July 14, 2025 Show with Mack Tomlinson on “One Pastor’s Experience with a Dark Night of the Soul”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 14th day of July 2025.

Before I introduce today's guest and our topic, I want to let you know that I got off the phone a little while ago, about 1 .30 p .m. to be more precise, with Phil Johnson, who's been a friend of mine for decades.

Phil is the executive director of John MacArthur's media ministry, Grace to You. And at that time, John MacArthur was still in the hospital, unconscious, and the doctors do not believe that he is going to live past today.

So, in essence, Dr. MacArthur is on his deathbed, but those of us who are Christians know that a deathbed for a Christian is really a launching pad to eternal paradise in the presence of Christ. So those who will deeply miss John MacArthur when he does depart from this Earth and enter into eternity, any sadness that anyone may have is going to be buffered by the joy of knowing that he is finally in eternity with the one whom he has been serving so faithfully for so many years, his Lord God, Savior, King, and Friend, Jesus Christ.

So, continue to pray for John, pray for his family, and pray for Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. I don't even know how they're going to fill his shoes when he goes home to glory, but the Lord will preserve his church as he sees fit.

And so just keep all of those folks in your prayers. I will keep you updated as I receive updates from Phil and perhaps other folks that I know over there. But today, we have a dear friend of mine who will always hold a very special place in my heart because the Lord used this brother to minister to my oldest brother, John Arnzen.

While he was closing in nearer to the day that he departed from the Earth and entered into eternity, Mac Thomason was a faithful evangelist and friend to my brother during these last months of his life.

And I am convinced that the Lord used Mac to lead my brother John to eventually and finally embrace the gospel and trust in Christ alone for his salvation. I have great confidence from what my brother told me, the last communication he had with me over Facebook Messenger, I am very confident from his words that my brother was born again and is now spending eternity with Christ.

And so obviously, I am forever in the debt of my guest today, Mac Thomason. Mac Thomason is the pastor of, or one of the pastors, I should say, of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas. And today, we're going to be addressing the theme, One Pastor's Experience with a Dark Night of the Soul.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trumpet Zion Radio, my dear friend, Pastor Mac Thomason.

Thanks, Chris. It's always special to be with you and, you know, and mentioning Dr. MacArthur. Would it be fitting if I could lead us and our listeners in prayer for Dr. MacArthur right now briefly?

Oh, definitely.

Yeah, I'll do that now. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the great legacy and decades of influence that Dr. John MacArthur has had on the body of Christ worldwide. Lord, even we think of the late 1960s as he started his pastoral ministry there in California and he had no idea what you were going to do.

And we just thank you that you have used him and others such as R .C. Spowell to bring the Reformed faith and the biblical gospel to the grassroots of our nation. And we do pray for Dr. MacArthur right now that you would minister to his spirit and his heart and that your hand would be upon him.

We pray for the MacArthur family, you'd give them joy and comfort. We pray for Grace Community Church there, that you would be with their entire congregation, the staff and the elders. And Lord, we pray, Brother John, that you would give him an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

We thank you for his legacy. And we praise you, Lord Jesus, that you use faithful men. We thank you in Christ's name, amen. Amen.

Before we get into the theme of your experience with the Dark Night of the Soul, Brother, if you could explain in a little bit more detail what is Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, and who those fine saints are.

Yeah, Providence Chapel is a Reformed Baptistic church in Denton, which is basically 30 miles north of Dallas and Fort Worth in North Texas. We have a wonderful church family, wonderful elders. I stepped out of being a pastoring elder last fall, and so I'm an elder emeritus filling the congregation.

And we have five marvelous pastoring elders and a wonderful church family that loves to pray, loves to love people and share the gospel. We're involved heavily in missions worldwide and local evangelism as well.

So I just invite anyone who's ever in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex area to visit Providence Chapel in Denton to worship with us and can contact us anytime.

And the website is ProvidenceDenton .org, ProvidenceDenton, D-E-N-T-O-N .org. And the reason, one of the main reasons that I put Mac in touch with my oldest brother John is that my brother John had been living for many years in Justin, Texas, which is not far from Denton.

And I'm so glad that they had communication, which I believe led to my brothers trusting in Christ fully for his salvation. But today, as I've already mentioned, that we are addressing the theme, One Pastor's Experience with a Dark Night of the Soul.

Can you explain to us in as much detail as you can, when you started noticing something different in your heart and your mind and your spirit that perhaps began to trouble you and how that began to develop and what were the symptoms and so on?

Yeah. Well, Chris, it really started in 2022. I don't remember exactly what month, but it began with just an increasing inability to sleep, insomnia began to set in. And I don't even know why. Maybe it was stress from ministry.

Maybe it was, I don't know honestly what caused it, but weeks led into months and I could not go to sleep. Or if I could go to sleep, I would wake up an hour later. And this went on for probably eight to nine months.

And I think I averaged perhaps two hours a night, but rarely ever more than three. And so the insomnia led to physical exhaustion, which led to mental fatigue and mental exhaustion. And then, you know, when you get in that condition and nothing changes, it becomes so difficult to even function.

And I told my fellow elders, you know, that I needed a break. They knew what was going on. They were very supportive, very loving. And so I couldn't preach for a while. I couldn't attend church. I was just too exhausted.

And the physical fatigue led to mental fatigue, which finally led into what I would just call to borrow Dr. Lloyd-Jones phrase, spiritual depression. And since I mentioned that title, that phrase, Dr. Lloyd-Jones has a marvelous book titled Spiritual Depression that has been used in the lives of countless Christians who go through times of just the spiritual depression or what's been called the dark night of the soul.

That book is a tremendous resource. So mine became spiritual depression in many ways. It wasn't. It was rooted in insomnia, but it escalated into just deep, really depression that was not, it was not chemical related.

It wasn't heredity because I never had a problem with depression in any chronic way. But I was so exhausted mentally and physically that I began to think down under a cloud of just not being able to function at all.

And then I was kind of a shell of a man in a way. And I was really reduced for three or four of those months to basically having to be at home, sit in my recliner, try to pray, try to read. I would have to sleep some during the day, but the nights were always the same.

I would begin to dread bedtime because I knew I probably wasn't going to sleep. And I didn't know how to communicate much about it, really. It was hard for me to give expression to it because I was so weak mentally and emotionally.

And so it just became a very severe period that I didn't know what to do except at night or in the morning, pray as a child would, God help me, help me through the day, help me through the night. I need you.

And I kind of lived in the Psalms. It was the only place I knew to go for primary encouragement. And it was, you know, when you read the Psalms, they're often they're simple prayers rather than theological content like Romans or Hebrews.

And so the Psalms were my go-to, and that's where they became kind of my lifeline to keep me with some sense of reality. But this lasted nine to ten months as a longer period.

Now, can you tell us about some of the things that were going through your mind? Was it merely exhaustion? Was there any sense that you were perhaps having an attack of Satan and his demons upon you and your ministry?

I mean, what were the things perhaps going through your mind?

Well, in retrospect, you know, it's hard to remember clearly what was going on in my mind. And at the time, you can't figure it all out. I had not been through any difficult period of ministry before the insomnia started.

I was preaching, I was pastoring, I was kind of just normal living. And so when the insomnia started, though, it began to be a slippery slope where the longer I didn't get sleep, you know, a month passes, two months passes, and then suddenly you are exhausted.

And then you're weak, even mentally, emotionally, you have no strength. And so you don't process things well and you don't really know what's going on. And so I wasn't, you know, I wasn't thinking spiritually well to try to figure things out.

But what I did begin to realize was I was in bad shape emotionally and mentally. Now, it wasn't a mental breakdown. It wasn't a, what other word am I looking for? It was not a...

Nervous breakdown?

Nervous breakdown, right. Wasn't that it was purely rooted in physical exhaustion, but then it began to sink down into spiritual depression. And this is where it's very probable that I began to be under some spiritual warfare, primarily in my mind, because in the middle of the night when I would fit in my recliner and my study, I would leave the light off because I wanted to try to go off to sleep.

So in the darkness, I would be, I'd be sitting there praying simple prayers like, Jesus, could I just sleep some tonight? Help me, Lord, help me through the night. And, but then I would feel condemnation come on my mind suddenly, and the condemnation came in the form of regrets from the past, like thoughts that weren't even accurate often, like, you know, I've not been fruitful enough.

Um, my ministry is probably over and I've not, um, I've not served Christ the way I should have or could have, and I would feel condemnation about it. But even then thoughts of, of moments of sin in my childhood, when I was a young teenager, suddenly thoughts of a memory would come up when I stole something or when I, um, did something else.

Things that had not bothered me at all in, really in 50 years, suddenly vividly came to my mind and I would feel condemned and I couldn't stop the feelings of guilt and condemnation. Even though, knowing the gospel well, like I know it, I knew intellectually my, those sins were forgiven, um, and they hadn't bothered me.

And in a half a century now we're talking, still the condemnation for them was very real in my mind. And I had such deep grief over them, just as if I had just committed them.

Wow.

And so at that point, I do think, uh, the Lord was, was sovereignly allowing me to be tested. Um, you know, he, any spiritual warfare a Christian goes through is God allows it for our good. We have to believe that, and the Bible teaches that.

So what that did for me in my weakness, I had to remind myself when I would have thoughts of, you know, something that I did that was just so grievous, um, lying to a family member or, as I said, stealing something.

In the moment of my condemnation, in the middle of the night, I would say to myself, I know Christ forgave me for this, for that. I know he forgave me because I came to know him. Um, when I was 19, I'm just preaching to myself.

See, I'm talking to myself in those moments. And so I said, I know those sins are forgiven. So Father in heaven, help me right now. Lord Jesus, you are my refuge. You died for me. You paid for those sins, and I trust you.

I trust you. That's all I could do. That's all I could pray. And so for over those months, whenever that would happen, or I would feel so, um, have so much desire, even for sleep, I got through those months by praying simple prayers like a child, such as, Jesus, help me right now.

I need you. And the Psalms, whether a verse like, what time I am afraid, I will trust in you. Verses like that literally became my lifeline that kept me hoping in Christ, and he never left me. And I knew he was with me, but I couldn't sense the presence of God.

I had no feelings of faith. I felt dry and empty and desolate. But the whole time, Christ used his word, the Bible, to keep me because I kept making myself go to it and pray what I could remember.

You know, as you are fully aware, in Revelation 12, 10, the Scriptures refer to Satan as an accuser of the brethren, and I can't help but to be reminded of that as you say that out of nowhere, sins that you committed over a half a century ago begin to plague your mind and conscience, and I can't help but wonder if you think that those are the efforts of Satan to begin to plant seeds of doubt in you as to whether Christ did really fully accomplish the work of redemption on Calvary on your behalf.

Well, yes, Satan is always the accuser of the brethren. You know, Romans 8 says that God is for us and not against us if we're in Christ, and that he is not our accuser. Who shall bring anything, any charge against God's elect, it is God who justifies.

So it is always Satan who is the accuser of the brethren. And but in my experience, I was able at times to remind myself of the truth, but what I could not get relief from was the cloud of a sense and feeling of condemnation.

It wouldn't stop every night or many nights. And so I was utterly weak, both mentally, spiritually and physically. But when I would doze off and I would, let's say, wake up at 530 a .m. and I would see the morning had broken, the morning sunlight was coming in through the window, it was like relief would come to me.

I would say, I made it through the night. Thank you, Lord. And I would have some hope in the morning time, and that became my best time. You know, I would try to read the word and sometimes it would minister to me, sometimes it wouldn't.

But by afternoon, you know, I needed to try to sleep some, and I did. And then, but it was a cycle of months of mornings were better, afternoons became harder because I was tired. But but then the dreaded nighttime would come and by 8 p .m., I would have this sense of dread come over my mind that I was going to have to try to sleep.

And I was just dreading the night coming. And I would just pray again, Lord, it's nighttime. Get me through tonight. Help me in whatever way I need help. Help me. Give me tonight what I need. Jesus, I trust you.

I ask you. I depend on you, Lord. And, you know, nine or 10 months, it continued.

Now, you're receiving relief and comfort by seeing the break of dawn and seeing sunlight. And, you know, doctors have for quite a while been finding a correlation between sunlight and mental health. Now, obviously, there's a lot of things in the so-called scientific realm, especially in regarding the mind that are nothing but garbage and false teaching, but not everything doctors tell us are without merit.

And, you know, there have even been studies about some of the Scandinavian countries where there are seasons with very little sunlight for a long period of time and so on, where the depression in the minds of the residents of any particular area that experiences that, the depression rates increase and, you know, you have suicides that increase and so on.

Do you think that there was anything like that going on there, that the sunlight was helping you in a physical way, or is it just that you found a reprieve from the nightmare of having to battle insomnia?

Well, that's very, very possible. I have not—I hadn't thought about it in that context really much, but it very well may be true. I think what I felt more than anything—remember the Scripture that says, a weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning?

Yes.

When I saw the morning light, I realized the night time was over, and I had a reprieve from the darkness and from—so it just, it brought me relief. It brought me emotional relief. It brought me mental relief.

And so, yeah, it was very real in that regard, and I was always grateful for the morning to come.

Well, we're going to our first commercial break, and we'll be returning with our discussion on Mack Tomlinson's Dark Night of the Soul when we return from the commercial break, and we'll also be telling you about a conference that is taking place this week, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, July 17th, 18th, and 19th at my former church before I relocated to Pennsylvania, Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, which was where I was so blessed to have membership all of my Christian life starting in the 80s.

It actually began as Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, Long Island, and then merged with First Baptist Church in Merrick, which became the Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, and so there is a conference called the Fellowship Conference New York that Mack Tomlinson is participating in along with another speaker, and we'll be telling you in more detail all about that when we return from our first commercial break.

If any of you have questions for Pastor Mack Tomlinson, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

If you are asking a very personal and private question, which could be very easy to understand why a topic like this would evoke personal and private questions, you may remain anonymous. We just ask for your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you are asking a general question.

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That's royaldiadem .com. Mention iron sharpens iron radio. And we're now back with my dear friend pastor mac tomlinson. I just wanted to let you know uh pastor mac that a dear mutual friend of ours mike gadosh who was my very first pastor now living in um fort st lucie florida he uh texted me and was wondering if your dark night of the soul began the day that you met me.

No it actually probably began the day i met michael gado. It goes around comes around like lord if mike can put try to put that on you you and i both will put it back on him.

That well i love michael gadosh i love that guy and me too and i can still remember him plunging me beneath the waters of baptism like it was yesterday. But uh yeah before we go on with this very important story of yours i want you to uh describe this week's conference the fellowship conference new york which is going to be held thursday friday and saturday of this.

July 17th through the 19th. Yeah well first of all any believers in the long island area or the all five boroughs of new york um the greater area that that love true fellowship and biblical preaching warm-hearted preaching and even corporate prayer meetings.

There will be two corporate prayer meetings on friday morning and saturday morning. Um it's not a large conference. There's opportunity to to eat meals with the the speakers the the preachers ask questions the the fellowship of the church there.

Um that hostess uh is always so gracious and wonderful. Um and so it is basically from thursday evening through saturday afternoon there will be six sessions of worship with six messages um and meals.

Lunch served those days. Um and i just encourage anyone in the in the long greater long island area that um it's it's not too late to register uh at i'llbehonest .com or you could even um reach out to me through chris for information on the conference and i'd be happy to put you in touch with the host pastors.

Uh it's always a special time though it is. It's um a true time of biblical worship of true fellowship and enjoying the things of christ. It is all centered around the the glory of our our great savior jesus christ and his kingdom.

And so we welcome you to join us if at all possible. Just um just drop in and you can register at the door and it's a it's a very special few days together always. Well who else is uh speaking other than yourself.

Well uh michael durum from our church in in uh denton at providence chapel. Michael is pastor for 25 years in kentucky and now he's travels full-time um across the u .s and in other countries around the world.

And in itinerant ministry. Michael is a wonderful preacher and a warm-hearted brother in the faith. And another one of our elders in our church brian elsey will also speak. So there'll be three of us preaching the six sessions together great and once.

Again the website to register is i'llbehonest .com forward slash fcny for fellowship conference new york i'llbehonest .com forward slash fcny and god willing we'll repeat that towards the end of the program.

Uh we do have uh some listeners who have submitted questions and uh we have uh cj from lindenhurst long island new york and cj wants to know was your dark night of the soul involving the doubting that you were truly born again and would go to heaven.

Well a very important question.

For me no it did not include that. Um as a christian uh i'm grateful that in my journey as a christian i never struggled with doubting my or lacking assurance of my salvation. So when i began to go through those that almost a year of this that was not a battle for me as hard as it was in my heart.

I knew that i was a believer because i had i had been rooted in in the gospel and that the basis of our assurance is what christ did for us and nothing in our performance or nothing and how well i'm doing spiritually.

So i did not have that that battle during this period of doubting my salvation. Um at all i'm sure that other christians.

Who experience this do have that unfortunate thought raced through their heads. Yes i'm i'm.

Sure. That's that's often true and many christians uh this is a big battle for them even when if they're not in a period of depression uh they they battle the issue of uh not having assurance that they're a christian.

So this is one of the hardest things to go through as a believer. Whether you feel like you're doing okay spiritually or whether you're going through a very difficult time it's always hard to um to lack assurance of salvation.

Yes. Well uh we thank you cj. Make sure.

You provide for us your uh full uh mailing address there in lindenhurst long island a town that i lived in for 10 years many years ago. And uh guess what. I got a big surprise for you. Um erdmann's publishing uh is going to be providing you with a free copy of a book that has meant a lot to my guest today mac tomlinson.

And that book is spiritual depression a classic by dr martin lloyd jones uh spiritual depression its causes and cure 21 enduring sermons from one of the 20th century's greatest preachers. And we thank erdmann's publishing erdmanns .com uh but cvbbs .com cumberland valley bible book.

Our sponsors of this show will be shipping that out to you so make sure you get us your.

Your mailing address. Uh wheels i would just. Well chris i was just going to say i would just issue to um the cj up an invitation to to join us um uh if he can since he lives yeah um on long island to drop by the conference and um let us meet him.

We would be delighted.

For that to happen. Yeah that's uh less than a half hour away from lindenhurst so uh we hope that uh you can. You can attend cj. And uh we have uh let's see. We have doreen in park city utah and doreen wants to know how were you getting along with your wife and others during this time of darkness.

Spiritually did you have a short temper. Did you want to be isolated from them. Uh were your conversations with them.

Existent at all. Tell us more about that aspect. Yeah very good question. Um well my wife linda was such a wonderful support. We've been married 47 years and um you know she knew first of all she knew the insomnia was bad and and then it takes that takes on a life of its own when you when you sink down to mental exhaustion too.

She she wasn't sure what she could do and it wasn't really anything anyone could do except she prayed for me. She uh encouraged me. Um she was there for me and so um you know she was just a marvelous support as a wife.

Um you know i i don't remember that i was able to talk a lot and i couldn't you know when something like that is happening and it's kind of organic it it. You don't know where it's leading you don't know what you know how long it's going to last you don't know how to analyze it or figure it out.

You're just day by day trying to survive. And so she was it couldn't have been more wonderful to me during that period of time. Well doreen you've also won a free copy.

Of spiritual depression by martin lloyd jones. Thanks to our friends at eerdmans .com. Uh by the that book publisher is spelled e-e-r-d-s-m-a-n-s. I'm sorry e-e-r-d-m-a-n-s. And uh as i said their website is eerdmans .com and we uh thank our friends at cvbbs .com for shipping these books out to you so make sure that you get us your full mailing address in park city utah.

And uh let's see. We've got another uh question. Uh from oklahoma and i was just looking at it. Uh oh at bixby oklahoma. Uh we have terry in bixby oklahoma. Who asks did thoughts of suicide ever.

Enter your head during this time. Well it's a very honest important question and uh i'm grateful it could be brought up for me personally. I did not. Um have that battle happen it doesn't mean it couldn't have.

I could have sucked down too bad uh but i was not tempted with that temptation. I'm so thankful. But i i do know what i i did realize. Uh sometimes i could process how low i was feeling how bad i was feeling and i would say to myself this is so hard.