March 8, 2017 Show with David Filson, Andrew Berg, & Richard Phillips on “Reformation: Recovering the Essence of the Gospel”

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

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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

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

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

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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

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

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Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 8th day of March 2017.

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We've definitely got a packed house here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio today. We have three guests that I trust will edify you and bless you.

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The first of our three guests who will be on with us for the first hour is David Filson. He's on for the very first time as a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron.

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He is pastor of teaching at Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, which is a congregation within the

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PCA or Presbyterian Church in America denomination. He is a PhD candidate in historical and theological studies at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

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He's a visiting lecturer in historical theology at Reform Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina and a blogger at Reformation21 .org

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and ChristWordCollective .org and TeachingLikeRain .wordpress

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.com and a regular panelist for the podcast East of Eden, The Biblical and Systematic Theology of Jonathan Edwards, which you can read at reformedforum .org.

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It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, David Filson.

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Well, thanks Chris. It's a pleasure to be here. And in studio with me is my co -host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor.

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Hello again. And it's great to have you back in the studio, Buzz. Thank you very much. And we are going to be addressing for the first hour.

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In fact, we're going to be addressing for the first hour and the last half hour, because we have Reverend Richard Phillips on with us for the final half hour.

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He is pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina. And both our first guest,

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David Filson, and our final guest, our third guest, Richard Phillips, they are both speakers at this year's

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Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, PCRT, as it is known as.

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And it is actually a misnomer because it's not held in Philadelphia anymore. And it's actually held in different parts of the country in addition to Pennsylvania.

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But the theme that we are addressing is Reformation, Recovering the Essence of the Gospel. And if you could,

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David, before we even go into the subject at hand, let our listeners know about Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville.

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Well, Christ Pres is one of the congregations of the Presbyterian Church in America here in Nashville.

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And in some ways, though, it's not the very oldest of all of our churches here. In some ways, it's sort of the mother church of several of the other churches that have been planted over the last several years.

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We were formed back in 81, and it's just really a legacy of the

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Lord's grace. And faithfulness to people who love the gospel and love the city of Nashville.

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We have a wonderful flock here. Our senior pastor, Scott Sauls, has been with us now just this past week for five years.

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He celebrated his five -year anniversary of being with us. And we just have a wonderful staff. We got our own

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Buzz Graham down here. You got a Buzz up there. We got a Buzz here. He's one of our faithful ruling elders. Just wonderful pastors,

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Todd Teller and a host of others who just love and care for our flock. And preach the word and serve the sacraments.

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Praise God. And you are a candidate, a PhD candidate, in historical and theological studies at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

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We've had not only the president of Westminster in Philadelphia, but we've had a number of the faculty on this program.

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Tell us something specifically about the historical and theological studies there.

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Well, historical and theological studies at Westminster is robust, to say the least. I mean, you have, as you mentioned,

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Dr. Peter Lilback, who's the president of the seminary. A longtime professor there. Obviously, Dr.

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Carl Truman, who I know you've been on your show. And Dr. Jeff Jew, specifically in the historical theology and church history departments there.

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But a host of other professors. I think one of the things about the overall pedagogy and curriculum at Westminster, it's very integrated and very organic.

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There's sort of a symbiosis that exists across the curriculum, so that even if you're in a systematics class, you're paying attention to historical theology.

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If you're in a historical theology class, you're looking at the history of exegesis in some respects, and the history of biblical theology.

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And so there's just a real symbiosis that exists across the curriculum. But obviously, with Dr.

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Truman, Dr. Jew there, and with Dr. Lilback, an obvious emphasis on Reformation, post -Reformation studies throughout the curriculum.

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But it's robust, to say the least. My focus, a lot of my emphases over the years has been on post -Reformation, as well as the theology of Jonathan Edwards.

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But interestingly, my dissertation is going to be on Cornelius Van Til and J.

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Oliver Buswell. So it's going to touch on apologetics and epistemology, but it'll be historiographical as well, because it is dealing with the debate that took place between those two philosophical theologians slash apologists in the earlier part of the last century.

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Great. And you are going to be speaking at the

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Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, something that is near and dear to my heart, because as a brand new

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Christian in the 1980s, when the late James Montgomery Boyce was still with us,

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I began attending that conference and cutting my teeth on Reformed Theology.

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I had come to understand the doctrines of grace prior to my attendance at these conferences, but was still very new, or they were still very new to me,

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I should say. And what a joy it was to go to that conference year after year.

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I haven't been to that conference in probably 16 years now, but I am looking forward to going this year for the first time in many years.

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The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals has asked me to have an exhibitor's booth there, and I'm looking forward to manning one to promote

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Iron Sharpens Iron radio. But I was privileged to hear such giants of the faith in the 1980s, as, of course,

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James Montgomery Boyce himself, John Gerstner, R .C. Sproul, and Sinclair Ferguson, and just a number of prominent figures within the

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Christian faith, and in particular the Reformed faith. And what a joy, and what precious memories

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I have of hearing these giants of the faith. Roger Nicole and J .I.

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Packer were among some of the speakers there. So it definitely has a lot to do with my personal history, especially my coming to grow in my understanding of Calvinism, as it is nicknamed, which we would basically just call biblical theology.

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And so this conference this year is on the theme, as I had mentioned,

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Reformation, Recovering the Essence of the Gospel. What specifically is your task there at the conference?

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Well, I'll be doing, at the Grand Rapids location,

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I'll be doing a series of Martin Luther, Theologian of the Cross. And I think, obviously, here we are in the 500th year, celebrating the anniversary of Luther, posting the 95

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Theses in the Castle Church store at Wittenberg on October 31st, 1517. And so there are obviously a lot of, over the course of this year, what

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I would call Lutherpaloozas going on all over the world.

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And I think it makes sense for PCRT doing something on the Reformation, specifically to have time devoted to Luther himself, his life, his theology, and so forth.

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And I think it's kind of neat just hearing you talk about those previous PCRTs. I didn't really come into the doctrines of grace in earnest until really the late 80s.

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And as I look back on collections of some of the essays that were, you know, really lectures given at the early

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PCRTs, those had to be just glorious days. I mean, you mentioning some of those figures, you were blessed to hear that that's like a great collection of theological hero trading cards that you got to listen to there.

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And so in some ways I feel like this PCRT hearkens back to some of those early ones that were dealing with the solas of the

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Reformation, the five points of Calvinism, some of those basics of Reformed theology that I would imagine,

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I mean, we won't know this side of heaven, how many people really came to embrace the doctrines of grace, or better realize that it was the grace of those doctrines that had embraced them through going to those conferences, and how in some ways

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PCRT sort of stood at the sort of fountainhead of this later, you know, dynamic that we've had over the last many years of conferences of all kinds together for the gospel,

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Gospel Coalition, Ligonier conferences have been faithfully being produced for many years, but there you have

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PCRT going back many, many years, sort of lighting the fuse for conferences on good

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Reformed biblical theology. So that's really got to be quite a memory for you, but what

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I'll be doing at the Grand Rapids location, as you say, there are going to be two events for PCRT.

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Yes. The one is in March 24th through 26th is going to be in actually

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Byron Center, Michigan, and then the other is going to be at Proclamation Prez in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

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Yes, you are actually... I'll be at the Grand Rapids locations where I'll be. Yes, and you're actually speaking on the same theme that Carl Truman is speaking on in Pennsylvania.

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Exactly, exactly. So, you know, if you want the short end of the stick, you can come hear me in Grand Rapids. Go to the...

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Go hear Carl in Pennsylvania for sure. Go hear Dr. Truman in Pennsylvania.

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Well, I think because I live in Pennsylvania, the likelihood is going to be much greater than I am going to be at the

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Pennsylvania Ephesians. Yeah. If I had a choice, if I had a choice, I'd go to Dr. Treeman. There's nothing to do with me preferring him over you, brother.

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It's just the geographical reality here. Well, I'll say this, you know, a great deal of what

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I've learned about Luther I've learned from Carl. Yes, I had a rare privilege of hearing him speak, not only interview him on that subject of Luther, at least once on that issue.

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I've had him on the program a couple of times, but I think at least once I've had him speak on Luther.

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But I also had the privilege of hearing him speak at the Redeemer Orthodox Presbyterian Church right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania about a year ago, perhaps a little longer, on that very theme.

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And it was quite an eye -opening thing because Dr. Treeman has insights into the life and theology of Luther that I had not heard until that privilege to hear him speak.

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Because there are a number of Christian historians who disagree on some level about Luther on a number of things, historians and theologians, so we may never know the whole complete story until we're in glory, but perhaps when we're there we won't care.

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Yeah, exactly, exactly. I think in the meantime that's why it's important to have critical historiography, and by critical

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I don't mean critical in the sense of disparaging, but careful, close reading of historical texts, primary, secondary, etc.,

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to sort of sift through what are things that are maybe more legend than legit, you know, what are things that are more hagiographical than historical, if that makes sense, in the life of any figure, not just Luther, but a figure who looms as largely as Luther, you know, there are going to be things that are more legendary than legit and perhaps things more hagiographical than historical, and so I think it's important in the meantime to try to sift through and say what are the things that did happen, what are the things he did teach.

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You know, obviously, I mean, I'm looking up right now, I'm in my study here at the church and I'm looking up at a little bitty

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Martin Luther action figure that Playmobil put out, and so when a figure from, yeah, you can get one, you can go on Amazon .com

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and everybody needs a Martin Luther action figure, but you know, when a figure from historical theology and church history becomes so prominent that, you know, the year of an event like the posting of the 95

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Theses results in the production of an action figure, you know there's bound to be some legend that creeps up around the story of a guy like Luther, but it's all fun, but the things that legitimately happened in the life of Luther, what he actually did teach, when you get to the essence of his theology, it's life -giving.

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So he didn't really have a lightsaber, huh? You know, well, here's the thing, I have a ton of Star Wars action figures at my house because my son and I are big

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Star Wars fans, and I could bring a little action figure and put it in Luther's hand, in fact, that's what

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I'm going to do, I'm going to do that and I'll post it on Instagram, right now he's got a little plastic quill in his hand, like a little feather quill,

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I'm going to replace that with a lightsaber, I'll complete the action figure. If he has a quill in his hand, they've got to come up with an action figure of the devil since he threw the inkwell at him, right?

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Yes, of course. At least that's the story. Collect all five. I've actually been in the room, y 'all, you can go,

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I've been in the room at the Barber Castle, we're in Luther, in the fall of 1521, of course you know the story, how he was kidnapped and taken there after the died of worms in April of 1521, so there he is all those months translating the

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New Testament from Greek into German, and I've been in the room there, and you can

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Google pictures of it, it's really interesting because there's this huge, like what appears to be a stone, you'd think he used it as a stool, it's actually a well for the break, but in his room, and then there's a desk and there's a spot up on the wall where legend has it he threw an inkwell at the devil, now this is where you get into those things of what's legend and what's legit, some will say because he spoke of slinging ink at the devil or throwing ink at the devil, is he talking about his writings in defense of the gospel as being, is he speaking metaphorically,

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I threw ink at the devil, or did he actually think he saw the devil and threw the inkwell, whatever the case, over the years,

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I guess for the sake of tourism, they've made sure that that spot on the wall stays sufficiently darkened, but you can go see it, you can go check it out for yourself.

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Wow. Well, since you are speaking on the theme, the same theme as Carl Truman is, we are going to likely get a lot of information on Luther over the next couple of weeks because actually

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I am very happy to announce that Carl Truman will be my guest, God willing, on Tuesday, the 21st of March, he is on for the first hour, 4 -5pm, and I'm looking forward to speaking further with Dr.

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Truman, but one of the reasons why there is so much disagreement on Martin Luther is because just like we all, he was a work in progress, the difference between Martin Luther and us is that he is a globally known figure that has been world -renowned for centuries and is a key figure in church history and history in general, being the one who is credited to have sparked the

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Protestant Reformation, but he retained a lot of Roman Catholic baggage for quite a long period in his life, which gives rise to the debates about who he was and what he believed, aren't these one of the, isn't this one of the reasons why there is disagreement amongst historians and scholars on Luther?

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Yeah, that's one of the reasons, he was a work in progress, and I think sometimes we as Reformed folk, we had this sort of anachronistic tendency of trying to do historical theology sort of after the fact, the statement that hindsight is 20 -20.

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So here we are, 2017, we have mounds of books, websites, conferences of some really good theologians over the last several decades and even centuries, where theology has become increasingly developed, articulated, crystallized, etc.,

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even in my own tradition in the PCA, we can tend to think that if we take, for instance, the

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Westminster Confession of Faith from the 1640s, that we can see in that, you know, just this clear, perfect representation of all of the theological development prior to that.

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Well, it is building upon it, and it is a crystallization and a distillation of the Reformed tradition preceding that, but even at the

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Assembly, there were debates, there were disagreements over things that we take for granted today. So theology, and it's one of the beautiful things about historical theology, and one of the reasons

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I love the study of historical theology is I think there is an invitation to humility when we study

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Church history and historical theology, because we realize that it's not just Martin Luther who's a work in progress,

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Chris, you and I, you know, right? Buzz, we're a work in progress ourselves in our own sanctification, and part of our sanctification is our understanding of the

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Word, our understanding of theology, our articulation of theology, and that's a work in progress as well.

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Now, for Luther, one of the things that's hard is that we will tend to look back on Luther and expect him almost like he's this sort of Church historical theological

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Mr. Potato Head, where I can see Luther. And even when you're a kid, you have a

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Mr. Potato Head, and you've got the eye where the nose is supposed to go, and the ear where the mouth is supposed to go. And what we end up doing is sort of recreating

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Luther in our own image. It's much like the quest for the historical Jesus of last century, where it was said that New Testament scholars ended up looking at the bottom of the well in their quest for the historical

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Jesus and seeing sort of a refabrication of Jesus that really was more in their image than the

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Jesus of the Gospel. We do that with Luther. We certainly do it with Edwards, right? I've been to conferences on Jonathan Edwards where, frankly, we hear lecturers on Edwards where Edwards would not have even recognized himself at the conference.

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Well, I think that happens with Luther, and so we look back on Luther, his theology, and we expect him to be a crystal clear sort of proponent of what later theological tradition has brought us.

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Luther himself admits that later in his life, for instance,

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Luther looked back on some of the things that he wrote especially early, when it was a real dust -up with Rome, say 1517 to 1521, just those years alone where he was writing very occasionally.

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What I mean by occasionally is not infrequently, but he was writing in response to specific events or specific teachings and so forth.

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Later in his life, he looks back on that and realizes that he was not as extricated from certain aspects of Roman Catholic doctrine as he would be later in his life, and so that's why he looks back, and I think he's speaking hyperbolically here,

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I can't imagine he really meant this, but he looks back and he says that his Treatise on the

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Bondage to the Will from 1525, which was written in response to Desiderius Erasmus, and his catechisms were some of the things that really he wanted to represent him.

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Yet I'm looking at my shelves at the American edition of the works of Luther, and it's now with these recent publications in the series verging on 80 volumes, thick volumes.

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So Luther was not only a work in progress, he wrote as he was in progress. In fact, his death mask and his hand, the casts that were made of them, you know, the left hand is splayed out like it's holding down a piece of paper, and his right hand is fixed as if it's holding a quill.

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He wrote voluminously, and so we get to track and see his progress, times when he wrote things that weren't as developed, weren't as crystallized, all the way to his more mature thinking and writing.

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So I actually have a death mask of the

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Reverend Buzz Taylor. It actually occurred when he fell asleep in a giant heap of mashed potatoes, and I let them harden.

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Oh, can you Instagram that? Well, now you brought up Jonathan Edwards.

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I recall hearing, of course, R .C. Sproul speak very highly of Jonathan Edwards, and he had the unfortunate circumstance, well,

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I can't say it, I mean, I didn't have the same fortunate circumstances to have somebody give it to me. I had to buy mine, but I started reading the complete works, and I'll tell you,

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I mean, I enjoyed the memoirs and all, but then when I got into the next stuff, I was starting to get really bogged down.

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So could you spend a little time telling us about Jonathan Edwards? Yeah, Jonathan Edwards is one of my, what

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I call, traveling partners. I tell, for instance, students at RTS, you know, you're going to be in ministry.

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Ministry is hard, and then the reality is pride will beat you out of the ministry, or the ministry will beat the pride out of you, and hopefully it's the latter.

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So along the way, as you're sort of on this journey through ministry, you need traveling partners.

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For me, it's Luther, it's Calvin, it's Augustine, Owen, Van Til, Voss, but, and C .S.

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Lewis is another of my traveling partners, as I like to say. This great cloud of witnesses by whom we are surrounded, who though they are dead, yet they speak, as the old saying goes.

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Well, certainly, perhaps my most, I don't know, my go -to traveling partner, and probably the one who's been more formational for me theologically, spiritually, etc.,

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has been Jonathan Edwards. Edwards, as you know, lived from 1703 to 1758, and is known as America's Augustine, although that's something of a misnomer, because Edwards would have still considered himself a subject of the crown, the revolution having not yet transpired.

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But, Edwards, to your point, you know, you start reading him, and if you think, well, I'm just going to get the old

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Sigmund edition, which Banner Truth has reprinted for years and years, and it's probably, for a lot of people, their most obvious and easy access to the writings of Edwards, although the

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Yale series, which is a critically edited series, and for serious study of Edwards, you have to go to the

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Yale series, which is also available online at theworksofedwards .yale

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.edu. But, at any rate, I love the old story of David Martin Lloyd -Jones talking about,

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I dug into this used bookstore, I believe it was in Cardiff, and he talks about kneeling down in his raincoat, having found a used set of the

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Hickman edition, which, again, is that two -volume set that Banner reprints, and how he just started pouring over its pages and just devoured it.

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Well, that's good, and people do that, but there are parts of Edwards, man, that are tough sledding.

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I mean, you've got to turn the TV off, or you've got to turn the TV off and take a bottle of aspirin with you when you sit down and decide you're going to work through Edwards.

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But I think about C .S. Lewis, who, in his essay, which was basically a preface essay on the

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Incarnation, and he talked about people not wanting to read old books, and I think it was later published, if I'm not mistaken,

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I think it was published in a collection of essays, Lewis, I think, got in the dock on the reading of old books, where he talked about us needing to be freed from that sort of arrogant modern notion that old books don't matter.

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And he says, you know, for every new book you read, you should read three old ones. And of course, he said, I don't want you not to read new books, because he's an author, and he wouldn't have a job if you weren't reading new books.

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But he said that people don't want to read old books because they find them too tough or too hard and not devotional enough.

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And I love what Lewis says, that he finds, at times, the most devotional reading that he ever does is when he sits down with a cup of tea, a pipe in his teeth, a pencil, working his way through a tough bit of theology.

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And I can't think of anyone who will reward you better for that, perhaps, than Jonathan Edwards. If you really want to get to the sweet stuff in Edwards, and I use sweet stuff intentionally, because that was one of the terms that he used a lot to evoke the imagery that he was trying to convey theologically with regard to Christ and things of God.

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He would speak of the sweetness or the loveliness or the beauty of Christ or the sweetness of the things of God.

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He would speak of the things of God and Christ being the cream of all the believer's pleasure.

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Go to the sermons. I would not suggest that anyone decide, I'm going to read Jonathan Edwards, and I'm going to begin with a dissertation concerning the nature of true virtue or the dissertation concerning the end for which

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God created the world or his treatise on original sin. I would probably say, get a handful of his sermons.

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And I think you really get to the heart of who he is as a homiletician, a preacher, a pastor, a

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Christian man, and a theologian. Some of the most theologically rich and, at times, pastorally insightful preaching

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I've ever read. You know, my favorite sermon by him, here's this intellectual giant, right, philosopher, theologian.

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My favorite sermon by him is a sermon on prayer called The Most High Prayer -Hearing God, and he speaks of God so intimately in that sermon.

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He speaks of our Father being so disposed toward us when we come to him in prayer that he presents himself as wanting to be conquered, overcome by our prayers.

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And I think about myself with my little girl, Lydia. I mean, she's 13, but I'm still putty in her hands.

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I want to be conquered by her desires and her needs when she comes to me. And Edward speaks of God being that disposed toward us.

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He speaks of Christ, as it were, hand -delivering our prayers to the Father, that Christ by his blood has purchased a hearing of our prayers and wiped away the cloud of our sin so that there is no hindrance of our prayers getting to God.

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And so I would say, you know, for your listeners, if they want to get into Edward's, get the two volumes set, wait a while before you jump into some of the heavy treatises and get a feel for the way he writes in his sermons.

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That would be a good entry point. Now, there's something controversial about Edwards that has divided

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Reformed Christians over his reliability in all things.

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Obviously, one of the watchwords of the Reformation is sola scriptura, so we're not supposed to rely on any human for all things and all knowledge.

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But are you familiar with the controversy over Edwards' understanding of the human will?

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Yes, I am. And here's one of the things, okay, so to get a feel for Edwards and why at times it seems like he is veering from the straight path of orthodoxy, when

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I don't believe he is, okay? He's not. But a couple of things contextually.

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One, I don't think there is anything, and this is hyperbole on my part,

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I think, but hopefully it'll make a point. I don't think that there is anything that Edwards preached, prayed, or proclaimed that wasn't at least implicitly and in many times quite explicitly cognizant of his transatlantic context.

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And what I mean by that is the encroachment of deism. He was writing as an apologist and a polemicist, always worried about Enlightenment development in a number of areas.

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Enlightenment areas in terms of historiography, Enlightenment developments with regard to ethics, the

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British Moral Sense School. With regard to history, no longer was history, you know,

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God's history of redemptive drama, but it was Historia Humana and the progress of man and man -donated reason and development, etc.

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And then with regard to theology, deism was coming across the

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Atlantic and, you know, setting up shop on the shores of the colonies. And so Edwards was always worried about and concerned about these philosophical developments and their implications for theology and for parish life.

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Well, when he is speaking on things like the will or justification or any of the things that we sort of, you know, those of us who have really been brought to life by the

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Doctrines of Grace and we inherit a sort of staple of theological terms and nomenclature, he was willing to venture outside some of that nomenclature in an effort to respond to post -Enlightenment, you know, or really kind of early

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Enlightenment development and philosophical terminology. He was thinking in terms of the way that Lockean terminology and sense experience and philosophical nomenclature was in the air that he was breathing.

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And so he was trying to write and articulate theology in a way that would be a polemical and apologetic response in those situations.

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I think with regard to the freedom of the will, though, it is not the easiest thing you'll ever read in Edwards, and it would never be a thing that I would suggest to someone if they were just wanting to get their feet wet with Edwards, jump into the doctrine of the freedom of the will, just as I wouldn't suggest they do it with his ethical treatises and so forth.

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Even though these are crucial aspects of his thinking, it's the nomenclature he uses that often is confusing and causes us to think that he has perhaps veered from received

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Reformed Orthodoxy, and it's just not the case. Well, that's quite encouraging to know.

34:47

And we actually are going to a break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for our guest

34:55

David Filson, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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41:29

Chris Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned in to Iron Sharpens Iron today, our first guest today on the program is

41:38

David Filson. David is one of the speakers at the

41:44

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology. The conference that he is specifically speaking at is going to be in Michigan, and we'll give you more details about that in a moment.

41:57

Even though it's called the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, that conference does not only take place in Pennsylvania.

42:04

In fact, ironically, it doesn't even take place in Philadelphia technically anymore, but that may change at some point in the future.

42:12

But this year it will be both in Michigan and in Pennsylvania, and we have been speaking on the theme of that conference, and that is

42:27

Reformation, Recovering the Essence of the Gospel. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

42:36

chrisarnzen at gmail .com. And we have

42:42

RJ in White Plains, New York, who wants to know, there are those who say that the

42:49

Reformation is over, that there is enough in common between Roman Catholics and Protestants where we do not have to continue to push this agenda, and in fact there was a

43:02

Lutheran -Catholic joint accord on justification. What are your reactions to these kinds of comments, that a peace treaty has been signed, sealed, and delivered between Rome and Geneva?

43:19

Well, I think in the spirit of 1 Corinthians 13, love believes all things and hopes all things,

43:27

I want to proceed along the lines that oftentimes people will assert something like that with the best of intentions and the most hopeful of intentions.

43:39

I do think, before I get into specifically addressing that very timely, very good question, that we do need to realize that when the

43:51

Reformation started, one of the, you know, I talk about what's legend and what's legit, sometimes we have this mistaken notion that on October 31st, 1517, there in Wittenberg, Germany, here's

44:05

Luther in his study in the tower there at what is now the

44:10

Lutherhausen Wittenberg, that like a light switch coming on, he just up and decided he had had enough with the

44:20

Roman Catholic Church and Roman Catholic theology, and he grabs his hammer and his nail and marches off, riding the theses as he makes that, you know, roughly mile trek down to the castle church door there in Wittenberg, and started a revolution.

44:34

Well, the reality is that's not the case. The 95 theses, when you read them and you take them at face value, don't expect the 95 theses to read like a, you know, an

44:50

R .C. Sproul book. They were about indulgences, or the sale of indulgences. They were about indulgences, the sale of indulgences, and Luther thought that he was being a good son of the

45:02

Church and a good servant of the Pope, that if Leo knew the abuses that were going on, that he would want to do something about it and fix it, and so Luther was acting, in his own mind, as a good servant of the

45:15

Church. He wanted to see reform in the Church in terms of morals and message. He wasn't alone, though.

45:21

He wasn't alone. He wasn't like this lone sort of, you know, 21st century Protestant.

45:26

Again, that's where we sort of turn him into a theological Mr. Platahead recreating him in our own image, especially in his early formation.

45:34

He thought he was being a good son of the Church, a faithful servant of the Pope. He wanted to call for reform, for debate, for discussion, and, you know, there's even, you know, sometimes people question, did he even have a hammer and a nail?

45:47

Well, perhaps he did, or sometimes they affixed things to the door with wax, kind of like putty, sticking...

45:55

Chewing gum, maybe? I'm only kidding. Maybe he had a pick of, like, what do we use to chew?

46:01

Was it Big League Chew, you know, the pouch? Had a big wad of that and used that. So all

46:06

I can say, he wanted to see reform in the Church. Others wanted to see reform in the Church. Luther did not launch out saying,

46:12

I'm going to leave the Church. Eventually, it became clear to him that the Church had left him, and so we all know that story.

46:19

Now, getting back to that good question, I think oftentimes it comes out of the best of intentions, and so I want to be respectful, because what

46:27

I'm about to say may sound a little bit stark, but here's the thing. If we no longer need the

46:34

Reformation, if the Reformation is over, then I have to ask the question, why has

46:40

Trent not yet been suspended? Why is it that the very things that we hold dearly, that we are to defend, declare, delight in, and lovingly demonstrate, things like the doctrine of justification by faith alone, how we view the grace of God and the sacraments and so forth, still technically, even though Vatican II in the mid -late 60s seemed to create this concentric set of circles and sort of flatten everything out, yet notwithstanding,

47:16

Trent was never suspended. And the anathema that is pronounced on those who hold to the doctrine of justification by faith alone has not been suspended.

47:27

Now, that said, do I believe that there are believers in the

47:32

Roman Catholic Church who love the Lord Jesus? Yes, I do. Do I believe that it's

47:38

Roman Catholic theology that leads them there? Conciliar, codified

47:43

Roman Catholic theology that leads them there? No, I don't. And so the Reformation is absolutely needed because it's never been a light switch that's gone off.

47:54

It's like a dimmer switch in the dining room that needs to be continually turned up so that in faithful submission to the norming norm, which is the scripture itself and tradition that is underneath scripture, and let me clarify what

48:13

I mean by that. Who, I believe it's Yaroslav Pelikan, who said that, you know, tradition as a living faith of the dead and traditionalism as a dead faith of the living are two very different things.

48:26

So here's the thing, what does sola scriptura mean? Scripture alone is the sole inherently authoritative, infallible, inspired, and inerrant norm for faith and practice.

48:38

All tradition must yield to the authority of scripture. That doesn't mean that tradition is bad. It means that tradition has its place, right?

48:45

You're a Reformed Baptist. You celebrate the London Baptist Confession. I am a

48:51

Reformed Presbyterian. I celebrate the Westminster Confession of Faith. It's a larger and shorter catechism, but you nor I would try to elevate that beloved tradition over scripture.

49:03

We want to see scripture as the norming norm, norming our tradition. That is an ongoing process and is why we still need, and will always need, the spirit of Reformation and the hermeneutic and the homiletic and the hope of Reformation.

49:22

Now, I'll say this, Trent has not been suspended. There are significant soteriological implications of that, as I've just said, justification being one of those things.

49:33

This brings up obviously the question of the solos of the Reformation. Do we still,

49:40

I remember hearing one time a man say, I just don't think we need to prop up, trot out the solos of the

49:46

Reformation and prop those up anymore. There's a lot that has happened.

49:51

Again, you mentioned there's been Lutheran and Catholic dialogue and so forth. And look,

49:59

I'm all for dialogue. I'm all for conversation, obviously. I have friends who are

50:06

Roman Catholic and we have spirited and I hope faithful dialogue and so forth.

50:12

But we must be in submission to Scripture. It is the formal principle of the

50:17

Reformation. And if we elevate anything to a place of equality or above Scripture as being the formal principle of how we do theology and faith and practice, which

50:31

I would submit Rome still does that, then we need the

50:37

Reformation to continue. Kind of a long way of answering your question, but know that the

50:44

Reformation is not over. We still desperately need the solos of the

50:49

Reformation. And without sola scriptura as the formal principle of the

50:55

Reformation, then we're not gonna have the material principle of the Reformation, which is justification by faith alone.

51:01

And if you think about the rest of the solos, those principles are needed as well, right? We hear theologians speak of sola scriptura as the formal principle, and justification as the material principle or the stuff for which the

51:15

Reformers were fighting and preaching and vying.

51:20

But what of solus Christus? I like to think of that as the executive principle of the Reformation. Christ as the executor of our salvation, of sola gratia, of grace alone, is the dynamic, grace is that dynamic, unmerited favor and power of God in the lives of believers, a dynamic principle.

51:40

And then, obviously, sola dea gloria is the teleological or the consonant principle of the

51:46

Reformation. And because those things are so pillars for us, and they are strong bedrocks doctrinally for us, there's a sense in which they are fragile, precious deposits that must always be vied for and re -articulated and applied and attenuated for our context.

52:08

Well, we are out of time. Our first guest could only be on the program with us for an hour, but I want to make sure you have, you who are listening, have all of the websites where you can contact our guests and also where you can attend the

52:23

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, no matter where it is being held.

52:30

First of all, Christ Presbyterian Church of Nashville, Tennessee can be found at christpres .org,

52:37

that's Christ, P -R -E -S, dot org. And you can find out more about the

52:43

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology at alliancenet .org,

52:50

alliancenet .org. And that conference is being held

52:55

March 24th through the 26th at the First Christian Reform Church of Byron Center, Michigan.

53:03

And then also April 28th through the 30th at Proclamation Presbyterian Church here in Pennsylvania in Bryn Mawr.

53:14

And I've only been living here in Pennsylvania since 2012, so I still don't know exactly how to pronounce that name,

53:22

B -R -Y -N -M -A -W -R. But I'm sure that if you go to alliancenet .org,

53:30

it won't matter how I pronounce it, you'll find it there, and you can register for either or both of these conferences known as the

53:39

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, even though it's not in Philadelphia. And the theme is Reformation, Recovering the

53:45

Essence of the Gospel. Any further contact information you care to give Brother Filson?

53:51

I think that's good. You can go to those various places where I blog and contact me there.

53:59

I'm on Instagram, you can follow me on Instagram, David Owen Filson. I'm on Facebook, Twitter, you can find me in all of those places.

54:08

And Chris and Buzz, if y 'all are ever down here in Nashville, come see me. We'll go get some hot chicken or go out to Lovebust Cafe and have some cheese grits.

54:16

It sounds great to me. I have the word wings and I can't resist. Just come on down.

54:22

All right, great, thanks. Well, also to repeat those blog websites,

54:28

Reformation21 .org, ChristWordCollective .org, and TeachingLikeRain .wordpress

54:35

.com. Well, thank you so much, Brother Filson, and we look forward to having you back on Iron Sharpens Iron in the very near future.

54:42

Lord bless y 'all, so good to be with you. You too. And coming up next, we have live in studio

54:48

Andrew Berg, who is a staff member for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

54:54

We'll be finding out more about what Andrew is doing on the campus of Dickinson College right here in town in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

55:04

And we would look forward to hearing from you with your questions via email at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

55:12

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We will be right back with our guest, Andrew Berg, after these messages.

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

01:03:53

This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned into Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, our second guest for today is

01:03:59

Andrew Berg. Andrew is a campus staff member for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA.

01:04:08

And he is currently working right here locally in Dickinson College or on Dickinson College's campus for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

01:04:18

Dickinson College is probably less than a five -minute walk from where I am, at least the first of the buildings on campus, because it is quite a large multi -facility campus that goes on for blocks and blocks here in the area.

01:04:35

But it is my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Andrew Berg.

01:04:41

Thanks for having me, Chris. Appreciate it. And if you'd like to join us on the air with an email with a question for Andrew, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

01:04:52

chrisarnsen at gmail .com If you have a question about what he is doing, what the state of millennials are in the 21st century in regard to the gospel, at least as far as his experience, as far as Andrew's experience is concerned, or any other connected question, you can send that email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

01:05:15

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Before I continue with our discussion,

01:05:21

I just want to remind you that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is in urgent need of donations and new advertisers and sponsors.

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01:06:25

Well, now we are going to be discussing, as I just mentioned a few moments ago, the gospel on the campus.

01:06:33

That's our theme for the next half hour with our guest Andrew Berg, a campus staff member at InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

01:06:44

And Andrew, if you could, first of all, give us briefly a summary of your own

01:06:49

Christian testimony, how you came to faith in Christ. Yeah, I'd love to. So I was raised in a

01:06:55

Christian household in upstate New York, Christian church, everything. It was actually a

01:07:01

Lutheran Missouri Synod church, so a bit more conservative, evangelical, but also had some charismatic and Pentecostal flair to it, which was a really interesting mix.

01:07:11

Really? For a Missouri Synod? Exactly. So I didn't realize how unique that was until I kind of got a bit older.

01:07:16

I think the Missouri Synod police are heading up there to upstate New York to have a question with your former pastor.

01:07:25

So it was very unique because you see, you know, we'd sing hymns, then we'd sing contemporary, people would be raising their hands.

01:07:33

It was a very interesting mix, and I really credit that for setting a strong foundation for my personal relationship with God.

01:07:40

I will say, I think that a lot of my view of the Bible and my relationship with God was framed with the theology and politics that I was absorbing from around me.

01:07:52

And it wasn't until I got to college, I was part of intervarsity at Franklin and Marshall College, where we studied the

01:07:57

Bible inductively. And instead of just immediately putting the Bible into my framework that I already had,

01:08:03

I just looked at the Bible as it literally was on the page. So reading things like Jesus saying, love your enemies or pray for those who persecute you,

01:08:10

I realized that that was not something I was doing, that I was actually kind of automatically categorizing and excusing verses that were challenging to me by, you know, kind of dodging around it.

01:08:21

So I really credit my involvement with intervarsity as a student with kind of reshaping and re -challenging my faith.

01:08:29

And yeah, so I actually really credit that with kind of taking God's word seriously in college.

01:08:36

Amen. And so how did you hear about intervarsity Christian fellowship? And obviously, perhaps before that, tell us about the history of intervarsity

01:08:46

Christian fellowship and let our listeners know exactly what that is. Yeah, so intervarsity was, intervarsity, a lot of people think it's a sports thing because the word varsity, but varsity actually means collegiate.

01:08:56

So intervarsity means intercollegiate. It was founded by a guy from England who came over, it was planting in Canada and America, you know, a bunch of different people.

01:09:08

And Stacey Woods was his name. I blinked on that for a second. Stacey Woods started up 75 years ago, is now present at about over 700 campuses across the

01:09:18

United States. And intervarsity itself is part of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students or IFES, which has campuses, which has chapters all around the world and countries all around the world.

01:09:29

Nigeria alone has more students involved in their intervarsity than all of the students in America, all the intervarsity students in America.

01:09:36

So it's truly a global kind of student movement, seeing students' lives transformed by Christ.

01:09:43

So it is interesting that it's also refreshing that you as a believer who are on campus at a secular college, even a lib, very liberal leaning college,

01:09:56

Dickinson College, which began as a Christian college. And now in the 21st century, you could barely recognize

01:10:04

Christianity from the college. But there is, as I am discussing right now, a

01:10:11

Christian presence there, obviously. And it is refreshing that you, as a

01:10:16

Christian young person, are not just going to college on a secular setting and saying, well, you know,

01:10:22

I'm just gonna keep my faith to myself so I can enjoy life as a student here, not be mocked and harassed, or perhaps even beat up.

01:10:32

I'm just going to have my private little faith here and not let anybody or just a handful of people know about it and just go about my daily life and do the kind of everyday things that all students do that would not involve sin, of course.

01:10:52

But you are not doing that. You are actually involved in a campus ministry. You are aggressively going after the fellow students there, or perhaps that's a bad way of putting it, but you're pursuing them evangelically or evangelistically with the gospel.

01:11:10

Tell us about what you are facing on the campus, not only at Dickinson, but you're also at York College?

01:11:16

Yeah, part -time at York as well with their intervarsity chapter. Yeah, so it's interesting. Yeah, I think evangelism has a very, very bad connotation.

01:11:25

Some of the methods and techniques that evangelicals have used to share the gospel, maybe they worked in the past, maybe they didn't, but they definitely aren't necessarily the way to communicate with the millennial generation.

01:11:39

By and large, I think there's a place for it. But with intervarsity, we are always inviting students in.

01:11:48

There's this wonderful phrase in the New Testament that Jesus says, come and see. Come and see what

01:11:53

Jesus is like. And this generation has less exposure to Christianity than perhaps any other generation in America before.

01:12:00

So many of them, they're the nuns, the N -O -N -E's that don't really know anything about Jesus.

01:12:07

So when they actually get a taste or a glimpse or see, oh, so that's what Christianity is actually about, or oh, that's what the

01:12:13

Bible actually says, they're intrigued if it's something that they're invited into and seek to learn more.

01:12:20

Yeah, so it's kind of a partnership. I was telling you earlier, one of our favorite events we love to do is an event called

01:12:26

Grilled Cheese Text Please. And our student leaders, they put up posters all around campus saying, if you have a question about God, about the

01:12:32

Bible, about Jesus, text your question to this phone number and we'll deliver a hot, free grilled cheese sandwich right to your door.

01:12:38

And we'll talk to you about the answer to your question. I've heard the Reverend Buzz Taylor has had more questions about Christianity than anybody in the area, even though he's an ordained minister.

01:12:49

Well, if you give them grilled cheese as well, you'll get even more questions.

01:12:54

And that's what we found. We found 60 to 120 people every time we do this event will text in questions. And we thought, oh, they're just hungry college students.

01:13:01

You know, they're just doing it for the grilled cheese. But 95 % of the time, they have deep, sincere questions. And we'll ask follow -up questions.

01:13:07

95 % of the time? I would say so, yeah, absolutely. This is not just a case of the munchies after a bong party or anything?

01:13:12

No, and in fact, some of the people who we, you know, we've done this event and there'd be people who text in drunk, you know, and so we're talking to drunk people.

01:13:20

We're like, are they going to remember this? A year later, they'll come back. They'll say, this happened to one of our student leaders. They'll say, Andrew, I got saved this summer.

01:13:27

I want to get involved with intervarsity. Tell me what to do. Are you having a Bible study? How can I get involved? And he remembered that conversation even when he was drunk and high from a year prior.

01:13:38

And so, yeah, it's just a way to invite students to learn more, to hear more in a way that isn't threatening or, you know, yeah.

01:13:45

And what kind of deep questions are you getting from these students? Well, it's interesting, you know, because some of them, because they have no

01:13:54

Christian background, they don't even necessarily know what questions to ask or what questions they're wrestling with. So there was a student who asked, well, what is

01:14:01

Easter? And we thought, oh, that's a silly question. But as it turns out, the student was actually Jewish. They had no idea what Easter was.

01:14:06

You know, this is not something they'd been exposed to. So the student who actually answered that question got to share essentially the whole story of Easter, the death and resurrection of Christ.

01:14:14

Other questions, I think our most popular question is probably, you know, something along the lines of, you know, why is there suffering in the world if God is good and loving?

01:14:23

And of course, you know, that's a great question. And so our student leaders, we tell them it's not about just giving an answer and walking away.

01:14:29

It's actually engaging, seeing like, so why do you ask that question? Why is that on your heart? You know, what's going on in your life?

01:14:35

And trying to build a relationship out of that so that it's not just a once and done answer the question, but actually something can develop further out of it.

01:14:43

Do you ever invite Christian speakers to have events there or anything of that nature? Yeah, so every

01:14:49

Monday night is our large groups meetings. So we have Bible studies throughout the night and those all tend to be student -led.

01:14:55

But on Monday nights, we'll invite local pastors or other university staff, other people kind of in the local

01:15:01

Christian sphere into to speak to the large group. We have discussion and worship, stuff like that.

01:15:07

Now, one of the things that... Did you have a question, Bob? Yes, yes. You mentioned that students lead the

01:15:15

Bible studies normally. Where do you get most of your input to the students? So we have leadership team.

01:15:21

So we mentor them one -on -one, but then on Sunday nights, we have leadership team meetings and we have prep meetings, check in with them, see how they're doing, different strategies, different things.

01:15:32

We give them good advice and help them lead their Bible studies. Because it's not something that a lot of people don't know how to lead a good

01:15:37

Bible study. It's kind of, you know, they just think, oh, I got to teach a lesson. And that's not really the way students want to learn and the way people want to learn.

01:15:45

So it's about asking really good questions. So that's the main thing we help our students come up with. Now, it has been very discouraging, disappointing, although not all that shocking, but it's becoming more perhaps annoying than anything.

01:16:02

Seeing on the news over and over and over again, these college campuses where students and perhaps sometimes the faculty are behaving like whining little spoiled brats.

01:16:16

And if a speaker is lecturing or giving some kind of a message in a hall on a campus, you will have students who disagree before they even know what the person's going to say.

01:16:31

The presuppositions that they have in opposition to that speaker, they will shout that speaker down.

01:16:38

There'll be all kinds of boycotts and protests against anybody who has any criticism of the activity of homosexuality.

01:16:48

And the homosexual activists amongst the student body will be there in mass in many of these campuses to try to drive out anybody who has anything of criticism to say about these groups.

01:17:05

What are you facing in that realm of political correctness? That's even beyond political correctness.

01:17:11

That's leftist totalitarianism existing on campuses. What are you facing at Dickinson and York?

01:17:19

It's interesting, actually. And perhaps this is because our relationships with people are really based on, we really try to make sure we have the relationship first before we go into these touchy, more touchy subjects like the issue of LGBTQ, maybe more political things.

01:17:36

We make sure that we have a relationship so that when our student leaders, when they do have friends who come out to them, that's actually something that they can understand the difference of opinion there, but actually can know that they'll be respected and welcomed and loved, even with that kind of disagreement over the morality of that.

01:17:59

And so, yeah, that's one thing we really highlight to our students. One thing I will say about this generation, and there's a book about this,

01:18:06

I believe it was written by James Chong, an intervarsity press book, looking at each generation has a different question that they're wrestling with.

01:18:14

And for the baby boomers and that generation, it was like, is it true? So then you have books like The Case for Christ, and that was the overarching question in apologetics training.

01:18:22

Millennials are very different. Is that Josh McDowell, The Case for Christ? Yeah, so that's the type of book that was written.

01:18:28

Buzz Lee Strobel. Lee Strobel, right. And I think Josh McDowell did a similar book. So it was really written for that generation's question, is this true?

01:18:36

Here's the history, et cetera, to answer that question, is it true? And apologetics training often is geared towards that.

01:18:44

This generation, the millennials, so I'm a part of the millennials, and so is this current batch of college students. The question is not so much, is it true, but is it good?

01:18:52

So they are wondering, they don't necessarily care if Jesus was a real person, is Christianity good for the world?

01:18:59

Are his values, are his beliefs actually good? Will they produce good things in the world?

01:19:05

So part of the dilemma is actually helping students see, yeah, actually Jesus, when you follow him, it might not make your life easy, but it is good.

01:19:15

And then the truth comes along with that, right? So the gospel is both true and it is good. But I think in the past, a lot of times, the truth aspect has been highlighted over the goodness, over the love aspect of it.

01:19:27

So that's kind of, that's something we wrestle with. And yeah, I mean, we actually, at our fall conference this past fall, we had a speaker who works with Ravi Zacharias.

01:19:37

And so he came and he was much more on the apologetics end, but still like this is true and it is good truth for us, for us as humans.

01:19:45

So yeah, for us, we have not really experienced a whole lot of the downsides of kind of the political correctness, stuff like that.

01:19:52

I've actually experienced the flip side of that, where there've been leftist speakers that have come to Dickinson and Christians in the community have come and protested at that, or they've told us, hey, you

01:20:01

Christians, you should boycott or you should protest at this. And my approach is, it doesn't really bother me.

01:20:08

They're not affecting us. This is an open campus. And so far everyone we've got - Opportunities to evangelize afterwards.

01:20:14

Yeah, right. Have a conversation. And in fact, on election day, which was a very tense day for a lot of students this past week, there's a couple of street preachers who were going pretty aggressively, a bit more of the

01:20:25

Turner Burn type street preaching, which I don't think is super effective for this generation. And so what our students, what university students were doing, we were mingling in the crowd that was kind of watching these, listening to these street preachers.

01:20:37

And some people, not our students, but some of the other students were cursing them out and getting really angry. But our students would be like, hey, what do you think about this?

01:20:47

Do you have a spiritual background? And kind of actually using that, kind of what might be arising negative emotions to actually have spiritual conversations in the midst of that.

01:20:56

Well, you're only on for a half hour as our guest today. So I'd like to make sure before our third guest joins us,

01:21:05

I would like to have you summarize what you predominantly want our listeners to have etched in their hearts and minds today.

01:21:15

Mm, I would say college students, especially in kind of a more post -Christian nation, there's actually this deep hunger for the gospel.

01:21:26

There's a deep hunger for the news of, the good news of Jesus, his love and forgiveness for humans and his called repentance.

01:21:33

So I would say be praying for your local colleges. They're not, you know, there's a lot of problems and sin there, but there's also a lot of hope and there's a lot of good things there.

01:21:42

There's InterVarsity, there's other campus ministries. Get involved, you know, donate, but make sure you're praying because God's actually really moving and they're going to be the next batch of leaders, you know, in the world and in this country.

01:21:56

So let's, I want them to, we want them, InterVarsity wants them to actually have some knowledge of Jesus, yeah.

01:22:03

And the InterVarsity website is intervarsity .org, I -N -T -E -R, varsity .org.

01:22:10

Do you have any more specific contact information that you care to share about yourself? You can send me an email at andrew .berg

01:22:18

at intervarsity .org. And it's B -E -R -G. Correct, yeah, like iceberg, yep. Right. Well, we do have time for a listener question.

01:22:26

We have Kelly Grant of WPFG radio, which is a local Christian radio station in town.

01:22:33

She says, Dickinson, that the question disappeared.

01:22:39

This was on the Reverend Buzz's cell phone. And I guess she didn't hear me repeat a million times our email address where we're supposed to have our listener.

01:22:49

Dickinson has a significant international population, which obviously means students of other faiths. Do any of these students show any interest in Christianity?

01:22:56

Also another question, as we know, society is becoming more intolerant of Christians in Christianity. Do you see this phenomenon also occurring on Dickinson's campus?

01:23:06

Yeah, I'll answer the second question first. In terms of like intolerance towards Christians, I think there's an intolerance towards a certain brand of Christianity that they see kind of out there that a lot of people see as just being solely tied up with the

01:23:21

Republican Party, solely tied up with neoconservatism, stuff like that. So by showing, we help students see

01:23:27

Jesus isn't a Republican or a Democrat. He's beyond that. Jesus is so much more. And while our faith does inform our political choices, they might not be in the way that students always expect or the way the media wants us to think of it.

01:23:41

In terms of international students, yeah, Dickinson has about 10 % of the population is international students.

01:23:47

So that's 250 out of 2 ,500 students. Actually, a lot of them are from countries that don't really have a lot of religious backgrounds, such as China.

01:23:55

So a lot of students come from there, don't necessarily have a religious background. And they actually come with a lot of curiosity because they come to America, they know

01:24:03

Christianity is big here. And a lot of times they do wanna learn, but for them, it might be kind of as a cultural perspective.

01:24:10

But as they start to learn more about Jesus, they actually, I think they get intrigued. And we've actually seen international students who decide to become

01:24:17

Christians based on the experience they have. Over the past two years, we've actually seen 30 students total make decisions to follow

01:24:23

Jesus, which is really exciting for us to see that. And just out of curiosity, do you often, or at all, do you have conflict within the

01:24:38

Christians who are members of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship? Do you have any discussions, debates? Because obviously, it's a pretty broad group of people that are professing to be

01:24:47

Christians. They might not use the King James version. Yeah, oh yeah.

01:24:52

So, I mean, InterVarsity is non -denominational. So we have Catholics, Protestants. We actually, we have a few pacifists in it.

01:24:59

And then we have students from ROTC. And so they have some really good, but they're respectful conversations because they're both following Jesus.

01:25:06

And so the conversation is just different when you have a different foundation there. Another thing that we're kind of pushing into that has a lot of tension is around issues of racial reconciliation.

01:25:16

What does it look like to be one faith body with people from different races, different ethnicities, different cultural backgrounds in general?

01:25:23

How can we all be worshiping God together? And so there's a lot of tensions around that.

01:25:28

But if the church can't model how to do it well, then what hope is there for society in general to actually do this well?

01:25:34

So we want to be a model for campus. The first conversation that I had today on the program, and the last one that's going to be following or including our program any minute now is on a, basically focused on the theme of the

01:25:49

Protestant Reformation, which is a discussion at the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology that I'll be attending.

01:25:56

Two of the speakers are my guests today. And one of the things that you brought up about there being both

01:26:02

Catholics and Protestants on either the staff or at least involved in the

01:26:08

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, that is a huge conflict to overcome to have people who, and in fact, what you already told me, because of the fact that the

01:26:23

Church of Rome technically has a different gospel than the gospel of the Reformation, because the

01:26:28

Council of Trent made that clear. The Catholic Church made that clear that they have a different gospel than the

01:26:34

Reformers had, which is why they anathematized the teachings of the Reformers and those anathemas still exist today.

01:26:41

How can you reconcile the fact that you do have people of both faiths represented in InterVarsity?

01:26:50

Yeah, I mean, I think that's interesting. I think in any denomination of Christianity, there are people who have a true understanding of the gospel, and there are people who don't have a true understanding of the gospel, and that's true

01:27:01

Protestants, Catholics, Anabaptists, anything in between. So I think the

01:27:09

Catholics who I know, who I'm friends with, especially those in InterVarsity, they pray, they believe, very similar to the way

01:27:16

I do. And I can't speak to exactly what the anathemas or exactly the

01:27:23

Church's overall stance, but in terms of their individual relationship with Jesus, I see it just as valid and legitimate as my own.

01:27:32

Yeah, it's perhaps they might have different cultural practices. They might have stained glass windows in their churches and my church might not.

01:27:39

Actually, in fact, it does. But I think, again, those are kind of the how do we reconcile different cultural understandings of God and discerning what is true.

01:27:54

Every culture has its own baggage and every culture has its own gifts. You know, it says in Revelation 21, the kings of the nations will bring their gifts in to the holy city, that each nation, each culture has something to offer as we understand

01:28:06

God. But the question is, you know, kind of figuring out and sharing those gifts amongst each other and then also wrestling with the baggage that every culture has.

01:28:14

Well, I might as well give also the website for the church where you are a member at newlifecommunity .us.

01:28:22

newlifecommunity .us and that's for New Life Community Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. And that is a congregation within the

01:28:29

Brethren in Christ, correct? Right. Well, it's been a pleasure having you in studio and sharing with our listeners something about InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

01:28:39

And I look forward to further activity with you. Like, for instance, I hope you keep coming to our pastor's luncheons,

01:28:45

God willing, if we keep having them and other things that we are doing here with Iron Trip and Zion. And perhaps we could even from time to time, if we have a speaker coming here locally, get a

01:28:57

Christian speaker involved in something you're doing on campus at Dickinson, if they approve of that. But we are going to be going to our final guest right now.

01:29:06

And that is Richard D. Phillips, the senior pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina.

01:29:13

So don't go away. We are going to be right back, God willing, right after these messages. Thank you.

01:29:18

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01:31:35

Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko inviting you to tune in to a visit to the pastor's study every

01:31:41

Saturday from 12 noon to 1 pm Eastern Time on WLIE Radio.

01:31:47

www .wlie540am .com.

01:31:53

We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions.

01:32:00

Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon

01:32:06

Eastern Time for a visit to the pastor's study because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back, this is

01:32:12

Chris Arnzen if you just tuned us in. Our final guest today for the third or should I say for the last half hour is

01:32:20

Richard Phillips, Senior Minister of the Second Presbyterian Church of Greenville, South Carolina. He's the author of over 25 books currently in print, board and council member of the

01:32:32

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, the Council of the Gospel Coalition, and the

01:32:37

Board of Trustees of Westminster Theological Seminary. He's the co -editor of Reformed Expository Commentary Series and today we are addressing

01:32:47

Reformation, Recovering the Essence of the Gospel which is the theme of the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Richard Phillips.

01:32:59

Hey Chris, good to be back with you. It's great to have you on the program. I feel tired just listening to you read my bio.

01:33:09

Well today might be even more difficult for our listeners to distinguish the different people involved in today's show because I've heard from my listeners that my co -host

01:33:18

Buzz Taylor sounds nearly exactly like you and I've heard that Buzz sounds a lot like me.

01:33:24

So I mean it may be hard for our listeners to... And by the way, I want to introduce you to my co -host

01:33:30

Reverend Buzz Taylor. Hello. And Reverend Buzz also mentioned that years ago he had the privilege of hearing you speak right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at the

01:33:40

Comfort Inn or Comfort Suite. Yeah, right. The Comfort Suites Hotel. You had some kind of a meeting there.

01:33:46

I don't know if you recall that. I don't remember. I've been there. I don't remember the venue.

01:33:51

I remember being in Carlisle. And then of course I saw you in Grand Rapids when I was helping Todd Jennings with his book tables there also a few years ago.

01:34:01

And also in the studio with me who is helping us co -host the last half hour is Andrew Berg who is a local campus worker for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

01:34:10

It's great to have you stick around for the last half hour, Andrew. Thanks for having me. And this theme of the

01:34:16

Reformation recovering the essence of the gospel. They're obviously the name or the title of the

01:34:24

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology's subject matter implies that the essence of the gospel seems to have been obscured or lost in regard to the

01:34:36

Reformation. Tell us exactly about that subtitle recovering the essence of the gospel.

01:34:43

You know, Chris, I think there may be some generations where conferences on the

01:34:48

Reformation and the great doctrines that were recovered might be superfluous. When people have heard it all, they know it well.

01:34:55

But this is not one of those generations. We have been experiencing the effects of massive demands of the culture to teach false gospels.

01:35:06

And so many of our churches wanting to please the culture mainly and there's always liberalism have really changed the message that we're preaching.

01:35:18

I think that, you know, in our day, the most, in many respects, the most unreached group for the gospel are the churchgoers.

01:35:26

Wow. Because of the exaggerating everything but the gospel in so many cases.

01:35:33

So, and I'll say as well, too, every generation has to do this. There's always the effect of sin.

01:35:40

There's always the winds of cultural influence blowing across the church. And part of the job of church leaders is to engage like the prophets of the

01:35:49

Old Testament in Reformation to remind people of what God has revealed, to call them to turn away from deviations in sin and to charge them to walk in the old path.

01:36:02

And we are the heirs of the Reformation. When I do my new members class in my church,

01:36:08

I have a class on the Reformation. And I point out, we are literally the spiritual heirs of that great revival.

01:36:15

The Reformation was first and foremost a revival, a work of the Holy Spirit involving the recapture of the gospel and then the working it out in the faith and practice of God's people.

01:36:25

That's the very thing we most need today. Amen. In fact, what you were saying reminded me of something that an old

01:36:33

Southern Presbyterian told me years ago from Mississippi when he found out that I was from New York.

01:36:42

He said, you got it easy being from New York. You just got to get people saved.

01:36:48

We got to get them lost, then get them saved. And that seems to be a lot of behind what you're saying here.

01:36:59

In fact, I was just at the G3 conference not long ago in Atlanta, Georgia, and Phil Johnson, who was on the staff of John MacArthur's ministry,

01:37:10

Grace to You, the executive director of Grace to You, he was addressing the fact that Protestants need a reformation just as much as the

01:37:21

Church of Rome did in the 16th century. Would you agree with that? In large measure.

01:37:28

And in the case of Rome, there developed during the course of the Reformation formal doctrines against the

01:37:36

Gospel. I mean, it's chilling to read the Council of Trent, which is very much in force today, where they place anathemas upon the very

01:37:45

Gospel of the Bible. So that's probably not the case in most of our cases. We, to the extent that we care about doctrine, we may be part of organizations that have pretty good doctrinal statements, but it's seen as almost an impediment to the work of the

01:38:00

Church. Rather than the proclamation of truth in the power of the Holy Spirit to exalt

01:38:05

Christ in his atonement and in the justification that is through faith alone, it's the attitude that we need to recover.

01:38:13

I think it's much like Josiah's time, where, you know, Josiah in 626

01:38:19

BC, he has a concern for the Lord, and he sends workers to clean up the temple, and they find the book of the

01:38:26

Lord. And it's like, wow, it's a rediscovery of the Bible. You know, even in many evangelical churches where the

01:38:34

Bible is preached, the message of the Bible is not preached. No, you're right. And you've got the vision statement of the pastor, and you've got this therapeutic message, and you've got, you know, honestly, the part of it,

01:38:43

Paul, is we've defined success in worldly terms, and so we do worldly things to reach those worldly definitions of success.

01:38:51

And we need to exalt the Lord. That's what we try to do through the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, is to exalt

01:38:57

God and His Word, and to celebrate it, to treat it as of great significance, and to really rally about it.

01:39:04

It's the ethos that, you know, to the extent that evangelicals would know these messages, and I think that the evidence is a little alarming.

01:39:13

You probably heard of Michael Horton and his friends who went to a Christian Booksellers Association meeting, and no one there could answer what his justification conveyed.

01:39:23

Yeah. Most evangelicals do not know what justification is, but to the extent that they do and can answer it, is it seen as this great message that we've got to get out, and it's sufficient for the work of our church, not just justification, the whole gospel, the

01:39:39

Word of God. Well, you see, the Reformers experienced that in the power of the Holy Spirit. I think of Aldrich Zwingli, when he began preaching in 1517, independently of Luther.

01:39:50

He starts preaching the Gospel of Matthew, and the city is electrified because the

01:39:55

Word of the Lord is going forth, not in a marketing shtick, not in a vision statement of a celebrity preacher, but as a prophetic preaching of the

01:40:06

Word of God. Boy, that's what we need today. Amen. And what would you say the most vital aspect of the gospel that has been distorted and clouded and perhaps even forgotten or abandoned, that we need to resurrect and put in the spotlight again of our evangelism?

01:40:30

What exactly is this that we need to recover, first and foremost? Well, I think that, as is usually the case, we fall off the rails to one side or the other, so there's more than one thing going on.

01:40:43

But, I mean, I think the evidence shows that evangelicalism in America is increasingly being dominated by the prosperity gospel preachers who assume

01:40:52

God's favor towards us, who wipe out the significance of sin, even if they may formally use that terminology, and whose message is one of worldly blessing through a faith that is more a mystical work on your part.

01:41:13

And so I do think we've got to preach the doctrine of sin. Every time I see a Joel Osteen or somebody like that,

01:41:18

I want to go, do you realize these are sinners under the wrath of God, and they're going to go to hell? And you're up there smiling and telling them they can own houses.

01:41:27

They just project their thoughts, and God will bless it. And wow, I mean, we've got to preach, not because, you know, it's our thing.

01:41:36

No, it's God's message of the wrath of God upon sin for which the blood of Christ has been precious.

01:41:42

And then, frankly, who cares how many bedrooms my house has if Jesus should die on the cross for my sin?

01:41:49

And so I think in that respect, the doctrine of justification with the wrath of God on sin, sufficiency of Christ.

01:41:59

Now, on the other side, you have many evangelicals, and I'm sorry to say many people with a Reformed understanding of the gospel who don't believe in holiness, and they don't believe in sanctification.

01:42:09

We've got this terrible, they call it the contemporary grace movement, but it's not biblical grace because biblical grace changes us.

01:42:18

And so you have, I would say on the one hand, the evangelicals are worldly in their aspirations rather than being right with God and celebrating

01:42:27

Him. On the other hand, the last thing you'd say of the evangelical movement is this is a holy people.

01:42:34

We're doing the sanctity of life. It's the exact opposite.

01:42:40

And we've got to preach the good news of sanctification through the grace and power of God.

01:42:46

Reverend Buzz Taylor has a question or comment. Well, yes, I think because a lot of times you have people coming into some kind of relationship with Christ that have never been told about repentance or the fact that they're sinners in need of a savior, that they're culprits, not victims.

01:43:02

And then they learn the five points of Calvinism, and then they're Reformed, and there you have it. They don't understand how it isn't just my preaching the gospel, it's my living the gospel, and it's being repentant of my own sin, seeing myself before God, a holy

01:43:18

God, as the sinner that I am. I think this has been lacking for generations now. And well, it's going to affect a lot of the

01:43:26

Reformed circles as well. And I think there's a lot of Reformed people who are reacting against legalism in their past.

01:43:33

And so they, now any, I've got people saying to me, you know, you're a legalist because you preach obedience.

01:43:39

Right, yeah, yeah. Well, Jesus is a legalist too, then. That's the case.

01:43:45

I mean, and I don't know. And so, but I think behind that is the absence of a fundamental theology where I do think in many cases,

01:43:55

Calvinism or Reformed teaching or whatnot is used almost in a therapeutic sense.

01:44:02

It makes me feel better. I feel like I have assurance. Rather than saying there is a great and sovereign and holy and almighty

01:44:08

God and when we're filled with a sense of who he is, it's like the Apostle John in the book of Revelation.

01:44:15

When Jesus unveils himself to him in his glory as prophet, priest, and king, the

01:44:20

Apostle John, one of his closest friends, falls to the ground as though dead. And we are not exalting

01:44:27

Christ in glory as God and God the Father in his holiness and sovereignty.

01:44:33

And so you have this glibness, Frank. And it comes out, again, how you worship affects your music, your theology, and vice versa.

01:44:42

You now have people singing romantic, almost sexual love songs. Oh, yes. Jesus and Christ. And I'm just wondering, what kind of view of God is behind this?

01:44:53

Yeah, do you think - So anyway, we have a big need to recover the essence of the gospel. The conference is gonna be very positive, not that they're bashing people, but this is why it's so important.

01:45:02

You've got to remember these great truths and the great power of God that has been in our churches in the past.

01:45:09

And y 'all come and we'll do that together. Yeah, I'm assuming from what you were saying about how modern evangelicalism or even modern

01:45:21

Christendom has distorted the biblical truth of the gospel, if not abandoned it, has a lot to do with the exaltation of man to an improper height and a lowering of God to sometimes even a blasphemous unbiblical level, a lower rung on the ladder, if you will, of authority and sovereignty and glory, making man and God closer as peers rather than we being the helpless, hopeless sinners that are reliant upon him, dependent upon him for everything because he is the

01:46:07

Alpha and Omega, the author and finisher of our faith. He is the only sovereign, righteous, and holy one.

01:46:13

And it seems that there seems to be a blurring of the lines. Am I overstating the case here?

01:46:19

No, I think the last generation or so has seen a disaster spiritually in America of the church growth movement because we define success in worldly terms, numbers, attendance, buildings, cash, which can be gotten without the gospel.

01:46:35

And so we have a consumer model, all the big how -to -be -a -successful minister is conduct a survey, find out what they want, and give it to them.

01:46:45

And so we, frankly, while the numbers of evangelicals have swelled, the number of Christians among the evangelicals has declined.

01:46:55

And I just think, and I don't mean this in some kind of smarmy, hypercritical way, I just think any sober assessment biblically of the evangelical movement would say that it's just really not a

01:47:06

Christian movement on the whole. I think if you pick 10 figures out of church history and just randomly brought them in America today, they'd excommunicate the whole

01:47:16

American evangelical church. Lack of holiness, lack of the exaltation of Christ, preaching of faith, or even worse, read

01:47:25

Revelation 2 and 3 and see what Jesus says. False teaching, sexual immorality, and a lack of zeal for true soul winning.

01:47:35

He says, I speak you out of my mouth. I mean, that's an American evangelical church. And so as an

01:47:42

American evangelical, what I want to do and what we're trying to do is we're trying to spur Reformation.

01:47:48

And it's true. So the very thing that Luther and those guys were doing, people say, you all have a

01:47:53

Luther complex. Would that we did. We want to have a burden for the people in our churches.

01:48:00

One of the things that really breathes me is we're always hearing people who say, you know, in my city,

01:48:05

I don't know where to go to church to hear the gospel. And there's mega churches and there's rock bands and there's always, but then there's all stories about me and my wife and my dog.

01:48:16

And here's my psychological journey. And there's no proclamation of the word of the

01:48:22

Lord. And well, we want to respond to that by proclaiming the word of the Lord and rallying people for great worship in a sober but joyfully reverent way.

01:48:33

And we have great speakers. We're going to preach the word. We're going to explain and teach the doctrines of the Reformation.

01:48:39

I can't wait. Well, let me tell our listeners something about the conference. There's two conferences, both under the same name of Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology.

01:48:50

And as I said earlier, neither one of them are being held in Philadelphia. Because of hotel room, that's why.

01:48:59

You can't afford to stay in a hotel down there. Oh, is that what it was? Okay. Well, we have... One of the big issues, actually.

01:49:05

Yeah, well, the first conference is being held at the First Christian Reform Church of Byron Center in Byron Center, Michigan, March 24th through the 26th.

01:49:16

So that one's coming up real quick. That's Grand Rapids. Okay. It's our 10th year there.

01:49:22

We've had great conferences there. That's going to be Dan Doriani, Kent Hughes, and me along with David Filson.

01:49:29

It's going to be wonderful. Great. And then the second one, the one that I intend to attend is

01:49:36

April 20th through the 30th at Proclamation... 28th to 30th. Yeah, Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

01:49:44

I've just been instructed how to pronounce that because I'm not a Pennsylvanian. I'm only living in Philadelphia.

01:49:52

Right outside Philadelphia. So it is Philadelphia. Bryn Mawr is right outside Philadelphia. Okay. And for more details on either one of these events, you go to alliancenet .org,

01:50:04

alliancenet .org, and click on events. And of course, you could also, if you want to write down this whole website, you could go to alliancenet .org

01:50:14

forward slash reformation dash recovering dash the dash essence dash of dash the dash gospel.

01:50:24

Or just click on the events button. In Philadelphia, we're going to have

01:50:31

Karl Truman with us. So that'll be a lot of fun too. Yes. Dan Doriani and me and Karl Truman in Philadelphia.

01:50:36

Yes. I've had the pleasure of hearing all of you and seeing all of you speak in public and have had the privilege of interviewing all of you.

01:50:49

So I'm looking forward to having Karl Truman. Actually, he's going to come back on the program next Tuesday, the 21st of March from 4 to 5 p .m.

01:50:57

He'll be on the first hour. And I hope to have Dan Doriani back on the program. I was taken aback in a good way,

01:51:07

I should say, when I saw and met Dan for the first time face to face in Harvey Cedars, New Jersey at a conference he was doing.

01:51:16

And he had a very appropriate use of humor. He was a very funny man, but it did not overpower the content of what he was saying.

01:51:24

He's a great guy. All of these are great guys. It's really a joy to be together. We look forward to meeting people there.

01:51:31

And I'm just really thrilled to be together with those men. And I really want you to have at least five minutes to address our listeners with what you most want in their hearts and minds before this program is over on the gospel of Jesus Christ in the 21st century, what you most have pressing upon your heart that you want to share with our listeners.

01:51:56

Well, about the gospel, I think that the good news is the good news of Jesus Christ, the

01:52:05

Son of God. Actually, after a prayer meeting tonight, I'm speaking on Mark. I'm beginning a series on Mark.

01:52:11

I said, John, that's how Mark brings his gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the

01:52:16

Son of God. And so everything about our gospel is centered on the person and work of the

01:52:25

Lord Jesus Christ. And we need to know him. We need to know what the Bible teaches about him and teach it accurately, not just sentimental, you know, idolatry out of our own heart of what we think

01:52:36

Jesus would be like, what the Bible says about the Lord Jesus. And, you know, the Lord Jesus is exalted now.

01:52:43

He's at the right hand of the Father. He is enthroned with all authority in heaven and earth given to him.

01:52:50

And so we're not talking about some absent mystical figure. We're talking about a living

01:52:55

Savior and Lord. And there is no gospel apart from him. And so the gospel is not a therapeutic way of dealing with my issues.

01:53:02

Now, it will have that byproduct. The true gospel is very therapeutic, of course. But the gospel is the work of the

01:53:10

Lord Jesus Christ to restore me to God by atoning for my sin, justification through faith alone in the atoning work of the

01:53:21

Lord Jesus. But then that same Lord Jesus Christ will dwell in me by the Holy Spirit that I will have a new and abundantly spiritual and godly life.

01:53:31

And what we need to do is the gospel calls us to the response of consecrating our lives to him.

01:53:37

In Old Testament Israel, there were two offerings. You would do the atonement offering, the blood offering.

01:53:43

Well, we don't do that. Jesus did that for us. But then there's a thank offering. And so when

01:53:48

Paul finishes his exposition of the gospel in the book of Romans, first thing he says is, let's pour out our lives unto him as a thank offering.

01:53:56

And so to put it differently, the gospel calls us to be followers of Jesus Christ, to be saved by him alone, justified through faith alone, but real

01:54:08

Christians, not just people on a lifestyle thing, not people whose real objective is the world, people who are really living in the power of the

01:54:17

Spirit reconciled to God for the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, that's what we need. And I'll say this.

01:54:24

One of the biggest problems we have in America, Chris, is that the pagans are more motivated for what they believe in than we are.

01:54:31

And so the Christians are at soccer practice. I got kids too, you know. And we have time for recreation.

01:54:38

Our kids are in sports leagues half the time. We don't go to church because we're at a baseball game. And we're not committed to the kingdom of the

01:54:46

Lord Jesus Christ. That's why we have these conferences, to rally these important things. And we seem to be excited about everything else, frankly, than the

01:54:57

Lord Jesus Christ. And then he is the gospel. Amen. Well, I want to let you know that a ministry that has nothing to do with my program, but they are called

01:55:10

Iron Sharpens Iron, a nationally known fraternal group of Christians, they contacted me, or at least one of the directors contacted me because he heard about my program because of the name.

01:55:25

And he was intrigued about what I'm doing. And he wanted me to get a list of speakers to recommend to him to speak on men's issues.

01:55:34

And I certainly want to include you among them, brother. So I know that you have written on a couple of topics that are specifically focused on Christian men and their role and responsibilities and duties.

01:55:49

So I hope to have something like that launched for Iron Sharpens Iron in the near future, that the fraternal ministry

01:55:59

Iron Sharpens Iron, along with you and some other brethren that I know. So let's keep in touch about that.

01:56:05

And if you could, before we go, Second Presbyterian Church of Greenville, South Carolina, where you are the senior pastor, tell us something about that congregation before we go off the air.

01:56:16

Yeah, we're a 125 -year -old congregation. We're a PCA church in downtown

01:56:22

Greenville, South Carolina. We're committed to the ordinary means of grace, word, prayer, sacraments.

01:56:28

We are a Bible -believing gospel church, Lord willing, with His power working through us.

01:56:35

Our website is spc, Second Presbyterian Church, spcgreenville .org.

01:56:41

And all of our service, you can watch our worship service live. If you're not available to go to church a certain day, you can download everything we do.

01:56:49

I'm just thrilled to be pastor of this church. It's a really great congregation, and we are preaching the word here.

01:56:56

So that's spcgreenville .org. Great. And once again, go to alliancenet .org

01:57:03

and click on events, alliancenet .org. Click on events for more information on the

01:57:09

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, both their Byron Center, Michigan location this year, and their

01:57:17

Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania location, the first being from March 24th through the 26th in Michigan, and the second being

01:57:28

April 28th through the 30th in Pennsylvania. And that's alliancenet .org.

01:57:34

Yes, alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org. Click on events. And I want to remind you that tomorrow, in fact, tomorrow and Friday, two days in a row, one of my dearest friends on the planet

01:57:46

Earth, Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church, Wading River, Long Island, New York, who is one of the largest sponsors of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, he is going to be addressing for two days in a row

01:57:57

Christians and sickness, and how sin is involved in that, and the fall of man.

01:58:05

And he is going to be talking about the atoning death of Christ and many other deep things, which required us to do a two -day interview with Pastor Ron Glass.

01:58:15

So please stay tuned to the program, or tune in, I should say, to the program tomorrow and Friday, 4 to 6 p .m.

01:58:23

It'll be on for two hours each day. And please email us at chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:58:30

with your questions on the Christian and sickness both days on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:58:37

In fact, you can start sending in your questions now, and we'll have them ready to ask Pastor Ron tomorrow.

01:58:43

Obviously, don't forget, next week, next Tuesday, for the first hour, 4 to 5 p .m.

01:58:50

on March 21st, we have Carl Truman returning to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and he's going to be talking about Martin Luther, theologian of the cross, which is his theme at the

01:59:02

Pennsylvania location for the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology this year. And I want to thank

01:59:08

Buzz Taylor, Reverend Buzz Taylor, for being my co -host today, and also for Andrew Berg in the studio with me from the

01:59:16

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship for being my guest, my second guest. And I want to thank all of you for listening today.

01:59:22

Obviously, I want to thank my last guest, Richard D. Phillips, for being our guest today as well.

01:59:30

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

01:59:36

Savior than you are a sinner. We look forward to hearing from you and your questions for Pastor Ron Glass, our guest tomorrow and Friday on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:59:47

And please continue to pray for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio as we are in urgent need of more benefactors and advertisers.