June 9, 2025 Show with Anthony Rogers on “Defending the Essential Truths of Christ and His Gospel”

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

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

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Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

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

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

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnson. 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 at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this ninth day of June 2025.

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Over the past few years, I have been having listeners contact me with the request, when are you going to interview

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Anthony Rogers? And I began to do some research on Anthony and was extremely impressed and am extremely impressed with his gifts, with his knowledge of Scripture, with his beliefs, his apologetic skill.

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And finally, that day has come where we have Anthony Rogers for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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We almost had him on a number of weeks ago, actually a few months ago, back in February.

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We hadn't planned for a specific date, but my brother

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Andy, his health took a turn for the worse in the hospital, and I was informed that he was likely not going to remain on this

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Earth very long, and sure enough, the Lord did take my brother. But I'm glad that Anthony could reschedule and be on with us today.

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And Anthony Rogers, for those of you who are not already familiar with him, he's a Christian apologist, a debater, an ordained minister in the

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Presbyterian Church in America denomination, also known as the PCA, and he is regional director for Metanoia Prison Ministries.

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And I have conducted an interview in the past with Lowell Ivey, the director of Metanoia Prison Ministries, and I'll let you know how you can hear that momentarily.

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But today we have Anthony Rogers on the program to discuss defending the essential truths of Christ and his gospel against his primary opponents today.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Anthony Rogers.

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Hey, thanks for having me on with you. It's a delight. Oh, it's such a delight to have you on, finally.

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And before we go on with your salvation testimony, which we always have first -time guests do on this program,

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I would love to hear more about Metanoia Prison Ministries, which, as I said before, we've already conducted a full two -hour interview on this ministry, but many may have missed that.

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So why don't you give our listeners a summary explanation of this wonderful ministry?

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Sure. So the PCA, as you mentioned, I'm a pastor in the PCA, the

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Presbyterian Church of America, has a home missions agency,

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Mission to North America, and part of Mission to North America's effort to extend the gospel into all areas of America involves work among prisoners, and that's what

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Metanoia as a branch of MNA is all about. So our goal is to be in—it's an ambitious goal, and we're far from completing it, but it's to be in every prison in every state across the

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United States. In that capacity, I am the regional director for South Carolina, so I am the one responsible for trying to get us into every prison and making sure that we are getting the gospel out to every prisoner.

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Most of my time presently is spent at a prison near my house,

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Perry Correctional Institution. I could keep myself busy in that one institution all day, so it's a pretty big task to try and be in all of them.

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So we'll see what that looks like down the road, but I go in all the time. I preach and teach, so I preached this last

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Sunday out at a local church that I'm currently serving as the pulpit supply for while they were looking for a pastor, and I went from there to the prison to preach the sermon for the inmates there on the prison yard.

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And then throughout the week, I go in several times teaching Bible studies. Currently, I'm teaching a

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Bible study called Dust to Glory. It's actually supplied to us by Ligonier, where we go through upwards of 50 different topics just surveying what the

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Bible says on major issues like creation, the fall, other things that are brought up that are of critical relevance to the

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Christian faith. And I also am doing an apologetics course. I mean,

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I just do a whole bunch of stuff out there. I think that gives people enough to get the idea.

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But the goal is to preach the gospel and disciple inmates, hopefully in the case of those that get out so that they might walk with Christ and be prepared to do so before they ever leave, but then also preparing men who will never get out to live for him behind prison walls.

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And the actual word metanoia, I understand it means a change of mind.

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Is there any nuance to the meaning of that word that would make it different than specifically repentance?

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Or is it identical to repentance? Yeah, it's the word for repentance. So it has an obvious relevance to all

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Christians, but has a special, I think, relevance to prisoners. They are guilty before God, as are all of us, but they've also committed criminal offenses.

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So offenses that rise to the level of justifiably incurring the wrath, if you will, of God through the civil magistrate, as Paul says in Romans 13.

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So these are men who need to hear of repentance towards God and faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And so the same gospel at the end of the day, it's the same for them as it is for us.

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But there is a kind of edge to it in their case, right? They know they've committed sin in ways that some people might not have.

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Right. Well, if anybody wants more information on Metanoia Prison Ministries, you can go to metanoiaprisonministries .org,

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and that is spelled M -E -T -A -N -O -I -A, prisonministries .org.

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If you want to hear an interview I conducted back in February of 2024, that would have been actually

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February 27th of 2024, with Lowell Ivey, the director of Metanoia Prison Ministries.

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Just type in Lowell, I'm sorry, L -O -W -E -L -L,

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L -O -W -E -L -L, and that will come up on your screen when you type that in at the search engine at irontrepanzionradio .com.

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And I have interviewed Lowell Ivey several times. That happens to be the most recent time

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I've interviewed him on Metanoia. Well, as I told you earlier, we have a tradition on Iron Trip and Zion Radio whenever we have a first -time guest.

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We have that guest give a summary of their salvation story, including the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which they were raised and the kinds of providential circumstances our sovereign

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Lord raised up in your life that drew you to Himself and saved you. So I'd love to hear a summary of your story.

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Sure. So briefly, as far as my family's history goes, there's a lot here, but I could get caught up the whole time just talking about this.

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But my family, my grandparents, great -grandparents came from Sicily to America.

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They moved what I refer to, my family referred to as back east. And I'll explain why.

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I don't know if that's common outside our family or if it's just something that was in our family, but that's how we referred to our relatives, you know, as back east.

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Well, my family came here from Sicily in the 1900s.

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My great -grandfather's brother was the lieutenant of Joe Pirello, who was the head of the

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Cleveland Mafia at the time. Wow. And my grandfather was named after him. And all of this was sort of brought out later.

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I didn't know a lot of this necessarily growing up. But what I did know, well, let me say this.

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So before I was ever born, my grandfather was forced to go out west by his family, his immediate family, for various reasons.

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And so that's where I was born and raised. I didn't know a lot of the relatives very well back east.

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I would only hear about them. But one thing I knew when I would go over to my grandfather's house was this was a very different kind of place than many other places

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I would go to. So his brothers would be there. And these guys just seemed very different than a lot of other people.

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They had tempers that were explosive, that were off the charts. And one day

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I remember watching Goodfellas, and I remember thinking, my goodness, these guys seem just like my relatives.

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Now, none of my relatives, my immediate relatives like my grandfather, his brothers and so forth, were in the mafia, to be very clear.

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But they were part of that culture. And so that was just the sort of thing I was raised in.

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It was very common to see people immediately fly off the handle at certain things.

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I learned at one point in my youth not to tell my grandfather if something happened in the neighborhood, because my grandfather was potentially going to do something terribly destructive.

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So I stopped telling my grandfather. But anyways,

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I grew up in Southern California then, and there were a lot of gangs, and it just was part of my mentality,

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I think in part because of this context. It seemed very natural to me.

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I had a very terrible temper and a bent towards crime and other things. I was getting in trouble from my youth up.

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Well, in any case, my parents, when I was 17, decided to move from California to Las Vegas, hoping that changing my environment would also change my behavior.

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So you might say they were Pelagians without knowing it. They thought that the primary explanation for my immoral behavior was due to factors outside of myself and not because I had a corrupt heart.

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Well, we got to Vegas, and it just took me a couple of months to fall in with a similar group of friends to my old friends.

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And I was off and running and getting in trouble again, engaging in gang activity, also a lot of theft.

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At one point, I stole a car. It was the car, the car in this case belonged, the one

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I got caught for, belonged to the son of Floyd Lamb, who was a very prominent figure in Vegas.

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He actually was sheriff there for like 30 years. There's a street named after him, a park named after him, very connected family, and I got arrested for that.

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Those charges were eventually dropped, but I got in trouble for another car that eventually stuck.

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So I went to prison. I had just turned 18, went to prison. And while I was in prison,

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I was put in a jail cell with a self -professed devil worshiper. I still look back on that day and I think, yeah,

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I think what an incredible providence. Wait till you hear what happened in this. So I went into jail looking at potentially being sentenced and doing prison time with no thought of God in my mind at all.

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My Sicilian background meant that I was lightly influenced by Catholicism, but it didn't play any major factor in my upbringing.

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In any case, so I'm in there and I'm housed with this devil worshiper. He'd make jokes and he'd drop pentagrams on the ceiling above my bed.

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He'd do all this weird stuff. Odd as it is to say, he was actually a pretty nice fellow to get along with in the prison, but he did have an ax to grind against God and the

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Bible. So he would say stuff and every once in a while I would push back against it. It just sounded like he was making stuff up.

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Even though I had no invested interest in the Bible, I didn't care in a sense if what he was saying was right or wrong.

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I just didn't think he was being accurate. Well, at one point as I was challenging him, he said, hey, he goes,

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I can tell you how to get a Bible and then I'll show you what I'm talking about. So I entertained this.

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I said, okay, how do I get a Bible? So he told me to fill out what's called a kite, which is a request for a

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Bible. This was 30 years ago. I still remember I never met this lady, but the

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Bible came to me from a Christian lady who supplied Bibles to inmates. Her name was Bonnie Polly.

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I didn't think to look her up until several years ago. And I lament that it took so long because I looked her up and she had just died months before that.

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But in any case, this Christian woman sent me a Bible and this devil worshiper couldn't show me what he thought he could.

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He just couldn't find anything that he was claiming is there. And now I'm sitting there with this

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Bible and nothing else to do. Very little distractions in jail.

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Every once in a while you can watch TV in the common area or something, but most of the time you're locked up.

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So I started reading the Bible more for entertainment purposes. But as I was reading the

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Bible, I was absolutely terrified from beginning to end. In Genesis 3,

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I read that God banished Adam and Eve from his presence simply, what

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I thought then was simply, for the reason of taking of the forbidden fruit.

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I now realize that it wasn't so simple. This was high -handed rebellion. The Lord made them, they depended entirely upon him.

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He gave them everything but withheld from them only the fruit of that tree. And their rebellion showed a high -handedness and so forth.

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But I learned from that that God doesn't see sin as a trifling matter and he'll hold people accountable and that accountability is quite stiff.

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But it doesn't stop there. You go to Cain and God banishes him further from his presence.

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Cain doesn't think this is a light punishment. In Genesis 6 and following, you have the story of the flood where God destroys the entire world, sparing no one except for eight.

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It wasn't exactly clear to me why these eight got saved. I learned better about that later.

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But at the time, what I see is just God is full of vengeance towards evil. You get to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and the

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Lord sends fire down out of heaven. I get to Leviticus, for example, and I see fire shooting out of God's presence to consume the sons of Aaron for offering unauthorized fire.

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Just this constant, it seemed, unrelenting message that God is holy, just, righteous and won't wince at sin but will prove himself to be the just avenger of his own holiness and righteousness and so forth.

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And I knew that I was a sinner. Along with this, this is really a critical point for me, was

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I was listening to other inmates try and justify why they were there, try and give some account to explain their predicament.

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And I'm listening to this looking for my own excuse. I'm thinking maybe somebody has something because I need peace here.

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I didn't care about being in jail at this point. I didn't care about my other issues. What I cared about was

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I was guilty before a holy God and didn't understand the gospel at all in any of this.

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And I read the entire Bible in two months. It was in the jail. And then I read it again when they moved me from the jail to the prison.

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I was locked down even more because they have a quarantine period before you get into the general population of the prison yard.

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They have you locked in a two -man cell for 23 hours a day. You only get out for one hour. So I had a lot of time to read, read the

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Bible twice, once in the jail and once in the quarantine of the prison.

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Well, terrified by all this, but I'm listening to people. And I heard one guy say, well, I came from a broken family.

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And I thought to myself, well, wait a minute. I didn't come from a broken family. My family was together.

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I mentioned the terrible fury of some of my relatives in the face of something they didn't like, but it wasn't directed towards family members.

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It was directed towards those outside. So I had a loving family. My parents were together. My parents,

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I never saw my own parents fight ever. They were together for 50 years. My dad died five years ago, actually, five years ago to the day yesterday.

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And I never saw them fight in my presence once. So I had a good family context. So I thought, man, if I, if that's a good excuse, then

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I don't have that. That makes me look worse, I think, than this guy. And then

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I heard somebody else say I came from a bad neighborhood. And I thought, well, I didn't necessarily come from the worst of neighborhoods.

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And I often sought out bad neighborhoods to live in and hang out in or move in, you know, so forth.

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So I thought that's not my excuse. And then I heard other people say they were poor. And I thought, well,

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I always had food, clothing, shelter. But I just felt like I was worse than these other guys. And then I thought about it even further.

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And I thought, well, wait a minute. I know people that came from broken families, poverty, bad neighborhoods, and they didn't do the things

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I did. So even if those were available to me, they're not, you know, I don't have an excuse, and neither do these guys.

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And it just really drove home this fact that I'm a sinner and deserve his just wrath and displeasure.

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And I was terrified. I didn't know what to make of any of this. I saw no hope of escape. But one thing

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I'll say about that is this, and I think this is, it's something I'm, when

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I listen to other people talk sometime about their beliefs, which differ from those of Orthodox Christianity, I often think this sort of thing is missing.

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But when I read the Bible, it read to me as the voice of God.

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I didn't, you know, there was no sense of, you know, how do

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I know this is God's word kind of thing? It spoke with divine authority. It spoke accurately to my sin, and it had a conviction to it that I couldn't escape.

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And, you know, Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me. Well, that was my experience.

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I heard in Scripture the voice of God, and I couldn't just cast this aside. And so I was terrified.

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For months I was terrified. I couldn't even sleep. You know, a prisoner wants to sleep to escape his jail situation, to not think about it as much as he can.

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I couldn't even go to sleep with peace because I'd be terrified awake from my dreams. You know,

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I felt like Nero, you know, if you read the accounts of Nero, he was a man that was plagued in conscience. The leaves would rustle and Nero would be hiding under his bed.

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You know, well, that was kind of me. I was like, I wanted to sleep, but even my dreams were terrifying.

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Well, so anyways, making this long story short, a gospel minister, a PCA minister was coming out to the prison.

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Eventually, I was able to go and listen to him. And I finally, in the course of this, I'm speeding things up a bit, but I heard the gospel, and I realized that I was missing the grace of God all along the way in Scripture, even from the very beginning.

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Way back in Genesis, when our first parents are banished from the garden, God sent them packing with this great promise, right?

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I'll put enmity between you, Satan, or the serpent, and the woman, and between your seed and hers, he will crush your head and you'll bruise his heel.

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So God is promising that he'll send a saving seed into the world who will undo the work of Satan and redeem mankind.

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And then that promise develops. And in the case of Noah, I read in Genesis 6 where it says, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the

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Lord. So that explains why Noah's family wasn't destroyed as everybody else was. And then the gospel of grace just stood out to me on every page.

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So the gospel flooded my soul. I was immediately desirous of telling other people the gospel.

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I assumed that people would be excited about this good news, but I quickly realized that not everybody's excited.

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Some people want to argue and fight against this, which made no sense to me. It's like offering somebody a million dollars and having them try and hit you.

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I thought, well, this makes no sense. I'm telling them how they could have life and salvation in Jesus Christ, and here they are thinking

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I'm their worst enemy. But that got me into apologetics. My original interest was evangelistic.

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It became apologetical in addition to that. I became interested in apologetics because it was always relevant in the course of evangelizing to have an answer for people.

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So it wasn't simply to argue with people. It was because I wanted them to hear the gospel, and I knew they would have objections.

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And then eventually I went through all the education I needed. I had to do a lot of remedial work. I went and got a

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GED, then a high school diploma, then a college degree, then seminary degree. After getting out of prison,

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I did all that. And then became a pastor, and now I serve in prison ministry. Well, I'm assuming that PCA pastor that visited prison had something to do with your coming to the

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Reformed faith. Yeah, absolutely. So this is another thing built into that.

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One of the things I love about my context was I read the

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Bible, unlike, you know, unfortunately, I mean, this should just be like first thing any

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Christian does. But unlike a number of Christians, I read the Bible, and I read it several times before being converted and had a lot of time to continually read it since then.

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I read it many, many, many more times during my stay in prison and haven't stopped reading it to this very day, 30 years later.

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But at that time, I was removed from a lot of influences, and even this PCA minister's influence was very limited.

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He didn't say a whole lot about certain things because our time together was limited.

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So most of what took place for me was reading my Bible, meditating on it, and so forth.

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And when it comes to the Reformed faith, I could remember, because, okay, when

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I remember, you know, I'm reading the Bible, but I'm reading, and I say I'm reading the whole thing, and I'm reading the whole thing in a very short period of time over and over again, right?

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So we're talking a month here, two months there. That means I would come across certain sections of Scripture quite frequently, and I learned to sort of put up my guard in the sense when

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I was coming to certain sections that I thought were very rough going. So as an example, one passage that was rough going,

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I used to think, was Isaiah 10. That's the passage where it says, Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger.

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Because in that text, if you read the whole thing, and even just that line is very pregnant with significance with respect to the sovereignty of God, the depravity of man, and how this relates and so forth.

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But notice there, God refers to Assyria as the rod of his anger. In the context, he's talking about the fact that he's going to use

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Assyria to chastise his wayward people. In the context, it says,

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I send it against a godless nation. The godless nation is Israel that's gone a -whoring after other gods.

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So Assyria is going to be used by God to punish Israel. It's a rod in his hand.

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Just like the Proverbs say, a father who spoils or spares the rod spoils his child, and the rod is meant for the back of fools, and the rod of discipline drives folly far from the fool.

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Well, this is how God is dealing with the folly of his people. He's using a nation to do it, and he's calling it his rod.

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Well, that meant that God is ultimately sovereign in this whole affair.

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You can't just say this was an accident, or this is wholly to be ascribed to the will of the

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Assyrians. This is something that God himself is claiming he is ultimately behind and orchestrating.

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But then it says, remember the first word, woe to Assyria, woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger.

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God is not just saying that Assyria is going to be used as his instrument of wrath, but he's going to punish

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Assyria. Well, how does that work? And you read the context, and it says that though Assyria is being used, it doesn't know that it's being used by God.

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God is using the sinful desires of Assyria to plunder and do all these things to his own holy ends.

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It's like Augustine said, God can strike a straight blow with a crooked stick. Assyria is a crooked stick, and God is striking a straight blow with it.

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So her evil intentions are her own, but God is using them to accomplish his purpose.

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And so I learned from that that God was sovereign. But at first, when I read that sort of thing, I was like, this is hard teaching.

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And I would see the same thing in the gospels, when Jesus in John 6, for example, is saying, people have to eat his flesh and drink his blood, which he explains there as believing in him and coming to him.

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They have to do that if they're going to have life. And this is offensive to people.

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And when he's told this is offensive, then he ups the ante and says, you can't even come to me to have life, unless you've been enabled to do so by the

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Father. I remember—just to interrupt you briefly— I remember having a friendly dispute with a

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Roman Catholic friend when he was trying to convey the idea that John 6 proves that Jesus was teaching the

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Roman Catholic Mass and that those who turned away were like Protestants who were repulsed by the fact that they were misunderstanding

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Jesus' words, that they thought he was talking about cannibalism. And he said, so it's

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Roman Catholicism that's being taught here, and those that turned away are like you

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Protestants. And I said, no, if you listen more carefully or read more carefully, what actually was the straw that broke the camel's back with Jesus' hearers was that no one can come to him unless it is given him by the

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Father. That's Calvinism. Right. Absolutely. Yeah, there's so many problems here for the

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Roman Catholic. Number one, Jesus explains exactly how people eat and drink, how they come to him and eat his flesh.

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In verse 35, it says, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will not hunger.

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So he's using these metaphors, bread, hunger, satisfied, and so forth.

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But they refer to the spiritual exercise of faith by which we receive him and are nourished by him.

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And that's very clear. But the other problems are, Jesus said, he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.

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Do the Roman Catholic partisans believe that everybody who eats the mass has eternal life?

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And they also believe those that are ecumenists, which most these days are, with the exception of the far -right traditionalist

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Catholics who are not ecumenists, but Roman Catholics believe that we, as Protestants, are their separated brethren.

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They also believe Muslims, Jews, and Buddhists and Hindus can get to heaven, and even atheists, if they live according to their light.

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None of these groups, including Protestants, partake in a

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Roman Catholic mass. So how can we have life in us? Yeah, yeah, very true.

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Yeah, so it says that coming is what is meant there, not literal eating.

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Or you might say it's more literal, right? It's the true eating. What we're doing when we chew something with our teeth is but a faint shadow of the reality that Jesus is talking about when he speaks of eating his flesh and drinking his blood.

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So, number one, he explains it as coming to him, which means believing. He says that those who eat have eternal life.

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Catholics would not say that everybody who takes the mass has eternal life. Moreover, Jesus said everybody who eats his flesh and drinks his blood has eternal life and will never perish.

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No Catholic believes that every person who takes the mass will necessarily be saved, but Jesus makes it very clear that they will be.

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So these are among the many problems in the context for taking this as a reference to the Eucharist.

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But for me, the point that I was making with this is that I read these passages and I knew full well,

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I mean, I didn't read Calvin, I didn't read Arminius, and of course, most Arminians haven't read

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Arminius either, but I hadn't read any of these guys, didn't know their names. Nobody could have told me, you're just following Calvin.

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I read these things and understood clearly from Jesus himself, clearly from the prophets, that the God of the Bible is sovereign and I am totally depraved and incapable of coming to him.

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And so when I would read these things at first, they were uncomfortable to me, but I didn't have any difficulty seeing them there.

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They were troublesome to me, but only for a short time. I would come to these passages and I would try and be a speed reader.

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As I would get there, I would like run through. I'd be walking slowly through John 1 through 5.

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I'd get to John 6 and suddenly I'd be a speed reader trying to get out of there because I didn't want to think about it too much.

33:36

But eventually these became glorious truths. At first they were stumbling blocks.

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I thought, well, this is hard to bear, like the disciples said.

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But eventually I realized, no, these are comforting truths. And I glory in these things today.

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I don't mean personally like I have any credit. The whole point is the God I serve is sovereign and gracious.

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He brought me to himself. He deserves all glory and praise. I can't take anything to my own credit for any of this.

34:08

And it's wonderfully comforting. God love me. Amen. And we have to go to our first commercial break.

34:14

If you have a question, submit it to chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

34:21

Don't go away. We'll be right back. James White here of Alpha Omega Ministries announcing that this

34:26

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

34:32

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

34:37

I'm speaking to men in ministry leadership at Chris's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pre -Pastor's

34:43

Luncheon at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville. Then on Sunday, September 21st, at 1 .30

34:51

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

34:56

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

35:02

For more details on the Pre -Pastor's Luncheon, visit ironsharpensironradio .com.

35:08

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

35:19

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

35:26

I'm Daniel Wolford, CEO and President of Lebanon Felt Credit Union, and we're excited to be part of the

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio family. At Lebanon Felt Credit Union, we're proud to serve the community with six convenient locations across Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, and we're growing.

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We offer competitive rates on everything from loans to savings, and we're dedicated to providing top -notch member service.

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When you join Lebanon Felt Credit Union, you'll immediately notice the difference. Our focus on meeting your financial needs with personal care and a friendly touch.

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LFCU can also offer you better rates and lower fees than our competitors. To find out more, please visit us online at lebanonfcu .org.

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Membership eligibility is required, federally insured by the National Credit Union Administration. Terms and conditions apply.

36:41

I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

36:47

Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

36:55

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

37:11

God. We are also devoted to living out the one another commands of scripture, loving, encouraging, and serving each other as the body of Christ.

37:19

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

37:25

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

37:33

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

37:39

This program is sponsored by Hope TR Ministry. Hope TR Ministry is a podcast produced by Hope Protestant Reformed Church in Walker, Michigan.

37:51

We are dedicated to sharing Reformed Biblical content every Wednesday and Friday. Tune in for sermons, lectures, and interviews exploring distinctive

38:01

Reformed doctrines. If you are looking for Christ -centered content, simply search

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Hope TR Ministry on your favorite podcast platform to begin listening today.

38:13

Hope TR Ministry also offers Morning Meditations, a daily podcast featuring

38:18

Reformed devotionals designed to nourish your soul. Start your day with these spiritually enriching messages by tuning in to Morning Meditations wherever you get your podcasts.

38:30

At Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, praise

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God for the generous monthly financial support of Royal Diadem Jewelers, educated by and affiliated with the

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Sterling Vanderwercker, owner of Royal Diadem Jewelers, his wife, Bronnie, his business partner and manager,

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, we get 100 % of the profits from any sale of jewelry to our listeners who mention

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. That's royaldiadem .com. We're now back with Anthony Rogers, who is a

40:48

Christian apologist and the regional director for Metanoia Prison Ministries, and we are discussing apologetics in general, and we are also discussing how to defend the true

41:04

Jesus Christ and his gospel against his primary opponents in the 21st century.

41:11

If you have a question, send it to chrisorenson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

41:19

Well, the person and work of Jesus Christ is what separates

41:28

Christianity from all of the world religions and the cults.

41:36

That's one area that we have in common with churches that we still believe to be false.

41:45

We believe that the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches are false churches because they have a false gospel and they are also idolatrous and superstitious and so on, but they at least adhere to a correct understanding of the deity of Christ and also to the hypostatic union that he is truly

42:14

God and truly man simultaneously. But if you could, when you are grappling with those who are opponents of the true

42:28

Christian faith and this primary issue comes up, is there one methodology or manner with which you would defend the deity of Christ with differing groups such as Muslims, such as Unitarian groups like Oneness Pentecostals and other anti -Trinitarians, or is there a unique way where you would defend

43:06

Christ with differing groups even though the teaching is the same? Yeah, so I lament that many people seem to be impoverished with respect to their understanding of the

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Old Testament's revelation regarding the deity of Christ, the person of Christ, and the

43:27

Trinity along with that, because in my experience, first of all, you get a lot of groups that obviously will make the claim that it's not found in the

43:38

Bible at all and they'll say that it comes along later in church history. Usually they'll say it's imposed on the church in the fourth century at the

43:47

Council of Nicaea. And of course, anybody who's familiar with church history knows that's not true. People can be found saying it all across the

43:54

Roman world early on that Jesus is God and he's the son of the Father and so forth.

44:01

And so that's just not true from a historical perspective. But even with respect to the

44:07

New, we get people that deny its presence there. And part of the way that these groups will argue it, in fact, it's a main part, is by saying this isn't what we find in the

44:17

Old Testament. And I think Jews have a good point here when they say, for example, that Deuteronomy 13 tells the

44:26

Jews not to listen to any person who comes down the pike claiming to be a prophet, even if that person performs miracles, if they teach them to follow other gods, gods that they did not know.

44:44

The Jewish person taking hold of this will say, hey, look, you could tell me all day long that Jesus performed miracles and so forth.

44:53

I'm still not supposed to listen to that because the Lord says he tests his people to see if they love him by allowing this sort of thing.

45:01

That's why Jews have no trouble, at least the earlier centuries, Jews then didn't have any trouble acknowledging that Jesus performed wondrous feats.

45:10

The Talmud says that he did. Literature outside of and even earlier than the Talmud speaks of Jesus performing wondrous feats.

45:17

Even Josephus talks about Jesus performing wondrous deeds. So that was no problem to them because they thought that there were ways that this could be accounted for that didn't require believing in him.

45:30

What they insisted on is conformity with the Torah, the law revealed by God. In the minds of Jews, and not just Jews, but I use them as a principal example, but you hear it from Muslims, you hear it from Oneness Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christadelphians, they all say that the

45:47

Old Testament stridently teaches that there's only one person who is God.

45:53

They confuse monotheism with Unitarianism. Monotheism meaning one God, Unitarianism meaning in this usage one person who is

46:02

God. We as Christians, of course, believe in one God, monotheism. What we reject is Unitarianism.

46:08

And I think too many Christians are willing to concede that the Old Testament doesn't say anything relevant to the

46:15

Trinity that goes beyond their monotheism. They say it's exclusively a New Testament revelation.

46:21

And I think to myself, again, I go back to the same thing I was talking about when it came to say the Reformed faith.

46:27

Somebody could say all they wanted that this came from after the Bible and all this stuff. It wasn't gonna work with me because I didn't learn any of this stuff from Calvin or Arminius.

46:37

I thought, right, here it is in the Bible. So you're gonna have to persuade me from this book that these things aren't there.

46:43

Well, it doesn't matter to me how many people I've heard say this is not found in the Old Testament. I always can fall back on,

46:50

I read the Bible numerous times. And from the very beginning, it was evident to me that the

46:58

God of the Bible is not unipersonal. And think about this. What is it that we're doing right now that's possible because we're made in God's image?

47:10

We're engaging in communication. The primary mode of communication is speech. This is something that takes place between persons, right?

47:19

There's no reason for a unipersonal being to speak at all. To whom is he expressing his mind?

47:26

I mean, what's the point of this? It seems like it's just whistling in the dark.

47:31

Well, what is God doing from the very beginning? In Genesis 1, God is portrayed as a speaking

47:37

God. That always struck me as quite interesting. Why is God speaking?

47:43

What kind of being is this that is speaking? It already suggests that there's more going on with respect to who

47:52

God is than just this idea that he is this abstract thing or unrelated being.

47:58

There seems to be this presupposition of relationship between God and somebody.

48:05

And this is long before you get to verse 26 in Genesis, right? Already in verse 3, it says,

48:11

God said. When you get to verse 26, it says, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

48:19

Who's God speaking to? Now it's very explicit that he's talking to somebody. He's not just speaking to himself, which would be an exercise.

48:29

Even when we talk to ourselves, what's usually going on is we're sort of envisioning that we're talking to somebody else.

48:35

Like we're playing out this future conversation we hope to have. We're thinking through how this conversation might go.

48:42

We're anticipating things, right? It always presupposes additional person. But when you look at Genesis 1, not only does

48:48

God speak and speak to someone, let us make man in our image, but the one or ones to whom he speaks share a common image and are capable of creating man.

49:03

So this presupposes that these persons are divine persons. Moreover, in the immediate context, there's a person named the

49:12

Holy Spirit. In verse 2, it says, the spirit of God was brooding over the surface of the water. That language is only used one other time in the

49:20

Torah, the law of Moses. It's at the very end, Deuteronomy 32, where it says that God was brooding over his people that he took out of Egypt like an eagle over its young.

49:29

So this language is consistent with personhood and is used elsewhere only of the person of God.

49:37

And so along with many, many other things, it bespeaks the personhood of the spirit. And here's

49:43

God portrayed as a speaking God already in Genesis 1. That to me was huge. And then as I moved through the biblical record,

49:49

I encountered innumerable other ways by which the multi -personal nature of God comes out.

49:56

So for example, although this is easy and often, you know, it's easy for people to miss and they often do.

50:05

In Genesis 15, it says, the word of the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him.

50:12

The way that's ordained, we just, we often will just sort of massage the text, even without knowing that we're doing it, we just sort of make it make sense in a way when that's not what it's trying to say.

50:27

But here, what a lot of people are doing is they think this is just saying God spoke to Abraham. But that's not what it says.

50:33

It says the word of the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him. The word is the subject doing the actions.

50:41

The word is the one who appeared and the word is the one who spoke. That happens repeatedly across the biblical record.

50:47

In Samuel, when Eli hears the voice of God and there's that whole thing going on there,

50:52

Samuel doesn't understand who's talking and you know, the whole account. But at the end of the account, it says that the

51:00

Lord revealed himself to Samuel by the word of the Lord. Now, the

51:06

Jews, interestingly enough, they recognized this sort of thing. And early on, they came to refer to Old Testament theophanies, especially as appearances of the memra, which is the

51:19

Aramaic term for debar, which is the word for word in Hebrew.

51:25

In Greek, it's logos, the very word that John uses in his gospel to talk about Jesus.

51:31

John is a Jew. This is his background. He's not getting this from the Greeks. He knows it from the

51:36

Old Testament and from the Jewish paraphrases of the Old Testament. In fact, there are many paraphrases only in the

51:42

Targums that John uses in his literature, so it's obvious John knows the Targums. But anyways, my point is just to say, as you move through the

51:49

Old Testament, there's a whole lot more there than a lot of people see. Along with this are appearances of the angel of the

51:55

Lord, which is always a divine theophany. The angel of the Lord is always identified as God.

52:00

There are statements in the Old Testament where God is talking to God and about God. So for example, in Genesis 35, 7, the

52:09

Lord said to Jacob, go up to Bethel and build an altar there to God, the one who appeared to you.

52:16

Well, why is God saying go there and build an altar to God, the one who appeared to you? Why doesn't he say to me?

52:22

He's talking as though there's this other person that's being called God. Another example is Genesis 19, 24, where it says,

52:35

In the context, the Lord appeared on earth to Abraham and said he was going down into Sodom to judge it for the outcry that came up to heaven.

52:43

So here's the Lord on earth, and it says he rained fire from the Lord out of heaven. So my point here is this is already found in the

52:50

Old Testament. And so it's just wrong when you hear Jews, Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, one is

52:56

Pentecostal say, the Old Testament teaches Unitarianism. And so in the case of Jews, they would say, if the new teaches a plurality of persons, then it's a different God and we're to reject this.

53:07

In fact, could you pick up right where you left off there? Because we have to go to our break, midway break. Okay, sure.

53:12

Yeah, just don't worry. Don't forget where you left off there. And don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages.

53:25

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

53:35

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

53:43

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

53:49

Joseph Morecraft. It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology.

54:03

Dr. Morecraft is Pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia. And I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.

54:14

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

54:22

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

54:31

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

54:38

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

54:45

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

54:52

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

54:59

Apple's iTunes app by typing Iron Sharpens Iron radio in the search bar. You no longer have to worry about missing a show or a special guest because you're in your car or still at work.

55:09

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

55:16

Please be sure to also give it a good review and pass it along to anyone who would benefit from the teaching and the many solidly reformed guests that Chris Arnson has on the show.

55:26

Truth is so hard to come by these days so don't waste your time with fluff or fake news. Subscribe to the

55:32

Iron Sharpens Iron radio podcast right now. And while you're at it you can also sign up for the reformrookie .com

55:38

podcast and visit our website and the YouTube page. We are dedicated to teaching Christian theology from a

55:44

Reformed Baptist perspective to beginners in the faith as well as seasoned believers. From Keech's Catechism and the

55:51

Doctrines of Grace to the Olivet Discourse and the Book of Leviticus the reformrookie podcast and YouTube channel is sure to have something to offer everyone seeking biblical truth.

56:01

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

56:11

Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Invidio and thanks for listening. When Iron Sharpens Iron radio first launched in 2005 the publishers of the

56:20

New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors. It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the

56:28

Iron Sharpens Iron radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the NASB.

56:34

I'm Pastor Nate Pickowitz of Harvest Bible Church in Gilmont and Ironworks, New Hampshire and the

56:39

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

56:47

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Sule Prince of Oakwood Wesleyan Church in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and the

56:57

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor John Samson of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona and the

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NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Chuck Volo of New Life Community Church in Kingsville, Maryland and the

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NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Steve Herford of Eastport Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida and the

57:20

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Roy Owens Jr. of the

57:25

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

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Here's a great way for your church to help keep Iron Sharpens Iron radio on the air. Pastors, are your pew

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Bibles tattered and falling apart? Consider restocking your pews with the NASB and tell the publishers you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron radio.

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Go to nasbible .com that's nasbible .com to place your order.

58:05

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

58:16

Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, New York pastored by Rich Jansen and Christopher McDowell.

58:23

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

58:41

Christ Jesus the King and His doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island and beyond.

58:48

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

58:57

For more information on Hope Reformed Baptist Church go to hopereformedli .net

59:03

that's hopereformedli .net or call 631 -696 -5711 that's 631 -696 -5711

59:17

Tell the folks at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

59:26

It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.

59:47

Here's Joe Riley, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,

59:56

Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland going back to 2005.

01:00:06

One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio

01:00:13

Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia are largely to thank since they are one of the programs largest financial supporters.

01:00:22

Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.

01:00:29

Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards and Dr.

01:00:34

Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight volume commentary on the larger catechism. Heritage is a member of the

01:00:39

Hanover Presbytery built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great

01:00:49

Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers scripture alone grace alone faith alone

01:01:00

Christ alone and God's glory alone. Their primary goal is the worship of the Triune God that continues in eternity.

01:01:06

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

01:01:13

that's HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com or call 678 -954 -7878 that's 678 -954 -7831

01:01:23

If you visit tell them Joe Roylian Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener from Attoy in County Kildare, Ireland sends you.

01:01:36

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

01:01:47

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

01:01:53

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

01:02:07

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

01:02:13

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

01:02:19

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

01:02:27

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

01:02:42

This is Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

01:02:49

Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support

01:02:54

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

01:03:10

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

01:03:17

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

01:03:30

Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior. Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.

01:03:40

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

01:03:47

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

01:03:53

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

01:04:04

Hi, this is John Sampson, Pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona.

01:04:10

Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider

01:04:16

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

01:04:25

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

01:04:31

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

01:04:37

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

01:04:43

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

01:04:51

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

01:04:56

Iron Sharpens Iron financially. Would you consider sending either a one -time gift, or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry?

01:05:04

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

01:05:11

where you can click support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com. James White here of Alpha and Omega Ministries, announcing that this

01:05:26

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

01:05:32

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

01:05:37

I'm speaking to men in ministry leadership at Chris's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pre -Pastor's

01:05:43

Luncheon at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville. Then, on Sunday, September 21st, at 1 .30

01:05:50

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

01:05:56

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

01:06:02

For more details on the Pre -Pastor's Luncheon, visit ironsharpensironradio .com.

01:06:08

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

01:06:18

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

01:06:37

I'm Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven, an Orthodox Presbyterian church in Comac, Long Island.

01:06:43

I hold the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Program hosted by my longtime friend and brother,

01:06:50

Chris Arnzen, in the highest esteem, and I'm thrilled that you're listening today. I'm also delighted that Iron Sharpens Iron is partnering with one of my favorite resources for Reformed Christian literature for decades now,

01:07:04

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. Well, with the economic nightmare that we're all currently enduring, cvbbs .com,

01:07:16

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01:08:33

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01:08:50

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and put, I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email where you can send in a question to Anthony Rogers, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:11:41

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. And before we go to any listener questions,

01:11:46

I wanted you to pick up where you left off, where you were discussing theophanies in the

01:11:52

Old Testament and also a plural understanding within the one

01:12:01

God that was evident even in the Hebrew Scriptures. And if you could pick up there.

01:12:12

You're on mute, brother. Sorry, yeah, yeah. So the basic idea to keep in mind is that non -Christians often want to ride roughshod over the

01:12:23

New Testament evidence because allegedly the Old Testament doesn't teach the Trinity and it needs to.

01:12:30

And so if you concede that it doesn't, then it seems to give some support or at least momentum to this argument.

01:12:39

When you look at the New, you shouldn't read it in the Trinitarian light. And so for Unitarians, they want to say,

01:12:46

I mean, first of all, for the Jews, they'll say we reject the New Testament for teaching the Trinity because that's out of accord with what

01:12:52

God revealed through Moses and the prophets. Unitarians will say you can't be interpreting the New Testament rightly as teaching the

01:13:00

Trinity because this would bring it into conflict with the Old Testament. I think you can see something of how this argument constantly goes.

01:13:06

But too many Christians have sort of conceded this and then just tried to write it off on progressive revelation as though he didn't make himself known as Triune in the

01:13:16

Old, but he does in the New and that's adequate. And setting aside the question whether or not that is adequate,

01:13:23

I just don't think it's true. I don't think that God waits till the New Testament to tell us that he's

01:13:28

Triune. Abraham clearly knew who Jesus was according to Jesus himself. If you look at John 8,

01:13:35

Jesus said, Abraham rejoiced to see my day. He saw it and was glad.

01:13:41

Jesus is referring to something in the past. He saw it and was glad. Moreover, even earlier in John 8,

01:13:50

Jesus is talking with the Jews and already gives some indication that he knows

01:13:56

Abraham personally because, and this is missed often by Christians, at one point in the conversation,

01:14:02

Jesus said to the Jews, he said, if you were Abraham's children, you wouldn't be trying to kill me.

01:14:10

Abraham didn't do this. And most people hear that as just Jesus saying Abraham wasn't the kind of person who was mean to strangers.

01:14:18

He didn't try to kill people as one who was inhospitable. But Jesus' statement is more pointed.

01:14:24

In the Greek, it's very specific. It says, Abraham did not do this. The this points back to try to kill me.

01:14:32

Jesus is saying, you're trying to kill me. That proves you're not Abraham's children because Abraham didn't do this.

01:14:38

That is, try to kill me. On what occasion could Abraham have thought he could kill

01:14:44

Jesus? The obvious answer is Genesis 18, when the Lord appeared to Abraham with two angels.

01:14:51

And it's that same occasion on which he goes down into Sodom and it says, the Lord reigned upon Sodom and Gomorrah, brimstone and fire from the

01:14:59

Lord out of heaven. So you have these texts in the Old Testament where God is speaking about God to God.

01:15:06

Other people are speaking about God as though he's multi -personal. God speaks in the plural. And I'm only scratching the surface.

01:15:13

There's a litany of references to this. And so the point is, we already have this expectation that when we get to the

01:15:22

New, God's going to be consistent with himself and reveal himself as a plurality of persons.

01:15:28

Interestingly, when you go to a passage like Isaiah 63, which is a critically important passage, not only for the

01:15:36

Old Testament, but for the New. In it, Isaiah is reflecting on Israel's past and is crying out to God in light of her pitiable conditions in his days and looking forward to the future.

01:15:51

So he looks back at the past and he says that God is the one who saved them in the past at the

01:15:58

Exodus. He's talking about the original deliverance of the people. And he says that the

01:16:03

Lord set his love upon them. In all their affliction, he was afflicted. And then it says, and the angel of his presence saved them.

01:16:12

So the Lord took pity on his people and he saved them by the angel of his presence.

01:16:18

And then it says, he put his Holy Spirit in the midst of them and gave them rest. So think about this.

01:16:24

This is talking about the original deliverance from Egypt, whereby God took that nation and made it his own.

01:16:31

He fulfilled the promises to the patriarchs in bringing them to himself and covenanting with them.

01:16:37

And through all of that, he was revealing himself. And the actions are being performed, these revelatory actions, through the

01:16:44

Lord, the angel of his presence, and the Holy Spirit. Well, Isaiah is looking back at all this and he's saying,

01:16:50

Lord, we need something to be done to restore us. We are miserable in our sins.

01:16:57

Whatever you did in the past was great, but it wasn't sufficient. We're worse off than that can deal with.

01:17:03

It's like the author of Hebrews saying that the law was inadequate to deal with the depths of our problems.

01:17:12

And so it could only at best be a type and a shadow of the new covenant, which does deal with these things definitively and perfectly.

01:17:19

So Isaiah is looking at the past redemption and saying we need something greater, but obviously it's going to be the same

01:17:25

God who's going to do this. So what do we see when we come to the New Testament in fulfillment of this prayer of Isaiah?

01:17:32

We see that God saves us by sending out from himself his son and also sending out from himself his

01:17:40

Holy Spirit. Paul says in Galatians 4, in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son made of a woman made under the law to redeem those who were under the law.

01:17:53

And then he also says he sent out from himself the spirit of his son, whereby we cry out Abba Father. Notice this maps onto this

01:18:01

Old Testament teaching that we see in Isaiah and elsewhere that God saved his people by the angel of the

01:18:07

Lord and his Holy Spirit. Here in Galatians 4, God saves by his son and the Holy Spirit.

01:18:13

This, I think, makes it clear that the angel of the Lord is the son, even though there's Old Testament evidence for that too.

01:18:19

But the point is this Old Testament paradigm is very clearly in the New interpreted this way.

01:18:25

And therefore, the New Testament revelation is not saying something along Trinitarian lines that's different than the

01:18:31

Old. It's the same God from beginning to end. And that's why, you know, it's interesting, you look in the

01:18:37

New Testament, there's all kinds of debate. Isn't there between Jews and the apostles? They're debating over whether Gentile can be included without circumcision.

01:18:47

They're debating other aspects of the application of the law. There's no debate among first century

01:18:52

Jews over whether Jesus is God, the Trinity is true. Now, among non -Christian

01:19:00

Jews, you do find objections to Jesus being God in the flesh, but not because they object to the idea that there is a divine person known as the

01:19:10

Son. Remember the high priest at Jesus' trial, he said, in Matthew's version, he says,

01:19:16

I adjure you by the living God, meaning he's putting him under oath in the name of God. And then

01:19:22

I like the phrase or the way it's put in Mark when he answers, but he asked him, are you the

01:19:28

Christ, the Son of the living God or the Son of the blessed one? Notice that the high priest doesn't say, are you claiming that God has a son?

01:19:37

No, the assumption of his question is that there is such a one. His problem is that Jesus, this guy from the backwaters of Nazareth, is claiming to be that son.

01:19:47

That's his problem. It's not that God has a son. It's this guy in front of him claiming to be the son that's bothersome to him.

01:19:56

And by the way, I could pull off books off the shelf at random here behind me from Jews acknowledging that all of this is found in early

01:20:04

Second Temple literature. There's Jewish material before the New Testament where they're acknowledging plurality of personhood in the

01:20:11

Godhead. So Orthodox Jews today, if they are knowledgeable, if they're rabbis perhaps, they know that from their own

01:20:21

Hebrew scriptures that God has a son? Yeah, and it depends how knowledgeable. You know, they could be ignorant in this area.

01:20:29

But for example, Daniel Boyarin, who is a Talmudic scholar, an

01:20:34

Orthodox Jew, he's written a number of books. One is called Borderlines and it refers to the partition between Judaism and Christianity, which scholars still debate exactly when that took place, the absolute break between the synagogue and the church.

01:20:52

But he's arguing that there's this thing going on simultaneously where Jews are reacting, post -Second

01:21:01

Temple Jews are reacting to the Christian movement, the proclamation of Jesus, by suppressing earlier teaching.

01:21:10

And Christians are coming more and more into their understanding of this so that it's almost like there's this transfer taking place.

01:21:17

But he points out that it's all over the Targums. So there's a difference between, just to make sure nobody confuses this, the

01:21:25

Talmud, which is a post -apostolic, post -Christian

01:21:30

Jewish production, that's, you know, when they're forming post -Christian

01:21:36

Judaism after the fall of the Temple, this is a post -Christian thing. The Judaism of today is younger than Christianity.

01:21:43

Well, they are crafting the Talmud, but there's this other body of literature that's called the

01:21:48

Targums. The Targums are Jewish interpretations of the Torah in Aramaic.

01:21:55

They're translations, but they have some interpretive elements in them. And all throughout the Targums, hundreds and hundreds of times, it talks about the

01:22:03

Memra, or word of the Lord, appearing and speaking and being worshiped, dwelling between the cherubim over the ark in the

01:22:10

Temple. He's the one who speaks and so forth to men. And so this is all there.

01:22:17

And yeah, knowledgeable Jews would know this, but that doesn't mean that every knowledgeable Jew would.

01:22:24

And we have to distinguish between who is truly a knowledgeable Jew and those who think they are.

01:22:31

Yeah. In fact, what a great title for a book. Maybe you should write it called

01:22:39

Talmudic Judaism is Newer than Jesus. Yeah.

01:22:45

I know that Baruch Maoz, who is a Reformed Baptist Israeli, wrote a book years ago called

01:22:53

Judaism is Not Jewish, which basically went along those same lines. Unfortunately, his latest publisher changed the title.

01:23:04

I don't like the new title nearly as much as I like the original.

01:23:11

Yeah. So here's an example of a couple of books besides Boyer, and who I mentioned. He also wrote a book called

01:23:17

The Jewish Gospels, by the way, where he argues that what's distinctive in the Gospels from Second Temple Judaism is not the belief that Jesus is

01:23:25

God, not the belief that there's a second person who's God. It's the incarnation that's so disturbing in that Jesus specifically claims sonship.

01:23:35

But here's another book. This is by Mark Shapiro, another Jewish guy. It's called The Limits of Orthodox Theology, subtitled

01:23:43

Maimonides' 13 Principles Reappraised. What he's doing in this book is he's pointing out that Maimonides, who's a medieval rabbi, is largely responsible for making a lot of changes in Judaism so that what many people today call

01:23:57

Judaism is not even Talmudic. I mean, it might be to some degree, but it's very much filtered through Maimonides.

01:24:05

And then here's another book. This is by Solomon Schechter, another Jewish guy. It's called

01:24:11

Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, and then subtitled, including the original preface of 1909.

01:24:17

But what's interesting here is it talks more than just about, and so does the book by Shapiro, the question of the trinity of the deity of the

01:24:26

Messiah. It talks about other things like, check this title out, the zakuth of the fathers, imputed righteousness, and imputed sin.

01:24:38

Wow. Yeah, there's a whole chapter in here on this concept of imputed righteousness among ancient

01:24:43

Jews. There's other chapters here that talks about things like original sin.

01:24:51

They don't call it that here, but that's what it's about. So the older you, the further you go back, the better it is.

01:24:58

Although, even as you move forward, you get Jews that will still hold on to earlier ideas, even when it becomes unfashionable.

01:25:07

So, for example, around the time of Maimonides, a little bit after, was another rabbi known as Nachmanides, and he was much more consistent with earlier rabbinic thought.

01:25:20

Maimonides wasn't the gold standard at the time. He was liked by some, but hated by a lot of others. He eventually prevails to become the guy that they all rally to.

01:25:30

But Nachmanides, in his day, was a very prominent rabbi. He's very well known, in fact, in some contexts in Christian circles because he held a famous dispute in Barcelona over the identity of the

01:25:42

Messiah. Jews claim that he won that debate and so forth. But my point is, he's a prominent rabbi.

01:25:48

And if you read his material, it's remarkable how much he disagrees with people like Maimonides, Rashi, even

01:25:57

Ezra, who are very prominent in shaping Jewish thought today.

01:26:02

And Nachmanides will say things like, for example, when Scripture talks about the glory of the

01:26:10

Lord, it doesn't seem like you can just relegate this to a created thing.

01:26:18

But you also can't just easily identify it, in all cases, with the person of God, the

01:26:24

Father. And so there's this tension he has where he's trying to say, it doesn't seem like this easily fits with our, he doesn't use the word

01:26:33

Unitarian, but that's what he's saying. It doesn't fit with that. Who's this glory that constantly appears?

01:26:41

There's other passages like the angel of the Lord passages. He doesn't seem to think it easy to just dismiss the angel of the

01:26:48

Lord as a creature, but it's also true that the angel of the Lord is distinguished from the one who would otherwise be called

01:26:55

God the Father. So, yeah, you can find this certainly in early

01:27:00

Second Temple Judaism, and to some degree, even after that in Jews, that will hold on to some of these earlier traditions.

01:27:09

Great. Well, we do have a listener question from Lacey, and Lacey is in Jasper, Alabama.

01:27:23

Lacey says, can you give us several of the best New Testament passages that teach the deity of Christ?

01:27:34

Sure. Now, first let me give you just a smattering of verses that I think speak directly and clearly to this.

01:27:43

Some of them I'm sure you're familiar with, hopefully all of them, but then I'm going to say a few other things.

01:27:48

So, number one, of course, this always comes up, John 1 .1. It says, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, and the word was

01:27:56

God. It's very clear here that the word is a person, not an abstract concept.

01:28:02

You don't speak of a concept being with a person. You might think or speak of an idea being in a person's mind, but here it's speaking of this word being with God, which presupposes relationship.

01:28:17

In fact, the picturesque language indicates the word was face -to -face with God.

01:28:23

So it's clearly a person, and then it says in verse 14, the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we beheld his glory.

01:28:32

The glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. So here's a clear affirmation of the deity of Christ.

01:28:40

In John 5 .17, we're told that Jesus, in response to the Jews accusing him of violating the

01:28:45

Sabbath, that Jesus said, my father's been working to this day, and so have

01:28:51

I. My father's working to this very day or until now, and so am I. The idea there is, he uses in Greek what's known as the present of past action, still in progress, meaning the father's always at work, even on the

01:29:04

Sabbath day, and nobody accuses the father of violating the Sabbath. He's obviously still active on the

01:29:10

Sabbath, otherwise the world would fall apart. He's upholding and governing and doing good, causing his son to shine on the just and the unjust.

01:29:17

So Jesus says, this is what the father does, even on the Sabbath, and then he says, me too, basically.

01:29:23

And this enrages the Jews because he's calling God his own father. He's implicating himself in divine works.

01:29:29

And so verse 18 says, they wanted to kill him because not only was he violating the Sabbath, but he was even calling

01:29:35

God his own father, making himself equal with God. So again, you have a text that identifies

01:29:42

Christ as God, this time in terms of an equality of attributes and prerogatives and so forth.

01:29:51

And by the way, notice that this is in conjunction with this expression of his sonship.

01:29:58

A lot of people stumble over the fact that he's called the son of God. They say, well, which is it? Is he the son of God or God?

01:30:03

Some people will say he can't be God because he's the son of God. But that misses the point of what it means to call

01:30:10

Jesus the son. He's not the son by adoption like we are. He's the son by nature.

01:30:17

He is what his father is by nature. And that's why he does whatever the father does. Everything the father does, the son does likewise, so that all men may honor the son just as they honor the father.

01:30:27

So there's a couple of examples. You also have John 10, 30. I and the father are one. The Jews understood that as a claim to deity.

01:30:33

They wanted to kill him for claiming to be God. In John 19, it says we have a law and according to that law, he must die because he claimed to be the son of God.

01:30:42

Again, that's a claim to deity. They're charging him with blasphemy, which in this case is punishable by death, which is obviously an indication.

01:30:52

He's not being stoned. They don't want to kill him for adultery, right? It's blasphemy that they're accusing him of.

01:30:58

And that means they could only understand his claim to be the son of God as a claim to deity. As you move on, you can look at even

01:31:06

Matthew's gospel. It says that he is God with us, Matthew 1, 23. At the end of the gospel,

01:31:12

Jesus says, lo, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age, underscoring the point that Matthew makes. In the epistles, you have

01:31:21

Paul's statement in Romans 9, 5 that he's God over all who's forever praised. Colossians 2, 9,

01:31:27

Paul says, in Christ dwells the fullness of deity in bodily form. This is a very strong term for deity.

01:31:33

And Paul says, not just, he kind of left it at this, in Christ dwells the deity in bodily form, but he says the fullness of deity, and not even that is all he says.

01:31:44

He says all the fullness of deity. He leaves no wiggle room here for somebody to worm out of this.

01:31:49

He has all the fullness of deity in bodily form. In Hebrews 1, 8, the father says of the son, your throne,

01:31:56

O God, is forever and ever. In 1, 10, he ascribes the words of Psalm 102 to the son, where it says, in the beginning,

01:32:02

O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth. So these are among the very clear and explicit passages that call the son

01:32:08

God. There are many others that do that. But I think that a lot of Christians miss the powerful and profound way that scripture is often showing

01:32:17

Christ's deity, partly because we're not well familiar with the

01:32:23

Old Testament. This is why I think the Old Testament is so important. There's a book, I think it's called,

01:32:30

He Told Stories, I can't remember the exact title, but it's Richard Pratt. And the idea is that God revealed himself to us through historical events and the inspired stories left behind about those events.

01:32:44

This is how he communicates himself, his attributes, his character, and so forth.

01:32:50

And Paul says the law is a tutor to lead us to Christ. It's pointing us to him.

01:32:55

So we should know the law so that it can do that work. When we go to the gospels, we should do so with this background of the narratives of the

01:33:05

Old Testament in mind. And so think about this, this always blows me away. And there's a lot more to this.

01:33:10

I'm trying to be briefer than I normally am, even though I'm not being brief, I know. But look at Mark's gospel.

01:33:17

Mark's gospel begins by saying, a voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the

01:33:23

Lord. And he quotes Isaiah the prophet to explain John the Baptist preparing the way for Jesus.

01:33:31

But notice he's quoting a text from Isaiah that's talking about a person preparing the way for the

01:33:37

Lord. And the word there in Hebrew is Yahweh. This is applied to John preparing the way for Jesus in the

01:33:45

New Testament. So already at the beginning of Mark's gospel, he tells you that Jesus is Yahweh, but he does so in a very pregnant text from Isaiah.

01:33:54

This is the beginning of what scholars call Isaiah's new Exodus section. He's talking about how

01:34:00

God is going to bring about a new Exodus, a more glorious act of redemption than that past Exodus.

01:34:06

And so God's going to come again and he's going to personally take up the charge of leading this new

01:34:12

Exodus. He's going to do it in person. He's going to be on the scene. And what's interesting is you move through this

01:34:19

Old Testament section. It describes the Lord in ways that once you get to the gospels are being used for Jesus.

01:34:27

So think about this. This again, this blows me away. In Mark chapter four,

01:34:34

Jesus delivers the disciples, 12 disciples, his little Israel from the sea.

01:34:40

Now, technically that's a lake, the Lake of Galilee, but the gospel writers, especially

01:34:46

Mark, call it a sea because they're trying to evoke something in your mind. They want you to think of this as a

01:34:53

Jewish person would, the sea. Here is Jesus delivering the disciples from the sea.

01:34:59

That already should raise in your minds Exodus ideas. But what happens immediately after Jesus delivers the disciples from the sea, from the storm -tossed sea, by rebuking it?

01:35:10

It says that they went into the region of the Gerasenes and he encountered the

01:35:16

Gerasene demoniac. Well, in this encounter, Jesus asks the demon his name and the reply comes, legion, for we are many.

01:35:27

Now, a legion is the term for a military unit, the Roman army, 6 ,000 members of the legion comprised the whole.

01:35:38

And so it's a military term, but Jesus destroys this legion of Satan's troops by casting them into a herd of pigs who rushed down an embankment and are drowned in the sea.

01:35:52

So now put this together. You have this deliverance by Jesus of the disciples from the sea, followed by the destruction of Satan's forces in the sea.

01:36:03

It looks like the Exodus, doesn't it? In fact, it's in the Exodus order. God delivered the people from the sea and then he drowned

01:36:11

Pharaoh and his armies, his legions, if you will, in the sea. Well, that doesn't end in there.

01:36:19

After Jesus does this, he goes out into the wilderness with the people following him and he miraculously feeds these

01:36:26

Israelites. He miraculously feeds them in the wilderness. Again, does it sound like a familiar story?

01:36:34

And it's not just a familiar story, it's in the exact same order as you find it in the book of Exodus.

01:36:40

Sea deliverance, destruction of Pharaoh and his armies, followed by miraculous feeding in the wilderness.

01:36:46

Well, Jesus does all of this again because the disciples don't get it. So if you look at John 6, he again delivers the disciples from the sea.

01:36:55

He follows that by delivering a girl from a demon. He then feeds a multitude of people now in Gentile territory in Mark 8.

01:37:02

And then he takes three of his disciples up the mountain with him. Now, this is where, this gets really good here.

01:37:08

And again, I said I was gonna be brief and I know I'm not. Be as thorough as you want to be, brother. Well, check this, this is really awesome.

01:37:17

So when Israel comes out of Egypt, they pass through the sea, they're fed in the wilderness, and then they're led to Mount Sinai.

01:37:26

And Moses is told in Exodus 24, this is one of those Old Testament plurality texts.

01:37:34

Even Jews recognize this text as significant. The Lord in Exodus 24 one says to Moses, come up the mountain to the

01:37:43

Lord. Now, again, as Christians, we don't always read very carefully, but ancient

01:37:51

Jews were meticulous here. They said, why does he say come up to the Lord and not come up to me? Why does he talk about the

01:37:58

Lord in the third person? It's the Lord talking. It seems to presuppose another person.

01:38:04

Well, the answer is found in the previous chapter leading up to this. In Exodus 23,

01:38:10

God told Moses, I will send my messenger, my malach, my angel ahead of you.

01:38:16

The word angel just means messenger. You only know if it's a divine person or a human person or a heavenly creature from the context.

01:38:24

You have to, you know, the term doesn't tell you by itself, right? Like in the New Testament, when it says in the book of Revelation to the angel of the church of Thyatira, there's debates among scholars.

01:38:35

Is that talking about the pastor of the church or is it talking about an actual angel that we think of today as an angel?

01:38:41

Because the word just means messenger. So you don't know what kind of being is in view of just because of that word.

01:38:46

But when you look at Exodus 23, God says to Moses, I'll send my messenger ahead of you.

01:38:53

He'll prepare your way. And then he says, to clarify who this is, don't rebel against him because he won't pardon your transgressions for my name is in him.

01:39:04

This one bears in his own being, the name of God. And therefore has the prerogative to withhold forgiveness and exact vengeance and so forth.

01:39:15

This language is only used elsewhere for God. Joshua 24, it says the same thing about God. So, but God goes on in that text and he says to Moses, he says, you are to listen to him.

01:39:30

This is a very technical phrase. You must listen to him. This is the one that you, Moses, and all the people are to listen to.

01:39:37

And if you don't listen to him, you'll be cut off from the people. Okay, so this is the one that God is telling

01:39:43

Moses to come up to on Mount Sinai. So think about this. When you get to this series of events in Mark's gospel, he feeds, he delivers him from the sea, feeds a multitude in the wilderness after delivering a girl from a demon.

01:39:57

He takes his disciples, Peter, James, and John up the mountain.

01:40:05

And what many people do here is they think, oh, this is showing Jesus as kind of a new Moses because Moses did this.

01:40:12

But watch what happens. I mean, you know what happens, but see it in this light now. When they go up the mountain,

01:40:18

Moses appears along with Elijah. Moses and Elijah in the Old Testament both encountered the angel of the

01:40:25

Lord on Mount Sinai. Moses in Exodus 19 through 24 and Elijah in 1

01:40:32

Kings 19. Well, while they're there on the mountain, the father descends in the cloud.

01:40:38

And what does he say? This is my beloved son, listen to him.

01:40:44

For Elijah and Moses, this was deja vu. They'd heard these words before because they encountered that person.

01:40:50

Here they are encountering Jesus again on the mountain, the same one they went up to and were told to listen to.

01:40:57

So what is going on in the gospels, which I think is far more profound than just saying

01:41:02

Jesus is God or Jesus is Lord, is you are being shown narrativally, Jesus is the

01:41:09

Lord. He's the Lord who originally saved the people at the Exodus, who's now come to accomplish a greater exodus.

01:41:15

And by the way, if you look at Luke's version of the transfiguration account, he's the only one who tells us what they were actually talking about,

01:41:24

Moses and Elijah with Jesus. It says they were talking to Jesus about his upcoming departure. The word for departure in Greek is exodus.

01:41:34

They were talking to Jesus about his coming exodus. So Jesus has come to accomplish a greater exodus, and he shows who he is by recapitulating these prior exodus -like events.

01:41:46

Hallelujah. I'm going to read a question to you from a listener, and then

01:41:52

I'm going to have you answer when we come back because we've got to go to work. We've got to go to our final break coming up.

01:42:01

We have Kai. I have a relative in Norway named

01:42:07

Kai. Kai in Little Shoot, Wisconsin. And Kai says,

01:42:15

I have heard of two parallel passages, one from the

01:42:20

Old Testament, one from the New, that are perfect passages to read to Jehovah's Witnesses because one talks about God alone being able to know our thoughts, and the one in the

01:42:38

New Testament is clearly talking about Jesus knowing our thoughts, but I can't remember what those verses in each testament are.

01:42:47

Can you tell us? And we'll have you respond to Kai when we come back from our final break.

01:42:53

And our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com if anybody wants to quickly join us before we run out of time.

01:43:02

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01:43:16

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Botafuco & Associates, from Chris Arnzen of Iron Trip and Zion Radio. We're now back with Anthony Rogers.

01:50:33

I already know that we've got to do a part two of this program because he is just so rich with information that we need another program, at least one other program to adequately address these giant topics we are addressing.

01:50:50

But as you may recall, we had Kai in Little Chute, Wisconsin, who was asking for two parallel passages, one from the old, one from the new, that he had heard were great passages to refute

01:51:04

Jehovah's Witnesses in their denial of the deity of Christ because one talks about only

01:51:11

Jehovah, only God Himself being able to know the hearts of men, and then in the

01:51:17

New Testament, there's a passage that refers to Jesus knowing the hearts of men. Do you know these passages?

01:51:25

Yeah, so actually, let me read two texts from the Old Testament that are very similar to each other, and both of these, in turn, are similar to a statement that Jesus makes in the

01:51:36

New Testament. So in 1 Kings 8, verse 39, this is in Solomon's prayer of dedication.

01:51:45

The temple has been completed. He's offering up a prayer to God in dedication of it, and he speaks of, you know, if his people turn towards him to pray at the temple after they've sinned against him and so forth, he's asking

01:52:01

God to hear. But he says in verse 39, again, 1 Kings 8, verse 39, then hear in heaven your dwelling place and forgive and act and render to each according to all his ways whose heart you know for you alone know the hearts of all the sons of men that they may fear you all the days that they live in the land which you have given to our fathers.

01:52:28

So notice, though, here that it speaks of God knowing the heart and says you alone know the heart, but it also associates this with the idea that God is the one who renders to each person according to his deeds.

01:52:43

So because God knows the heart, he knows what people are responsible for. He can hold them accountable for it as well as forgive those who repent.

01:52:52

But then when you go to another text, this text should be remembered for many reasons.

01:52:59

This is Jeremiah 17, verse 9 says this, the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick.

01:53:08

Who can understand it? So it's talking about the sinfulness of the human heart. But then it says,

01:53:15

I, the Lord, search the heart. I test the mind even to give to each man according to his ways, according to his deeds.

01:53:25

So you notice in both these texts it talks about God knowing the hearts of men and God rewarding people according to their deeds.

01:53:32

And in one of them it's explicit about God alone knowing the hearts of men. But it's this repetition of these ideas between both texts that I think is significant.

01:53:43

It shows that this is a something that's constantly associated with God.

01:53:49

We're to think of God as the one who knows the hearts. Even if Scripture didn't say you alone, right?

01:53:55

But it does say that. But it's this constant conjunction of God as the one who knows the hearts and that he rewards people according to their deeds.

01:54:02

This is language that God is getting his people familiar with. So when they hear it again they don't think that it's untethered to something, right?

01:54:13

Too many people, in my experience with Jehovah's Witnesses they want to pretend like a statement in the

01:54:18

New Testament is irrelevant to something in the Old. But all of this was being given to God's people to train their ear.

01:54:25

He was training their ear by this. So after you hear this and you associate these ideas with God and you then come to the

01:54:31

New Testament and Jesus says, in this case in Revelation 2, when he says this, you know exactly what this is supposed to say.

01:54:39

So in Revelation 2 he's talking about people repenting of evil and so forth.

01:54:47

But he says to the church in Thyatira, he says,

01:54:53

I have this against you, this is verse 20, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess and she teaches and leads my bond servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.

01:55:08

I gave her time to repent and she does not want to repent of her immorality.

01:55:14

Behold, I will throw her on a bed of sickness and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation unless they repent of her deeds.

01:55:23

Now, here's the specific part. And I will kill her children with pestilence and all the churches will know that I am he who searches the minds and hearts and I give to each one according to their deeds.

01:55:37

So you can see there both this idea of Christ is the one who searches the hearts and the one who rewards people according to their deeds.

01:55:44

So again, it's not just that Jesus claims to know the heart so that somebody might say, well, maybe those

01:55:51

Old Testament texts aren't in view here. In those Old Testament texts, it says God alone knows the heart and it says he's the one who rewards people according to their deeds.

01:56:01

So when you have Jesus laying claim to this very thing that God says is exclusive to himself and it's conjoined with this very idea of rewarding people according to their deeds, it's obvious.

01:56:12

It's obvious he's claiming to be Yahweh by virtue of this. Yes, and in fact,

01:56:19

I remember years ago, James White of Alpha Omega Ministries recounting his experience with an elderly

01:56:28

Jehovah's Witness lady when he first got her to acknowledge that the

01:56:35

Old Testament passages that were being cited that you just read were referring only to Jehovah.

01:56:41

She acknowledged that and then he quoted from the New Testament that Jesus is knowing the hearts of men.

01:56:50

She actually slapped him in the face. I've never heard of any

01:56:56

Jehovah's Witness slapping somebody until that story. But you've got to come back.

01:57:04

In fact, if you could remain on the line after we are off the air because I'd like to schedule you for part two of this.

01:57:11

But if you could, just summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we go off the air.

01:57:22

You're muted, brother. Okay, so yeah, I was thinking, man, that's hard.

01:57:27

One thing. So we've talked a lot about who Christ is. One thing that always impacts me about this and the denial of it on the part of people is

01:57:38

I think you people don't realize how you're gutting the gospel and undermining what

01:57:46

Scripture says about the love of God. Think about this. In John 3, 16, it says, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten

01:57:54

Son. That is in this way. This is what supremely proves God's love for the world that he gave his only begotten

01:58:00

Son. If you're a Jehovah's Witness, what that means is God gave

01:58:05

Michael the Archangel, a creature that he spoke into existence that really doesn't cost him anything.

01:58:12

The only thing that could cost God and truly bespeak his love is if the one that he gave is the

01:58:19

Son of his love, the one in whom his eternal pleasure has always rested, the eternal object of his affection along with the

01:58:26

Spirit. Only then do we really have something that answers to what John is saying in John 3, 16.

01:58:32

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. It's only in Christianity that you've got this kind of gift as bespeaking

01:58:39

God's love. You don't get it in Mormonism where he's Satan's spirit brother. You don't get it in various New Age religions where he's an advanced medium on the sixth sphere or whatever.

01:58:51

Somebody wants to say it's only this Jesus that is at the heart of this gospel and reveals the love of God in the gospel.

01:59:00

And it's only this gospel. It can only be the death of the Son that saves us. Only his death is sufficient to atone for our sins.

01:59:08

And so, that leaves a lot to be said still, but I think it's still a mouthful. And don't forget, folks, the website for Metanoia Prison Ministries is metanoiaprisonministries .org.

01:59:19

Do you have any other website or contact information that you care to share? Well, I have a

01:59:25

YouTube channel under my name, Anthony Rogers. People can go there, watch videos, leave comments on the videos.

01:59:30

I have stuff scattered around the Internet in different places. Somebody's working on preparing a website for me, but that's not up yet.

01:59:38

Yeah, we just got a message from Cindy in Finley, Ohio, telling me how much she loves your

01:59:45

YouTube videos. Well, I want to thank everybody who listened today. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater