November 21, 2024 Show with M.D. Perkins on “Culture Warrior”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 21st day of November 2024.

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As many of you may have heard already, there is a note of historic significance today in that Matt Gaetz, who was nominated by the

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President Elect Donald Trump to be his Attorney General, has removed his name from consideration, and I'm sure we'll be finding out more about the details on that in other media formats and find out who will be

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President Trump's choice to replace him and so on. That has nothing to do with our program today.

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I just thought I'd mention that as a note of interest, having just heard about this shortly before the program started.

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But today we have a returning guest. I'm thrilled to have him back on the program. Many of you may remember that I've interviewed twice before M .D.

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Perkins. M .D. Perkins is a staff member of the American Family Association and author of The Dangerous Affirmation, The Danger of Gay Christianity, and today he's gonna be addressing a brand new documentary that is available for free for everybody listening today,

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Culture Warrior. And if you have any questions for M .D.

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Perkins, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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

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USA. After this live program is over, I would urge all of you to at some point, as soon as possible, if you have not listened to these interviews already, you can listen to my interview with M .D.

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Perkins on November 16th of last year, 2023, on his book Dangerous Affirmation, The Threat of Gay Christianity, and also our interview on January 30th of this year when

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M .D. and I offered a response and loving rebuke to Alistair Begg, and that was involving his counsel to a grandmother to demonstrate her love as a

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Christian to her grandchild who was marrying somebody alleging to be transgendered, to demonstrate love to that grandchild by attending the wedding, and that put a lot of people who highly regard

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Alistair as a faithful biblical exegete and Christian pastor and teacher, put a lot of people in a tailspin and could no longer in good conscience recommend his ministry because of that, especially since he never repented of that choice of counsel.

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But you can listen to these programs at ironsharpensironradio .com and just type in Perkins, P -E -R -K -I -N -S, into the search engine and they will come up.

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But today, as I said, we are discussing the new documentary

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Culture Warrior, which is primarily a tribute to the late

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Don Wildman. Don Wildman was actually still with us on this side of Glory the first time

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I interviewed M .D. Perkins. He went home to be with the

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Lord at 85 years old on December 28th of 2023, and he is the founder of the

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American Family Association and American Family Radio, which originally arrives on the scene under a different name, and we'll find out more about that and the legacy that has been left by Brother Wildman.

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And also, we're going to be discussing some controversies that exist and disagreements that exist even amongst those in the body of Christ who may be equally as faithful to the

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Scriptures as Don was, who may be equally conservative equally opposed to all forms of entertainment and media images and music lyrics and other things that are offensive to God but have different approaches on how we as Christians in a free state and a nation that upholds the freedom of speech as one of our core beliefs that cannot be violated.

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There are different approaches to this subject, and then we will have time to hear about your opinions as well when you send in your questions if you care to do so.

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But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, M .D. Perkins. Yeah, good to be with you,

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Chris, once again. I appreciate your program willingness to have me on and talk about this stuff. Why don't you, first of all, give us a little bit more information about the

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American Family Association? Yeah, the American Family Association was founded back in 1977 by Donald Wildman, and he was a

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Methodist minister who was concerned about television entertainment at the time, and that public concern grew for him over the years.

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And this is really the subject of the documentary Culture Warrior for Don Wildman and the Battle for Decency that I'm talking about that we've just completed and is now released to the public.

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Culturewarrior .movie is the site. You can go there and watch the movie for free, just a very brief registration name and an email address, and you can get access to watch the movie for free at culturewarrior .movie.

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And so the story behind AFA is really Don Wildman's story, but the ministry exists beyond Don.

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Like you mentioned, he went to glory later. But Don's concern began with just sitting down to watch

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TV with his family one night in December of 1976.

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And it had been a busy week. He was a pastor in South Haven, Mississippi, and he sat down to watch

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TV with his family, and each station offered a different vile option. There was violence on one station, there was profanity on another, and there was a sexual encounter happening on the third of the three network stations that existed at that time.

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And so he just had the TV turned off, and that began for him,

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I think, a level of dual concern. First of all, there was a recognition that he had been a bit complacent in the midst of all this.

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And second of all, he realized just the erosion that had happened in terms of ethics and morality and decency in America, just kind of gotten used to, and most people had gotten used to.

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And so while he could just sit there and turn the TV off, which he did, you know, that night, he started a campaign at his church called

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Turn the Television Off Week. And this was something that he was using as a springboard to raise awareness among his congregation about the issues of television media, how much we consume, how much time people were spending in front of the television set at that point, and realizing how many violent images a child would see over the course of his life just from watching normal network

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TV over the course of those early years of development and childhood. And this was something that,

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Don, it's fascinating that he wasn't just someone who was happy with just a private conviction, but it became a public witness that he wanted to bear on this.

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So he wrote a press release and sent it out to local media, which then got picked up nationally. And so this

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Turn the Television Off Week kind of became a bit of a movement. And as he recognized people sensing this same sense of frustration and burden and concern, he began what was called the

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National Federation for Decency, which is the original name of the Ohio American Family Association, which is the ministry that I work with today.

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So that began, the NFD started in 1977, changed its name to American Family Association in 1988.

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And some of the cultural issues were broadening out and the concern was a little bit bigger than just the issues of decency related to television and pornography was a major point of concern there in the 1980s that he was fighting against.

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But that's kind of the roots of the American Family Association. We still exist today.

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We're based out of Tupelo, Mississippi, and it's about a hundred staffers who work for the ministry.

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Tim Wildman, Don's son, is the president of the ministry. And then grandsons of Don, which are

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Tim's sons, Wesley, vice presidents here at AFA. And so, you know, that's not just because, you know, it's kind of a family legacy.

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They really do carry on and embody the spirit of Don, his concern, and his approaches to dealing with this over the years.

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And so AFA has grown and expanded in a number of ways from those early days of the 1970s and 80s.

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But so many of those heads of concern and how we approach these issues remain the same even today.

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Yes. And I'm sure it shocks many who discover Don Wildman.

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I'm amazed by how old I'm getting so rapidly because there are,

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I'm sure, many people who listen to Iron Trip and Zion Radio who are younger than both of us who have never heard of him and don't even, you know, have any recollection of the struggle of the

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AFA and the reasons for its existence, especially early on, because many of them weren't even around on this earth yet.

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But one of the things that I was wondering about watching the documentary is

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I was a bit surprised that the decline in morality on television seemed to be some kind of an amazing revelation for Don and his family during that Christmas season in 1976.

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Was he watching TV before that? Because it seemed like news to him that during that Christmas season when he was trying to watch programming with his family that he believed would be, you know, at the very least sentimental and appropriate for Christmas, that time and time again as he turned the channels, there were things that even by today's standards would be considered tame, but back then were more disturbing for your average

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Christian as far as perversion and sexuality. But why was this such a revelation to him at this point?

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Yeah, I think there's a couple of reasons for that, Chris. I mean, one, I don't think Don watched a whole lot of television just generally.

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That wasn't his chosen means of entertainment. He was much more, much preferred the company of books to that of TV.

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And I think also he expressed just more of having turned a blind eye to it over the years, had not really given it that much consideration.

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I mean, he certainly had recognized there had been a decline overall socially, but in terms of how he would respond to it and the burden that that put on him, because it wasn't just an issue of it impacting his family.

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I mean, as a pastor, he began to think of the implications on his church members that the people in his church were consuming a lot of television.

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And what was the implication on them? What was the implication on the children in his congregations? And then even if he were to completely turn off the

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TV or throw out the TV, you know, his children were in schools, they had friends, they had the neighbors were around.

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And so the influence of television, I think it was it was more than just being burdened about the particular implications of just the decline that had happened, but it was also seeing the interconnection in the bigger picture.

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And that that picture broadened out even more for Don over the years where, you know, he says at one point we include the clip in the documentary where he says,

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I suddenly began to realize the more and more I was reading into this because he started doing a lot of research in light of of his burden that night.

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But he said, the more that I looked into it, the more I began to realize that even if you were to remove all of the sex and violence off television, there was still something fundamentally wrong with it.

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And he began to realize that what that was, was it was a secular humanistic worldview that was influencing the television producers, the executives, and that these guys were intentionally removing any sense of the kind of the

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Christian basis for a lot of people's normal life. You know, Don would often say, you know, you could pull up a network

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TV show and you would never know that over half of the country identifies as a Christian or even more identifies practicing some kind of religion.

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You would never know that from watching television because the television shows don't don't don't show characters who are actually religious in a very genuine sense.

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It was always Christians were the bumpkins. They were the they were the butt of the joke. They were they were hypocrites.

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They were schemers. They were even murderers in some cases, you know, but they were never presented as just ordinary people.

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And so he began to see that there were there were larger things happening there than just sex and violence on TV.

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There were worldview issues. And of course, you know, he picked up on things that Francis Schaeffer and Norman Geisler and other guys like that,

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Sproul, were writing and beginning to speak about the issues of secular humanism as a worldview and how these things were were influencing many, many aspects of American social life during that period, even though the the behind it would never would always act like they were neutral.

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In fact, when Don Don would debate an executive at CBS in 1981 about about bringing up consumer boycotts and whether this was a form of censorship and all of this, this was the common accusation that Don faced and and the the the network executive said, you were a pastor, you know, you're a preacher.

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So you have a very particular worldview mindset that you're coming from. But I am a television executive and I don't have any worldview that I'm that I'm promoting, which, of course, is completely false and erroneous.

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Right. Everybody has a world. Right, but this is this is what the kinds of things that were being thrown out there to people, kind of the the idea that secularism is just is just the neutral category.

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It's not pro or con religion. But then you begin to realize, no, it actually is against religious worship and religious practice and especially

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Christianity. And and so Don began to to raise a spotlight onto that, too.

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Now, I can't even remember if I completed my thought before. But what I was starting to say is that I'm sure it would shock many.

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Today, especially to know that Don Wildman was a United Methodist minister, and today, most people who have any knowledge of the

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United Methodist Church know that there was a recent huge divide. The more conservative and biblically faithful members of that denomination broke off from the

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United Methodist Church to start the global Methodist Church. Although there are there are many conservative

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Bible believing Christians that don't think that even that group has gone far enough. They still ordain women and so on.

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But did Don remain in the United Methodist denomination for his entire life? Because it was only a year ago that he went home to be with the

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Lord. And that denomination has been known for denying the scriptures on not only essential theological truths, not that everybody denied essential theological truths, but it was permitted to deny even the deity of Christ and the virgin birth and bodily resurrection and substitutionary atonement.

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And we could go on and on, in addition to being a denomination that was at the forefront of promoting the murder of unborn children and the promotion of same sex relations, although apparently they were not in their church polity as far into allowing those things as many of us thought.

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From what I'm hearing is that those things were not like same sex marriage and the ordination of homosexuals was not something that was technically, legally acceptable within the polity of the

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United Methodist Church. It is now, I believe. But where was he at? I mean, what was he saying about his own denomination?

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When did these things start to surface while he was the United Methodist minister?

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Yeah, Don's history with the institutional church is fairly vexed.

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I mean, from the early times of him trying to raise awareness about his concerns in society, he immediately faced pushback within his own denomination almost instantly.

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And he was often very burdened by that fact that he struggled.

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Of course, there was a decent bit of support that he also received from Methodist ministers and people who were involved in Methodist churches and so on and so forth.

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So I don't want to give the impression that he was kind of the lone voice in there, but he certainly was, he didn't garner widespread support.

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I'll put it that way. And it was something that bothered him. It burdened him.

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It grieved him. And it was something that, especially as, you know, in the late 90s, a lot of these denominations, it is interesting that the mainline denominations, despite having eroded so much of those biblical doctrines, they had not fully embraced on the public side homosexuality and these things in their polity, even though they were not,

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I guess, fighting against it or dealing with the disciplinary cases related to it until the late 90s, early 2000s, and really even into the 2000s.

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And I think the PCUSA didn't officially change their doctrine on this or their positional statement until 2011, if I'm remembering correctly.

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But Don, so one of the initial things that AFA produced back when it was the

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NFD, and it still does it today, was something that's called the, it was initially the NFD newsletter, which then became the

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National Federation for Decency Journal, the NFD Journal, which is, became the AFA Journal, which is now called

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The Stand. We still have this magazine, but one of the things that the reporters in that were constantly reporting on were the denominational issues and the position shifts on abortion, on homosexuality, and also the larger worldview issues related to orthodox

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Christian thinking. And so, yeah, I mean, Don was willing to point things out and to talk about it.

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You know, he, when he stepped into the public ministry of AFA, he stepped back from being a local pastor and took on the

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NFD role full time. And so he was no longer active in the sense of being a pastor.

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He was always active in his local church, in his local Methodist church. He was always active there, teaching

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Sunday school, keeping nursery, you know, being involved in the life of the church and, you know, having those relationships and sitting under the preaching of the word there.

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But, you know, his connection with his denomination was always something that was frustrating for him, and it was frustrating for other ministers, too, who came out of that Methodist background who constantly were being derided or dealing with the questions and assaults of others who were trying to make it seem like he was being unloving in his response or that he was being foolish in his approach and all of these different denigrating kind of descriptions that he faced.

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So, yeah, it wasn't always an easy time for him. I mean, he suffered a major health issue in 2009, and so I think he was maybe already retired officially within the denomination by that point.

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But, you know, I don't think he ever removed his name. A number of other ministers that were connected with him and stuff did as the new global Methodist started to emerge, or even before that, really.

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But, yeah, it wasn't an easy time for him in the Methodist church, I'll say that. Yeah, and as I said, there are a lot of people who would probably be shocked to know that Methodism actually has its roots in fundamentalism here in the

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United States. And in spite of my differences over the doctrines of sovereign grace, although there were

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Calvinist Methodists like George Whitefield, they stood side by side with Reformed Christians on all the issues of biblical morality and so on.

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I mean, even Bob Jones came out of the United Methodist Church, and there are other well -known staunch

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Bible -believing conservatives who shared that same history. So, in our day and age, that is a shock to many, as well as they know about the

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United Methodist Church is the apostasy and the perversion and so on that is promoted.

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Yeah, and for Don too, I mean, he was very much a coalition builder around the broader social concerns that he was seeing and trying to get

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Christians, regardless of theological background, to connect together and to be able to speak out on some of these issues.

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So, he was willing to link arms with Christians in a number of different denominational backgrounds, even

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Catholics, and sometimes with the Mormons would even jump in, even though there's complete differences there regarding our understanding of who the

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Lord Jesus is and so on. But Don saw these as moral and ethical issues that we could recognize a common source of understanding from, even though we weren't locking arms theologically on all the points of doctrine.

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But one of the things that he did was there was a coalition for better television, which was one of these coalition groups that he started in the early 80s, which was trying to rally a lot of Christians around this issue and get

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Christians to begin to think about not just being bothered by things that they were seeing, but also to really think for yourself about the kind of media that you're consuming.

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And I think that's a message that we could stand to hear some today, you know, is to take stock a little bit more of the kinds of things that we're watching and listening to, the ways that we're being discipled by the world.

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And so, we try and bring out aspects of that with the documentary Culture Warrior as well.

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Tom Hanks Well, we have to go to our first commercial break. If you have a question, as I said earlier, for my guest

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MD Perkins, submit it to chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least, city and state and country of residence.

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mention Iron Shoppin's Iron Radio. We are now back with MD Perkins, who is on staff with the

36:34

American Family Association. We're discussing the new documentary, Culture Warrior, Don Wildman and the

36:41

Battle for Decency. If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

36:47

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Before I go to any of our listener questions,

36:55

I wanted you to basically explain what it was that Don Wildman actually was attempting to do, because, as you are fully aware, as you and I are here in the 21st century as conservatives, not only having conservative theology, but adhering to conservative political principles and so on, the most frequently today, as I'm sure you would agree, the people who are trying to bring censorship into the public arena and prevent people from watching, hearing, and reading what they want to, and even things being called dangerous information that should be made illegal when it comes to health and things like that, it's the leftists that are far more often trying to control what the population is consuming mentally.

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And so here you have Don Wildman, for all appearance's sake, and I'm sure that a lot of this has to do with a wrong impression or idea of what he was actually trying to do, it seems that you had people like Don and, of course,

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Jerry Falwell back then and others who were trying to basically be cosmic killjoys and take away the rights and privileges of people who were not

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Christian to enjoy and be educated by whatever they chose to hold on to as their favorite sources of media and information.

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So it seems that you very rarely hear in our modern day conservatives doing this.

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Many people may remember in the late 80s or the mid -80s, perhaps it was, when record labels were being compelled to have warning labels about the sexual and violent content on the lyrics.

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Well, that whole movement was spearheaded by Al Gore's wife, Tipper Gore.

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So she wasn't some right -wing ideologue doing this. But anyway, if you could explain what was

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Don Wildman actually trying to do and have many misunderstood what he was trying to do?

39:53

Yeah, I mean, the charge of censorship was always something that the left threw at Don almost instantly, because once you start talking about television and concerns about what kind of programming is on television, people immediately say, well, are you saying that I have no right to say this?

40:11

And one of his common responses was to say, well, I'm not saying that you don't have the right. I'm saying you should take more responsibility with the right and freedom that you have, because what you're doing is detrimental to society.

40:24

And the reality is, I mean, Don had a very much for free market approach to this.

40:30

He looked at it like, well, first of all, when he's talking about network televisions, the networks were publicly owned.

40:36

So this is essentially every taxpayer in the country owned a piece of ABC, NBC, and CBS.

40:43

So there was that aspect to it. So these were not necessarily really even privately owned entities, even though they were privatized to some degree and had kind of a complicated, complex leadership structure regarding all of this.

40:59

But they were public airwaves. And so there was that aspect. But there was also the fact that he said that the networks can produce the kinds of shows that they want to watch, and people can watch the kinds of shows that they want to view.

41:14

And then the networks can advertise on the kinds of shows that they want to advertise on. But part of what his role was and what he was doing was to make the connection for people that if you don't like this kind of show or the kind of content appearing on something like Three's Company or Mash or some of these shows from the late 70s, early 80s, that you can have your voice be heard at the advertiser level.

41:41

Because the truth of the matter was whenever he would go to the network executives or the producers to talk about it, he realized they would just lie to him, listen to, if he even got a hearing, they would say, well, okay, we hear your concern and we'll do something different and then nothing changed.

41:59

And so he realized, well, all of these guys are mostly just driven by money anyway. So if I just skip that,

42:06

I can go to the advertiser and say, well, Sears, you were supporting, your ad dollars are going to support

42:13

Three's Company. Like if you were to remove your support of Three's Company, then perhaps

42:20

Three's Company and the producers and the network will have to kind of reckon with the idea that people don't want to see some of these sexual depictions on television.

42:31

And so it was kind of making that point of connection for people. But it wasn't advocating for laws to censor because the reality is censorship is something that the government does to people.

42:45

It's not something that the people do when they choose to not produce a certain kind of television show for whatever reason.

42:55

I mean, that's not censorship. If ABC polls doesn't produce Three's Company anymore, that's not censorship.

43:02

That's their choice as an entity in the free market to choose what they want to do. And so he was never represented very fairly on this and his position was never represented.

43:14

They just kept hammering the drum of censorship and that you're against free speech. It is interesting how free speech has now become the threat to democracy and the threat to individuals to thrive,

43:29

I guess, somehow in society because you hear ideas that are counter to what you believe.

43:35

Don was willing to have open conversations, but he was really trying to get

43:43

Christians to pay attention to the things that they watched and then to say, you know, if you don't, if you don't like this, if, because one of the other things too, you know, is if you go into a grocery store, for example, and they have

43:56

Playboy and Penthouse that they're selling on the magazine shelf, you know, and then you stop shopping there because you saw that, he would say, well,

44:05

I mean, that's, that's fine that you're not shopping there, but you haven't really made any impact because you didn't tell anybody that you're not shopping there as a result of this.

44:14

And so to be able to, to speak to the manager and say why you, why you had this concern, why you no longer want to spend your money there because of this, this problem that you see that they're selling, then it gives them no response, no time to respond or to change and no opportunity for your

44:32

Christian witness to really shine forth. And so it was a matter of the public Christian witness coming out.

44:38

And that's, that's where the, the nature of these boycotts and things happen because when you say boycott, it gets people's attention and it makes, it makes the company start to think about where they spend their money and it makes people start to start to talk about the issues more than they would have if you had just kind of politely raised your concern.

44:58

Sometimes you have to step in there with a little more force to get people to actually recognize the concern or the danger that's there.

45:05

Well, we have a question from Roland in Merriam, Kansas. And Roland said, correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember

45:15

Don Wildman having the insight to recognize the fact that everyone on all sides of this issue had a spiritual root in what was occurring.

45:28

It was not just Christians preaching what they believed to the population with a spiritual message.

45:36

The enemies of Christ were doing the same thing, and it was equally spiritual. And I believe

45:42

Don even used the phrase that we were being preached at by the left.

45:47

Is this true? Yes, that is absolutely true. And this comes out in the documentary

45:53

Culture Warrior, which by the way, if you want to watch the documentary, go to culturewarrior .movie. It's a website, culturewarrior .movie.

46:00

You can go there and watch the movie for free. And there's a little brief registration there, name, email address, but then that'll give you access to watch the movie for free.

46:10

But yeah, we talk about this in the documentary, the idea that you are being preached at.

46:18

And this goes back to the question over secular humanism.

46:24

So in 1981, Don debated one of these television executives, and the television executive said that you are a preacher and you have a worldview, but I'm a network executive.

46:37

I don't have a worldview. And that idea was what was being presented commonly in the marketplace of ideas.

46:47

And Don said, well, everyone who is in a network executive role or within the higher echelons of film and television production, they're all coming from a particular worldview mindset.

47:05

And there was a study that was done by some sociologists named Lichter and Rothman. And one of the things that they brought out was that despite most of the people within the higher echelons of the media elite having a religious background, whether it be

47:21

Christian or Jewish or Catholic or some other religious background, 95 % of them didn't recognize any religious participation or affiliation at all, but they were producing all of the media content that was going out on television and movies and within the network television news outlets and all of these different things.

47:48

And also, in addition to them not having a religious background, they all said that they wanted television medium, or a majority of them said, we want the television medium to be a force for change in society.

48:00

And his question is, well, what change are you trying to bring about? And where do you gain these morals and ethics that you believe that we are not living up to somehow?

48:10

And he began to look at what was the data behind their beliefs on some of these social issues regarding abortion and homosexuality, on promiscuity, on divorce, on all of these different points and realized that they were promoting things.

48:27

And they had personal beliefs on all of these matters that they were essentially promoting, but were acting like they were a neutral party, that they weren't really promoting a worldview.

48:37

So yeah, I mean, that was something that Don was really trying to highlight the fact that there are spiritual implications behind this.

48:44

And in fact, one of the main themes, I would say, of the documentary, I think it really is the heart of the documentary, is the concept that the culture war is spiritual warfare.

48:54

And it's spiritual warfare in the sense that these aren't battles against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against ideas and strongholds, that these are things that take root in society and begin to infest ideas and people and institutions and erode a common sense of even meaning and understanding.

49:18

I mean, you can see that now with even questions over what is a man and what is a woman.

49:23

I mean, that was assumed common ground 20, I mean, even 10 years ago, frankly, but generations ago, that was assumed common ground that we had because of a shared understanding that was really rooted in a

49:39

Judeo -Christian mindset and worldview. But as the tethers to that had eroded over time and people began to more consciously sever their ties to those earlier roots, you begin to see society turn in a different direction.

49:56

And so, yeah, it was a matter of these things are spiritual. And I mean, even the producer of MASH was very politically outspoken or Norman Lear behind All in the

50:09

Family or the TV show Maud. I mean, a lot of people don't know that there was something called the

50:16

Population Control Council or something like that. It's some really clandestine sounding group, but I learned about this from a book by a media sociologist who's not even a

50:27

Christian. She wrote about how this population control group met with a lot of media elites in the early or the middle to late 1960s and wanted to figure out how to get the issue of population control into common media, whether it was news stories or whether it was entertainment programs.

50:46

And a guy who was at that meeting was a producer by the name of Norman Lear, who then really took a lot of those ideas to heart.

50:53

And even within the 1970s show Maud, which was a spinoff from All in the Family, he had

50:59

Maud have an abortion on the show and to use that as a springboard to kind of talk about this controversial social issue of abortion in the late 1970s from the perspective that was agreeable to it or just seeing it as a woman's choice or a woman's right or just some way that she could better control her life and her circumstances.

51:24

And so, yeah, I mean, that's a sermon and that's preaching to people and that's trying to change the public perception and awareness on these issues.

51:33

And so I think a lot of people really didn't understand how much they were being shaped by the media that they consumed and even now don't really realize how much they are shaped by the media that they consume.

51:45

And I think that was one of Don's real messages to people back in the day. And it's ironic, as I was saying earlier, that today the most vociferous opponents of such shows as All in the

51:57

Family are leftists now. And you could not recreate All in the

52:03

Family today because of the central theme of the program, making light and making humor out of Archie Bunker's bigotry.

52:16

And that is considered anathema to be put in any kind of positive light, not that it was

52:26

Norman Lear's goal to affirm those views, but he made them funny.

52:33

And today the biggest enemies of those programs are leftists who would never stand for them being recreated.

52:44

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and that was Norman Lear's point, was to make fun of the ideas and that position and to kind of denigrate that character through him being the butt of the joke so that people would be less inclined to believe or act that way.

53:00

But he wound up being the hero of the show. Right, right. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's kind of how it turns out.

53:08

But the bigger picture now, which is fascinating, is that, I mean, just with this last election,

53:15

I was so fascinated how the Republican side and the Donald Trump ticket kind of became the free speech ticket, you know, with all of these comedians jumping on board in support of Donald Trump, just because it wasn't nearly as restrictive as what the left was constantly promoting, which is really against these people being able to speak out in any way that they wanted to.

53:45

So that was just an interesting observation from this past election cycle. And we have to go to our midway break.

53:51

Please be patient with us. And if you have a question, send it to chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages.

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

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

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It just figures that while I am giving this live announcement that I don't have the exact website for you, even though they live stream my show every day.

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It's FirstLoveMinistries .org, FirstLoveMinistries .org, and you can click on events at the top of the page and eventually that January conference will be coming up.

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01:12:41

We are now back with my guest, MD Perkins, and I am thrilled that he has returned to the program.

01:12:52

We are addressing the very important new documentary in tribute to the late

01:13:00

Don Wildman, who went home to be with the Lord last year in December at 85 years of age.

01:13:12

Give us the website again, please, brother Perkins, where our listeners can watch this for free.

01:13:20

Yeah, go to culturewarrior .movie, culturewarrior .movie. That's a website. You can register there briefly, name, email address, and then get access instantly to watch the movie there at culturewarrior .movie,

01:13:33

and they'll watch it for free. Now, alleviate the apprehensions, if you can, of some of our listeners, because as you probably know, even the niche that you and I are in of Reformed theology, you being a conservative

01:13:54

Bible -believing Presbyterian in the PCA and myself being a confessional

01:13:59

Reformed Baptist, even within our communions, our circles of fellowship, there are disagreements over these issues that we're discussing, and some people don't share a reaction of enthusiasm when they hear that term culture warrior.

01:14:19

They don't even view it as something that would be complimentary for a Christian. They have misconceptions about that whole mindset and worldview being something that is putting something other than the gospel in the forefront of the mission and goal and primary purpose of the

01:14:42

Church of Jesus Christ. You do perhaps have these more starkly contrasted between dispensationalists and Reformed Christians, but even in our own

01:14:55

Reformed circles, people radically disagree. If you could just perhaps try to alleviate some of the apprehensions of people who misunderstand this.

01:15:06

Yeah, well, that's one way or one place where I would say definitely go watch the movie Culture Warrior, because part of what we're trying to do is to help to unpack that idea and help people understand what was

01:15:20

Don Wildman's approach to this issue of the culture war and being a culture warrior.

01:15:25

We kind of wrestled with a whole lot of different concepts around what that meant, but really one of the big things that Don was noted as saying frequently was that the

01:15:37

Lord has not called us to be successful. He's called us to be faithful. And sometimes the idea of being a culture warrior or being engaged in the culture war is this idea that we're just trying to gain power for ourselves or we're just trying to be pragmatic and win at all costs, when really the idea, or at least,

01:15:58

I mean, maybe some people have approached things that way, but Don Wildman's approach and the approach that AFA continues to this day is this idea that God has called us to speak faithfully on these issues.

01:16:11

And it becomes a gospel issue in the sense that you're making room for the gospel to be able to be presented clearly.

01:16:21

You're arguing for Christians to be able to speak up and have opportunities to speak of Christ in these various situations.

01:16:32

It really is creating opportunities for Christians to share the gospel more often than not.

01:16:38

And when you are speaking out on some of these social and cultural issues, you're presenting the

01:16:44

Christian witness on it, and that opens the door for the gospel witness more correctly.

01:16:50

And so, I mean, those are some things that I'd say about it is just kind of be mindful of where that falls.

01:16:57

And if you have questions, if you have kind of this hesitation, I mean, honestly, I wasn't always there in terms of the culture war battle.

01:17:08

Being at AFA, understanding the heart for the Lord that exists among the leadership here and the staff, the love for Christ, and the desire to see

01:17:21

Christ honored in the public square, and the desire to have that voice go out and be represented is something that I've come to appreciate more over the years here.

01:17:34

And then studying Don, I mean, you know, I started working on this documentary in 2018, even before I wrote

01:17:41

Dangerous Affirmation, the Threat of Gay Christianity. You know, I kind of took a little hiatus because I got into studying that issue.

01:17:51

But honestly, I'm glad that providentially that that happened because to take on an issue like that and to understand it, to put the time into researching it, and to then go through the process of presenting that to people,

01:18:08

I feel like gave me an insight into Don that I gained experientially, you know, that I wouldn't have had had

01:18:16

I not gone through that process. So, I mean, I've been working on this documentary since 2018. And so here we are now six years later, and it's finally coming out to the public.

01:18:25

And so having spent a lot of time trying to understand Don and his approach, you know,

01:18:33

I just, I think he's been misrepresented pretty heavily by the media over the years. And then that trickles down into how

01:18:39

Christians think about it and how Christians talk about it. So, yeah, I would say watch the movie, culturewarrior .movie.

01:18:47

Go watch it for free and understand a little bit more of why some Christians have taken on this approach of feeling like they need to speak out on these issues.

01:18:56

Well, we have Violet in Londonderry, New Hampshire, who wants to know, is there anything that absolutely surprised you about Don Wildman's worldview and application of his ideology to his faith?

01:19:13

And is there anything that you remain in disagreement with him over? Well, I would say that the things that have surprised me are really like I was describing, kind of his approach to the culture war concern.

01:19:31

You know, he had such a heart for the Lord in this and a desire to see

01:19:39

Christ honored, but also to speak in a way that was clear and honest and to confront these kind of idols of American society.

01:19:52

And, you know, the boldness and the courage that it took to do that, I think that was particularly impactful for me in the researching of the documentary to consider the value of the

01:20:06

Christian public witness in it and to see how Don approached things,

01:20:11

I think was particularly helpful. When it comes to disagreement with Don, I mean, you know,

01:20:18

I think whenever you're dealing with these issues, you always struggle with how much information to share.

01:20:26

And I think there were moments in Don's ministry where he probably said too much.

01:20:34

You know, I'm thinking in particular, there's a clip in the documentary, which, by the way, we warn people to not let young children watch this, to be mindful of kind of teenagers, you know, kind of judge where they might be sensitive in this.

01:20:51

Because, you know, when we're talking about issues of pornography, we're talking about the homosexual agenda, we're talking about artistic depictions that were being funded by the government through the

01:21:03

National Endowment for the Arts that were highly pornographic or blasphemous in their imagery. You know, so there's sensitive topics that are in this documentary.

01:21:13

But there's one clip in particular where Don is describing a particular news story where two young boys get a hold of their mom's pornographic magazines and begin to act out what they were seeing in those magazines upon a younger sibling.

01:21:31

And we actually had to slightly edit part of that because the description was so graphic that we felt like the point was already made without the graphicness of the description that he specifically gives that what they did.

01:21:49

So I think there's issues like that where, and I've struggled with this too, you know, speaking on issues of sexuality.

01:21:56

When you research these topics, sometimes you're constantly confronted by the apathy and complacency of the audience that you're speaking to.

01:22:08

And sometimes you have to shock them or you feel like you have to shock them a little bit to actually pay attention to the seriousness and urgency of the cause.

01:22:18

Now those are fine lines because as Christians, you know, obviously we don't want to point people toward the darkness.

01:22:26

We don't want them to be defiled. But at the same time, sometimes you have to understand the nature of these things in order to really respond to it.

01:22:35

And I think that was something that was a disagreement at some points among different people in the ministry is how much do you say?

01:22:43

How much do you hold back? How much is enough? Do we get the point if it's just this? But Don was a very frank, straightforward kind of guy.

01:22:50

And so he was not sometimes always as sensitive as maybe, I mean,

01:22:57

I don't know, maybe he should have been. But at the same time, I mean, you're also talking about pornography in that era when a lot of Christians had no idea really what that even was.

01:23:07

They were just thinking it was just kind of like airbrushed magazines. But then there was so much more to it than that.

01:23:15

And sometimes you had to shock people a little bit. So, you know, I felt that at certain points working on this documentary of maybe we don't have to say everything because I mean, maybe it works in a talk when

01:23:28

Don has this other, the fuller context of what he's saying. But when you're kind of condensing things down and you've got additional imagery or music underneath it that heightens the emotions, you know, you kind of have to be sensitive to that because you don't want to defile people through what they're watching.

01:23:46

But at the same time, you do have to be honest about the things that are happening. And so that's a challenging line sometimes as a

01:23:52

Christian and as a Christian filmmaker or speaker. Yeah. And at the same time, you're faced with the dilemma of if you're not descriptive enough, it may sound like you're candy coating a reality.

01:24:06

So yeah. Well, and that was the problem that Don faced so often with the

01:24:12

National Endowment for the Arts is that the media in particular wouldn't ever show any of the art that they were, that was being funded.

01:24:21

Right. And so you had to almost just to tell people what was happening, you had to go a comfortable doing sometimes.

01:24:32

And even if you put warnings on it, even if you just sent it out to a select number of people, but you still had to do it in order to get the message out and to raise the awareness about the concern.

01:24:43

And so, you know, that was, that was always something that I'm sure Don struggled with even internally.

01:24:48

He may not have fully agreed with some of the things that he ended up saying sometimes or how he approached things, but felt like it was right in the moment, but maybe reflected on it and regretted it later.

01:24:58

Yeah. I mean, people are still ignorant about the fact that the government funds artwork that is purposely created to mock

01:25:10

Jesus Christ, the scriptures, primary characters from the scriptures and themes from the scriptures by intermingling these images with sexuality, drug abuse, and all kinds of things.

01:25:26

And the government, why on earth is the government paying for that at all? I mean, it's just mind boggling.

01:25:33

Yeah. And Don was actually sued by one of these artists. We talk about this in the documentary, a

01:25:39

New York based artist named David Warner Rovich tried to sue Don for copyright infringement, for slander, and for several other charges.

01:25:47

He tried to claim $5 million in damages from Don taking pieces of the artwork and mailing it out to congressmen and senators to let them know this is being funded.

01:26:03

You funded this. Do you have any response to that? And that initiated the debate among Congress about whether the

01:26:12

National Endowment for the Arts was going to be funded, how much funding it was going to receive, what kind of artwork was going to be approved for funding and all of these things that, you know, that was generated by Don Wildman in 1989 and carried throughout the 90s.

01:26:27

But this artist tried to sue Don. The case was most, well, four of the counts were thrown out.

01:26:33

There was one piece of that that caught on a particular New York Rights Authorship Act that related to artists and the depiction where if Don had in these descriptions said that these were, you know, cutouts or pieces from larger artworks, then he probably would have been safe.

01:26:51

But because he didn't have that caveat in there on the technicality, he had broken that statute.

01:26:58

But the judge fined him a dollar, you know, in damages, saying that it really hadn't been that significant in terms of the impact of Don's, you know, desecration, quote unquote, of the blasphemous and pornographic artwork.

01:27:15

You know, so interesting, some of these things, how they play out. But yeah, we talk about that in the documentary and the lawsuits that, you know,

01:27:24

Don was sued by Playboy and Penthouse as well. They tried to sue Don because of, they claimed

01:27:29

RICO violations in the state of Florida because of the boycotts that he was doing against convenience stores.

01:27:35

So, I mean, if you wanted to know if you were having an impact, you just look at whether someone files a lawsuit against you somehow, some way.

01:27:43

How is that a RICO violation? Well, they were claiming that because he was, so there was a state affiliate of AFA that was in Florida, and then they were trying to get to the national organization and get to Don.

01:28:05

So, they were saying that it was this, you know, kind of the connection of these, the way that you go after organized crimes, where the person who's initiating the thing is not really the one giving the direct order, it's kind of through inference or through other people in the organization.

01:28:23

But then they were saying that it was somehow, I'm losing the term, but there was, they were saying because of the picketing that this was extortion.

01:28:35

That's the word that they were using, that it was extortion to get people to picket and to boycott these convenience stores that were selling

01:28:44

Playboy and Penthouse. And so then the lawyers that Playboy and Penthouse have were starting to bring these cases up.

01:28:52

Of course, they went nowhere. But the civil rights movement was rooted in, you know,

01:28:59

I mean. Yeah, exactly. But this is what has happened.

01:29:05

I mean, this is where people have gone. The forces of darkness don't like being exposed, and they will use even the law to try and, if not completely thwart, it usually was an intimidation tactic.

01:29:19

And that's the thing about Don is that he was not easily intimidated. In fact, when a lot of these lawsuits started to build up, he put together a law firm here at AFA with legal counsel behind it, even before the

01:29:33

Alliance Defending Freedom came into existence. Don was actually on the founding giving some of the initial seed money for that.

01:29:40

But Alan Sears was connected with that, and Alan Sears is interviewed in the documentary.

01:29:46

So, like, we have connections with a lot of these different things, you know, in ways that I think will surprise people that they may not have realized.

01:29:53

But yeah, even before the ADF was in existence, AFA actually had a law center here that was trying a lot of these very challenging cases to try and allow

01:30:05

Christians to be able to speak up in the public square and to not be, you know, threatened with these lawsuits.

01:30:12

Yeah, it's ironic that you brought them up. I made use by the providence of God, made great use of the

01:30:20

ADF, which at the time was those initials stood for the

01:30:26

Alliance Defense Fund. And I arranged a debate,

01:30:33

I think it may have been 2002, early 2000 sometime, a public moderated debate between Dr.

01:30:41

James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and Barry Lynn. I don't know if you remember

01:30:46

Barry Lynn. He used to be the president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

01:30:57

And very hypocritical of Barry being somebody who claimed that his primary purpose in life was to protect freedom of speech, being a former

01:31:12

ACLU attorney. And yet, when he lost a debate on homosexuality, the theme was, is homosexuality compatible with biblical

01:31:25

Christianity? And Barry Lynn was an ordained

01:31:32

United Church of Christ minister. And he was - He was taking the affirming position that homosexuality was compatible with biblical

01:31:43

Christianity. Dr. White was obviously opposing that. Barry Lynn was so badly beaten in that debate and so humiliated, not that Dr.

01:31:53

White was being harsh and cruel, he was being as gracious as could be.

01:32:00

Even at some - Beat up by the truth, you might say. Yeah. In fact, he even rebuked the audience at times when they were laughing at Barry Lynn.

01:32:09

But Barry Lynn was so furious and humiliated that he threatened to sue

01:32:14

James White if he distributed the video of that debate. So, I contacted the

01:32:22

Alliance Defense Fund, now called the Alliance Defending Freedom, and told them about the situation.

01:32:29

They said that they would love to represent Dr. White in that conflict. They told him that he had to, before Barry Lynn filed a lawsuit, that he had to jump or beat them to it by filing a lawsuit, not for money, but just for the freedom to distribute the video.

01:32:50

And Barry Lynn and his legal counsel never showed up at the hearing. So, the judge, thankfully, threw it out of court.

01:32:59

But what hypocrisy - I mean, when you think about the hypocrisy of that, a man whose claim to fame is protecting freedom of speech.

01:33:12

Yeah. And that's the thing that you constantly see with a lot of the leftist figures is the hypocrisy behind it.

01:33:22

And that comes out very often in the documentary too. I mean, Don would argue with these guys, and they really didn't have anywhere to go.

01:33:38

And yeah, that's a fascinating story. I'm still kind of reeling from you bringing up Barry Lynn.

01:33:46

I ran across him at several points because when there was the

01:33:52

Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, which happened under the Reagan administration, underseen by Attorney General at the time,

01:33:59

Edward Meese, which Don was not on that group, but Alan Sears was, and Dr.

01:34:07

James Dobson was, and there were other secular minds that were part of that.

01:34:13

But that was a pretty important point in American recent history regarding pornography, because you had the government actually recognizing the harm that was brought by pornography.

01:34:28

But one of the things that Alan Sears brought up when we interviewed him on that regarding hypocrisy was that you would often have the pornographer saying that pornography was really good for people, and that there were all kinds of people who were benefited by pornography.

01:34:45

It helped their sex life. It helped their marriages. It gave them just a sense of well -being and all of these things that helped unleash the repression that they felt regarding sexuality.

01:34:57

But when they conducted these hearings all across the country, they invited witnesses to come forward to testify on behalf of pornography's good, and there wasn't a single one that came up to testify regarding that, but there were always witnesses who came forward testifying about the harms that it caused, either to them personally, to their children, or women who had come through the pornographic industrial complex, and all of these different people who were impacted by it.

01:35:25

So you had overwhelming evidence to its harm, but no evidence to its good, and that was their claim.

01:35:32

So there, again, the hypocrisy behind it, but Barry Lynn was arguing against the

01:35:39

Attorney General's Commission on one of these, I think, McNeil and Lehrer on one of those old shows talking about the issue, and Chrissy Heffner was on it, too, and Don was on it, and one of the men on that commission was on it.

01:35:54

But yeah, that's where I heard about Barry Lynn. But yeah, there's the hypocrisy once again shows itself.

01:36:01

Yeah, that was one of the areas, I don't know how much of a factor it is today, that was one of the rare areas that created, as they say, strange bedfellows between feminists and fundamentalists.

01:36:18

You had them both decrying the danger and the mistreatment of women and objectifying women and treating them like objects and so on through all things under the umbrella of pornography.

01:36:41

The feminists were on the same side, maybe for different reasons, but not always different reasons, but obviously offending

01:36:49

Christ had nothing to do with their reasons. But it was interesting how you had the two polar opposite movements on the same side, and it speaks loudly, the silence, the deafening silence speaks loudly today, how we do not have those allies amongst the feminists boldly making their voices heard when it comes to the transgender issue, even though that whole issue is a clear violation of the rights of women in sports and every other way.

01:37:25

There are a few out there, and they've been labeled as trans -exclusionary radical feminists.

01:37:31

Turfs is the derogatory name. J .K. Rowling has been kind of labeled one of these.

01:37:40

She's spoken out against the transgender issue, but they're so highly marginalized at the mainstream level that you don't hear about a lot of them.

01:37:49

But Heritage Foundation actually hosted a group symposium not too long ago that gave a lot of these women platform, talking about losing their job in the light of saying things against transgenderism and different things like that.

01:38:05

So it's a small group. It's not fully well known, but there are a few out there.

01:38:10

But yeah, it is interesting sometimes how these issues kind of tie different coalitions together in interesting ways.

01:38:19

Yes. And we have Terry in Seekonk, Massachusetts.

01:38:29

Terry says, Did Don fail in any way when he was trying to separate the true gospel of true

01:38:39

Christians and a more apparently ecumenical approach to these culture war issues when

01:38:47

Mormons and other members of false religions would collaborate and cooperate with Christians, sometimes giving a false impression that we are on the same page and in the same relationship with the one true

01:39:02

God and the gospel? Well, I suppose that's a matter of debate that you could take up in saying that there's that that's the representation that's being made up there, you know, that it gives it gives a false impression.

01:39:18

So, I mean, some people may see it that way, but I think the way that Don saw it was more of this is a common law, the light of nature kind of thing, that something that is good for us because it is rooted in God's word is generally good for society as a whole.

01:39:39

And so other people can recognize that for their own reasons and join in in the cause, as we're just talking about, about the radical feminists joining in on the issue of pornography or perhaps even on some of the trans issues, you know, you certainly aren't joined with a lot of the other, you know, you can't join with the feminists even on the abortion issue, you know, but you can on the on the trans issue perhaps and on the pornography issue sometimes, or at least you could back in the day.

01:40:08

I'm not sure where that stands today. So, you know, does that cross a line and present, make it seem as if we're more common in our ideologies than we truly are?

01:40:22

Maybe, but at the same time, I mean, it also gives the opportunity to bear witness to the truth to people who can see a common cause on these issues, even though they are coming from a different worldview mindset and position and ultimately theological position, and ultimately we would say a different spiritual condition.

01:40:45

So, yeah, I mean, obviously, I mean, that's a point of conscience, I think, for some

01:40:50

Christians where they might feel like, well, I don't feel like I can join in this cause because of these others that are in there.

01:40:58

But, I mean, Christians have faced that on the abortion issue, you know, I mean, a number of Catholics have, the

01:41:05

Catholics have been very strong on the pro -life issue historically throughout the history.

01:41:11

And to dismiss them from the pro -life cause would be detrimental to the larger part of that movement.

01:41:19

But at the same time, you're wanting to guard and preserve, you know, your own convictions on these things.

01:41:25

And, you know, you might be uncomfortable at certain points with people that you lock arms with, but I don't know, maybe some people really sense that more deeply.

01:41:37

I've learned to appreciate some of the lines that you can cross and the conversations that that opens up through this.

01:41:47

I don't see it as an ecumenical movement, like the ecumenical stuff was really, it was more built around a theological saying that we are all worshiping the same

01:41:58

God equally in the same way and that there's no reason to kind of speak against one another on any of these issues.

01:42:04

We could all just sing kumbaya and kind of be happy enough with our shared sense of religiosity.

01:42:10

But with some of these other social issues, you know, you're not, this isn't an ecumenical movement in the sense of shared theology.

01:42:18

It's a coalition that's built around a common cause for a very particular goal that won't be shared at every point of emphasis along the way.

01:42:27

But we have to go to our final break. Please do not go away. We'll be right back. Word of God, inherent in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak.

01:43:24

We believe in salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This salvation is based upon the sovereign grace of God, was purchased by Christ on the cross, and is received through faith alone, apart from any human merit, works, or ritual.

01:43:41

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Lord's day, we'd love to have you come and join us in worship. For details, visit linbrookbaptist .org.

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That's l -y -n -brookbaptist .org. This is Pastor Keith Allen of Linbrook Baptist Church reminding you that by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves.

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Lord's blessing and the knowledge of himself. Dr.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sends you. I'm Dr.

01:45:57

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,

01:46:08

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Janssen and Christopher McDowell.

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

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

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

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

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

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That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

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but today I want to introduce you to my senior pastor Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

01:50:03

Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.

01:50:14

In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt

01:50:19

God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.

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I sensed that same God -given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.

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That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a savior who died for sinners and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

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I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the

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Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church visit nhpbc .com

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that's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672 that's 516 -352 -9672.

01:51:16

That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

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

01:51:46

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I'm also delighted that Iron Sharpens Iron is partnering with one of my favorite resources for reformed

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Oh, and make sure that you tell them you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron radio.

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And don't forget, cvbbs .com is now shipping worldwide.

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Don't forget that, folks. It's a major development. I also want to remind everybody that this program is paid for in part by my very dear longtime friend

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Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law and a law firm of Buttafuoco & Associates. If you are the victim of a very serious personal injury or accident or medical malpractice, no matter where you live in the

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United States, call my dear friend Dan Buttafuoco. I have 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, or visit his website, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com,

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1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com. And please make sure you tell Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, that you heard about his law firm,

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Buttafuoco & Associates, from Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron. I want to also remind you of something very important.

01:54:09

It's our topic and our guests for this Monday. We are going to be joined by two brethren in Christ from Europe.

01:54:19

One of them is Dr. Joseph Boot, founder of the Ezra Institute, who'll be joining us live from London, England.

01:54:28

And also, we will be joined in that same interview with my very dear friend, who is going through quite an ordeal right now with some very vicious and slanderous people in the body of Christ, or at least they profess to be.

01:54:48

I'm speaking of my dear friend, Pastor Tobias Riemenschneider of the

01:54:54

Evangelical Reform Baptist Church in Frankfurt, Germany. They will be both joining me to discuss the new

01:55:03

Antioch Declaration. And if you want to find out more about that, go to AntiochDeclaration .com.

01:55:12

AntiochDeclaration .com, but this is a declaration that was born out of, believe it or not, the rising tide of anti -Semitism amongst professedly

01:55:25

Reformed Christians. I'm talking about confessional Reformed Christians, even

01:55:30

Reformed Baptists who are involved in Holocaust revisionism, putting a soft spin on what

01:55:41

Hitler and the Nazis actually did to the Jews. They swear they are not

01:55:46

Hitler lovers and they are not Jew haters, but those phrases have to be determined by what they actually believe.

01:55:56

And I hope that you listen this Monday, especially in the light of the fact that you're definitely going to be hearing more slander pouring out like sewage from the internet against my dear friend

01:56:09

Tobias Riemenschneider especially. So, please, not only listen to this program

01:56:17

Monday, spread the word about it and pray for this declaration, the

01:56:23

Antioch Declaration, and more of the ministry of Tobias Riemenschneider at the

01:56:29

Evangelical Reformed Baptist Church of Frankfurt, Germany.

01:56:36

We are now back with our guest today, MD Perkins, and we do have a listener who has a question for him in Cave Spring, Virginia.

01:56:49

Gladstone says, what would you think would be the most important highlights of the legacy of Don Wildman that the church today should remember and put into practice?

01:57:04

That's a great question. I think one of the, some of the highlights, I would think, would be just his conviction behind Christian involvement in the culture, a recognition of the entertainment that we consume and its impact on society, speaking out against the horror of not just abortion but pornography.

01:57:33

And I would love to see Christians rise up with a level of growing concern against pornography and to speak out more vehemently against it.

01:57:45

That was a concern that was there very heavily in the 1980s.

01:57:51

But as we know, the technology behind it has changed and shifted, and so the way in which we fight it has to be different now.

01:58:00

But I think vigilance and mindfulness still need to be there. And overall,

01:58:05

I mean, one of Don's phrases was that God calls us to be faithful, to not necessarily be successful, but to be faithful.

01:58:13

And I think that's a message that all Christians can get behind because we recognize that the battle belongs to the

01:58:19

Lord. And so we're trusting Him in the midst of all of these things, not just trusting our own cleverness or our own pragmatic abilities to get things done, but we're trusting

01:58:29

God to bless our efforts. And if the Lord in His own sovereignty chooses not to, we recognize that God is also able to pour out

01:58:40

His judgment by not giving us success and allowing things to decline even more in some ways.

01:58:48

So I think having that eternal perspective on the things that we do is important, and it's an important message of Culture Warrior.

01:58:55

And I hope people are able to see the movie. CultureWarrior .movie is where you can go. CultureWarrior .movie.

01:59:04

And I hope that as many of you as possible will take advantage of watching that for free. I also want to remind you that the website of the

01:59:12

American Family Association, where my guest MD Perkins serves on the staff, that website is

01:59:19

AFA .net, A -F -A for AmericanFamilyAssociation .net. I want to thank you so much,

01:59:26

Brother Perkins, for doing such a superb job as you always do on the show. I look forward to your return to this program, and I want to urge all of our listeners once again to especially tune in Monday to the interview with Dr.

01:59:43

Joe Boot and Pastor Tobias Freeman -Schneider on the Antioch Declaration.

01:59:49

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