Aug. 12, 2015 Show with Mack Tomlinson on “Marks of Biblically Faithful Preaching #2” & Tom Conway on “Marks of Biblically Faithful Eschatology”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now here's our host Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 12th day of August 2015.

I'm very excited about today's program not only because of the content of the subject matter but because we're also promoting a very important conference that starts tomorrow in Maine, in Portland, Maine, and for any of our listeners who live in Portland, Maine, or if you know of someone in Portland, Maine, or if you have the opportunity to travel to Portland, Maine, I heartily urge you to do so.

This is going to be held August 13th through the 15th in Portland, Maine, and the theme of the conference is

Fellowship Preaching and Singing that Center on the Glory of God. That's from Thursday, August 13th through Saturday, August 15th, and we hope that as many of you as possible can attend this and the website to go to for more information on this conference is

I'llBeHonest .com. That's I'llBeHonest .com

and you will be able to find the information by clicking on browse and you will eventually get to the actual conference data.

The website, once again, is I'llBeHonest .com and there's no apostrophe in the

I -L -L so it's I -L -L -BeHonest .com. But speaking at this conference are my two guests today and one of them is a return guest that I'm very excited to continue a discussion with.

That is Pastor Mac Tomlinson of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, and he is going to be discussing marks of biblically faithful preaching.

We already began this discussion with Pastor Mac a number of weeks ago and we basically did not complete everything that we wanted to discuss on this very vital subject.

After Mac is completed with his interview, the second hour we will have on the program for the very first time

Pastor Tim Conway of Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas. He's going to be talking about the marks of biblically faithful eschatology.

So there you have two very important topics and very exciting topics, the marks of biblically faithful preaching and the marks of biblically faithful eschatology.

But first let me introduce to you our very first guest for the two -hour program, Pastor Mac Tomlinson of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas.

It's great to have you back on the program. Good afternoon Chris, thanks for having me back.

Well the pleasure is all mine and I am looking forward to our discussion and I'm more than happy to promote a conference such as the one that you are involved in.

Before we even get into the topic at hand, marks of biblically faithful preaching, what can you tell us about this conference coming up, the

Fellowship Conference New England in Portland, Maine this Thursday through Saturday?

Well this conference started three years ago out of the desire of believers,

Christians in the Portland area to have something for pastors and Christian families.

It was substantive, it would provide resources, it would be encouraging to promote solid biblical

Christianity. And so this is the third year and the conference is free, there's no cost.

Thursday night we had a conflict in scheduling that came up at last minute.

So tomorrow night, Thursday night, the conference will be at Stroudwater Baptist Church on Congress Street there in Portland.

And then Friday morning the conference moves to the Deering Center Community Church nearby there in Portland.

But that information is on the website if you find it. So it's not a large conference, but it's a very encouraging conference with biblical preaching, true fellowship, good wonderful books that are well discounted, and real fellowship.

There's also a pastor and church leaders lunch on, I believe that's

Friday. And so we welcome any believers in or near Portland or in New England area for that matter to join us.

And we have people coming from as far away as Long Island, New York and so we hope that people will take advantage of this opportunity this week.

Great, do you happen to know off the top of your head who from Long Island is coming because that's where I'm originally from? I'm sorry

Chris, I don't. It's a young couple I know that are engaged to be married and they're very serious about following the

Lord Jesus Christ. I know that. I have met them. Do you know if they're from Grace Reform Baptist or Hope Reform Baptist?

That rings a bell, they very well might be. Okay, well I'm very happy to promote this conference.

I'm always happy to promote conferences when I know that the men conducting them are biblically sound and that would follow that the subjects would be as well and the content of the subjects.

So go to I'llBeHonest .com and keep in mind there's no apostrophe in the word

I'll and click on the browse button and you can get the topics, the speakers, etc.

And actually when you click on browse the very last option is Fellowship Conference and go to 2015.

So I'llBeHonest .com, click browse, then scroll down to Fellowship Conference and then click 2015.

Sorry I'm making this a little bit more difficult than it may need to be but I know that the initial website that was available for the conference has outdated information on it.

So this is the updated information with two different locations and I'm sure that you could find everything that you need on that website and we look forward to hearing a good report from our listeners who have attended.

Today we're going to be talking about a subject that we already began, the marks of biblically faithful preaching.

And one of the things that we did not really address, or at least we didn't address as fully as you wanted to the last time, is the idea of powerless preaching.

And you and I, Pastor Tomlinson, we are both Calvinists, which is just a nickname of course.

We are both theologically reformed, another nickname, and we believe in the doctrines of sovereign grace.

And you and I know that powerless preaching, unfortunately, is not totally foreign to our fellowship of churches, if you will.

And if you could comment on that. Well, I believe in the American professing evangelical church.

That's one of the curses of our 21st century. But that certainly started long before this century.

Powerless preaching really begins with what I would call Bible -less preaching.

How often do Christians, church people, hearing men preach in pulpits, they don't even actually preach the text in the

Bible. They don't preach what it is. So they tell stories that warm the heart or that move the emotions, or they just give points of principles and success in life, etc.

So the Bible and any preaching that doesn't actually open the

Bible and preach what's in the Bible is going to be powerless preaching. But powerless preaching means more than that.

Powerless preaching is preaching that does not have the power and the authority of the

Holy Spirit upon the preacher or upon the message. In history, theologians and Christians from the past have called that divine unction.

Divine unction. U -N -C -T -I -O -N. Which means the actual power of the

Holy Spirit coming upon the preacher during the sermon, where the

Holy Spirit is especially present and He makes the most simple gospel sermons powerful.

An example of that is in the book of Acts chapter 2. We often think about Peter's great sermon in Pentecost, but we often forget that it was a spontaneous, unprepared, unwritten sermon.

It was spontaneously preached. And of course, Peter had enough of the Old Testament in his mind and heart that he could expound

God's historic redemptive purpose. He started with the prophecy of Joel, and then he said, this is that which you see today.

This is that which Joel spoke about. But what made Peter's sermon so powerful that there were 3 ,000 conversions that day under one sermon was simply that the

Holy Spirit was poured out. An old preacher used to say, in Pentecost, one sermon converted 3 ,000 sinners, but today 3 ,000 sermons hardly converts one sinner.

Wow, that's a great line. The difference is the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Now, going back to what

I originally said in introducing the topic, although our fellow

Reformed churches would not be typically guilty of a

Bible -less sermon or Scripture -less sermons. In fact, the typical

Reformed sermons, Calvinistic sermons, if you will, are filled with Scripture, typically.

But cannot they also be powerless if they are delivered as pure lectures filled with facts and there is no righteous indignation or compassion or fire present at all in what is being taught from the pulpit?

Absolutely, that's a danger, and I believe it happens all the time. Even orthodox preaching, which is sound truth, can be simply cold, intellectual, academic preaching, where the sermon is structured and orderly, and it's presented with clarity, but there's no power in it.

So information is given out, but hearts aren't served, and men's consciences aren't pricked.

The famous thing that they said about Martin Lloyd -Jones in Britain, perhaps the greatest preacher of the 20th century, that his sermons were characterized as being called logic on fire.

In other words, it was great logic, great truth, great theology, but it was preached in the power and the anointing of the

Holy Spirit. Yes, I have the DVD series about Martin Lloyd -Jones of the same title. You know, back in the 1850s,

J .W. Alexander, pastor in New York City, he was a son of Archibald Alexander, I believe, or grandson perhaps.

He was a professor at Princeton Seminary, and he also, he pastored in New York City in the 1850s when the 1858 prayer revival broke out in New York City, and there were powerful outpourings of the

Spirit all over the East Coast in 1857, 1858.

And J .W. Alexander preached a famous sermon that became basically a booklet, a pamphlet, which you can get today easily on the internet, called

Pray for the Spirit, based on Luke 11 .13, which says, if you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your

Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? So the thing that marked the heart of preachers in the past, priests with great power, was after all their preparation of a sermon, they would actually cry out mightily to God to send the

Holy Spirit upon them while they were preaching. They would plead for the Spirit's power, and if preachers wished to preach with divine authority, they had to preach the

Bible only, and not their own opinions, but they had to preach with the

Holy Spirit sent down from Heaven. Now, don't you think that there's a danger that is often committed, especially with the very popular televangelists and radio teachers?

It's a shame that the most popular very often are the least biblical or least sound, and you have preachers like Joe Olsteen, for instance, and he's not the only one doing this.

There may be even far more biblically sound men doing that. In fact, there are, but the danger in talking to your audience, especially when it could be in the millions when you're talking about a televangelist, like everybody who's listening is a child of God, is a

Christian, and the concept of Romans 8 .28 will be cut in half.

It will just be all things work together for the good, and what will be left out is for those who love

God and are the called according to His purpose, and therefore you have these messages of encouragement and comfort at times, or perhaps on the other end of the spectrum for the more intellectual pastor, biblical instruction given, but the presentation is being conducted as if everybody listening is already born again.

Isn't that a very serious danger? Absolutely, it's a very serious danger, and I think it happens every week in most churches.

Many pastors, sadly, presume all too often that a majority of their congregations are

Christians, even though many of those people in their church give no credible evidence of being born again at all.

They show no fruit, no grace, no heart for God, and so the pastors, out of fear or out of ignorance or presumption, seem to preach to their congregations presuming most of the people are

Christians, and that is a very bad danger in the state.

A faithful ministry ought to realize a faithful pastor must realize that there are people who attend his church every week who are unconverted.

Young people, children, adults who have been in that church all their life, every week we are preaching to unconverted people, and we can't ever forget that.

Don't you think an important element of a faithful minister's pulpit is to preach the whole counsel of God and to avoid hobby -horsing?

Absolutely. Yes, it's easy to fall into the trap of the preacher getting on a soapbox or a hobby horse and kind of only sounding one note all the time, and so that's the beauty of preaching through the books of the

Bible, preaching through a whole book or doing expository preaching is you're not preaching your own biases.

You're having to address everything that God says in Scripture as you go through a section of Scripture.

Right. I have been very blessed my entire Christian life in that all the churches that I have been a member of, well actually there's only been two,

Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island and now Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, but I've been so blessed by the preaching because the whole counsel of God is being preached and there is not a hobby horse where the concept of unconditional election is brought up every single

Sunday or the limited atonement is not brought up every single

Sunday. And then of course you have the more independent fundamentalist type preachers who always hammer away at specifically worldly sins like the way people dress and the things that they watch on TV and the movies they go to and on and on and on and very little other instruction is heard from many of these pulpits.

And then of course on the opposite extreme of both of those you have, as I mentioned before, one of America's most popular preachers,

Joel Osteen, who cannot be preaching the whole counsel of God if he's always smiling.

Isn't it impossible to preach the whole counsel of God and always have a smile on your face?

Well I think that goes without saying, absolutely. When you listen to such men, and he's not the only one as you said, but what's striking is when you listen to him, he begins by calling the people to remember that the

Bible in his hand is the word of God, but then he never opens it, he never preaches from it.

It's always just how to be happy, how to have a good life, how to conquer your fears, and the

Bible is not ever in those sermons actually opened and expounded.

So yes. Go ahead brother.

True preaching will be at times with great joy and it will be with solemnity and sober mindedness, and often with tears and urgency, because when you preach the whole counsel of God, you're covering so many things that the

Bible says, that at times it's the terror of the

Lord, at times it's the love of God, the grace of God, the joy of Christ, so it's all important.

Yeah I think that there must be something wrong with a pastor's pulpit ministry if no one is ever upset when they leave the building.

If they're always being encouraged and uplifted, there's got to be something wrong with the message.

Not that as you said, that should be an element especially for the true people of God.

It would be an equally but opposite error for them to constantly be pouring guilt and condemnation and sorrow and grief and anger on the congregation, but this constant drumbeat of your spirits should be lifted up and so on.

Isn't that obviously something is crucial missing? You can't have the good news without the bad news.

You can't really appreciate what the gospel is unless you know what the gospel is rescuing people from, correct?

Absolutely right. The old British preacher Leonard Ravenhill used to say, talking about John the

Baptist, when John would preach, people would either go away mad, glad, or sad, and I think true preaching produces all those.

He also said the preacher is called to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable, and both those things are true as well because anytime we stand to preach, before us are multi different types of needs.

There are people being drawn by the Holy Spirit, being dealt with by the Spirit, and their hearts are tender and their minds are prepared.

There are some that are cold and callous and indifferent. There are some that are believers that have a very tender conscience and they need to be encouraged.

There are some that are lacking assurance, that are true children of God. There are some that have false assurance, that think they're

Christians, but they're not, and so the importance in preaching is to remember that we are simply the vessel, we're the clay pot, and the gospel and the word of God is the treasure that needs to come through the vessel, and only the

Holy Spirit can apply the word of God to the various needs represented on any given

Sunday morning. I'm going to give our email address if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for Pastor Mack Tomlinson on the marks of biblically faithful preaching.

This is a live program for those of you who may have tuned in late and wrongly think that this is a rerun of a previous message.

We are continuing a topic that we began a number of weeks ago, so if you want to ask a question of Pastor Mack, well, we are still live for the next 35 minutes or so for his portion of the program.

Our email address is chrizarnsen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com,

and please include your first name, your city and state, and your country if you're outside of the

USA. I do already have a listener, a CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who asks, what do you make of the excuse given by some such as the aforementioned

Joel Osteen and also a similar preacher before him,

Robert Shuler, who would say, I know that there needs to be the preaching of repentance and the preaching against sin, but that is not my calling.

Other men are called to do that. I believe that I have been given a calling to preach an encouraging word to those who are in misery, sadness, or who are not fulfilling their potential as Christians.

That's a very good question, because I have heard both of those men say things like that, that it's their specific calling.

If you could answer that question. Well, men who have that mentality, who believe that, simply put, they're not called to God's ministry.

They're probably the most dangerous men in the nation, because they do not believe the

Bible. The Apostle Paul told Timothy, preach the word, in season, out of season.

No preacher has a right to pick and choose what he wants to preach. If he's under divine authority, if he is sent by God.

So, such men who say such things, they're sent by their own desires, they're sent by their own preconceived ideas, but they're certainly not sent by God, because they're not saying about preaching what the

Bible says. And our email address, again, is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. One thing that I know is very near and dear to your heart is

Christian literature, good books. And you believe that there are a number of good books that our listeners should be acquainted with that would help guide them into really getting a grasp on what good biblical and biblically faithful preaching is.

And you did bring up some during our last program. Perhaps you have some others to add to the list that you didn't have an opportunity to mention when we previously discussed the same issue.

Well, I believe every pastor and every preacher should always be reading books that will help them improve.

That's the only one -off thing to do. And as far as books on preaching,

I think there's two categories that are important in answer to this.

One is books on preaching, and another is books on the Holy Spirit, especially in relation to the ministry.

Some that just automatically come to my mind, John Popper's little book,

The Supremacy of God in Preaching, is a marvelous book. And it's small, it's very excellent, and it is a real tonic.

Every preacher, I believe, should read that little book every year. Another book is two books by Ian Murray, who is one of the founders of the

Banner of Truth Trust from Edinburgh, Scotland. His book on Martin Lloyd -Jones called

Messenger of Grace is a book on the preaching of Martin Lloyd -Jones in relation to the power of the

Holy Spirit. And it is very wonderful. Messenger of Grace, published by Banner of Truth.

Another book by Mr. Murray is his book Pentecost Today. That's another

Banner of Truth title. And it's on the doctrine of the outpouring of the

Holy Spirit in revival and the nature of the work of the Spirit. And it is one of the best books on the

Holy Spirit any Christian could read. While you're thinking of some more, we're going to go to a break.

And I also want to let our listeners know that if you would like to purchase any of these books, you can get them from one of our sponsors,

Solid Ground Christian Books, and their website is solid -ground -books .com.

solid -ground -books .com. And also, one of our other sponsors, the

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, their website is cvbbs .com.

C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B for Bible Book, S for service .com.

C -V -B -B -S .com. And you can order any of the books that Pastor Mack Tomlinson mentions through either of those websites.

We're going to be going to a break right now, and we're going to be returning with our subject, Marks of Biblically Faithful Preaching, when we return.

And shoot us an email with a question if you have one. Even if you disagree with anything that's being said, perhaps you are very fond of the ministry of Joel Osteen, or someone else that may have been criticized today.

Whether you agree with our guests, whether you disagree, or whether you're just not certain, we'd love to hear from you. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arns. And if you've just joined us on the air, our guest today for the first hour is

Pastor Mack Tomlinson of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas. We are discussing the marks of biblically faithful preaching.

Our email address, if you have questions for Pastor Mack, is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

One thing that I forgot to mention to you, Pastor Mack, before the break is that if you could put your cell phone on mute during the break, if you want to talk, because we can hear you speaking during the station breaks.

Sorry about that. So if you could just put your cell phone on mute during the station breaks, if you are going to talk with someone.

My apologies. Oh, that's quite all right. I didn't tell you. So that's my fault. I also want to announce the newest sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron, Providence Baptist Church in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

Their website is providencebaptistchurchma .org.

It is a Reformed Baptist Church. Pastor Mark Lukens is a wonderful brother in the

Lord and has been a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron. I'm looking forward to having him back. And he has loved

Iron Sharpens Iron since the old days when we were broadcasting it of New York on WNYG and WGBB AM radio.

And when he heard that Iron Sharpens Iron returned to the airwaves back in June, he was very excited about it and rallied support from his church to become a monthly sponsor for a year to begin with.

So we are very grateful to them and their support to help us remain on the air. And why don't you also give your website for Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, Pastor Max, since we already have been promoting the website of the conference that you're speaking at.

Why don't you specifically give the Providence Chapel website? It's providencedenton .org.

Providencedenton .org. That's very easy to remember, obviously. Providencedenton .org.

Providencedenton .org. And we were discussing right before the break books that Pastor Mac Tomlinson recommends specifically that address the topic we are discussing,

Marks of Biblically Faithful Preaching. And if you have any more, feel free to mention some more.

Two other wonderful books immediately come to mind. The famous British Baptist preacher,

C .H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students. It's a book for preachers in preparing for the ministry, and it's not just on preaching itself.

It's on the ministry. And it's a classic. Every preacher and every young man entering ministry should ask

Spurgeon's Lectures to My Students. Great. And I thought you said two more.

Maybe I missed one. No, there is another one. Preaching and Preachers by Martyn Lloyd -Jones is a classic, and it's must -read for any preacher.

Preaching and Preachers by Martyn Lloyd -Jones. Great. And as I said earlier, you could go to solid -ground -books .com,

solid -ground -books .com, or cvbbs .com,

cv for Cumberland Valley, bb for Bible Book, s for service .com, cvbbs .com.

And they will certainly have the books that Pastor Tomlinson is recommending.

And one of the things that you and I have discussed off -radio is the dangers of false preaching when people need to hear the truth perhaps the most, and that's at funerals.

Obviously, you don't want to add to the unnecessary grief of those who mourn by having a sermon filled with condemnation for the person who has passed away if they did not know

Christ, but isn't there a danger of what we were just speaking about before in the first half hour of the program where you're treating everybody in the audience as if they're

Christians? Right. I believe one of the great mistakes, and it's really sinful, is when pastors, what

I would call, they preach wicked people, unconverted people right into heaven in their funeral message.

We've all seen this happen. A person in the community dies, and they never evidence being a

Christian. Perhaps they were baptized early, or they professed to be a Christian in the past, but perhaps they didn't, and they've lived a wicked life.

They're a notorious sinner. They never knock on the door of a church. They don't like Christians at all, and then when they die, their funeral is held in a church, and the minister feels compelled somehow for some bad reason to speak about the person being in a better place, or now being at home, or that they now are at rest.

Well, nothing is further from the truth if you're talking about an unbeliever. It is wrong to address in funerals to give the family false comfort and false hope that their loved one, who is now deceased, is in heaven.

That's often motivated either by fear by the pastor, or by a sense of loyalty to the family, or wanting to comfort them, but that's not the way to do it, because you never comfort anyone by giving them false hope, or by speaking a lie.

So what should you do at a funeral? If the person has evidence being a true

Christian, and a true follower of Christ, then it's very genuine and right to address that person's hope in Christ, but I have done many funerals over the years of people that have evidence not being a

Christian at all. What should we do? We should simply talk about the great reality that God is there, and He's available.

A funeral message is for the living, not the dead. So what can we say to those who are left behind?

We can say Jesus Christ is the only hope in life and in death. He is available to all who will turn to Him.

There is only comfort in the grace of God in Jesus Christ. There is only eternal life and the hope of heaven in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I preached a funeral one time of a man who never went to church, and everyone who knew him knew he was an atheist.

But the family did not know any ministers, so they asked me to do the service.

Well, I knew the wisest thing I could do was speak about Jesus Christ.

So I went to the gospel of John, and I wrote down every place where Jesus claimed to be something.

I am the resurrection and the life. I am the door. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the good shepherd, and I just went through eight or nine or ten claims of Christ, and that was the whole message.

That's what we should do at a funeral of an unconverted person is to speak about the hope there is in Jesus Christ, and that's truthful.

And, of course, lest anyone misunderstand you, you don't believe that you should dwell on the damned state of a non -Christian whose funeral they are gathered at because, first of all, if you were not there when the person died, you would not know for certain if that person didn't repent and so on.

So you're saying that the state of the one who is dead is not really to be the issue at all when you're at a non -Christian's funeral.

It's the messages for those who are still alive and have an opportunity to repent and believe, correct?

That is right. If I do a funeral of one who is probably an unbeliever,

I say nothing about them. I don't address their life or where they are now because I don't know.

And it would be almost cruel and wrong and truly unloving to speak about the deceased loved one, but it's also deceitful in giving a false assurance to try to comfort them that maybe their loved one is in heaven.

So I don't believe the person's, their eternal state of the person or their life should even be addressed really in the funeral.

One thing that conservative Christians, conservative evangelicals have been known for for the last two centuries is songs and sermons of great patriotism and love and thanks for the nation that we live in.

Is that really wise to have a consistent message like that when we see our nation departing so far away from the truth of the scriptures and we see things like same -sex marriage being legalized and so on?

I mean, I'm not saying we should not be patriotic, but can we be so overly patriotic that it becomes an idol?

This country can become an idol. I believe that's very true.

There's a great difference between being patriotic and a good citizen and longing to see your nation turn back to God, longing to see a national revival and preaching sermons from the pulpit about the nation and about patriotism.

I personally do not believe that that's biblical because we're not called to be, ministers aren't called to be patriots that are preaching political or national sermons.

Only where the Bible addresses that. The Bible says righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.

So an example would be the recent Supreme Court decision on same -sex marriage.

Well, there were many pulpits soon after that that preached sermons about how should marriage be viewed biblically?

How should the state of our nation be viewed biblically? And I think there's definitely a place for that.

That is important at different times, but to preach sermons regularly to deal with patriotism rather than preaching the

Bible, in my opinion, is a mistake. What is your opinion about the style?

We went into this somewhat the last time you were on regarding the homiletics issue and the style and manner and the art of preaching, but there are some people who dislike a pastor or a preacher because he is overly loud, and there are others who dislike a preacher because they think he is overly soft and never seems to have any righteous indignation.

Is that a significant issue? Should there be a balance of both bold and loud words with gentle and soft ones, or is this just relegated to the issue of a person's own voice and personality?

Well, I certainly think every preacher is different, and one of the most important things is a preacher has to be himself.

It's a great mistake to copy someone else, try to preach like someone else.

So we have to be ourselves, and God will make us into the man He wants us to be.

So I can't preach like other men can preach. Some men are very loud.

They're very, what's the word

I'm looking for? Righteously indignant? Yeah, they have a lot of gestures.

They're very articulate. They're very passionate, and they can get very loud. Other men who are just as faithful preachers are more calm.

They hardly raise their voice ever. They don't have many gestures, and so I think it depends on the man and how

God has made him to be. I don't think a preacher should be judged on his oratory or his manner.

What's ultimately important is, is he being faithful to the Scripture, and is he declaring without compromise the truth of the

Gospel and the truth of the Bible? You know, it's interesting. When Jesus and John the Baptist both preached, they were both criticized for how they came across.

One group said, thinking about John, he came neither eating or drinking, and so they had one criticism of him, but then they said about Jesus, he came eating and drinking, and so both of them were criticized in their manner of coming, and I'm sure their presentation outwardly was probably different, but it's not the characteristics of the vessel that the importance is the truth that's preached through any vessel.

Now, having said that, though, if a man has such a manner of preaching or teaching where he seems to be totally devoid of any compassion, where he is delivering a message that may even contain the truth, but is doing so in an indifferent way, where he doesn't really seem to care, isn't that a sign that that's not really his calling, if he doesn't really demonstrate?

I'll give you an example. I know men who are soft -spoken men, but you can see quite evidently that they are passionate about what they are preaching about, if you follow what

I'm saying. Exactly, and that's a great point. Men who preach certainly should have some reality of passion and urgency in their heart.

They need to preach with conviction, whether their voice is softer or louder, where the people hearing them know those men are preaching out of their heart.

They are preaching with conviction, and that will always be seen, no matter what manner the preacher is coming across, and it should always be there.

If a man preaches with dullness, no one's going to really believe that he either believes what he's preaching or that he really cares if they believe it.

Then, of course, on the other end of the spectrum, you can be just as mundane or banal by always shouting from your very first word when you rise up to the pulpit, to the end of your sermon.

If you're always shouting, it becomes like somebody's car alarm going off. You're not even listening to it anymore.

It's background noise, and if you're not accentuating the important parts of the sermon with your loudness and everything, even those things that are far less important, urgent, or serious are being shouted about as well, then it's all going to be a blur, just as if a man was droning in the voice of a college professor.

Right. I think such loudness in preaching, such shouting, usually comes from a culture of fundamentalist preaching, where fundamentalist circles have equated loudness and shouting with good preaching.

The content may be horrible, but if the guy's a good shouter and he can emphasize at the right point, then they think he's really preaching good, and nothing's further from the truth.

True passion in preaching, if men get loud and begin to speak louder, it's going to be natural.

It's going to seem real. It's not going to seem to be a performance. It's not going to be worked up.

Nothing is more distasteful than artificial zeal. It's got to be authentically from the

Holy Spirit through that man's personality. And historically, what happens when there's preaching during a true revival?

Obviously, we have to emphasize a true revival, because there are churches that every time they have a sermon preached, it's a revival meeting, or if they have a special event under a tent somewhere that's open to the community or what have you, it's always referred to as a revival meeting of some kind.

But I'm talking about a true revival, like those that have happened in England and in Wales and here in the

United States over the centuries. What is really happening in the preaching there?

Well, I think several things happen. There are several characteristics in history during times of revival when preaching is occurring.

One thing would be the Holy Spirit has come down in an extraordinary way and real power on the most ordinary preachers and the most ordinary sermons.

It's not great personality that bring revival. It's the

Spirit of God coming in power. And when He comes in power, a simple sermon, the

Holy Spirit comes upon the congregation or the audience, be it in a local church, be it in the open air when

George Whitfield preached, it would be 5 ,000, 10 ,000 or more people. And the

Spirit would descend in power and great conviction on the congregation, even during the sermon.

And people would come under powerful conviction of their sin. God by the

Holy Spirit would draw especially near. God was present. And in an unusual way, they've turned that the presence of God would be heavy.

He would be felt and people would feel like God had zeroed in on them personally.

They would be deeply convicted over their sins. And the truth was powerfully moving them.

And when that happens, really the preacher and even the sermon is forgotten and people are shut up to the presence of God.

So in times of revival, ordinary preaching is kindled with spiritual fire.

It comes alive and it grows almost into a spiritual flame.

And preaching in history has been the primary thing God has employed to send revival to somewhere and to convert many souls.

One of the greatest theologians and preachers in American history was Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts.

And he's connected obviously with the first great awakening in the 18th century. What people sometimes who've heard of Edwards don't know is that that awakening in Northampton in his church that summer,

I believe it was 1737 around there, 1738, that awakening started when he was preaching a series of sermons on regeneration, the new birth.

And it started among children in the town and in his congregation.

It was a four -year -old girl named Phoebe Bartlett. And you can read about Phoebe Bartlett on the internet easily.

She came under deep conviction of sin as a four -year -old under Edwards' preaching.

And that work among those children began to spread until finally the first great awakening in colonial

New England fanned in the flame all over those

New England states. So that's one of the name marks.

And I would say that's really the primary mark of revival preaching. It is as the

Old Testament says, it's not by might, nor by power, a man's power, but by my spirit says the

Lord. Well, if you could in one minute or so, maybe 90 seconds, give our listeners what you most want etched on their hearts and minds before they leave this broadcast today.

If you're a protecting Christian or you're a Christian that's in a church and you somehow discern that true preaching of the

Bible is not happening. The minister is telling stories. He's just trying to be an encourager, a motivational speaker.

Go find a church where there is biblical preaching because that's where you will grow as a

Christian. A second point would be for us to realize that true revival, a spiritual awakening is needed in our land today more than ever.

And that will only come by sovereign outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God, which is authentic and genuine and not counterfeit.

Well, thank you so much for a wonderful interview, brother. And once again,

Pastor Mack Tomlinson's website for Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas is

ProvidenceDenton .org. ProvidenceDenton .org.

And he will be speaking at the conference being held in Portland, Maine this

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And all of the details can be found at I'llBeHonest .com.

I'llBeHonest .com. And there is no apostrophe in the I -L -L. I'llBeHonest .com.

Click on Browse and then scroll down to the information on the conference this year, 2015, because they've had other conferences.

And we look forward to hearing good reports from our listeners who've attended. And we look forward to having you back on the show,

Pastor Mack. Thank you, Chris. It's always a blessing to be with you. Yes. And now we are going to have

Tim Conway, who is going to have the discussion for the second hour of our broadcast on the marks of biblically faithful eschatology.

So don't go away. We're going to be right back with another hour on Iron Sharpens Iron. I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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Lynnbrookbaptist .org. That's lynnbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Arns. And if you've just tuned us in, the last hour we had the privilege of interviewing

Pastor Mack Tomlinson of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas on the subject,

The Marks of Biblically Faithful Preaching. And today for the second hour, we are very excited to announce for the very first time our guest,

Pastor Tim Conway, and he is the pastor of Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas.

He is going to be speaking on the theme, Marks of Biblically Faithful Eschatology.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron for the very first time, Pastor Tim Conway.

Hello. Hi, Chris. Thank you for having me on. Yes, I'm looking forward to this discussion.

And of course, people who know me know that I would never hear the end of it if I didn't make some kind of a

Carol Burnett joke. But anyway, or Harvey Korman or what have you, because of your name,

Tim Conway. But perhaps one day we can have you and Pastor Steve Martin, another Reformed Baptist, do a conference together.

Be kind of interesting. But you two, both you and Pastor Mack Tomlinson are both going to be speaking starting tomorrow at the conference there in Portland, Maine.

And if you could let our listeners know something about it. For those of our listeners who did not hear

Pastor Mack Tomlinson during the first hour, we did announce the fact that this

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, that's starting tomorrow, the Fellowship Conference New England is being held in Portland, Maine.

And the theme is Fellowship Preaching and Singing that Center on the Glory of God. If you could perhaps tell our listeners what you specifically will be speaking on.

Well, I haven't actually determined yet exactly what I'm going to be speaking on.

I think I probably will do a message on the Second Coming. I'm looking at Matthew Chapter 11.

And then I've got a handful of other messages that I'll try to be guided by the

Lord as to what I actually bring. Pastor Mike Morrow, myself,

Mack Tomlinson, Jesse Barrington, the four of us will be preaching Thursday through Saturday here in Portland, Maine.

And the website is illbehonest .com. That's I -L -L without the apostrophe, behonest .com,

I -L -L -B -E, honest .com. And click on Browse and then scroll down to Fellowship Conference and click 2015.

And you will have all the details that you need about this conference being held in Portland, Maine starting tomorrow and going on through Saturday.

And today we are talking, as I mentioned already, marks of biblically faithful eschatology.

There is no issue that I'm aware of that so sharply divides evangelical

Christians next to music. I would certainly think it would be the end times, because this not only divides people of polar opposite theologies or doctrine, but it even divides people very often in the same pew at a church or within the same denomination or fellowship.

And I know that you are very concerned with the direction that some ministries have taken on eschatology.

First of all, why don't you give our listeners a definition of eschatology? Eschatology, basically a study of the last thing or a study of the end time.

And so typically, what do we think about when we think about eschatology?

It includes prophecy, the second coming of Christ, judgment day, the end of the world, the new heavens and new earth, eternal punishment, oftentimes the nature of the kingdom of God, the future of the church.

Many like to talk about the future of the nation of Israel, the millennium, the rapture, oftentimes the resurrection of the dead.

The Antichrist is a big, big factor in there, the tribulation. And the things that have really set apart the amillennial view from the other views is that it is rarely sensationalized or rarely becomes a dominant part of the pulpit ministry of the churches that hold to it.

I'm not saying that all post -millennialists or pre -millennialists, whether historic or dispensational,

I'm not saying that they all do that. I know some very dear brethren in Christ who are even

Calvinistic, who are dispensationalist or post -millennial, and they do not hobby horse on eschatology.

But it seems to be that the danger that has occurred probably for quite a long time now,

I was going to say a more recent date than when I started to think about it. I mean, you're really even talking about the 19th century with the rise of some of the cults and so on.

But that can be a very warped way of presenting the truth of the word is when you hobby horse on eschatology, can't it?

Right. And I think those that hold to the amillennial position largely are not dealing with it.

And I hope I don't get in trouble here. I greatly, greatly appreciate

John MacArthur. And I know in 2007, I believe, in his Shepherds Conference, I think he challenged those that hold to an amillennial eschatology, just saying that you don't hear amillennialists have a conference on prophecy.

And he was faulting people in that camp. And maybe just a little bit of history on myself.

God used John MacArthur very instrumentally in my conversion, profound influence in my life.

His book, The Gospel According to Jesus, was handed to me when I was very much lost and on my way to hell.

And the Lord used that book to bring me to himself. I greatly appreciated

MacArthur. If he could, he seemed to be so, so biblical.

He taught me sovereignty, showed it to me from God's word, taught me about election.

There it was. I could go into God's word and I could see it. I could find it. I would just, for the first 10 years of my

Christian life, just really, I mean, my seminary degree probably came through a thousand of his sermons.

And he would show me lordship. There it was. And repentance. And yes, I saw it.

There it was in Scripture. Then he got to the rapture. He got to aspects of his eschatology.

And it was like, wait, where is that? Unlike things like the

Trinity, where the word may not be found in our Bible, but the concept is everywhere.

The word rapture wasn't there in word or concept. I actually heard

MacArthur one time teaching from the book of Revelation say, now, you know, some of you are wondering where the rapture here is in these verses.

And he said it's in the white spaces between chapters three and four. Maybe some of your listeners have actually come across that message.

It's still out there and it's on their website. And I thought, wait a second, wait a second.

John, you have been so faithful to guide me in the truths of Scripture and to show me where it is in Scripture.

But it seemed like when he got into eschatology, suddenly I was saying, wait, where is this?

I'm not seeing it. But the verses that supposedly spoke about a rapture did not at all seem to me to be secret.

I didn't see anything in the New Testament that seemed to indicate two comings of Christ, one outward and manifest, the other one secret and mysterious.

And so I felt like I had to go outside of his teaching and examine the

Scriptures. And it just seemed like I was not finding this premillennialism, this dispensationalism that is so largely taught.

It seems like it's so prevalent today. And so not too long ago,

I came across his 2007 Shepherds Conference, and it sounded to me like he was challenging those of an amillennial persuasion to deal with this.

And I felt like, you know, this topic matter is not trivial.

I think it really matters. I believe that if we have a proper eschatology, that it ought to really prompt urgency in the

Church. It seems like it ought to prompt a readiness in us.

I think eschatology, when rightly understood, is going to promote worship, it's going to promote evangelism, it's going to promote holiness.

And so I don't think that this is a small matter. I don't think it's a side issue. I think it's something that certainly the early

Church had a ready expectation of what was next on God's timeline, and it seemed to really motivate.

And so I have felt compelled to do a series in my church because of these important matters that relate to it.

Now, having said what you said about the importance of eschatology, don't you think it can be very dangerous, as we have seen, when people use eschatology as a test of fellowship?

You will be declared a heretic if you do not agree with someone's eschatology, and you have people being slandered as being liberal or being spiritualizers who do not take anything in the

Scriptures literally. You have a lot of attacking going on amongst brethren who may believe identically in all other ways.

They might even be, as I said earlier, they could be five -point Calvinists, they could be even theologically

Reformed, which obviously would rule out the dispensationalists, but they may be very strongly postmillennial or even historic pre -mill.

But you have this extreme sectarian spirit sometimes when it comes to eschatology.

Can't that be also a danger, especially when you are cutting off fellowship over an issue that many great men of God who are heroes of the faith today disagreed on the issue?

Oh, absolutely. You know, after our Supreme Court ruled just recently on same -sex marriage,

John MacArthur responded with a message called, We Will Not Bow. And I listened to that, and I thought, you know, we may differ on eschatology, but that man is standing for the truth, and I think that needs to be the test of true fellowship.

What we believe about Christ. Is Christ our all? Are we clinging to Him? Are we seeking to magnify the

Lord? Are we seeking to uplift Scripture? Yes, you're absolutely right. Good men have differed on this.

I think we need to form our fellowship around the doctrines that are really important, that if we go wrong, we've lost the gospel.

Now, I wanted you to clarify something because of your comments about the rapture and especially the Word not being in the

Scriptures. I want to make sure that you have opportunity to differentiate yourself and set yourself apart from hyper -preterism or full -preterism that believes everything that has been written in the pages of the

Bible has been fulfilled. There is no future resurrection where the saints will be caught up in the air with Christ and all that type of thing that we see in Paul's letter to the

Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, where you have the picture of those things that are going to happen at the return of Christ.

Your beef, if you will, is with a secret rapture, correct? That's right, that's right.

Somebody I was just reading recently said that they felt that Matthew chapter 24 may be one of the most difficult chapters in the entire

Bible, and certainly anybody that has studied that and tried to do it justice and to differentiate between when our

Lord is speaking about the destruction of the temple and when He is speaking about the second coming,

I think we would all agree that it is difficult and very likely the destruction of the temple is a small picture, it's a foreshadowing of what we're very likely going to see at the very end.

But I would reject the full preterism. I believe that we definitely have the return of Jesus Christ ahead.

I do not believe that everything has already passed. I do believe that saints are going to be caught up.

I do believe that when Christ comes, there is going to be a general resurrection of the dead, there is going to be a general judgment, as we would see very much portrayed in Matthew 25.

Then you believe that the return of Christ will be visible and physical, do you not? Right, that seems to be the next major event in God's timetable.

Now it looks like there is going to be a great falling away first. We do have a teaching about the man of sin, and of course there is lots of speculation about who and what the man of sin is.

Is he a final evil figure? Is that something that we have to look forward to?

It does seem like there is going to be a falling away. It does seem like the love of many is going to grow cold.

Christ is questioning whether he is going to find faith upon the earth when he comes.

I guess that would be one of the primary reasons that I would reject post -millennialism, is just because it does not seem that Jesus himself was as optimistic as some of the post -mill guys are.

But I believe that there is definitely a future reality to a lot of the prophecy that we find in Scripture.

Now, you have, since you have already stated that you are amillennial, you have people, especially from dispensationalist backgrounds, who will say that you take the

Bible figuratively. You have a very flawed or dangerous hermeneutic.

But isn't the fact of the matter is that the historical grammatical method of hermeneutics is not something that is exclusively the backyard of dispensationalism?

Well, you know, hermeneutics plays a huge part. In fact, if I can go back to John MacArthur again, he has actually stated that you will never get your eschatology right until you get

Israel right, and you will never get Israel right until you get your hermeneutic right. And I think this is one of the areas that dispensationalism is dangerous.

And I'll use that word dangerous, because I think what happens is the

Church's hermeneutic is lost. You know, if we want to be honest with Scripture, let's take, for instance,

Elijah. We know how Malachi would speak about Elijah, the prophet, is going to come before the great and awesome day of the

Lord. And if we're going to be honest about that, if we take that literally, are we talking

Elijah the Tishbite, or are we actually looking at John the

Baptist there? Well, if we're going to be honest with what is said by our

Lord, we have to take that as being John the Baptist. And yet, isn't it interesting that oftentimes the dispensationalists want to read more into that, that actually

Elijah the Tishbite is going to still come at some point in time, but it seems like our

Lord gives us the proper way to understand that what we want to do is we want to look at the

New Testament. We want to look at New Testament light as to how we're to interpret the

Old Testament. This is another one of the areas that John MacArthur has been very strong about.

He believes that the Old Testament needs to stand by itself, and that the only way anybody comes up with amillennialism is by reading the

New Testament back into the Old. But is that even how we find the

Apostles and our Lord Himself in the New Testament? Is that how we find them handling

Old Testament Scripture? Or do we not find light in the New Testament that we would really never have if it wasn't for the

New Testament? That doesn't make the Old Testament obsolete. That doesn't render it useless.

But what we find back there is a lot of shadow. Well, shadow is not useless.

We don't want to neglect shadow, but it's not the full light. And so when we come over to the

New Testament, we find like muzzling the ox. We find a reality that just reading the

Old Testament we don't find. Elijah is going to come before this great and awesome day.

In the New Testament, we get light to that about who that is. And so I just think,

I think the proper hermeneutic is always that we are going to look at New Testament light and take the brightness of that light and definitely interpret what we find in the

Old Testament by that New Testament light. And I think that's one of the places where we get this whole dispensational thinking, is there's such an emphasis on taking the

Old Testament in a literal fashion that the New Testament light is ignored.

I was going to say especially when it comes to Israel.

I mean, we're not just talking about a faulty hermeneutic here. We're talking about promises.

I mean, are we going to look at Israel and say that Israel has entitlement to more promises than the

Abrahamic covenant, than what the Church has? And I think if we properly read the

New Testament, we say, no way. We say there's one new man in place of the two.

We're not looking at distinct promises between Old Testament Israel and the

New Testament Church. We're looking at every single promise that a truly converted

Jew can look at and point to in Scripture and say, that promise is mine. We as Gentiles who have now been grafted in same root, same tree, we can look at those same promises and say they're mine too.

Yes. That's not a small thing. Right. And so you're not taking the

Bible figuratively in all ways or spiritually. You're seeking to take it in context and according to what the author of any particular text intended by it.

And obviously, the dispensationalists who claim that they corner the market on a literal interpretation of the

Scriptures, they don't consistently take a wooden, literal interpretation of everything.

Otherwise, they would have a Roman Catholic understanding of the mass, wouldn't they? Yeah. Yeah. They don't do that.

Right. They don't follow the very principle that they claim to adhere to. And in fact, there are places in the

Scripture where the amillennialist and the postmillennialist would take things literally, where the dispensationalist would not.

Like for instance, John 639, and this is the will of him who sent me that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

You believe that is literally the last day of earthly existence, don't you?

I do. I do believe that. And they believe it's a thousand years before that. Right.

I heard, again, I think I have to stress just how much

I do appreciate John MacArthur and how much he's been a spiritual father to me.

But I know that in Acts chapter 2, when he deals with Joel's prophecy as it's being preached there by Peter, Peter is very distinctly saying that it was fulfilled, and yet MacArthur will say, well, it's half -filled, and yet that isn't what

Peter says. Peter says it was fulfilled, and I think when we understand apocalyptic language, when we see things happening in the sky and to the stars and to the sun and to the moon, that that is apocalyptic expression of just great and traumatic events, and that we don't necessarily have to read things like that off to the end times.

We do have a listener in Perry County, Pennsylvania, Arnie, who says, do you ever describe your own theology or eschatology as replacement theology?

I very frequently hear the dispensationalists and premillennialists accuse both amillennialists and postmillennialists of believing in replacement theology, but I never have seen that word in the writings of actual amillennialists and postmillennialists.

A very good question from Arnie in Perry County. Yeah, the postmillennial people won't use it because most don't believe it.

Replacement theology is the idea that the church replaces Israel, but that isn't what we see.

What we see is that there is one olive tree, and we find that there are branches, and that is a

Jewish tree, that is Israel, and we are grafted into the people of God.

I mean, if there's any place that tremendously speaks to this, it is definitely

Ephesians chapter 2, and we see this idea that at one time there was this separation, at one time there was the circumcision and the uncircumcision.

At one time we were separated from Christ, and we were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel.

But see, there it is right there. We were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, but no longer.

Now we are fellow citizens with the saints, which means what? We're no longer aliens.

We're fellow citizens. We're in the citizenship of Israel, of the commonwealth of Israel.

We have been grafted in. They are native branches. We are not.

We come from the wild olive tree, but we're all grafted in by faith.

We're all offspring by faith in Jesus Christ. But we're not replacing.

It's God bringing both together. Christ creating in Himself one new man in place of the two.

No longer do we have the Jew and the Gentile. No longer is that distinction a reality.

And I think one of the things is that it really helps when we recognize that in the truest sense,

Christ, Jesus Christ Himself is the true Israel. But if you think about what a true

Jew is, He's one inwardly by the Spirit. Jesus Christ, if you look at Israel, if you look at the obedience that God always attached to owning a people,

Jesus Christ is really the only one in the truest sense who is the true

Israelite. And it's interesting, Isaiah, sometimes it can be difficult to know if Isaiah is actually speaking about Israel or if he's speaking about Christ.

He uses servant language that goes back and forth. We know that Hosea talked about Israel and coming out of Egypt.

And you come over to Matthew chapter 2, and we find that that's Christ. We go to Galatians chapter 3, and we find that there's really one true offspring of Abraham.

And everything comes back to Christ. Everything is found in Him. By the way,

I want to let our listeners know, those of you who may be gritting your teeth and throwing things against the wall or whatever, perhaps you've been tempted to throw your radio or computer out the window,

I am having, God willing, six days of eschatology starting this coming

Monday, where each day of the six, I am having a different eschatological view represented by a person who espouses that view, the amillennial view, the historic premillennial view, the premill, pretribulational view, the postmillennial view.

In fact, I'm actually doing two postmillennial views, one on the broader understanding of postmillennialism and one specifically on the theonomic understanding of postmillennialism.

So that, God willing, will start this Monday, the 17th of August through the following Monday, the 24th of August.

So I just wanted to let you know that your turn will certainly come around to hear something that you agree with, although there may be people that disagree with all of those views, and I have very much apprehension about anybody that would vehemently oppose all of the views that I listed.

But anyway, we are going to our break right now, and when we come back, we would love to hear from more of our listeners with questions on the marks of biblically faithful eschatology with our guest

Tim Conway of Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas. Don't go away.

We'll be right back. ...generously and strengthen the communities where they live, work, and worship.

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That's nasbible .com. Tired of box store Christianity?

Of doing church in a warehouse with all the trappings of a rock concert? Do you long for a more traditional and reverent style of worship?

And how about the preaching? Perhaps you've begun to think that in -depth biblical exposition has vanished from Long Island.

Well, there's good news. Wedding River Baptist Church exists to provide believers with a meaningful and reverent worship experience featuring the systematic exposition of God's Word.

And this loving congregation looks forward to meeting you. Call them at 631 -929 -3512 for service times.

631 -929 -3512. Or check out their website at wrbc .us.

That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen. And that was an ad by a very, for, I should say, a very dear friend of mine,

Pastor Ron Glass of Wedding River Baptist Church, who happens to be a Calvinist and a dispensationalist.

So I thoroughly do enjoy his preaching and consider him a dear brother in the

Lord whose tutelage I eagerly sit under whenever I have the opportunity.

And so we are making it clear that this is not an issue that we are discussing that is intended to be divisive, but at the same time, whatever you believe about the scriptures should be held to as a serious issue.

And our email address here is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please, if you're writing in, include your first name, your city and state, and your country if you're writing from outside of the

USA. And our guest, if you've just tuned us in for the second hour of Iron Sharpens Iron, has been

Tim Conway, who is the pastor of Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas.

He is also one of the featured speakers at the conference that's being held in Portland, Maine, actually tomorrow it's starting,

August 13th through the 15th. And the theme of the conference is Fellowship Preaching and Singing that Center on the

Glory of God. That's the Fellowship Conference, New England in Portland, Maine. The website to go to for more details is

I'llBeHonest .com. That's I'll Be Honest and the I'll has no apostrophe.

BeHonest .com. Click on Browse and then go down to the Family Conference.

Click on that and click on 2015 to get all of the details that you need for this conference being held starting tomorrow through Saturday.

And in case I forget to announce it before the end of the program, Pastor Tim Conway, what is the website for Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas where you pastor?

That would be GCCSATX .com. GCC, what's the rest of it?

GCCSATX .com. SA for San Antonio, TX for Texas .com.

Great. GCC for Grace Community Church, SATX for SanAntonioTexas .com.

And we hope that you look up that information for any of your loved ones or perhaps even yourself if you live in San Antonio or nearby and if you're ever visiting there.

And that should be always something that Christians do when they're vacationing or visiting somewhere on business.

If they know they're going to be in that area for a Lord's Day, they should definitely with advance, well in advance, look up Biblically faithful churches wherever they're going.

And especially if they're moving permanently or for a great period of time, if they're relocating to a different place, they should always have that first and foremost in their minds and a part of their agenda.

We have been talking about the marks of Biblically faithful eschatology. We do have another listener,

Christian in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who says, how do you respond to those who say that amillennialism is just another piece of baggage from the

Roman Catholic Church and that churches that are holding on to this eschatology just have not reformed or broken away enough from Rome?

They are still holding on to a heretical concept of end views that Rome invented.

Now, how do you respond to that? That's a very good question because I've heard that too. What exactly?

Do you happen to know right off what exactly it is that Catholicism teaches that they're referring to?

No, they're just speaking about the eschatological view of amillennialism, that there will be no literal thousand -year reign on the physical planet

Earth before the end and so on. The secret rapture, the whole concept, that the

Catholic Church does not hold to a dispensational view, and perhaps most do not even hold to a postmillennial view.

They are predominantly amillennial, and the listener is asking, how do you respond to those who say that amillennialism is just part and parcel baggage from Roman Catholicism that we have not let go of?

I mean, my argument would be, my response would be, one of Scripture.

I mean, Scripture has to guide us. I'm going to run to Scripture for my eschatology just as I am for all my other theology.

And when I go to Scripture, you know, when they were expecting

Jesus to set up his kingdom right away, he very specifically said, it is not going to be observable.

He very specifically said to Pilate, my kingdom is not of this world.

And it's very interesting that you were talking before about how very oftentimes the folks in the dispensationalist camp, they themselves don't follow their own literal hermeneutic.

And there's one of the places right there. I said to a dispensational friend one time,

Jesus himself said, my kingdom is not of this world.

And he said, not yet. I said, brothers, it's, I mean, that's not taking that literally.

And I think if we all are honest, that any place that we find a thousand years, it is in a very highly symbolic book.

It's only found in one chapter of our Bibles, in a book that is full of symbolism.

And so if we're going to go look at the simple teaching, I think when we're dealing with eschatology, we cannot start in Revelation, Ezekiel, Daniel.

I think the way to start is if we're going to understand our Bibles, we need to start with that which is simple and move into that which is more and more difficult.

And if we go to the simple teachings, like if we just very, take the very simple teachings of Christ and the

Apostle Paul, how do we see them talk about the timeline?

What we find is they use some real, simple terminology, this age and the age to come.

And I know that the different men out there that have written on their Amillennial eschatological views, they like to cover this.

Anybody that's dealing with that that comes from a Reformed community seems to deal with this age and the age to come.

That is a very basic way that the present moving out into the future is laid out in Scripture.

We are in an age, this age is going to come to an end, and then there is going to be the age to come.

And if we search that out, we find that the age to come has no end.

And so this age comes to a culmination, it comes to its end on the last day.

That's the day of Christ's coming, that's the day of judgment. And that seems to be clearly what we find laid out in Scripture.

So my answer to anybody, I actually came from nominal

Catholicism, and so I'm going to be first in line to knock down false doctrine that's associated with Catholicism.

But when I come to Scripture, and I look at the clear teaching of Jesus Christ, and I look at the clear teaching of the

Apostle Paul, I'm not finding this complexity of, okay, we've got a secret rapture, we've got seven years of tribulation, we've got this battle of Armageddon, this season there where the

Antichrist rules, and then Christ comes and he defeats Antichrist and he binds

Satan, and then there's a thousand years. I actually think that this is very dangerous eschatology in this sense.

I know when I was lost. I kind of had a mindset, well,

I'm just going to chase my sin, and when all of a sudden the church is raptured, then

I'll get my act together. And if I don't get my act together then, then I'll watch the seven years of tribulation, and then

I'll have another chance then, and I'll be able to get my act together. And then if Christ comes and he sets up his thousand years, well, then

I'll have another chance. But I think that's a very dangerous way to view that.

I think if we're honest with Scripture, Jesus said, you better be prepared.

You better watch. He describes ten virgins. He is showing us,

I mean, this is what I would say to people no matter what camp they come from, is just make your eschatology fit with the parable of the ten virgins.

Just make it fit with that. And the warning that the church should be giving to the world around us is not, you better repent and believe because you will otherwise have to live in the great tribulation period.

You won't be raptured off this earth. It should not be that. It should be repent and believe because you could die at any moment and meet

Christ face to face as your judge who will be a God of wrath casting you into hell.

Isn't that really more the urgent message, not one regarding the rapture and so on?

Right. Think about Matthew 24. Jesus tells his disciples that not one stone is going to be left upon another here.

Well, you know what? They want the information like we do. You know, we want the chart.

Lord, chart it out for us. But isn't it interesting? Where does he go? He goes and he tells a parable about five wise and five foolish virgins.

He goes and he tells a parable about the talent. In other words, to his disciples, boys, you want to know about the end?

Well, let me tell you, let me take you where this doctrine ought to take you.

I own everything. You are servants. I am the master who goes away for a long time and I'm coming back.

And when I come back, there is going to be an accounting and you want to have been faithful.

You need to be ready. I mean, if there's any, Jesus doesn't bring out his charts. He doesn't bring out his scrolls.

He doesn't. He doesn't do that. What he tells us is you need to watch. You need to be ready.

And one of the things that has puzzled me about the view that amillennialism necessitates antisemitism, aren't the words of 1

Peter 2 .9 clearly addressing Christians, but you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,

God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness and into his wonderful light.

That isn't exclusively for ethnic Israel, is it? Isn't it for all those who believe

Christ and follow him? Well, exactly. We get this teaching, you know, the church in Galatia is called

Israel, the Israel of God. We find that the Philippians are called the true circumcision.

We find Paul talking to the Roman church, which undoubtedly was made up of Jew and Gentile, but he talks about what a true

Jew is, a true Jew. And he clearly has in mind a

Gentile who keeps the law. And he's not just talking theoretically there.

He's talking about somebody who's been transformed. Their heart is changed.

They have the Spirit of God. That is to be a true

Jew. And we're not antisemitic as Christians.

We believe that the gospel is going to prevail with them just as much as with people from any nation.

And Paul would even say to the Jews first, and also to the Greek. We want the gospel to be preached to them.

We believe that there are going to be saved Jews along with saved

Gentiles, but that there isn't going to be any distinction. We're going to be one in Christ.

We're not opposed to them. We're not against them. We believe that their Messiah is our

Messiah. It's the same promises. It's the same covenant. We believe that the new covenant was for Israel.

And we believe that the way in is through the true Israelite, Jesus Christ Himself, through that true offspring of Abraham.

We believe that He is the way by faith in Him. He is the way into this realm of the true people of God.

And we're not against them. We don't pit ourselves against them. We just don't believe that there's a whole separate set of promises for them.

We believe that all the promises are ours. They're yes and amen in Christ.

Well, the thing that's odd is that even the dispensationalists and the

Messianic Jews agree that the Gentile believers are grafted in.

But how can that possibly be talking about Israel as a nation or something? Because we're not grafted into that as Gentile believers.

Aren't we grafted into spiritual Israel, which is the church? Well, exactly.

We're grafted into the spiritual people. But it was always the spiritual people that were the true people.

No one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly. That's the truth of the New Testament.

We have to run with that. We have to cling to that. In other words, if they're rejecting

Christ, they're nothing. They don't have a part with God.

It's only through Him. It's only in Him. Now, the accusation that we hear from our post -millennialist brethren that this accusation would be hurled against both dispensationalists and amillennialists who may be bent towards the pessimistic end of things, that since we believe that the return of Christ either will be or is imminent or may be at any time, that we are promoting the idea of polishing the brass on a sinking ship.

And therefore, outreach and activism and involvement in the public square and in all spheres of life is much more subdued amongst our people as opposed to the post -millennialists who believe that the return of Christ and the end of the world is far off.

How do you respond to that concept that both amill and premill and dispensationalists are all lumped together very often as polishing the brass on a sinking ship?

Well, I'm not pessimistic at all. I really believe that there in Revelation 20, when it talked about Satan being bound for the thousand years,

I believe that now. I believe that when Jesus said in John 12 that He talked about the judgment of this world and He talked about the ruler of this world being cast out,

He said that was going to happen now. And He very specifically said that right before He says, when

I'm lifted up from the earth, I'm going to draw all people to myself. And what we see in Scripture is

Satan being bound from deceiving the nations. If you think about the world prior to the cross, you have a hard time counting very many

Gentiles in the Old Testament who were actually people of God. And in fact, if you don't think

Nineveh, you probably can count on one hand the number of Gentiles that we have good reason to believe are in glory right now.

Once Christ came, once He was lifted up, something happened. The ruler of this world was cast out.

Now we know He still goes about like a roaring lion, but that's not what Revelation 20 says.

It's not a total eradication. It's not a total binding. It is from deceiving the nations.

And so I'm not pessimistic. I believe that we ought to have hope that the

Spirit of God is going to move, that we're going to see seasons of revival. We have to remember, this is not primarily about turning this world into heaven.

This is about the church and the full number of the elect being brought in.

Christ is the head. The church is the body. It's the church that is, that all the living stones are being put in this dwelling place for God.

That's the real issue. And that's happening. Sometimes it's happening in greater measure.

You get times of revival, times of awakening. But I believe that I am not pessimistic.

I have great hope. I have great expectation. I love reading biography.

I see these times in history when the Spirit of God has moved. I have great expectation that that is going to happen.

Yes, this world is a sinking ship. If you want to put all your hope and stock in this world, that is a sinking ship.

If you're looking for this world to become paradise, I think that's a sinking ship.

But that's not what I believe that the New Testament would have us look to. It's more the church and the fullness of that church being brought.

I think the real issue is that our eschatology needs to be focused this way.

That it really ought to be, it's going to be right, it's going to be proper when

Christ and the church are the end. They're the perfection.

They're what we're moving towards. It seems like all the prophecies, all of this, it all climaxes.

It finds its perfection in the person and work of Christ and in His redeemed people, the church.

And as we're moving through Scripture progressively and unpacking the history of Revelation, we're moving towards this finality, this mountaintop, where all the elect are gathered in, where the full number of the redeemed is complete, and then we come to an end.

And even if in the end there is a man of sin and there's a great falling away, this thing is going to keep moving forward until that last stone is put in the temple of God.

And it'll be complete. That's not a sinking ship, that's glory. And if you could, in just a minute, sum up what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners.

Oh, I think what we want to look to is this, that eschatology, if we're going to properly have a right eschatology, everything needs to point to Christ, everything to Him.

And I think it's redemptive regression when we start to think that one day we're going to move back into the shadows of Old Testament sacrifices and Old Testament temple.

Everything culminates in Christ, everything is moving towards Him. And you can be pretty persuaded you're on the right track with regards to eschatology when it is just exalting

Christ, it's magnifying Him, it's glorifying Him. Well, thank you so much,

Pastor Tim Conway, for being our guest today. And for those of you who want to see and hear

Pastor Tim Conway preach in person this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, along with other speakers, go to illbehonest .com,

I -L -L -B -E -honest .com. And also, Pastor Tim Conway's own website is

G -C -C -S -A -T -X, G -C -C for Grace Community Church, S -A -T -X for San Antonio, Texas.

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.