July 27, 2023 Show with Rev. Evan McClanahan on “The Problem with Lutheranism: A Lutheran Pastor’s Critiques of Modern Lutheranism” (Part 2)

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father

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James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

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This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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

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

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

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

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 27th day of July, 2023.

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For those of you who tuned in yesterday, you may recall I announced a prayer request for my older brother

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Andy, who is a resident in a local nursing home here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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He was taken to the hospital last Sunday evening with pneumonia and a urinary tract infection.

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And although my initial visit to him yesterday was rather frightening because he was shivering violently and not in the best shape and was quite concerned about him, obviously, but the latest report from his nurse is that his fever is broken, his levels have all returned to normal or near normal, his white blood cell count, his blood pressure, and all of the other levels that they consider when someone is in serious condition.

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And so, thank you all who have been praying. God has been hearing your prayers and smiling, and my brother seems to be on the road to recovery, but please continue to pray because of the fact that pneumonia is a very tricky thing, as many of you know, and hopefully he will be back in his nursing home soon, and I intend to visit him tonight unless he is sleeping when my show is over because I never want to interrupt his sleep because he needs to get as much rest as he possibly can.

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But thank you, and continue praying for Andy Arnzen, who is currently in Carlisle Hospital and who resides at Forest Park Nursing Facility in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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Well, today is day number two of an interview I began yesterday.

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This will be part two of The Problem with Lutheranism, a

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Lutheran Pastor's Critiques of Modern Lutheranism, and my guest for the second day in a row to conduct this interview is

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Reverend Evan McClenahan, moderator and occasional participant in one of the only continuously operating debate series in the country, the

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First Word Debate Series at First Lutheran. He's a writer for The Everyman and the

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Federalist and Pastor of the First Lutheran Church in Houston, Texas, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

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Reverend Evan McClenahan. Well, thank you very much. Hopefully everyone understands

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McClenahan is a classic German Lutheran name. And so, yeah,

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I get that a lot. But if they heard the story yesterday, they understand we sort of snuck in the Lutheran Church via the back door.

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We were escorted in by someone with the last name of Schultz. So anyway, they've been nice to us in spite of our,

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I don't know, Scotch -Irish or whatever it is we are, ancestry. But I want to thank the guy who

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I bumped off today, because I know you schedule way out in advance. I know some poor soul was destined to be on the

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Chris Arnson radio show from, you know, four to six Eastern Time today. And I'm so long -winded that that poor fella is,

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I don't know, you know, weaving baskets right now or something, you know? Well, if you had been my very recent guest,

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Christopher Costaldo, who is Sicilian, I would have been a lot more concerned when you said you bumped off one of my guests.

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I mean that in the nicest way possible. Yes. Well, we postponed my guest who was originally scheduled for yesterday.

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But actually, as providence would have it, he was thrilled because his day wound up being a lot more busy than he had intended.

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Okay, good. So he was thrilled that he was able to move it to a different day. Yeah. Good. Why don't you, for the sake of those who did not hear you yesterday, give another summary description of First Lutheran Church of Houston, Texas?

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Yeah, First Lutheran. We're down about a mile south of downtown

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Houston. And we've been around since the 1840s. We're incorporated in 1851, so we're coming up on our 175th anniversary.

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As I'll talk about today, you know, we were a German church, right? We were

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Germans that came up through the south part of Texas, through Galveston, settled in Houston.

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There's a First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Galveston. There's a First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Houston. That's what we were. We actually recently took the name evangelical word out of our name a few years back because we didn't want people to think we were in the

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Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. By the way, I want to thank you for that because, although it is the leftist apostate denomination that has hijacked that word evangelical, why on earth they want that in their name,

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I have no idea. In fact, I don't even know why they want to call themselves Lutheran because they are neither evangelical nor Lutheran.

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But I have often wondered why these Missouri Synod folks and Wisconsin Synod folks and other conservative

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Lutheran churches, they still put, like St. Matthew's Evangelical Lutheran Church or whatever name they have, they still put the

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Evangelical Lutheran Church in there and it's very confusing. Because you don't always see on the sign that it is a

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LCMS church or a Wisconsin church.

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You don't always see that, so it's very baffling. Yeah, if you don't know what the logo is.

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I drive by and I see the LCMS logo, so I know what that is, but most people don't know that. And it's too bad that the

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ELCA has made it sort of difficult for us. But actually, as you were saying, the joke is that the

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Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is not Evangelical Lutheran or a church. Right.

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But it is in America, so I guess we'll give them that. But yeah, that was essentially a merger in 1988.

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Well, it was in the works for the 80s, but it was the LCA, the ALC, and the AELC that merged in 1988 formally to form the

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ELCA, and that was kind of the best name they came up with. And I mean, there's cultural baggage with it, you know, in terms as well as, like, is

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Evangelicals kind of a voting bloc? Or it kind of – it could describe everything from, like, a Oneness Pentecostal to a

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Bible church attending, Bible -believing Calvinist, right? So it's not especially any more – especially a helpful name.

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But anyway, long story short, we were – as I said earlier yesterday, we were in the ENR for a long time, the

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Evangelical and Reform denomination. That denomination was one of the eight that formed the United Church of Christ, the

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UCC. So from its heyday, that denomination was already kind of very, I'd say, liberal and ecumenical, and we eventually left the

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UCC. But we always – I think we always kind of had this maybe kind of lower church, you might say, or kind of Calvinist strain to us.

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These days, I'd say we're pretty high church, high liturgical, traditional church, and yeah, we'd love people to stop in and say hello.

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A number of folks from ELCA parishes are – for whatever reason, they are finally at their wit's end with the

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ELCA, and they're stopping and visiting and saying, oh, I didn't even know this church was here, or, you know, glad that y 'all haven't gone totally off the rails yet.

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So that's who we are. Yes, and I have heard that there are people leaving the local

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EL – well, we actually have two in Carlisle, ELCA churches, but the one that I'm aware of that began performing same -sex marriage, which is really not a marriage, as we know, but calling it that, and sadly and tragically having the legal protection of that idea of a marriage, that people are leaving there because of that.

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Now we should only hope that these people who are leaving actually become born again because I have had interviews with pastors who have brought their congregations out of leftist denominations or have accepted calls to the pastorate of formerly liberal congregations formerly in liberal denominations who have left, and when the evangelical pastor comes, he discovers sometimes that a great number of these people may have biblical morals, but they are as lost as an active homosexual because they are not regenerate, and it eventually becomes obvious.

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So just because somebody has a biblical conviction on morality does not mean that they're saved.

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Right. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I think that's part of kind of what we're talking about, is some of these mainline churches, they kind of get a little bit stuck in time, they become institutions, and we don't always do a very good job of teaching our people what it really means to have a relationship with Jesus Christ or to confess

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Christ as your Lord, and Lutherans might be a little bit bashful about some of the personal

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Lord and Savior language. But yeah, so I don't take issue with that, but we do paedo -baptism, so some of that language is associated with credo -baptism, which we could talk about as well.

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But yes, there's an institutionalism that sets in, and it's just kind of the way we've always done things becomes the reason the church exists, and that's a real problem.

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Now, you are a congregation of the North American Lutheran Church, and as you said yesterday, you are a very conservative denomination, with the one exception that may raise the ire of other conservatives is that you ordain women.

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Now, does every congregation need to believe in that and even practice that if a woman were to apply, for instance, or become a candidate for a pastor?

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Yeah, actually that's a good question, and the short answer is I don't know. I would suspect probably very, very back -of -the -napkin math, probably a third of the pastors in the

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North American Lutheran Church probably would not openly defend the ordination of women.

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I know we're not supposed to say things like that, and maybe I'll get in trouble, but I think that's probably just the case.

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But we serve in parishes where, you know, that's a big fight, and it can result in a lot of hurt feelings.

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So, you know, we kind of had to fight the big fight to get away from the sexual deviancy.

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Now, I do understand the argument that every church that ordained women, whether the United Methodist Church, eventually what we call the

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ELCA, it was the LCA back in the day, or ALC, but, you know, the Presbyterian Church USA, etc.,

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etc., etc. They all ended up in the same place, right, on the far -left spectrum of Christianity and borderline not

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Christianity at all. So what you're seeing in the Presbyterian world, you have the Evangelical Covenant Order, you have the

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NALC, you have the Anglican Church North America, you've got the Global Methodist Church.

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Those are all four church bodies that already had the ordination of women, and they didn't want to cut that back, right, or they didn't want to cut that out.

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It's very rare that church bodies will actually do that. And so what they're trying to say is, hey, can we be conservative on every other issue except this one?

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And I think it remains to be seen, if I'm being perfectly honest. I will say, too, I did a

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Sunday school class a while back. It was quite long, I mean, six or eight weeks or something, where I tried to do as much research as I could, look at the biblical passages, and I wanted to know what were the arguments, the old

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LCA, the Lutheran Church in America, ALC, American Lutheran Church, what were the arguments they made to ordain women?

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I wanted to kind of get back to, like, source material. This would have been the late 60s, early 70s, and I dug into some, you know, there's some online resources available, and the arguments are just, they're just not there.

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It was almost as bad as, well, women can vote, you know, women can, you know, women are working in the workplace, and so it only makes sense that women are leading the congregation.

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There really have not been, in my view, even if I totally agreed with women's ordination, and I know people who do that will agree with me when

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I say this, there just have not been many attempts at robust biblical defenses of the practice.

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The things that are commonly said—you didn't maybe want to go here, but— That's fine with me, because I know that a lot of people, especially from my complementarian and even perhaps patriarchal -leaning background, that's still stuck in the back of their head from yesterday.

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Oh, for sure. It's a—yeah, yeah. No, I understand. It's going to be a big issue. People would write me off, you know, from day one because I'm in a denomination that, you know, that does that.

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I get that, you know. So I'd only ask that you listen to the words that I'm saying. I'm not a liberal proposing liberal.

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I'm quite the opposite. You know, I'm probably more conservative than—in fact, I think what

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I'm saying is actually, in many ways, more conservative than some in the Missouri Synod on some of these other issues.

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Some of our understanding is a relationship to the law and whatnot. But the main arguments, I think, that are used to justify women's ordination are, for example, well, women were among Jesus' disciples, to which

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I would say, well, yes, we're all called to be Jesus' disciples, but that doesn't mean that we're qualified to be an elder.

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Or they'll say women were the first to proclaim the resurrection, you know, the gospel of resurrection.

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Well, yes, we're all called to proclaim the gospel of resurrection, but that doesn't mean we're all qualified to be an elder. So, you know, you have these examples where, yes, women are most definitely lifted up in the

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Christian story, certainly above and beyond the contemporaries of Christianity at the time, say

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Greek and Roman culture, for example. And yet there are qualifications for elder, and it's hard to get around that.

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So, you know, yes, you can have deaconesses, for example, like Julia, and yet that is not an elder.

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So anyway, I would – it's not a hill

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I'm going to dine, but I will say this. I will say this. I've known a lot of male pastors who are truly awful.

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So, you know, being a man is also not – it might be a baseline qualification, but merely being a man doesn't make you a good pastor.

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In fact, I have a friend, a very dear friend. I won't mention his name in case my quotation of him gets him in trouble, but he is a conservative

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Presbyterian in a denomination, the Associate Reform Presbyterian Church, that is conservative, but just like the

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North American Lutheran Church, they ordain women. At least they did a decade ago.

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I have been hearing people who have insisted that they no longer do that, and I have never seen that verified.

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I know that the Associate Reform Presbyterian Church in Canada never and still does not ordain women, but the

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United States branch does, at least from my last experience with a friend down south.

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But he lamented that they ordained women, and he said, but the thing that's worse is that many of the women preachers are better than the men.

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Yeah, well, and I'll say just objectively this is going to make some people – they're really conservatives among us.

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They won't want to hear this. But yes, there are very faithful women serving the church, and so I'll just leave it at that.

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Like I said, it's not – I'm a solo pastor. I'm gifted and able to do ministry at our church.

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There's an agreement among the members and myself as to what they want me to do and what I'm happy to do for them, and I will only have to deal with –

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I'll never have to deal with that issue, right? Not really. The church will when I go, so I've tried my best to explain what would be helpful to them.

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But anyway, but that's – yeah, we're in the North American Lutheran Church. That's where we're at right now. And just for the sake of any of my listeners who are

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Reformed, who are immediately writing my guest off for even being in a denomination that ordains women, well, if you love

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Sinclair Ferguson, he, while pastoring in the United States, was in the aforementioned

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Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church denomination, which ordains women. So I'm not saying that Sinclair is infallible or inerrant, but he is definitely a great hero of the vast majority of very conservative

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Reformed Christians, and he did not see that as so objectionable that he would refuse to be a pastor in that denomination.

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So I'm not saying that he agreed with the practice. I'm just saying that he agreed to be a pastor.

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He accepted a call to be a pastor in that denomination. We have to go to our first break, and when we return, we're going to pick up where we left off with my guest's critiques of modern

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Lutheranism. I urge you, after this live show is over, to listen to the recording of yesterday's program, because we went through a lot of issues that you don't want to miss.

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And so at your earliest convenience, listen to part one of our discussion with Pastor Evan McClanahan on his critiques of modern

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Lutheranism. But we left off, basically, after his critiques of the two -kingdom theology that is very prevalent in Lutheranism, conservative

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Lutheranism. And he didn't totally write it off, but had some serious concerns about it and how it is used.

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And we'll pick up right there where we left off when we return from our first commercial break.

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If you have a question, our e -mail address is ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

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ChrisArnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

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Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, like you are a

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Lutheran who is disgruntled or has problems with something that you experience as a

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Lutheran today. And you don't want to draw attention to your identity. I understand that. But if you're just asking a general question, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

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We're now back with our guest today. Pastor Evan McClanahan. Who is the pastor of the

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First Lutheran Church in Houston, Texas. We are discussing part two of a discussion we began yesterday.

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Of the problem with Lutheranism. A Lutheran pastor's critiques of modern

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Lutheranism. And our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. If you have a question of your own.

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Chrisarnsen at gmail .com. As always give us your first name, at least your city and state. And your country of residence.

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If you live outside of the USA. I would like to read a question that came to us yesterday.

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That we did not have time to read. From a dear friend. Who has actually been a guest and a co -host on occasion.

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On Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. His name is Charlie Liebert. Formerly a colleague of Ken Ham.

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The world -renowned young earth creationist. And Charlie Liebert has his own ministry.

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Called Six Day Creation. And the website of that ministry is sixdaycreation .org.

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And it's spelt S -I -X. It's not the number.

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And I think I may have given you the wrong website.

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It is sixdaycreation .com. Not dot org. I'm sorry. Sixdaycreation .com.

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And remember to spell six. S -I -X. Don't use a number. And Charlie, he has a question.

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I'm Presbyterian. But soon after I was saved in 1977. I worked with a Lutheran pastor in Greensboro, North Carolina.

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I was always confused by the different denominations that used the name Lutheran. Missouri Synod and many others.

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For example, using the Presbyterian name, we have OPC, PCA, PCUSA, ARP.

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And it goes on and on. They range from very orthodox to the heretical.

32:53

Can you give a little background on the different Lutheran groups? And obviously we don't want you to spend a lot of time on this because our main theme is your concerns and your critiques of modern

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Lutheranism. But give us a brief overview of the prominent

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Lutheran denominations. Well, actually, I think this kind of ties into my third point, which is one of the problems with Lutheranism, which is the ethnic histories.

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Because really to understand Lutheranism in America, I think you've got to understand where those Lutherans came from.

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Because we're not very good at making more of them. And so the Missouri Synod, for example, a denomination

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I have great respect for, by and large, they were folks that originally came from I think it was southern

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Germany. They did not want to become in a union church, a unionized church, if you will, with Presbyterians.

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They were still in the 1820s, not agreement on the Lord's Supper, going all the way back, of course, to Zwingli and Luther and the

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Marburg Colloquy and all of that. So rather than a fellowship with Calvinists, they came to America.

34:05

And so I think that's part of the DNA of the Missouri Synod. It's always been a little bit insular, not necessarily in a bad way, but maybe sometimes in a bad way for that reason.

34:14

We kind of stick to ourselves, and we're going to preserve true Lutheranism, and we're going to be the confessional

34:20

Lutherans. Meanwhile, you had other German Lutherans and Norwegians and the

34:27

Swedes and some Danes that came to America for different reasons, to farm, to have access to land, and yes, perhaps to have some more religious freedom.

34:38

There was a pietist strain in the 1600s that opposed kind of state church understandings, kind of the

34:45

Lutheran version of Puritanism perhaps. And so they came to America, and they brought their cultures with them.

34:51

They brought their attitudes with them. They brought their languages with them, and who did they congregate with? Other Norwegians, right?

34:56

So it's not uncommon still in America today to have a Norwegian Lutheran church next door to a

35:02

Swedish Lutheran church. And so I think those cultures sort of lent themselves to different denominations and different kinds of fellowship.

35:09

Like I said, my church – in fact, my founding pastor was educated at St.

35:15

Krishona Seminary in Basel, Switzerland. So not that hard to understand that he was probably as much

35:21

Calvinist as he was an Orthodox Lutheran. So he was our founding pastor in the 1840s.

35:27

Our church became evangelical and reformed. That's very different from the – in fact, in 1880, a dozen families left my church, which was

35:36

I think at the time called First German Evangelical Lutheran Church. And they formed Trinity Lutheran Church, which is now in downtown

35:43

Houston, so Trinity Lutheran, which is Missouri Synod. So a dozen – even back in the 1880s, there was significant enough differences to where people felt obligated to leave my congregation, and they were probably right to do so by the way, and formed another church here in Houston.

36:00

So I think probably it ultimately goes back to – there were strains of high sacramentology and lower sacramentology.

36:12

So whether you would have the Lord's Supper, how often you would have it, the degree to which

36:18

Christ was truly present, the red wine, those were some disagreements. I think

36:23

Lutherans have always been pulled into the evangelical world that surrounded it. We've always been a little bit ashamed of being

36:28

Lutheran. That's not what I'm saying, by the way, with my critiques here at all. But I think

36:34

Lutherans – there have been some Lutherans who have kind of wanted to blend into the evangelical world rather than retain their kind of unique Lutheran identity, their confessional, their liturgical identities, and so on and so forth.

36:44

So they sort of lost their identity. Here's how I would put it. If you had a spreadsheet – this is to summarize it.

36:51

If you had a spreadsheet, and let's say there are four or five issues, and the combination of those particular issues kind of is where you're going to end up, how you answer those issues is where you're going to end up in a denomination.

37:02

The same thing is true, I'm guessing, in Presbyterianism, perhaps Anglicanism. But you have just outright liberalism, right?

37:10

So just basically denying – I don't know – the Bible is the word of God. So that's what we see in the progressive circles.

37:16

You've got whether or not churches are congregational or whether or not you need bishops, so some kind of hierarchy or structure beyond the congregation.

37:25

You've got women's ordination, of course. And actually, six -day creationism is an issue.

37:33

I mean it's a bit of – in the Missouri Synod, there's disagreement about to what degree the six -day creationism is a gospel -level issue.

37:40

So even in conservative church bodies, there's not wholly disagreement about that. So I think some combination of outright liberalism, women's ordination, congregationalism, or having bishops and or presidents and that sort of thing.

37:55

And I guess there's a few other dividing issues, but those are pretty much it. So there are combinations of that, right?

38:01

So congregationalists who ordain women, congregationalists who don't ordain women. Churches with structure that ordain women, churches with structure that don't ordain women.

38:11

So those are the main issues. And correct me if I'm wrong, and perhaps you're not even aware of this yourself since you're not in this denomination, but I have heard that the

38:22

Wisconsin Synod tends to be a lot more isolationist. I have even heard extreme examples of perhaps a

38:33

Wisconsin Synod Lutheran husband who is married to a Missouri Synod Lutheran wife, and they can't even pray together.

38:44

Do you know if any of that is true, or is that an extreme? Well, yeah.

38:50

So yes, the Wisconsin Synod is considered to be more conservative than the Missouri Synod.

38:55

For example, they – of course, this was going back 20, 30 years before the

39:02

Boy Scouts thing was really an issue. But they're kind of known for not endorsing Boy Scout troops in their churches because the god mentioned in, they say, the

39:10

Boy Scout Creed is not the Trinitarian god. It's kind of the generic god. I don't necessarily disagree with them on that.

39:15

I think they're actually quite prescient on that given where the Boy Scouts went. It's kind of the Trinitarian god or bust.

39:22

Yeah, because there's a lot of Mormon influence in the Boy Scouts. But there have been some scandals in the

39:28

Missouri Synod Church. For example, a pastor in New York. Do you mean the Wisconsin? No, actually I mean Missouri, but it's related.

39:35

Okay, real fast. There was a pastor who prayed at a public service after 9 -11 in New York, right? Yes, yes. Yeah, and it was like, well, now he's – if he prayed, it's an act of worship, and he's doing it with – and these were non -Christians.

39:46

Yeah. So like a Muslim imam or something was there, right? So that was sort of a scandal. And then there was another issue

39:52

I think after the school shooting in Connecticut, the one that Alex Jones made so famous. And I can't remember the name of the town.

40:00

Anyway, Newton, maybe Connecticut. But there was a Christian prayer service for that, and he got permission even to attend and pray.

40:09

And then still people came at him, and that's the kind of conservatism I have to say that kind of drives me nuts.

40:15

I'm not saying it was necessarily right or wrong in those instances to pray, but I think they did conduct themselves probably in ways that were okay, or they apologized after the fact.

40:28

I don't know. Sometimes – so yes, in conservatism, you end up with questions about the degree to which you can fellowship.

40:38

So I would imagine that if a husband and wife were not – one was Missouri Synod, one was Wisconsin Synod. I would imagine, for example, neither could have communion in the other's church.

40:48

So they practiced fairly close communion, and I think that's a little – to me, that's a little bit going far because they both affirmed the

40:56

Lutheran confessions. So I think if the Lutheran confessions – at least I think they would both say that – if that's kind of our standard.

41:06

But at the same time, if I went to a Missouri Synod church and I talked to the pastor in advance and he said,

41:11

I'm not going to commune you, I would say, okay, no problem. I understand. I'm not going to get offended at that at all.

41:16

It's your church. I'm not really for the isolationism, though.

41:24

I want those of us who confess Christ as Lord and submit to the authority of Christ, even if we don't agree – if our

41:31

Reformed brothers, we don't agree about the Lord's Supper and other things. Let's have the most robust fellowship we can.

41:36

So when we host these debates – I mean, I don't think I've ever had a Lutheran, except for myself, debate at one of them.

41:47

So I don't think I'm doing some great disservice to the Lutheran church. Yes, and I can recall –

41:54

I'm not going to say the name of the church – but years ago, when

41:59

I was doing my first Iron Sharpens Iron radio pastor's luncheons,

42:07

I was originally doing them in New York, where I previously lived.

42:13

And I was, you know, searching the area for evangelical pastors to invite to the pastor's luncheon.

42:23

These are free events, and not only do they have free attendance and free food, but every pastor leaves there with hundreds of dollars' worth of free brand -new books donated by Christian publishers.

42:37

And I invited a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran pastor, and not only did he reject my invitation, he insulted me – well, perhaps not me, but he insulted evangelicalism in general.

42:55

And he said, I have no intention of sitting around having a pleasant chat over a meal with you evangelicals.

43:06

And I remember I was taken aback by that, and I said, well, don't you think it's about time that you took the word evangelical out of your own church's name?

43:17

Because they too were, you know, calling themselves – Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. Yes, exactly.

43:24

Yeah, yeah, interesting. But to be honest with you, a response like that,

43:31

I have to wonder if somebody's even regenerate to go that far, especially to respond in that way.

43:40

You would think he would be more demonstrating the love of Christ and wanting –

43:46

I would like you to visit my church for a worship service, so you could really see and understand where we're coming from.

43:51

Right. Nothing like that. Right. It was just a flat out – So it's like they have the ability to rightly distinguish law and gospel, but they're actually legalists, right?

44:02

Because their whole manner is that of legalist, right? It's basically I'm – you're the unwashed, and we're the ones who have it right.

44:10

So it's that kind of attitude that I feel like Jesus really preaches against over and over again.

44:15

So it's straining out a – what is it? Swallowing a camel but straining out a gnat or whatever other example you want to use.

44:26

So I find that kind of attitude and approach kind of revolting if I'm being honest.

44:37

Again, I think we should have the broadest fellowship that we can, and I understand there are limits to fellowship.

44:44

I think there's good reasons not to be an altar and pulpit fellowship with everybody. I'm not for that.

44:51

Let's be honest with our differences. That's fine. But let's do as much as we can, whereas I think a lot of the real conservative types, it's like let's do the least that we can, and that's kind of what

45:00

I was saying yesterday about the law. And kind of what our attitude towards the law has become in kind of orthodox, if you will,

45:09

Lutheranism where the attitude seems to be let's utilize as little of the law as possible, whereas my attitude is let's have a maximalist approach.

45:19

Let's assume that all of God's law stands except for the ones that we can clearly cut back like sacrificing animals at the temple or eating shellfish or whatever the case may be.

45:29

So again, it's kind of a maximalist approach to things, to relationships, to God's Word, to having the most generous approach that we can while not betraying convictions.

45:42

Now, I have had on a couple of occasions in my conversations with Missouri Synod folk, and there is a wide variety of Missouri Synod pastors and church members.

45:55

They're not cookie cutters of one another, but I remember on a couple of occasions being surprised that it was palpably obvious when

46:03

I mentioned the Lutheran Brethren they were turning up their nose about them. Do you have any familiarity with the

46:12

Lutheran Brethren denomination? I actually do not. That's not the Moravian Brethren, is it?

46:18

I don't know, but it's actually called Lutheran Brethren. Okay, no. The word

46:23

Moravian is not in the name. I mean, there are like free Lutheran traditions.

46:28

I know that. And so they come out of the pietist. So in the 1600s, as sort of Lutheranism was getting – we're kind of like now our own thing, and it's kind of like, well, who are we?

46:42

And you had what's called a big Orthodox strain of Lutheranism, and then you had kind of a pietist strain.

46:48

And I actually love a lot of the writings of the pietists. I think it's quite lovely. And I think they saw the real problems of the institutional church.

46:58

But those in the Orthodox Church still to this day really snub their nose at pietism, and I don't know if that's what it was or what.

47:06

I got that sense actually, yeah. They actually run a conference and retreat center,

47:12

Tuscarora Conference Center here in Pennsylvania, not very far from where I am sitting. And I actually have been there on several occasions with a

47:20

Reformed Baptist church on Long Island that used to have their retreats there. But will you –

47:28

I'm assuming that you completed to your satisfaction your critiques of the

47:34

Two Kingdom Movement. If you haven't, you could finalize that conversation and move on to your next complaint or criticism.

47:41

Yeah, well, yeah, I would just summarize it as a reminder. Two Kingdoms is kind of one of those things that, again, it's an example

47:49

I think where we've kind of gotten a little bit stuck in time. The issues today aren't the same issues as the 1600s.

47:55

We don't live where the state and church are that intertwined. So it was needed. It was a necessary – and it is still a necessary distinction we need to make where the church wields the gospel, the word and the sacraments, and the state wields the sword.

48:10

It was funny. Last evening I was reflecting on our conversation, and I thought to myself, the state doesn't even hold up that end of the bargain.

48:19

They don't even wield the sword anymore. You think about criminality is not even wrong anymore.

48:26

You look at the ability of someone to just kind of go into, I don't know, a Walgreens in San Francisco and walk out with trash bags full of stuff.

48:34

Anyway, in a lot of our cities, it feels like the state doesn't even do their job. So it seems like we kind of had this truce with the two kingdoms where we said we'll do this.

48:44

We'll take care of people's souls, but you need to execute justice. Well, they don't even do that, and more to the point, the state is telling the world – the state is reflecting a worldview.

48:54

The state has a worldview, a secular humanist worldview that it is seeking to advance.

49:02

So it is giving special rights to people in the LGBT world. That's why you can see naked men riding around on bicycles at a pride parade, and anyone else doing that would be sent to jail.

49:14

But if you do it as part of a pride parade, it's okay. So all of these double standards and all these protected classes of people, the state is advancing a worldview.

49:21

So two kingdoms may be a hearty doctrine and a wonderful thing when both the state and the church are advancing what we would call a

49:29

Christian worldview. But what happens when the state doesn't do that? Now what? Now we need to rethink our relationship to the state and how we speak about the state or to the state.

49:40

And I also think – and then so the second issue is really about law and gospel and the distinction there and how that can be – the problem with that ultimately became that the gospel was the good thing that saved us from the bad thing of the law.

49:58

So Lutherans love to say things like the law only condemns. Well, to a degree, that's true.

50:04

The law doesn't save. Paul makes it very clear that you cannot be saved by the law, that we are saved by grace through faith. No disagreement on that, but that doesn't make the law bad.

50:13

David said he loved it, didn't he? Absolutely. Like I said yesterday,

50:18

Psalm 1, we meditate on the law day and night. And honestly, it's far harder to have a page in the

50:27

Bible that doesn't talk about the goodness of God's law than not. I mean it's really just assumed throughout.

50:34

And even Paul says, does this mean that grace abounds and in essence

50:39

I can live how I want? I'm sorry for my bad paraphrasing, but of course his answer – and I think this is in Romans 6 – but by no means, right?

50:47

The idea that no, the gospel doesn't free you to live wantonly. We still love the law.

50:53

We still want to be obedient to the law. So what happened, though, over time was this Lutheran kind of mantra that the law is bad, the gospel is good, that came to become really cheap grace, as Bonhoeffer would call it.

51:06

You know, he says we're fighting for costly grace. And so we turned distinguishing between law and gospel, which is an important skill in preaching, right?

51:15

We don't want to turn the gospel into law and vice versa. We turned it really, though, in the last 30 years obviously in the progressive churches, but I think to a degree in our own way we're guilty in more conservative churches of just relegating the law off to the side and preaching gospel only.

51:31

This is kind of manifested in a gospel reductionism. It's manifested, as I said, seminaries will teach young pastors to preach in this way.

51:41

You know, the first half is about the law. The second half is about the gospel. And then there's a question of, well, what do you mean by gospel?

51:47

In fact, can we pick up right where you left off on the law and gospel distinction right when we return from our midway break?

51:55

Folks, remember, please be patient with us. In the middle of the show our break is a little longer because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break because the FCC requires them to localize geographically this program to Lake City, Florida.

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And they do that with their own public service announcements and other local things that you will not hear unless you are listening to Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida.

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So thank our advertisers and also send your questions to Pastor Evan McClanahan, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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We'll be right back. Don't go away. The Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society presents The Future of Christendom 2023,

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01:07:46

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01:12:02

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01:12:08

And before the break, you were talking about one of your criticisms of modern

01:12:14

Lutheranism, and we are actually speaking primarily of the fellow conservatives in Lutheranism, not the apostates, because there really needs little explaining why we would have criticism with them.

01:12:30

But you were talking about the mishandling of the law -gospel distinction that is prevalent, in your opinion.

01:12:39

Yes, it's just become kind of stale, I think. It's become kind of static, where we understand that in the 16th century, the law and gospel were not rightly divided in the church.

01:12:51

There was great ignorance about what the gospel even was, that faith might reckon someone as righteous was obviously a foreign idea, because someone as well -learned as Luther, Romans 117 was pretty well a foreign verse to him.

01:13:04

It was like a lightning bolt when he came to understand the nature of grace and faith and righteousness.

01:13:11

So we do want to distinguish these things, but like I said, what it's come to mean is that the law is bad, and the law is the bad thing, and the gospel is the good thing that saves you from the law.

01:13:21

And the problem with that is that we never want to exhort our people, or we never want to even describe the law as a good thing.

01:13:31

That is the necessary tool to answer the ethical questions that we face in the church, in our own personal lives, and of course in our society.

01:13:38

And you can see quickly how this kind of ties up to two kingdoms, right? Because if we're not going to involve ourselves in politics because the state deals with the issues of the sword, and law, for that matter, and we're only in the business of handing out the word and sacraments, that's the only thing the church does, then you can see how we're going to end up retreating into this corner where all we do is handle sacraments, but we're not applying the gospel.

01:14:04

Now let me stop there and say how you define the word gospel is really important, and I would argue it in some way has multiple meanings in different contexts.

01:14:14

So the gospel as opposed to the law is the good news that God became flesh, that Jesus bore our sin on the cross, that he was risen from the dead, and that through faith all those who trust in Jesus Christ have their sins forgiven and are given the promise of everlasting life with our

01:14:30

Father in heaven. That's the gospel as opposed to the law. But we also then will turn around and use that word and say, well, we need to preach the gospel.

01:14:40

So if there's a guy, a street preacher, and he's got a sign that says repent for the end is near, and he says

01:14:47

I'm going to go out and preach the gospel today, what is he actually saying? Is he saying he's only going to preach that portion of the scripture that is the gospel that isn't the law?

01:14:56

No, I don't think so. I think he's preaching what I would call the whole counsel of God. That's what Paul says, preach the whole counsel of God.

01:15:03

So there are ways in which the gospel means all of the scripture, which is the law and the gospel.

01:15:09

And then there are these ways where it's sort of the thing that's opposed to the law. So we need to be – we need to clearly understand what we're saying when we say the word gospel.

01:15:18

But I would also say the gospel has become something of a personal and therapeutic word to people struggling with sin.

01:15:26

Well, again, that is always needed. It was definitely needed in the 1500s in Luther's day.

01:15:34

But I would argue the modern preacher has a wide array of people in his pews or in his chairs.

01:15:43

And some of those people are burdened by their sin. Some are wholly not burdened by their sin at all.

01:15:50

Some are worried about death. Some have never given it much thought. You have a whole wide array.

01:15:56

So as a preacher or as a pastor dealing with people, they need to hear both the law and the gospel.

01:16:02

But Christians also need to be put on mission. They need to be given words of exhortation.

01:16:08

And I think therefore the law is helpful in that. My concern is that we reduce the gospel, and this is going to be – there's hopefully some – maybe not hopefully, but there are probably some

01:16:20

Lutherans out there who are going to really bristle at this. But I'm going to dare to say it anyway. I think the gospel is more than just the personal forgiveness of your sins.

01:16:28

I think I want to use that word in the broadest sense, which is the whole good news of what Jesus has done, which is total restoration, which is life -changing, which is culture -forming, which is family -forming, which is dominion -having.

01:16:42

So the preaching of the gospel is not just your personal sins being forgiven and your salvation being guaranteed, but it is the whole effect of the radical nature of being reconciled to your creator, the radical effect that it's going to have on your life, and therefore the ripple effect that that radical change is going to have in your church communities, your cities at large.

01:17:03

It seems like – and a way to summarize this might be this.

01:17:09

If you tell me what your model of church is, it kind of tells me what your understanding of both these issues are actually, law and gospel and two kingdoms is.

01:17:18

So for example, a lot of people say, well, the church is a hospital where people go in, and they're cured of their illness.

01:17:25

And it almost portrays every person as kind of a victim of sin rather than someone guilty of sin through their own volition.

01:17:34

And then the church's job is to basically give them this protective anointing, or it's to heal them.

01:17:41

It's to take care of the weak and damaged person, and I think that model has a lot of flaws in it.

01:17:47

For one thing, we might be responsible for our own illness, but here's another model. Another model might be the church is like an embassy where you can go in.

01:17:57

You're with your people. It's like you're a citizen of heaven when you're in there, and you get your administrative stuff taken care of.

01:18:04

You understand. You get your ID reprinted or something like that, but you're in hostile territory, or you're at least in foreign territory.

01:18:11

But you've got – the church is like an embassy in that foreign territory. I'm closer to that. My ultimate model would be something more like a military fort or a military outpost where we are actually in spiritual terrain, spiritual warfare terrain.

01:18:28

We're in hostile territory, enemy territory, but the church is that place where we can go in.

01:18:34

We can get our wounds bandaged, so yes, there is that hospital -like element. We can get wrapped up. We can get bandaged.

01:18:39

We can maybe get a splint on for a couple of days. But we've got to go back out into the mission.

01:18:44

We've got to go back onto that battlefield or that spiritual battlefield. And so if you tell me what model of church – and there are,

01:18:52

I'm sure, other models people could propose as kind of metaphors or whatever. Maybe it's a little bit of all three, but whatever model you describe is going to kind of tell me kind of what you think the pastor ought to be doing for you, what the church ought to be doing for you.

01:19:04

And if your overarching model is that of a hospital, then yes, the message of the church needs to be, hey, they're there.

01:19:11

Everything's going to be fine. Here's the good news. I just think that tends to be a little bit parochial,

01:19:18

I guess. It's just provincial maybe is the better word for that, not parochial, provincial. It's a little too narrow in its outlook, so that's why

01:19:27

I've tended to gravitate towards theonomy, not because I think I want to be a legalist or anything like that.

01:19:32

But I think there's a broader application to the Word of God. Okay. We have a listener who is

01:19:46

Thomas in West Islet, Long Island, New York, who is asking a question that I have always wondered about myself as long as I've been a

01:19:57

Christian and a Calvinist and have become familiar with Luther and Lutheranism.

01:20:02

Thomas asks, I know that Martin Luther in the

01:20:08

Reformation was a champion of sola fide and sola gratia.

01:20:13

How does that coincide with his belief in baptismal regeneration, which also seems to be a belief that modern conservative

01:20:25

Lutherans hold to while simultaneously also believing in sola fide and sola gratia?

01:20:34

Well, that's a great question. I'm not a systematic theologian, so let me tell you how

01:20:43

I think about this. I think when it comes to the question of baptism, it's a question of, is this something that God does to the person, and therefore that is something that the person can sort of return to, a promise from God given that we can walk away from, but we can also return to at any given time?

01:21:03

Or is baptism, of course, in the, you know, maybe Anabaptist tradition, a reflection of a decision that we have made?

01:21:10

You know, that's Billy Graham's, you know, magazine, right? Decision. Is this a reflection of a decision we've made and a kind of letting the world know that, you know, we're part of the tribe now.

01:21:19

We're part of the Christian tribe. I guess what I would say is this, is that we have in Christ, we possess an alien righteousness, which is a righteousness from outside of us.

01:21:32

That there are passive works of God in our life. I think that's what sola gratia means, sola fide means, right?

01:21:39

That we are the passive recipients of God's grace, that we are changed as a gift of God's grace, and so therefore, from my point of view, there really is no distinction between the baptism of an adult or the baptism of a child.

01:21:53

In each case, God is doing the same thing. God is claiming that person for his own.

01:21:59

It's not some kind of magic act or something like that. Now, there are Lutherans who will go around and they'll quote 1

01:22:04

Peter 3 that, you know, baptism saves or we're saved by baptism. I can't remember the exact phrasing there. And they would say things, which

01:22:11

I think is kind of nutty, that if you pour water on somebody and you say the

01:22:17

Trinitarian formula, that that person has the guarantee of salvation. I think that's silly.

01:22:24

I mean, I think that Luther would say that baptism is made effective by faith. So the rite in and of itself, just like the water in and of itself, they don't accomplish,

01:22:34

I don't want to say they don't accomplish anything, but one must trust in their baptism.

01:22:41

So as I said yesterday, I think we can out -baptize the Baptist in a sense that we daily die and rise in our baptism.

01:22:46

That's almost direct language from the small catechism on the teaching of baptism. So just Google that and see what he says there.

01:22:53

But I think the bottom line is, is our salvation a passive – the act of work of God that we receive passively.

01:23:02

If that's the sense, I'm not bothered by baptizing people of all ages, because at the end of the day, there's going to be a constant process by which the

01:23:12

Christian says, I am a baptized person. I'm going to live into my baptism, whether they're baptized at 50 years old or one month old.

01:23:19

That's my view. Thank you, Thomas. And let's move on to your next criticism of modern

01:23:27

Lutheranism. Yeah, well, I actually did touch on this earlier, and I don't want to have to force you to do a part three, so I'm not going to dwell on it too long.

01:23:36

It's simply the ethnic reality, as I mentioned earlier. You've got Germans, Norwegians, Swedes, Danes.

01:23:43

They come to America for different reasons at different times. They are extremely insular. They comport with people whose language that they know.

01:23:52

I'll give you an example. Here in Houston, there once was nine

01:23:57

German communities that did nothing but get together and sing German songs and drink beer, right?

01:24:05

Nine. Now there are two. It's kind of amazing that there are still two who do this.

01:24:10

I know this because one of those groups rented space from us for a long time, so we have a pretty good relationship.

01:24:16

But that's what happened. People came to America, and it was like, well, I don't speak

01:24:21

English. I don't know anybody. What am I going to do? I'm going to fellowship with people who speak my language. So a lot of churches formed that way, and my own church is a good example.

01:24:29

If you look at the records, we had hundreds and hundreds of members, right?

01:24:35

Now we have well under 200, right? So there are no more boats coming from Germany or Norway or Sweden, but we never had to do evangelism.

01:24:42

So now it's pretty obvious what happened. We lived off of the capital. In many cases in America, Pennsylvania, of course, you guys go way back further than us.

01:24:51

There are churches there from, I'm sure, the 1700s, maybe even before. But we lived off that capital of all those immigrants coming over, populating these churches.

01:24:59

The pastor was so busy doing weddings and funerals and baptisms and preaching and visiting and taking care of families.

01:25:06

They never did need to do evangelism. So there is no evangelism in our – even though we have the word evangelical, there's no evangelism really in our kind of core

01:25:14

DNA. And so now we finally have expunged the capital, and now we're running out at a record pace.

01:25:21

And a lot of congregations are finding out we can't afford the $50 ,000 air conditioning repair bill and that sort of thing, and these congregations are going belly up quite quickly.

01:25:31

So the ethnic history that not only the Lutherans, and I'm sure it's true of some

01:25:36

Presbyterians as well, but it's really hampered us. And we've got to stop – I don't know if we're proud of being

01:25:41

Norwegian still. I mean I don't know how many German jokes we need to still be telling. I mean who cares?

01:25:47

None of that really matters. We've got to be evangelists like yesterday, like right now.

01:25:54

Peak church attendance in America was 1965. It's been downhill for almost 50 years. No, that's almost 60 years.

01:26:02

So that would be kind of a third thing where you kind of have these ethnic histories that are in our

01:26:08

DNA that we've really got to shake off, and we've got to – to me, I just don't find the kind of German Lutheran stubborn jokes or whatever all that humorous anymore because I'm kind of like, look, those days are just over.

01:26:21

So we've really got to embrace being evangelists. We have an anonymous listener who asks –

01:26:28

I'm remaining anonymous because I don't want anybody to think that my question is stupid. Then I should have been anonymous as your guest,

01:26:39

Chris, because most of what I said is probably pretty stupid. The anonymous listener says, and I don't think it's a stupid question at all, on some cable channels you can still find the

01:26:52

Davy and Goliath program for children. Is that program theologically safe for our children?

01:27:02

Because I don't know if this is a part of the leftist apostate Lutheran group.

01:27:10

I could Google that while we speak and maybe try to give an answer, but I've honestly never heard of it. You've never heard of Davy and Goliath?

01:27:18

I mean I've heard of the Bible story David and Goliath, but Davy and Goliath? I guess you are a lot younger than me, aren't you?

01:27:26

I'm 61. Well, I'm 43, so –

01:27:32

People of my age group, regardless of what kind of religious affiliation you may have, will probably very clearly remember as children an animated program that was a clay animation program.

01:27:50

Like, for instance, do you remember – Okay, okay. Do you remember Gumby? Yeah, yeah.

01:27:56

Okay, well, it's similar to Gumby. In fact, they used to play them, I think, back to back. Gotcha. Okay, so I'm guessing it's something

01:28:03

I've seen, but not – Davy and Goliath was basically a program that didn't get heavy on theology at all.

01:28:12

In fact, I don't even know if it had theology ever as its theme, but it was almost like the kind of moralistic lessons that you would hear and see on The Andy Griffith Show or –

01:28:26

Well, it was – it looks like that show was made in a different country. It's called

01:28:31

America Before 1965, so that's a bit of a joke.

01:28:39

But the LCA, the Lutheran Church in America, that's what did become the ELCA, and the

01:28:44

ULCA, the United Lutheran Church in America, probably was part of that merger as well.

01:28:49

I'm not as familiar with it, but I mean I think Lutheranism at the time was probably a little bit tepid, and as I've said, probably not in need of doing a whole lot of evangelism because the churches were thriving.

01:29:01

I mean in the Missouri Synod, the Missouri Synod tripled in size in the 1950s, tripled, right?

01:29:07

So these were just very, very different times, and boy,

01:29:13

I'd like to go back to those. In some ways, the pastors were probably busier than they are today, but they had some things easier.

01:29:20

It was probably a perfectly fine show. It looks like, like I said, it was produced in another country, America before 1970.

01:29:28

But let me just say – let me just – I don't want to interrupt. No, that's all right. Let me put it this way.

01:29:34

You definitely would not have heard anything promoting what is now known as wokeism or homosexuality.

01:29:42

There was definitely nothing even remotely coming close to any of that.

01:29:48

Although I will say this. I was reading a book. I'll put a plug in for my friend's book. It was written by the

01:29:53

ALPB, published by the ALPB, the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau. It's called Changing World, Changeless Christ.

01:30:00

It's a history of the ALPB, but it's also kind of a history of American Lutheranism, which in its own way is a history of a lot of American Protestantism going back 100 years.

01:30:11

And the question of sexuality was a lot earlier than people may think. It was definitely around in the 70s, and it was definitely around in the 80s.

01:30:19

It came up when the ELC emerged. It was already a topic of conversation in the 1980s. So it actually has been around for quite a while.

01:30:26

That shouldn't surprise anybody. In our case, the ELCA formalized it in 2009.

01:30:33

I'll admit I was kind of shocked when that happened. I thought basically there were enough corn farmers in Iowa that would show up to these meetings and put the kibosh on this kind of insanity, and it would never happen in my church, so I was quite shocked.

01:30:49

By the way, if people want a fun little factoid to research, that was in 2009. The meeting was in Minneapolis.

01:30:56

A tornado – right around the time a very important vote in the ELCA was happening at that annual convention.

01:31:03

A tornado went through downtown Minneapolis and did damage to the church where the pro -LGBT group was meeting.

01:31:10

So if someone wants to Google that and you put in a couple of keywords,

01:31:15

I'm sure a picture of an overturned cross on a steeple might come up. Interesting story.

01:31:21

I'm not saying God did it per se. I'm also not saying that God did not do it per se.

01:31:28

By the way, just out of curiosity, are you a Cheers fan? I enjoyed the show.

01:31:35

I haven't watched it in a while. One of the most classic and most hilarious scenes in Cheers was when

01:31:44

Woody comes walking through the door crying his eyes out, and people are trying to console him and asking him why is he crying.

01:31:53

He said, I just broke up with my girlfriend, my fiancée. They said, why did you break up?

01:32:00

I found out she was a member of a different religion. And they said, I thought you were both

01:32:05

Lutheran. And he said, yeah, but I'm Missouri Synod, and she's the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

01:32:15

But the thing is, even though it is funny, he wasn't wrong in the line, because it is a different religion.

01:32:22

Well, these days, 100%. I'm with you and what you've said around the mainline

01:32:27

Protestant churches, the more progressive or liberal, what we used to call liberal churches. Yeah, it's barely recognizable as Christian in any sense of that word anymore, which isn't to castigate every single people in those pews.

01:32:42

But you probably saw the Sparkle Creed that went around, kind of went viral a couple weeks ago. Yeah, yeah, how disgusting and blasphemous.

01:32:49

I mean, hello, people are sitting there. They should have gotten out and walked out in mass. So how does it – how does this happen where people just sit there and accept that?

01:32:56

It's just – it's really sad more than anything. So let me just say my fourth thing, my fourth kind of critique of modern

01:33:04

Lutheranism. I'll just highlight it quickly, which is a debate you probably had before or talked about a lot on your show, which is kind of the classic apologetics style or apologetic technique debate.

01:33:15

And Lutherans have really adopted the evidential school, which isn't surprising because presuppositional method or approach is going to be more in the reform camp.

01:33:24

And since Lutherans are supposed to hate Calvinists, we can't adopt their apologetic methodology, and we have to think

01:33:30

Van Til was some crazy nutjob. So naturally, we fall into the evidentialist camp. But it tends to not be the kind of philosophical evidentialist camp but kind of the historical evidentialist camp, which, of course,

01:33:43

I believe that the resurrection is true. I believe the Bible attests that it's true. I believe Jesus was truly crucified and risen from the dead, and I believe that's as historically verified as any other event in history as much as the reign of Julius Caesar or the life of Alexander the

01:34:00

Great or whatever it may be. But I do think that there is a kind of fatal flaw to that method, which is that you have to use the scripture to defend the contents of the scripture, and it also puts us in a posture of always being defensive.

01:34:15

Now again, I think this is true of kind of all the evidential apologetic camps, and what I love about presuppositionalism is that it actually is a – not that I want to debate about epistemology with somebody for an hour at all.

01:34:26

That's not the presuppositionalism that particularly excites me. But I do want to put the shoe on the other foot.

01:34:32

I do want to put the burden of proof on the person who actually is holding to the most absurd claims, which is that everything we know and experience and see has come about by random chance of no purpose, of no design at all.

01:34:47

That's what the unbeliever has to account for. They have to account for the absurdity that they claim. They do it, as we know, by borrowing from our worldview.

01:34:54

And so I think that when Lutheranism just kind of falls lockstep into the evidential camp of apologetics, hoping, as John Warwick Montgomery does – he's kind of our best -known

01:35:05

Lutheran apologist – that basically the claims of the cross are so unassailable that only a fool would not believe them.

01:35:13

I find that to be extremely naive, and in the end, it's assuming things about scripture and even reality that the unbeliever cannot attest to.

01:35:25

So I think the presuppositional approach of sort of putting the burden on the other foot, being prepared, yes, with historical and even philosophical arguments, fine, but putting the burden on the other foot.

01:35:34

So I think that's a – Lutheranism has sort of just – to the degree they even know what apologetics is, they're only just now discovering it, and they're sort of naively falling into the evidential camp instead of really grasping onto the radical nature of the gospel and of the revelation of God, which is that he is unassailable, he is sovereign.

01:35:55

We need to be pressing that. We need to be pressing the unbeliever to account for their worldview without borrowing from ours.

01:36:00

I just don't see that we do that. It's just another tepid kind of lukewarm version of Christianity and defense of the gospel that I just find not particularly inspiring.

01:36:14

I'll put it that way. By the way, what has ever happened with John Warwick Montgomery?

01:36:20

I have not seen him since the 80s. He used to be frequently on the

01:36:26

John Ankerberg Show. Yeah, he's still around. In fact, he gave a lecture at the Lanier Theological Library, a big location here in Houston a couple years ago.

01:36:34

I attended it, and deep on the Theology on Air podcast, which I mentioned I do with Theology on Tap here in Houston, the

01:36:40

Theology on Air podcast, probably all the way back in like February of 2021. But my cohost and I did a review of that lecture, and we talk about everything

01:36:48

I just talked about. So if you're kind of an apologetics geek, and it's just – so as a trial lawyer, it's crazy that he kind of says – and in this lecture he gives, he talks about reasons people don't believe, and it's like cost fallacy and cognitive bias fallacies and so on and so forth.

01:37:10

And it's like a lot of that works against us as well. Anyway, I can't remember all of the arguments now, but he's still around.

01:37:16

He's still kind of pushing the idea that the world is like a neutral jury pool, and if we just bring the best arguments and evidence, then they surely will change their mind.

01:37:30

And again, this is not even – forget being 1517 anymore. This isn't even the 1980s anymore.

01:37:36

This isn't even the 1990s anymore. We are living in a time of rather extreme hostility. Now, I think that hostility is – there's a backlash to that hostility, which is bringing young people into the church in its own way.

01:37:48

People are realizing the futility of atheism. So I think people are in there looking at events like COVID lockdowns, and they're looking at the kind of mind -control games that seem to be going on in the world.

01:37:59

And there are people that are like, whoa, this Jesus guy is a lot better than I thought. He's a lot better than, I don't know, the Anthony Fauci's of the world.

01:38:06

So I think people are giving Christianity another go. But yeah, but this idea that you can kind of plead your evidential case to this kind of neutral jury like you do in a courtroom is crazy to me.

01:38:21

That is not the world we live in anymore. We at least have to play a little bit more offense and say you need to account for the world that you espouse and the world that you live on the merits of your worldview instead of me giving it mine.

01:38:33

Well, we have to go to our final break, folks. And if you have a question, send it in immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:38:40

ChrisArnson at gmail .com. ChrisArnson at gmail .com. Always give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

01:38:48

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter. Don't go away. The Mid -Atlantic

01:38:57

Reformation Society presents The Future of Christendom 2023, The Gospel at War.

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September 15th to the 16th in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, featuring Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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We are excited to be including a formal debate in this year's conference. Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries will be debating

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01:40:04

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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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That's liyfc .org. Welcome back, Pastor Evan.

01:55:43

We actually do not have time for any more listener questions, so I'd like you to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today when it comes to your critiques of modern

01:55:55

Lutheranism. Well, you know, what I'm interested in is promoting the most robust Christianity we can, and I think that when our traditions kind of get us in ruts or our church body exists as a result of a historical event like the

01:56:15

Reformation itself where there were sort of issues at the time that led us to certain doctrines like our understanding of law and gospel or two kingdoms, etc.,

01:56:23

I think that we might find those limiting, and I think we need to say, okay, we actually want to be the most biblical, the most robustly biblical

01:56:31

Christians that we can, so we need to examine our tradition. We need to take the good pieces of it that came out for very good reasons, but we need to kind of maybe let go of some of the clichés that leave us kind of stuck in our thoughts.

01:56:44

And if I could, I'd like to say some really good things about Lutheranism if I could. No, absolutely not,

01:56:50

Emily. I know we're short on time, but hey, I actually love

01:56:55

Lutheranism. I think there's a lot of great about it. For example, a beautiful – a rich musical tradition, you know,

01:57:02

J .S. Bach and Heinrich Schutz before him and many others after come out of the Lutheran tradition. There is a fascinating history, and there's the primacy of the word that comes out of Lutheranism.

01:57:14

I'm very thankful to Lutheranism for that. As a result, we don't have a lot of the charismatic, some of the nonsense kind of going around the word -faith movement and some of what's going on in the

01:57:22

Pentecostal world. That isn't part of our identity. And of course, I think probably more than anything, and I think a difference between us and our

01:57:28

Calvinist friends is that we are sacramental and really what, you know, the importance of the sacraments in there.

01:57:34

Yes, we get accused of invoking mystery, but I do think that there is something beautiful and wonderful about the – not necessarily the mysterious, but the majestic understanding of the sacraments and the way that we do think that God comes to us.

01:57:47

The means of grace as word and sacrament really mean that God is present. So there are many – you know, and the rich liturgical tradition as well, that a lot of Lutherans have thrown off, but our own congregation is pretty deeply and strongly liturgical, so I think that's – those are wonderful things.

01:58:03

But I would say, look, question your tradition, look at it analytically, don't be defensive about it. Ask yourself what needs to change.

01:58:11

And I just hear some pastors, they think in a way that seems – it seems kind of rigid and it seems restrained by these traditions, these –

01:58:19

I don't want to say clichés, but they've kind of been turned into clichés. So think about that.

01:58:25

By the way, I do know of at least one congregation in the American Association of Lutheran Churches, which is a charismatic

01:58:32

Lutheran church, just to let you know. I had never heard of that, so that's new to me.

01:58:39

Are you familiar with the AALC, which is conservative, but from what I understand – Oh, yeah, yeah, that's the one church the

01:58:45

Missouri Synod is in fellowship, in alternate pulpit fellowship with. Okay. But I didn't know they had a charismatic church.

01:58:53

I think that that may be a different one with America in the word. Well, we'll find out that later, but I know for certain – that this church that has been in existence on Long Island for decades is charismatic.

01:59:07

But anyway – Gotcha. Interesting. But I want to remind our listeners that my guest today,

01:59:13

Pastor Evan McClanahan, will be returning to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on Wednesday, August 16th, and on Thursday, August 31st.

01:59:23

So mark your calendars. It's been a joy, Pastor McClanahan, to have you on the program. Don't forget, folks, the website for First Lutheran Church of Houston, Texas is flhouston .org.

01:59:35

I want to thank you so much for being on the program. I want to thank everybody who listened, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater