June 17, 2021 Show with Jerry Slate on “Our Sovereign God’s Plan for Missions”

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

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

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

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.

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

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. This is

Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 17th day of, what month is this?

June 2021. My mind still hasn't gotten back to normal, but actually,

I'm not sure if my mind being back to normal is a good thing, but just got back from Texas.

This is the first live broadcast for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio since I departed for Texas on June the 9th, and this is the first live broadcast since then of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

As many of you know, I attended the Wokeness and the Gospel conference in Denton, Texas, at Denton Bible Church, and it was absolutely extraordinary, monumental, and I cannot be too high in my praises for this conference.

It was just a time well worth spent, and that is putting it mildly, and I will get you more details on that in the next day or two, but if you want to get, or should

I say view, the videos of all the sessions, go to WokenessandGospel .org,

WokenessandGospel .org, and all the information that you need should be available on that website.

But today, I am so thrilled to have a first -time guest. His name is Jerry Slate, and he is the pastor of Berean Baptist Church of Hiram, Georgia.

He was a guest speaker very recently at the church where I am a member, Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and I was so richly blessed by his preaching,

I immediately knew, not even halfway through his message, that I had to invite him on to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Jerry has served as the administrative council chairman for the

Georgia Association of Confessional Baptists, as well as chairman of Reformed Baptist Mission Services.

He is a missionary conducting short -term mission trips each year as an extension of his own church's ministry, and an author of two short biographical sketches published by Solid Ground Christian Books, and if you listen to this program every day, you are fully aware that Solid Ground Christian Books is a major sponsor of this program.

But those books are titled, William Carey and the Greatest Generation, and Faithfully Holding the

Ropes, The Life and Ministry of Samuel Pierce, 1766 -1799.

He is also the co -author, with Dr. Michael A .G. Haken, of Loving God and Neighbor with Samuel Pierce, and as I said earlier, he is the pastor of Berean Baptist Church of Hiram, Georgia.

Today we are going to be discussing our sovereign God's plan for missions, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome for the very first time ever to Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio, Pastor Jerry Slee.

Good to be here with you, Chris. Praise God. Well, first of all, let our listeners know about Berean Baptist Church of Hiram, Georgia.

Yeah, Berean was started over 18 years ago in 2003. I started off as a trench planting venture, and we have 18 years of history, and we first met in facilities that were in Allstown, Georgia, and then moved about 10 years ago to where we are now in Hiram, Georgia.

So that's northwest Atlanta, not terribly far from Six Flags, if you're trying to figure out on a map where that is.

So yeah, I've been the pastor that entire time, bivocational the first 13 years, and full -time vocational the last four or five.

So very grateful for that. And this is a confessional Reformed Baptist Church. Yes, sir, it is.

And if you want more details, if you happen to live near Hiram, Georgia, or are visiting there, or have family, friends, and loved ones there, the website is bereanchurchps .org.

That's B -E -R -E -A -N church, P as in Peter, S as in Sam, dot org. By the way, what does the

PS stand for? It actually stands for Potter Springs, because we were hoping to be in my hometown of Potter Springs, but as it turned out, in God's providence, we were not staying there.

I was wondering if it stood for Pastor Slate, so you could tell that to people. It does not. Well, you can tell that to people anyway from now on.

Yeah, that's right. Well, as we have a tradition here on Iron Trouper and Zion Radio, whenever we interview a first -time guest, we have that guest provide for our listeners a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include the religious atmosphere you were raised in, if any, and what kind of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you. So why don't you tell our listeners your story?

Yes, sir. I was born in November of 1969, so I'm a little bit of a flower child, at least in that way.

I was born into an at least professing Christian home and was raised in Southern Baptist churches.

My father and mother, six months after they had gotten married, my mom was converted inside of a

Methodist church. The pastor who was counseling her looked at my father and said,

What about you? And my dad didn't want the man to mess with him or talk to him, so he said,

Well, praise God, he saved me. And so he was lying. He didn't know the Lord at all.

They came to Georgia. He had met my mom in Illinois. He's originally from Georgia. He came back to Georgia with my mom, and I was born after that.

But he was a deacon in a Southern Baptist church, a leader of children's ministries, and he was lost as he could be and did not know the

Lord. And when I was a child, my two older sisters, remember this, I do not, but my mom and dad were fighting like crazy on the verge of divorce.

Things were going very, very bad in his life. And when I was about three or four years old, a guest preacher came to our church, and he preached a series of messages on the evenings of Monday night and Tuesday night and Wednesday night.

My dad went up to him after one of the services did not know him from Adam and wanted to congratulate him for the sermon he had preached and to thank him for it.

And this man looked at my dad right in the eyes and said, Are you saved? And my dad kind of awkwardly said,

Well, yeah, amen, brother. And he said it again, Are you saved? And the

Lord used that to break my dad. He didn't sleep at all that night and wrestled with God until by the morning he had closed with Christ.

And he came to the pastor and told him that he had been truly converted. One of my earliest memories of my dad was him being baptized as a true believer shortly after that.

And so I grew up predominantly in the wake of my dad knowing the Lord, and my dad led me to Christ when

I was eight years old. His evangelistic method was a little different. I knew the word saved, but I didn't know what the word meant.

I just knew that if you were saved, you went to heaven, and if you weren't saved, you went to hell. But beyond that,

I knew very little. And so I began inquiring of my dad what it meant to be saved. I was the only person in our home who had not professed faith at that point.

And my dad's evangelistic method was to say, Well, I'm not going to tell you. And the reason he did that was he wanted to know,

Is this just a passing fad in my life, or was I truly desirous of knowing what it is to be saved?

And God, in his providence, used that to make me hungry to know what it meant to truly be saved.

And so for many, many months, I began wrestling with the Lord and asking my dad lots of questions about what it meant to be saved.

And he finally saw that I was not letting go, that the Lord was really drawing me.

And so I came to Christ in December of 1977 when I was eight years old and was baptized as a believer the following summer.

And so I became a member of the church. And then we moved to a new church in Mableton, Westside Baptist Church, when

I was in the sixth grade. And in many ways, I would say I cut my teeth as a new Christian there.

I was taught by a very zealous Sunday school teacher who was in his twenties.

He would later introduce me to his niece, and I liked her so much, I married her. So, um, but, uh, yes.

So I grew up in Baptist Church and went to, after I graduated from high school, I went to Columbia Bible College in Columbia, Sacramento, where I obtained my

Bachelor of Arts in Pastoral Ministries and in Bible. And so that was my journey in that way.

And how did you come to discover the Reformed faith? Well, my first quarter in Bible college,

I was 17 years old, and my roommate asked me a question. He said, so did you choose God or did

God choose you? And I was a good son of a Baptist boy, so I said, well, I chose God, right? And he looked at me and said, well, did you?

And I said, I don't know. What do you think? He says, I don't know. He was just trying to play devil's advocate with me.

But I have said to many people that since that time, that question was the beginning of my journey into the

Reformed faith. And several of my professors in Bible college were at least

Calvinistic. They weren't necessarily always confessional, but Calvinistic. My Hermannus professor.

But then I did have a confessional professor over me, Richard Belcher Sr., who was our homiletics professor.

And so the bend of the twig, a lot of the preacher boys came out Calvinistic. The other thing I noticed is when

I was in Bible college, whenever I had a textbook that was from Banner of Truth, which I had never heard of before, I always seemed to resonate with the books.

And so after I graduated from college, I continued reading books like crazy. I had never even heard of a

Reformed Baptist church before, or of our confession. And of all things, in 1995,

I had been teaching at Sunday school in, of all things, a fundamentalist Baptist church. But I was really growing in Reformed theology.

And a man came up to me and gave me a flyer from a bookseller, a book catalog to me, and said, this comes from a

Reformed Baptist church. And I said, Reformed Baptist? That sounds a lot like what I am.

And it was Trinity Book Service in Montville, New Jersey, and so I started buying books from them.

You bought many books from them over the years. Yes, yes. And one day

I got to thinking, well, I wonder if they have like a doctrinal statement. So I called their secretary and asked, and they said, yes, it's the

Baptist Confession of Faith, 1689. I had seen it advertised on their catalog for $2.

I paid my $2 plus my shipping. Still have that little green -backed copy of the 1689

Confession, and I read it going, where has this been all my life? And so actually, the first edition

I have is produced by the church that you go to at Carlisle. And so, yeah, that was my first introduction to the

Confession. Well, praise God. Well, our theme today is our sovereign

God's plan for missions. I don't think this topic could be addressed too often, especially since there remains a lot of confusion amongst

Christians outside of the Reformed faith about what we who are

Reformed believe about missions. There are obviously, sadly and tragically, slanders and false caricatures that are perpetrated by those outside of the

Reformed faith, both, I believe, knowingly, and also those statements perpetrated or perpetuated by people who are just ignorant of the facts of Reformed theology.

They think that Reformed missions is an oxymoron.

They think that we who are Calvinists, because we believe that God is in total sovereign control over all things that ever have happened and ever will happen on heaven and earth and all of the universe, they think that means, well, we just have to sit back and allow

God to just do whatever he wants to do, and we just do absolutely nothing.

So, please inform our listeners how this is just a total slander against what we believe.

Yes, we believe in evangelism, and we believe in world missions, first and foremost because the

Bible commands us to be involved in evangelism, and it commands us to preach the gospel to every creature.

The invitation to come to Christ is universal, and we have to make that boldly.

It's interesting that even the canons of Dort tell us that we are supposed to be zealous in spreading the gospel among every nation.

Beautiful, beautiful statement there. The fact is, the sovereign grace of God is what should fuel us to give us confidence that our evangelism and missions will be effective, because we believe that those whom

God has chosen, God will certainly infallibly save, and the same God who has ordained the ends has also ordained the means to the ends.

And so, as we preach the gospel, we can have confidence that indeed God will save sinners.

And so, that actually fuels evangelism. It doesn't hinder it, and it doesn't hinder world missions.

As a matter of fact, I would submit that the Great Commission, which we are all so familiar with, is not the foundation of world missions.

Those are our marching orders, but that is not the foundation upon which world missions are built.

The foundation is actually the intra -Trinitarian covenant of redemption that God made with himself before the foundation of the world.

To put it simply, God had a chosen people, and he had a chosen Lamb before the foundation of the world.

When I was a kid, I said I was converted when I was eight, I knew about the Lamb's Book of Life and that the names of all those whom

God saves are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. But when I was a child, I thought that in December of 1977,

God opened this great, massive tomb in heaven, took out a pen, and wrote my name,

Jerry Carl Slate Jr., in the ledger book of his Book of Life. I know my

Bible a little bit better now, and know that the Book of Revelation tells us that the names that are written there were written before the foundation of the world.

And as we think about that, that tells us that all the names of all who are ever going to be saved until Jesus comes back are already written down.

But the fascinating thing is, where did God choose those people from? He did not choose them exclusively from the tribe of Israel.

Rather, he chose them from every tribe, every tongue, every people, every nation.

Every ethnic group is represented, every skin color is represented in heaven. Every family of every nation on earth is going to have representatives who are standing before the throne of God on that final day, singing the praises of the

Lamb. So that gives us confidence, as we send out missionaries to places that have never heard the

Gospel, that they're going to be people redeemed, whom God is going to save from that particular tribe.

Because that is where he's chosen them all from. So that's the foundation of our world missions, and it gives us the ground of our confidence.

In fact, the Doctrines of Sovereign Grace, Reformed theology,

Calvinism as it is nicknamed, it actually is of infinite benefit to mission work, is it not?

Because, unlike the Arminian or those outside of the

Reformed faith, we do not have a pessimistic attitude, even if circumstances that we see and hear physically around us, the efforts of a missionary, or even an evangelist wherever he may live, and when

I say evangelist, I think that would include each and every person who is sharing the

Gospel, proclaiming the Gospel, defending the Gospel to their family, their friends, their loved ones, their neighbors.

We need not be pessimistic when we do not see fruit being born of this, at least immediately, or even for a considerably long time, because we know that God's elect will eventually emerge from the same clay that all of humanity has been created from, the sinner and the saint, the elect and the reprobate, all coming from the same lump of clay, but the elect will emerge from there and will embrace

Christ eventually, and we can know that for certain when we are laboring to spread the

Gospel, can we not? Absolutely, absolutely. If you've ever read the book

Jungle Pilot, which is about Nate Saint, one of the famous martyrs who was martyred alongside of Jim Elliott.

Yes, I know who he was, but I did not read the book yet. Okay. Yes, well, he was not a

Calvinist. He was from a more fundamentalist background, but he was writing in his diary or in a letter,

I can't remember which it was, and he made the comment, some people questioned, why are we going to the

Waranee Indians to bring the Gospel to them that were known at the time as the Akka Indians, because they were a savage, warlike people, and he wrote in his letter or in his journal, he said,

I read in my Bible that men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation will be standing before the throne, singing

God's praises, and praising the Lamb that He would redeem them by His blood, and he said that means there are

Akkas there. There's going to be Akkas there, and that gives me confidence that perhaps God will use me.

Now, this is coming from the pen of an Arminian, and yet as I read what he wrote as a

Calvinist, I have even more reason to say, yes, that's absolutely right, that I have confidence that Christ shed

His blood to not make these people redeemable, but actually to redeem people from their midst, and so that gives me great confidence going in.

The other thing about this is when men say that it's just man's free will that gets them into the kingdom and things like that, they really have not realized just how sinful we really are, because we're not sick in trespasses and sins, we're dead in trespasses and sins, and as you share the

Gospel, even in your own community, and see how people are hostile or indifferent to it, you recognize that God's sovereign grace is irresistible grace.

It's so helpful and such an encouragement to realize God will draw the hardest of hearts to Himself in the time of His choosing, and He may be pleased to use our stammering lips to do it.

Amen. Well, perhaps you could define missions, that may seem like something ridiculous to ask because most people have an idea in their heads of what that means, but I think that many people have a wrong idea of what that means.

They may think that exclusively means sending out

Christians from a church to a foreign land. They may even make that even more restrictive in their understanding or definition to a primitive land, a jungle somewhere where no one has ever heard of the

Gospel or seen anyone outside of their geographic region. Now, of course, missions certainly includes that, but if you could give us a true and fuller definition of what missions means.

Certainly. Missions, properly speaking, is really dealing with cross -cultural ministry, and that can certainly be your own territory when you're dealing with a culture that's different than your own and seeking to evangelize the people there.

But the thing that we should recognize is that missions is about more than just doing evangelism with an unreached people group or a cross -cultural ministry.

The aim of a missionary, I believe a missionary proper, should be a man who's qualified to be a pastor because his job is to evangelize a people, and as people respond to the

Gospel and are converted, he's to baptize those people and organize them into a local church.

And then that local church, he must labor to disciple those who come to faith in Christ to teach them how to live the

Christian life. And as God raises up faithful men from within the midst of that indigenous community to seek to train them to be elders and take over the shepherding of that church.

So his ultimate goal is to see churches planted that are self -governing, self -propagating, and self -supporting.

And the idea being that once he is able to commit the care of that church into the indigenous elders planted there, then he moves to another region and begins the process all over again trying to establish a second church, and then a third, and then a fourth, and being confessional as we are, his ultimate goal is to see an association of churches in that place so you have multiple churches being shepherded by indigenous pastors who are carrying on the faith and preaching the

Gospel to their own culture. And so that's the ultimate goal of missions. Now, there certainly can be support roles to help facilitate things like that.

You think of like MAF, Missionary Aviation Fellowship, that helps fly people into places that otherwise we could never reach.

But the man flying the airplane is not actually planting a church, but he's facilitating the planting of a church by assisting a missionary and that kind of thing.

So I think missions, we shouldn't just think of it as exclusively evangelism. It's evangelism plus discipling, plus mentoring men for ministry, and establishing local churches.

The same thing that we should be doing here in our own land. Amen. Now, the

Mormons, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, a very well -known cult has a false god.

In fact, they have an infinite number of gods. They claim that they are not polygamists. I'm sorry, polytheists.

They are not polygamists any longer other than the cult of the fundamentalist

Latter -day Saints. But they claim to be not polytheists because they worship one god, but they are, in fact, polytheists anyway because they believe in an infinite number of gods.

But anyway, having said that, I think that they do have a right understanding of the fact that even the

United States would be, in its majority, people who are outside of God.

And of course, you and I would include, we would include the Mormons in that group. But they send out missionaries all over the

United States because they have that conviction. Would you share that conviction that we should be setting up missionaries even here in our own nation?

Certainly. Certainly. We need, you know, here in Georgia, if you lived here, you'd know that there's a church building on every corner.

Almost literally. And yet, the reality is so few of those churches are really preaching the whole counsel of God.

Most of them are preaching cheap grace. You know, a friend of mine by the name of Steve Martin, not the actor, but the retired pastor.

Yeah, I know Steve very well. Yes. Well, Steve has said many, many times, if you take a systematic theology book, look at the leading headings of the subject matter of that book.

Every one of those subjects is under attack, not by the theological liberals, but by supposed evangelical churches.

And so there's a great problem in our own land that there's very little solid expositional and experiential preaching coming from the pulpit.

And so there is a need for solid churches to be built here, established in our own land.

And then, as they're established, to have a stronger base to send out missionaries to other places. The reality is, when a church sends out missionaries, we are going to reproduce ourselves.

Our theology, our methodology. And if the methodology and theology of the sending church is flawed, what kind of churches are going to be planted when they're sent out?

The same kind of churches we're going to reproduce ourselves. You know, Jesus said to the Pharisees, you traverse land and sea to make one proselyte.

And once it's proselytized, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are. So not everything that's done in the name of missions is actually

God -honoring. And so, yes, we need, you know, planting churches in a foreign context is not more spiritual than planting churches here.

They're necessary. Amen. Well, we have to go to our first station break. If you would like to ask a question of our guest today,

Jerry Slate, on our Sovereign God's Plan for Missions, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away.

We'll be right back with Jerry Slate after these messages from our sponsors. I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back.

This is Chris Sorensen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the entire program is

Jerry Slate, who is pastor of Berean Baptist Church of Hiram, Georgia.

We are discussing our Sovereign God's Plan for Missions. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrissorensen at gmail .com,

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USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And we have

Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who asks, You said earlier that Nate Saint was not

Reformed theologically. Isn't it true that he was on his mission trip with Jim Elliott that was

Reformed? I don't believe Jim Elliott was Reformed. Oh, really?

I guess his wife became Reformed later in her life. Yeah, I'm not even aware that she was

Reformed either. Really? I can't speak to that completely. But certainly

I have a great deal of admiration for her and for her husband. Huh. For some reason

I always thought the late Elizabeth Elliott was Reformed. Well, we know she is now, and we know that Jim and Nate are now.

Yes. And certainly faithful brothers and a faithful sister. Amen. Well, thanks,

Bobby, in Hartsdale, New York. And keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

As far as your own personal experience on the mission field, what cultures and nations have you endeavored to bring the gospel to?

I've had the privilege of going to Jamaica and Chile and Cuba. I've been to three different nations in Africa, South Africa, Botswana, and Zambia.

I've preached in Scotland, also in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Just to mention, that's the bulk of the places I've been. I've also been to Guyana, South America, as well.

The primary thing that I've done over the years—did I leave out Cuba? I shouldn't leave out

Cuba, because I've been to Cuba three times thus far. The primary things I've been doing in recent years is

I've had opportunities to minister to other pastors, other professional Baptist pastors, particularly in Cuba and in Chile, and seeing them growing in their understanding of the

Scriptures, seeing how God is doing really great work in both those places, and returning to the same places and the same churches each year.

It's been a great encouragement, because we're cultivating relationships with these brothers and getting to know one another.

It's been hugely profitable to be able to have those opportunities. If you could go through the places where you have most frequently endeavored to bring the gospel, what were the unique challenges of each of those mission fields?

The biggest challenge, of course, is preaching in Spanish, which I don't do. I don't speak

Spanish, so learning how to preach through an interpreter. We kind of learned the cadence of that pretty quickly and were encouraged by that.

But the challenge is you sometimes use illustrations that would work in Georgia, that don't work in Cuba, that don't work in South America.

Sometimes your translator stops and looks at you and asks you to explain what you're saying, and you have to just abandon that particular illustration so that you can come up with one that they understand.

For example, I was in Cuba once, and I was using the example of trying to explain that works don't save us, the proof that we're saved.

So I said, my wife has a diamond ring on her finger, and it was her engagement ring.

And suppose you looked at me and said that I think you're a cheapskate, and you bought her a ring out of a bubblegum machine.

This really isn't a requirement. Well, I could take that diamond, scrape it across a window, and if it cuts the glass, that doesn't make it a diamond, but it proves it's one.

Well, I'm trying to wax eloquent about this, and then suddenly realize that in that culture, women don't receive a diamond ring when they're getting engaged.

And so the interpreter, when I said she has a diamond ring on her finger, he looked at me and said, really? And I said, well, yeah, that's normal in our country.

And he looked at her and said, it's normal in this country to have diamonds. And so I knew they thought we were all rich after that.

So I had to completely scrap the illustration because it just didn't work in that particular culture. As far as a level of hostility towards the gospel, is there any place that you can single out as being the most difficult mission field in that way, of having very negative feedback, hostility, perhaps even threats of endangering your life, or what have you?

Well, in my own life, I have not experienced that personally. Typically, most of the places

I have gone are churches that are already confessional. So we didn't run into that in my own trips.

But certainly, if you're going in a Muslim context in particular, you're going to have a very difficult time preaching the gospel among that culture because they are closed down and hostile to what you're going to say.

But I have not ministered in a Muslim culture except when I went to Indonesia. But even there, what

I was doing was ministering to missionary kids with Southern Baptists who were there in 1995.

So again, I should mention that I got some pushback there for some of the things

I was teaching, for example. Could you repeat what you said? For some reason, you cut out for a minute. Oh, I'm sorry.

Sure. When I went to Indonesia, actually, in 1995, it's interesting.

I did get pushback from some of the missionary kids that were there because in the process of teaching them,

I was teaching that women should not be pastors. And I got quite a good bit of pushback for that group because there were some of the missionaries there who believed women should serve as pastors and others as deacons.

So that's about the only hostility I ever received was in that particular context.

Yeah, and that kind of issue can bring up a lot of hostility, I've noticed, over the years.

Yes. And we have another listener who has a question for you. We have

Mike in Monroe, New York. I have to enlarge his email because the font is microscopic.

Mike says, I would like to hear what your guest has to say about men like Leighton Flowers or Roger Olson who both go out of their way to disprove the doctrines of election and predestination.

How can we accept such sovereign deniers, to borrow a phrase from the ungodly, as true believers when it is clear they do not just misunderstand sovereign grace, but detest it altogether?

How would you see these liars and false teachers? Also, the New American Standard Bible is my

Bible of choice. Godspeed, my brothers. Yes, that is a question that I have been hearing,

I have heard asked, not about those particular men, but as long as I have been a

Christian, I became Reformed within months of coming to Christ. In fact,

I had an instinctive negative reaction against the doctrines of Reformed theology when

I was first saved. I couldn't believe they could possibly be true. Hated them. And then someone gave me a booklet published by Chapel Library, George Whitfield's letter to John Wesley on election, and I did not know who either of those men were, didn't know who

John Calvin was, didn't know who Charles Spurgeon was, didn't know who any of the great heroes of the faith are.

So it wasn't men that led me to the doctrines of grace, but the Bible, the scriptural evidence that George Whitfield presented to John Wesley on this subject, just overwhelmed me, and the

Lord used it to bring me to understand. And although I initially said to myself, wow, these things are true, but I hate it, within months

I came to say, these things are true, and hallelujah, I love it. But the question of whether or not we have those who are not only non -Calvinists, but who are anti -Calvinists, who are, are they, are any of them truly regenerate?

Are they our brothers in Christ? I happen to believe that many, of course not all, but many are our misinformed, misguided brethren in Christ.

But what do you have to say about that? Yes, I can say that I'm familiar with the two men that you mentioned by name.

But I think the first thing we have to recognize is, speaking of just those who we would call non -Calvinists, here in the

South, I have to vouch for what goes on here, we are filled with Southern Baptist churches, I mean literally we have thousands of them in Georgia alone.

And for our culture, we have been trained in the church, in the evangelical environment, to be hostile to the doctrines of grace.

In other words, when you hear the doctrines of grace, it's like a culture shock, because it's completely contrary to what we've grown up with in so many ways.

And so many people, when they hear it, it's almost like they've been conditioned all their lives by the church environment they've been in, to not receive something like that, and it takes some doing and some thinking and some going back to the scriptures to search these things out, and to begin working through them.

J .R. Packer says in his book, Evangelism and the Psalty of God, that there are brothers whose minds have not caught up with the doctrines of grace, yet in their heart of hearts they believe it.

In other words, they know in their heart, nothing that they did brought them into the kingdom.

It was God himself, it was God's grace alone. They know that in terms of their experience, but their mind hasn't caught up to what their experience has already taught them, and what scripture itself affirms.

And so I think there is some hope in realizing that. When you see men who know what the scriptures say, who know what the doctrines are, and yet they're so absolutely hostile to them, sometimes people are just resisting a caricature, or criticizing a caricature of Calvinism that actually is a misrepresentation of what we actually believe.

And that's called building a theological straw man. But when men know what you're saying, and they completely reject it, there is a question there when you see a hostility there.

Because in John 6, you have a group of people who had just the day before, the 5 ,000 had been fed by Jesus, miraculously in the wilderness.

Well the next day they're following him and diligently searching after him, but Jesus knew that they were following him for all the wrong reasons.

Follow Jesus and you'll get free groceries. And so he turned around and begins, you know, and so everybody wants to follow that, right?

So Jesus knows why they're following him. He says, you did not seek me because of me, but you're seeking me because you were fed.

And they said, you need to believe on me. And he said, well show us a way we may believe on you. And we have an idea.

Moses gave us bread from heaven. Why don't you do that? See, they're still thinking with their stomachs.

And Jesus then begins to teach them sovereign grace. He teaches them every person whom the

Father has given me will come to me. And the one who comes to me I will otherwise cast out.

But then he begins to tell them about their own inability to come of their own free will to Christ by saying no one can come to me unless the

Father grants it. And he says that repeatedly throughout John 6 and at the end of it, finally they're offended because he says you cannot come to me unless the

Father grants it. And they leave him. And they follow him no more. And in that case, they have demonstrated they didn't truly know the

Lord at all. They were following for sensual, carnal reasons, not for that they might have life, eternal life in Jesus Christ.

And then he looks at his disciples, his apostles, and says, do you want to leave me too? And I love

Peter's response. Where will we go? You alone have the words of eternal life. In other words, what you've just said is really hard, but at the end of the day, you're the

Lord. And so be it hard, be it difficult, it's you that said it, so it must be true.

And there's the mark of true saving faith. I think if you see an overarching hostility that does raise some question marks about what's really going on in someone's life.

Yeah, when I have read the interaction between George Whitfield and John Wesley, who were opponents on these issues of Reformed theology,

George Whitfield is noticeably a lot more charitable and gracious and patient with John Wesley, who could be quite caustic.

But even though George Whitfield knew that John Wesley was, dare

I say, even mean -spirited at times, he viewed John Wesley as his brother in Christ, requested that John Wesley preach at his funeral when that day came, when he died, and when he was asked if he would see

John Wesley in heaven, and he said no, because he would be so close to God's throne that he would not be able to view him something like that.

I don't have the exact quote in front of me. So we have to be very careful about those that we deem to be reprobate or unsaved because they disagree with us, even passionately, on these issues.

And at the same time, we have to be careful about being far too ecumenical.

As much as I love the late J .I. Packer and as much as I have benefited from his books, it is actually quite a mystery to me how he could know the

Gospel so thoroughly well and be so biblically literate and doctrinally astute, how he could embrace

Roman Catholics as his brethren, and of course what I mean by that is Roman Catholics faithful to the dogma on the

Gospel, which is a false Gospel. Yes. The Gospel of the

Council of Trent. Yes. But anyway... It's pretty positive that the old saying goes, the best of men are the bestest men.

We're all fallen and fallible and we all make mistakes and we sometimes endorse things that put us back.

With a bit of hindsight, we realize, no, it wasn't the best idea. Well, we have to go to our midway break, folks.

And as you know, if you listen to this show often enough, the midway break is a bit longer than the other breaks because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because they are required by the

FCC to air their own public service announcements and other local things during the midway break to geographically localize

Zion Sherpa and Zion Radio and all their programming to Lake City, Florida. And we air simultaneously during this break our own globally heard commercials.

So please use this time wisely. Write down as much of the information as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you possibly can so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize our advertisers or at least respond to them to thank them for sponsoring this program because we want our advertisers to be pleased with the results of advertising with us so that they keep returning and renewing their contracts.

Otherwise, we would not be able to continue this program as we absolutely positively depend upon our advertisers' finances to exist.

So please try to respond to them as often as you can, at the very least, by thanking them for sponsoring the show.

And also send in questions to Jerry Slate, to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

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

USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Jerry Slate after these messages from our sponsors.

Music Hi, I'm Phil Johnson, host and executive director of Grace to You, the media ministry of John MacArthur.

I hope you plan to join me and Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, for the

G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Thursday, September 30th through Saturday, October 2nd.

The theme this year is Christ is supreme over all. My friend Chris Arnzen and I will be joined by several of our other friends, including

Vody Balcom, Justin Peters, Daryl Bernard Harrison, Virgil Walker, and James White.

More than 20 other speakers will be joining us, and the lineup this year includes my pastor, John MacArthur.

For details, visit g3conference .com. That's g3conference .com.

Chris Arnzen and I hope to see you September 30th through October 2nd at G3 2021.

This is Phil Johnson reminding you that Christ is supreme over all. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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

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

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

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

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

Anchored in Truth Ministries is the mission arm of Grace Life Church of the Shoals.

Based in Alabama, it supports missionaries in over 13 countries around the world.

Anchored in Truth is in partnership with 36 church plants, as well as radio stations, theological seminaries, and various programs for unreached people groups.

With an aim to glorify God and reach the nations with the gospel, it is a blessing to see how

God has used Anchored in Truth in so many different contexts globally, as well as locally.

To find out more about this vital work worldwide, visit anchoredintruth .org.

I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

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

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church 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

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

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

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

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

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

You no longer have to worry about missing a show or a special guest because you're in your car or still at work.

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

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

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

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

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

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Doctrines of Grace to the Olivet Discourse and the Book of Leviticus, the Reform Rookie podcast and YouTube channel is sure to have something to offer everyone seeking

Biblical truth. And finally, if you're looking to worship in a Reformed church that holds to the 1689

London Baptist Confession of Faith, please join us at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham, New York.

Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Avino, and thanks for listening. This is

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

Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens Iron radio financially.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor. Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio has had a long -time partnership with our friends at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

They specialize in supplying Reformed and Puritan books and Bibles at discount prices that make them affordable for everyone.

CVBBS has been a family -owned book service since 1987, operating out of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

They seek to bring you the best available Christian books and Bibles at the best possible prices.

Unlike other book sites, they make no effort to provide every book that is available or popular because, frankly, much of what is being printed is not worth your time.

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Lynnbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue in Lynnbrook, Long Island is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century.

Our church is far more than a Sunday worship service. It's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant.

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We're a diverse family of all ages. Enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ. In fellowship, play, and together.

Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman and I invite you to come and join us here at Lynnbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

Call Lynnbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402.

Or visit lynnbrookbaptist .org. That's lynnbrookbaptist .org. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

If you've watched my Dividing Line webcast often enough, you know I have a great love for getting Bibles and other documents vital to my ministry rebound to preserve and ensure their longevity.

And besides that, they feel so good. I'm so delighted I discovered Post -Tenebrous Lux Bible rebinding.

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Lux is a remarkably gifted craftsman and artisan. All his work is done by hand from the cutting to the pleating of corners to the perimeter stitching.

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That's PTLBibleRebinding .com. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,

Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read. He who never quotes will never be quoted.

He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

You need to read. Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the

Prince of Preachers to heart. The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.

Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God -centered, Christ -exalting books for all ages.

We invite you to go treasure hunting at Solid -Ground -Books .com.

That's Solid -Ground -Books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past to present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And never forget, folks, that Solid -Ground -Books .com

is a vital, a premier, a primary sponsor of this program. Without their financial assistance, we would likely go off the air, permanently borrowing a miracle from God financially.

So please visit Solid -Ground -Books .com frequently and purchase generously from them.

And keep in mind, you can get two of the books that my guest today,

Jerry Slate, has been a part of as far as the authorship.

We have William Carey and The Greatest Generation, and Faithfully Holding the

Ropes, the Life and Ministry of Samuel Pierce, two of the books written by Jerry Slate that are available and have been published by Solid -Ground -Books .com.

Please always remember also that you're not only going to be doing Solid -Ground -Books .com an enormous favor by purchasing books from them and helping them remain in business, and you're not only going to be doing us a favor at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio by making one of our very important advertisers happy and helping us remain on the air, you're going to be doing yourself and anyone for whom you are purchasing gifts from Solid -Ground -Books .com

a favor of incalculable value because they publish nothing but the finest in Reformed literature from the past going all the way back to the

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Yes, sir. It was a joy. Amen. And always remember, folks, when you purchase anything from Solid -Ground -Books .com

to mention Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Before we return to our guest today,

Jerry Slate, and our discussion on Our Sovereign God's Plan for Missions, we just have a couple of important announcements to make.

First of all, one of my greatest living heroes of the faith, my favorite preacher of all time,

Dr. Conrad M. Bayway. He is preaching this weekend in Hazleton, Pennsylvania at Grace Fellowship Church.

That's Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And if you are able to get to Hazleton, Pennsylvania, I strongly urge you to take a plane, train, or automobile, or parachute, or any other way you can get to Hazleton to hear this powerfully gifted servant of God.

Just out of curiosity, Pastor Slate, are you familiar with our dear brother, Dr. Conrad M.

Bayway? I am familiar with him, and I've emailed with him a few times, but I've never had the chance to meet him.

And you just got a little garbled there. Did you say you never had a chance to meet him? I've never had a chance to meet him.

Okay. Well, for those of you who are in the same position as Jerry, has never got a chance to meet

Conrad, if you can make it to Hazleton, Pennsylvania, the Grace Fellowship Church website is

GFC, standing for Grace Fellowship Church, GFC, Hazleton, H -A -Z -L -E -T -O -N, that's

H -A -Z -L -E -T -O -N .org, and you'll have all the information on how to get there.

And I just got exciting news, minutes before going on the air today, and Dr.

Conrad M. Bayway will also be preaching, God willing, at the church where I am a member,

Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, on Sunday, October 3rd, and he will be my guest speaker at the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastor's Luncheon on Monday, October 4th, from 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m. Anyone in Christian leadership who is a man, who is a pastor, an elder, a deacon, a leader in a parachurch organization, this is a men's only lunch, as it always has been since the early 1990s, a luncheon that was begun as an act or expression of love by my late wife,

Julie, who recognized that I had so many friends who are pastors, an unusually high percentage of my friends are pastors, and she said, you know, we should be treating your pastor friends to lunch every

Christmas, and not only treat them to lunch, but give them books and have a guest speaker come in, and we've been doing that since the early 90s, and it has become the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Luncheon since I launched my program in 2005, and this is absolutely free.

Nothing is for sale at this luncheon. Christian publishers, all of the major, or at least most of the major Christian publishers all over the

United States and the United Kingdom, donate at least a hundred copies of a book

I select from them to give to the pastors for free, so there are hundreds of books there, and each pastor gets each and every one of those books, each man in attendance,

I should say, gets each and every one of those books for free, so you're getting fed physically for free, fed spiritually for free, and you're getting a whole bunch of free books.

So, if you'd like to be included on that invitation list, send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com, and put Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line.

Also, folks, if you love this show and you do not want it to disappear from the airwaves, I'm urging you, please go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

click support, then click, click to donate now. You could donate instantly with a debit or credit card, and if you prefer snail mail, sending in a gift the old -fashioned way through the postal service, you can send it to the address, the physical address that will appear on your screen as well when you click support at ironsharpensironradio .com.

You can also advertise with us. We are certainly in great need of your advertising dollars. Send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com

and put advertising in the subject line. And as long as you are promoting something that is compatible with what we believe, you don't have to be promoting something that's identically the same as what

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and put advertising in the subject line, and I will help you launch an ad campaign as quickly as possible.

We are in urgent need of those advertising dollars. Also, folks, if you are not a member of a very biblically solid, theologically sound church that is faithful to our

Lord Jesus Christ, including Berean Baptist Church of Hiram, Georgia, no matter where you live on the planet

Earth, I may be able to help you find a church. I have helped many people in our audience from all parts of the globe find churches that they didn't even know existed, or they may have passed by these churches every day and not even known that they were theologically sound.

So if you are in that position of not being a member of a biblically faithful church, or if you have family, friends, and loved ones who are not members of a biblically faithful church, or you are going on vacation, and you want to visit a biblically faithful church anywhere in the world, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line.

And last but not least, folks, when you are giving to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, please do not siphon money away from your regular giving that you're accustomed to to your own local church in order to give to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Please never do that. And also, please, if you are really struggling to survive, do not plunge your family into financial peril by giving to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Those two things are commands of God and Scripture providing for your church and family. Providing for my radio show is obviously not a command of Scripture.

But if you are blessed financially above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands, you have extra money that you use for recreational purposes and trivial purposes.

Well, please, if you love this show, use some of that money to help us remain on the air. Go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

click support, then click, click to donate now. And if you have a question for Jerry Slate on our sovereign

God's plan for missions, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com give us a first name at least, city and state of residence, and country of residence.

If you live outside the USA, only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

We have a very faithful listener and a very faithful financial supporter of this show in Asheboro, North Carolina, Grady, who says,

Greetings, brothers. Growing up as a Southern Baptist, we had the

Lottie Moon and Bertha Smith missions offerings. I don't know a lot about their ministries, but I do know that some

Southern Baptists have used them as examples of why women should be able to pastor.

I heard Elizabeth Elliott say she always found a man that could lead the services even if she had to tell him what to say.

As a Reformed Baptist, our church has chosen to have indigenous men trained as the elders to lead their congregations.

Do you ever see where a woman would have to pastor a church?

I guess he's saying, did you ever see where it was necessary for a woman to pastor a church? Personally, I believe the

Holy Scriptures make it clear that is unbiblical. Right, and I would agree completely with that.

That women are forbidden to rule or exercise authority over men or teach men in the

Holy Scriptures is set forth in the book of 1 Timothy. It's a violation of the creation ordinance.

God has made a distinction between the genders, and when you violate that distinction, you open the door to all kinds of problems.

And so the answer, to my mind, would be no. It's a very pragmatic argument to say, well, there's nobody else here, so I'm going to do it.

It's one thing for a woman to labor in personal evangelism. It's quite another for her to pastor a church.

And that the Scripture forbids. Well, thank you, Grady. Now, what would be the parameters of work, mission work, that you believe a woman is permitted to do?

Would she be able to translate the pastors or the missionary sermons?

What are the parameters? Certainly. Well, certainly she has the right to teach other women and to teach children.

I'm sorry, you... I broke up again, didn't I? Yes. She would certainly have the right to teach other women and to teach children, be involved in translation work, certainly a major part of what a woman can be a part of is hospitality, which is a huge part of ministry.

And so laboring in hospitality with her husband to open her home in ministry to others is crucial, absolutely essential.

Certainly involved in Bible translation work, even in offering books and things of that nature.

But as long as she's not taking over the role, the unique authority that is given to a pastor in Scripture itself.

And so when it comes to actual teaching, it would be exclusively in the realm of teaching other women and children,

I'm assuming. That's correct. That's correct. But never teaching men. Great. Well, thanks again,

Grady, and keep listening to Orange, Red, and Zion Radio and keep spreading the word about this program in Asheboro, North Carolina and beyond.

I hope to see you at the G3 conference coming up in the fall. As far as your heroes of the mission field, can you name some of them and explain to our listeners why they are your heroes?

Wow. How long is your program? Yes. We've got about a half hour.

Yeah, yeah. Right, right. Well, certainly David Brainerd stands out as a missionary to Indians in New York.

His diary and journal was hugely influential upon other men, William Carey most notably, who literally could quote entire sections by heart of his journals.

Carey stands out as another hero, certainly, although, interestingly enough, I would look at his life and realize that he was probably sent out too soon when you consider the fact that his wife was not ready to go on the mission field with him.

And I think if she had been given a few more years to grow and mature, that things could have turned out differently in that way.

But certainly he did set the tone and the pace for those who came after him.

You mentioned Samuel Pierce several times in some of the writing I have done. Samuel Pierce was not a missionary.

He was a British pastor. Close colleague and friend of William Carey's. And part of why

I love Samuel Pierce is because he didn't go to the mission field. He wanted to go.

He desired to join Carey in India. And yet, as he submitted himself to his fellow pastors in the various associations of churches, they concluded that they should not send him because they felt he was too valuable at home for the work of the mission.

And so he submitted himself to them and did not go. I've said often that Carey is my hero because he went and Pierce is my hero because he stayed.

Because he was a man who could submit himself to his peers. Another would be Adoniram Judson.

Judson was to the United States what Carey was to Great Britain, one of the first pioneer missionaries sent out from us.

And another one certainly I have to mention is John Payton, a Scottish Presbyterian who was sent to the

New Hebrides to establish churches among islands that were completely filled with cannibals.

Some consider John Payton's autobiography, which Banner of Truth publishes, to be one of the greatest missionary biographies of all time.

And I think it would be hard to deny that. Now, can you please explain to us, in fact, this was actually a major part of our brother

Dr. Conrad M. Bayway's sermon last night at Grace Reform Baptist Church of Camp Hill where he was a visiting preacher and I had the privilege to be there.

But the main focus of his message last night was basically giving

God the glory in missions. If you could please explain to our listeners, especially in a way that might be helpful to our non -Reformed listeners, because we do have a considerable number of non -Reformed listeners, even non -Christian listeners.

We even have Muslims that listen and others outside of Christianity. But if you could explain what our emphasis, what our goal should be as Christians in the work of missions.

And I think that there have been errors on both the non -Reformed

Armenian side that tend to be far too man -centered.

And I also believe on the other end of the spectrum that would be in the realm of hyper -Calvinism there have been some serious errors as well regarding that whole subject.

But if you could explain the main goal and emphasis of missions. Yes, well you've already hit upon it, that is the glory of God.

We have this language used all throughout Scripture and most notably I think of Habakkuk where the

Scriptures say that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters fill the sea.

The creation mandate, even to Adam, essentially was to fill the world with God's glory.

And by the publication of the Gospel our intention is to see God being worshipped and praised and glorified in every place.

Certainly it is true that one goal of missions is the conversion of sinners. We want to see people regenerated and make new creatures in Christ, no question.

That is actually the secondary motivation. The primary motivation is the glory of God. John Calvin was spot on when he said that we are by nature idolaters.

Our hearts are factories for idols. And when people are transformed by the

Gospel not only are they saved and dressed in the righteousness of Christ and forgiven for their sins, but they are made into true worshippers of the living

God. Jesus said in John 4 that the Father is seeking people who will worship

Him in spirit and in truth. In that sense, I like to say to our congregation from time to time, we want to be seeker sensitive in our worship.

We just need to identify who the seeker is. And the seeker here is God the Father to please

Him with our worship. And so the goal is to see men transformed into worshippers of the true and living

God so that He is glorified and praised and exalted. And that is our primary goal. The first motivation for missions is the love of the

Lord our God. Sometimes it is said that the Great Commission is the greatest commandment ever given. Jesus actually identified a different commandment.

The first and greatest commandment is the love of the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And that is the principal motivation of missions.

The secondary motivation is loving your neighbor as yourself and seeing sinners converted to Christ.

And so while I do not want to minimize in any way the love that we should have for our fellow man, it is our love for the

Lord first and foremost that is supreme. So we need to make Christ known whether men receive Him or not and to give

Him glory in that way. Now, at the risk of getting myself in some serious trouble with my fellow

Reformed brethren, do you think sometimes in our earnest desire and efforts to keep

God on center stage and being the primary focus of His praise, honor, and glory even in the death of Christ, the obedience of the

Son to the Father, etc. Do you think sometimes we could do disservice to what

God intended by His death on Calvary and our efforts in evangelism when we really remove any importance or minimize radically to an unbiblical point the importance of those for whom

Christ died? You and I believe that He only died as a substitute for His elect.

If He died as a substitute for everyone in the world, as many

Arminians believe, they should actually be universalists because that would mean everybody would be saved.

In fact, there are even, perhaps they're a minority, but there are even some Arminians who are scholars and theologians and seminary professors who recognize that.

I have heard even a Nazarene professor, who I've read what he said, actually, where he was basically scolding or correcting his students for using the term substitutionary atonement.

He said, we believe Christ died for every single human that ever lived and ever will live, so He could not be a substitute since everyone would indeed be saved.

But going back to my original point, can we at some times, in our desperate attempt to not be guilty of Arminian heresies and errors, undermine the beauty and the glorious gift?

I mean, the Scriptures tell us that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten

Son. I don't mean that to Arminianize, if that's a word, the atonement, but at the same time, it is a very important element of His death, is it not?

Yeah, certainly. If I understand your question, we should be, the canon of Dort, which is where the so -called five points of Calvinism came from in the first place, literally uses the word promiscuously.

It says the Gospel should be preached promiscuously. That's my very favorite use of that word

I've ever read anywhere. The point being, sometimes in the Reformed world, we are guilty of getting the

Gospel right, that's a good thing, but not as zealous to get the Gospel out. And we should have both.

The Arminian too often is happy to get the Gospel out, but he's got a Gospel that's not quite the full

Gospel. And there's enough of Christ proclaimed by the Arminian world that people can find faith in Christ, but nonetheless, there needs to be a greater zeal for people and for souls.

Paul literally said in the Book of Romans, he said, if I could be accursed from Christ, and that would allow my brethren, my fellow countrymen, the

Israelites, to be grafted in, as it were, then I could wish it upon myself. That's how much he loved his fellow man.

So we want to always have our primary focus on glory of God, certainly, but at the same time, we do want to have a zeal for our fellow man.

Paul actually viewed himself as a slave, as a man who owed a debt, a debt of love, to his fellow man to make

Christ known to them. And so, yes, we should be zealous in our desire to spread that Gospel to others because we love the

Lord, but also because we love never -dying souls. Yes, and we do have, actually, a listener who's asking a question on that very subject.

CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York. He says, There seems to be disagreement, even amongst the

Reform, as to how to answer the question, Did Christ die for all men?

There are some Calvinists who say Christ only died as a redeemer for the elect, but there are benefits to the entire universe in regard to his death, even for the reprobate.

Where would you fall with these two opposite understandings, it seems, even among Calvinists, about the death of Christ?

Well, I would hold to a very strict substitutionary view of the atonement, that Christ died exclusively for his elect and for them alone, that he made a full atonement for them.

He didn't make a potential atonement. And so, I actually find myself even being very careful to not speak,

I mean, sometimes Calvinists will speak and say, Christ's death is effectual for the elect, but sufficient for the non -elect.

And I find myself being a little bit guarded about that from the perspective of saying it this way, Christ is sufficient to save anyone and everyone who comes to God through him.

It's the sufficiency of Christ himself that we proclaim in the Gospel. But as far as the extent of the atonement, it is exclusively for the elect, because it is substitutionary.

That being said, certainly there are temporal benefits that I believe come to the non -elect from the perspective even of the fact that God's wrath has been postponed until all the elect are gathered in.

And so, the non -elect benefit from that. If that answers your question.

Yes, well, I'm assuming it answered CJ's question. And, you know, that actually goes along the same lines as the love of God.

Now, by the way, that first way you, the explanation that you offered, which was not your own, that was actually a quote, was it not, by Andrew Fuller?

That Christ's death was sufficient to save all men. Right. But his intention was to save the elect.

Something to those words. In the Gospel, worthy of all acceptation, yes. Yes. But the love of God.

Now, when I have had disagreements with my Arminian and other non -Reformed friends and loved ones, or acquaintances, the issue of the love of God will come up.

And they will frequently ask, do you believe that God loves everyone?

And I will say, well, God only loves the elect as a father loves his own children and as a groom loves his bride.

Yes. There may be other levels of love that include benevolence and common grace.

I know my friends at the Protestant Reformed Church despise that term. But how do you, how do you describe this?

Is it love that he has for the non -elect? Or is it just patient benevolence and kindness that would not be under the category of love?

How do you explain that? Yes, you know, of course, in God there is, because God is simple, there are no divisions in God, no parts in God.

But for us to understand or to explain things, it's helpful to speak in the categories of God's general love versus his particular love.

There's a general love that God has for every man. He calls it sun to shine upon the just and the unjust, rain to fall.

You even find Paul teaching this in Acts 17, also in Lystra when he was there, speaking of how

God has shown us kindness and given us even seasons of joy, that there is a general love of God from which no man is excluded.

And, I know there are some Reformed brothers who would probably disagree with this, but I do think even the universal preaching of the gospel is a sign of God's general love for all men.

That being said, there's a peculiar love, a particular love, that God has that is exclusive for his elect.

Jacob I have loved, and Esau I have hated. Obviously, Esau was excluded from this particular love that God had for Jacob.

And, you know, I think the description you have used is helpful. There's several children in our church, and I love those children, but I don't love those children like I love my six children that are my own.

There's a peculiar love I have for them because they're my children, from which other children are strangers.

And so, even so, there's a love God has for his elect that is peculiar and unique. You know,

Paul could say, Christ loved me and gave himself for me. And so, he's speaking there, of course, of God's particular love for us.

Now, we have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who asks, Having said what you have said, is it ever appropriate on the mission field, whether it be in a foreign land or in your own neighborhood in the

United States, to tell strangers that Jesus loves them and died for them?

Hmm. I believe it's fair to say that, you know, to look at someone in the eye and tell them that God loves you without having to qualify to death what you mean when you say that.

You're not saying that they're necessarily one of God's elect. I do not believe it's appropriate to look someone in the eye who does not know the

Lord and say, Christ died for you. Christ died for sinners. You know, when you come to faith in Christ, then

I can look back and realize, yes, Christ died for me. I'm among that number. But I think it's very often in making application, whether it's in our own pulpits here in the

States or whether it's in a foreign context, we have to be very careful about the nouns and the pronouns we use in the way we make application.

And so, you never find in the book of Acts that has so many specimens of evangelistic preaching.

Never one time do you find the apostles looking at lost sinners and saying, Jesus died for you. But you do have them saying, there's a promise given to you and that is if you believe on Jesus Christ he'll receive you.

And so, I think it's very important that we need to be careful in that regard. Yes, if anything, it should give an unrepentant rebel against God a salved conscience and a legitimacy in his mind to remain the way he is, is to be reminded over and over again,

Jesus loves you and he paid the price for your sin. I mean, well, that's great to know. Thanks.

So, even any occasion where I might wonder if Jesus is truly who he claims to be is true or not,

I could still rest assured that he's covered my sin for me. So, I guess

I could just stay the way I am and enjoy my sin, right? I mean, that would seem to be the logical response, especially when you also hear combined with that the illogical, oxymoronic statements made with good intentions, of course, by even such well -known evangelists as Franklin Graham and his father before him, that not only does

Jesus love you and he died for you, but his love is a never -ending love.

It's an eternal love. Nothing can make him fall out of love with you. Now, obviously, a hardcore five -point

Arminian or a Roman Catholic or a member of a cult might actually believe that God could fall out of love with people, but most evangelicals, whether they're

Reformed or not, even hardcore Arminians would never say that, but it doesn't fall in line with their belief system, does it?

That's right. That's right. In the Gospel, what we say is that there's a promise that if you will come to Christ repenting of your sins, renouncing your confidence in your own righteousness to save you, and trusting him to do for you what you cannot do for yourself,

Jesus is able to save you, and he's just as willing as he is able because he's made this promise to you in his word, and he cannot lie.

So the ground that people come into Christ is not so much the extent of the atonement as it is his promises in the word of God which they receive by faith.

And then, when we enter into the kingdom, then we are able to look back and realize, wow, he died for me, and that's why

I'm saved, because his redemption has accomplished everything that it was supposed to accomplish. We have

Joseph in south -central Pennsylvania who asks, when on a mission field, especially one in a foreign country, how much respect should a

Christian give towards the traditions and rituals of those in false religions?

When do we have to draw the line and tell those who we are evangelizing in the mission field, that's where you cross the line and you must repent of that, never to partake or participate in that activity or belief ever again?

That's the perennial question in cross -cultural ministry, isn't it? The difficulty of what parts can you adapt to the culture and what parts must you confront in the culture?

A general answer to the question there, certainly as a concessional Baptist, we believe in the perpetuity of the

Ten Commandments as God's moral law, and so these form boundaries for us that we are not to transgress and that are required as universal obedience for all men.

Within those boundaries, we have Christian liberty, we have latitude. Within those boundaries, and it's interesting that Paul, in talking about Christian liberty in 1

Corinthians, addresses the issue of cross -cultural ministry from the perspective of Christian liberty.

He says, in order to win the Jew, I become as a Jew. But in order to win the Greek, I become as a

Greek. And when you think about that, it's really a fascinating thing because here's an Orthodox Jew, a man who grew up with a kosher diet, and yet he says, when

I'm with the Gentile, I set aside my kosher diet and I'll dig in and eat his pork chops.

And doing so is a part of winning him to Christ. I become one of them that I might win them to Christ.

And yet, he goes on to qualify not without law towards Christ. In other words,

I'm still under the commandments of Christ and I must obey what he said without compromise, but there are some traditions that I may be able to say, let me embrace this because this is a part of the culture that I'm not compromising

God's law nor God's gospel in order to embrace. But it's always a difficult thing, a challenge, in every single mission field to figure out what are the boundaries here.

William Carey, in many ways, is a good example of these kind of things. He, in his mission in India, had to deal with the question that they had people who were coming out of Hinduism who had to name

Krishna in their names and that they, as a mission, required new converts to change their names to a

Christian name as opposed to a name that had roots in paganism. And they went to the scriptures and they saw that there were men named

Apollos and others like them who had Roman mythology and Greek mythology in their background and yet they were never required to change their names.

But then, interestingly enough, there was a controversy that arose over the question of communion because in those days, communion was given with a common cup so everybody shared the same cup.

Well, imagine you have a group of converts in your church in India and they all come from different caste systems.

And so you have a high caste convert and you have a low caste convert. If the high caste convert drinks after the low caste, he loses his caste.

And that has enormous cultural impact upon him in terms of his economy, his family renouncing him, the job he can get after that time.

And yet, Terry and his associates consistently required that if men came to faith in Christ before they would baptize them and admit them to the church, they had to renounce the caste system because it was contrary to Christianity.

And so the very first high caste man who was ever converted, he was baptized on a

Sunday morning, Sunday evening, he celebrated the Lord's Supper at the church for the first time. Krishna Pal, who was a low caste man, took the cup and drank the cup and this high caste man got out of his seat, walked across, grabbed the cup from the low caste man and put it to his lips to say,

I'm renouncing caste, you're my brother in Christ, and we are one family. So there you have something of a tension between what things in culture must be confronted and what things must we say we can adapt these things.

And we are going to our final break right now. It's going to be a lot more brief than the other breaks. If you have a question for Jerry Slate, send it in immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous. Fellowship in worship one another as we're walking in the light.

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LindbrookBaptist .org. That's LindbrookBaptist .org. Welcome back. If you have a question for our guest today,

Jerry Slate, please send it in immediately because we're almost out of time. ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

Pastor Jerry, if you could provide for us at least two minutes of summary for our topic today, uninterrupted, a summary of what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

Hmm. Well, missions is something that in the

Reformed world we need to give more thought to, more attention to. So often today, most missions that is done is parachurch -driven rather than local church -driven.

And so much that is done in the name of Christ is all theological rather than understanding how missiology connects to all the disciplines of theology that are there.

We need godly men raised up who can be sent out two by two to take the gospel to places where people have never heard that their creator has a son named

Jesus, to preach that gospel, to see churches established that are self -governing, self -supporting, and self -propagating, to see indigenous elders mentored and trained who can shepherd the souls with a

Reformed faith, men who fully subscribe to our confession of faith. Missions should be confessional.

And then to see more churches planted until you have literally an association of churches that can help and encourage each other and hold each other accountable to work together for the furtherance of the kingdom in their own nation and their own culture.

And so, we want to be intentional that way. Missionaries should be sent from the local church, something we've not really gotten to touch upon today, but they should be sent out by the local church.

Paul and Barnabas, the first New Testament missionaries, were sent out by the church in Antioch, and they set for us a model and a template for all missionaries from there.

So, the local church needs to reclaim our duty that we've been given by the head of our church, the

Lord Jesus Christ, to lay a hold of the Great Commission and seek meaningfully to fulfill it. Now, how would that not be in contradiction to your work with Reformed Baptist Mission Service in the past and other organizations that might be viewed as parachurch organizations involved in missions?

Yes. One thing I used to love to say about RBMS was in our some 30 -some year history,

RBMS never sent out a single missionary. They came alongside the local church.

The church itself sent out the missionary, but the service agency worked in just that way, an assistant to the church to help coordinate missions, but we were not the sending agency ever.

But helped with the structure of vetting the men, testing them, examining them, and then seeing their support raised as well financially from our sister churches.

Well, we have time for one quick question. We have an anonymous listener who says,

I'm a member of a church who sends out missionaries, but they seem to quickly yank them off the field when they don't see numeric growth as quickly as the mission board would hope.

Should we not be more patient with these missionaries? Absolutely. The first several years, you should really be seeing your missionary focus upon learning the language and the culture that they're going to minister to, and that takes a lot of time and a lot of work before they can really begin preaching effectively to that culture.

So, numbers in and of themselves, by the same rationale, we would take Isaiah or Jeremiah off the field, because they didn't see converts in their ministry either.

Well, we are out of time, and I want to repeat the website for Berean Baptist Church in Hiram, Georgia, where our guest is the pastor, bereanchurchps .org.

bereanchurchps .org. Thank you so much, Pastor Jerry, for being such an extraordinary guest today.

I look forward to having you back soon and often on Iron Trip and Zion Radio. I want to thank all of our listeners, and I want you to all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater