December 14, 2020 Show with Dr. Joe Morecraft on “The Holy Trinity & Its Implications on Salvation, Politics & the Structure of Human Society”

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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 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.

We're listening via live streaming at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio dot com. This is Chris Arnzen your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio wishing you all a happy Monday on this 14th day of December 2020.

I'm thrilled to have back on the program Dr. Joe Moorcraft one of my favorite guests of all time.

He is an author and pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming Georgia and he is going to be addressing the

Holy Trinity and its implications on salvation politics and the structure of human society and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back again to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Dr.

Joseph C. Moorcraft III and it's always a privilege for me brother. Well as we always do especially for the sake of those who are hearing you for the first time tell our listeners about Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming Georgia.

We're a small congregation of about 60 people we are four years old we're a member of Hanover Presbytery we are a conservative

Presbyterian Church that is we believe really do believe the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms.

We believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God and we seek to be faithful in carrying out the

Great Commission and spreading the Reformed faith. Our people come from all kinds of backgrounds and God has woven them into one.

They really have a heart for the conquest of America with the gospel and we pray for that we work toward that and the spearhead of all of our efforts is evangelism and capturing the hearts and minds of Americans for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Amen well it fits the description of a church I would certainly want to be a member of if I was living in the

Cumming Georgia area that's for sure and if you want to look up more information about this church folks you can go to HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com

HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com Now tell our listeners for those of them who have not heard about your commentary on the

Westminster Larger Catechism known as Authentic Christianity an exposition of the theology and ethics of the

Westminster Larger Catechism and this very huge really phenomenal contribution to the body of Christ comes if I'm not mistaken in eight volumes?

Yes sir it's eight volumes they're beautifully produced Kyle Shepard who produced them did a magnificent job

I think right now they're on sale I'm not sure but you go to WestminsterCommentary .com

and you'll know about them these books I did not write them in a seminary context or an academic context but they are basically my notes from twenty years of sermons on the

Westminster Larger Catechism to a congregation that had all ages all kinds of people so it's not just for preachers though it is for preachers it's for fathers mothers young people

I know people that use them in their family devotions and various things like that as resource material

I wrote them for my children and my grandchildren and if anybody else buys them that's all the better but basically

I wrote it for them and for future generations to know that in the 21st century there still were people that believed in the faith of our fathers.

Amen well it obviously means a lot to you to be bringing you to such an emotional state over this and it blesses my heart to hear that and I also want to read a plug for this commentary series a commendation by someone who

I am confident will be well known to our Reformed listeners anyway our theologically

Reformed listeners which would probably be the majority Dr. Joseph A.

Piper Jr. President of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in South Carolina says every

Christian who is serious about the Reformed faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use this set it is much more than an exposition of the

Larger Catechism it is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology and that is quite a commendation from somebody of the caliber of Dr.

Joseph A. Piper Jr. I really appreciate his words well today as I mentioned already in the introduction of the program we are going to be discussing the

Holy Trinity and its implications on salvation politics and the structure of human society if anybody wants to join us on the air with a question of your own send us an email to ChrisArnzen 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 let's say you are struggling through a theological issue and find yourself in disagreement with your own pastor or the congregation or denomination that you are in you might even be a pastor yourself when you find yourself coming to conclusions over our topic today that differ from your own fellow elders or denomination or whatever the case is that would compel you to remain anonymous if it is a personal and private matter such as those examples are we will obviously give you the freedom to remain anonymous but if you are just asking a general theological question we would ask you please give us your first name at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence we have done quite a number of programs on the

Holy Trinity and in particular its implications on salvation but to my knowledge

I cannot recall ever doing a program that involved the Holy Trinity's implications on politics and the structure of human society but if you could start the program with a biblical definition of the

Holy Trinity and obviously you have those who are in cults or in religions that deny the

Trinity they will say there is no such thing as a biblical definition and they will scoff and say the word isn't even in there and I'm sure if they are hearing lectures or sermons or whatever they call the messages delivered to those that gather together in whatever religion they are a part of or whatever they read as far as literature promoting their religion

I'm sure that they are just not quoting the Bible word for word in fact if somebody is to preach they are supposed to exegete the

Bible they have to use their own words as a minister in addition of course to Bible reading aloud and so on I'm not trying to undermine that but even before you give us a definition of the

Holy Trinity Joe isn't what I'm said a very important thing that is a guard rail preventing the more easy derailment of people into heresy the fact that we need to use words that have historically been developed to help us better understand the

Bible in a clearer manner that are using words that aren't necessarily in the

Bible itself. Yes sir the Trinity is the heart and soul of Christianity without a

Trinity people whatever religion may be listening without the doctrine of the Trinity and the reality of the

Trinity there is no such thing as Christianity there is no way of having a unified view of this world without the doctrine of the

Trinity and when we compromise the doctrine of the Trinity there is no possibility of salvation if there is not a

Trinity and if we compromise the doctrine of the Trinity it will always in a culture lead to tyranny to loss of freedom to racism as expressed particularly in the critical race theory you ask well we will get to that later on but without a doctrine of the

Trinity we have nothing and like you said the words not in the

Bible but there is a lot of doctrines that we have truths in the Bible that we talk about with non -biblical words which is okay because if a word accurately expresses and defines a biblical truth well the

Bible wasn't given to us just so we could repeat the words as one person said it's not simply the words of scripture that's the word of God it's the meaning of scripture and so if we have the proper meaning of scriptural text and there is a good word in English that expresses accurately and faithfully without introducing any innovations that particular doctrine then that's good in fact what's interesting is

I had a friend past tense who didn't like the word Trinity for the very reason it wasn't in the

Bible and as a result of not liking the word Trinity he did not have a wholesome view of God because without that and so he would try to cover his false doctrine on God by saying

I don't use non -biblical terms well if you don't use non -biblical terms and the doctrine you believe is false then it doesn't matter the apostasy it's worse form it's beginning it's conclusion is the denial of the historical doctrine of the

Trinity and Christians today are so biblically theologically historically illiterate

I don't say that lightly I say that after having studied several generations of American Christians since the late middle 20th century that were compared to our fathers we are basically illiterate and we don't realize even those of us who are evangelicals don't realize that the language that we use today to talk about the truth about the

Trinity was a language developed by the early church three or four or five hundred years after the birth of Christ and without God using those people in the early days of the history of Christianity we wouldn't even have a language to talk about the

Bible and yet we don't know that today we've forgotten that language preachers aren't teaching people the language of the church for the past almost two thousand years concerning how we talk about God so our understanding of God is basically emotional it's based on feeling it's half baked it is embarrassing it is offensive to God and so one of the most important subjects we can possibly talk about we'll never understand it completely of course because we're talking about an infinite

God and we're finite creatures is who God is as I said a while ago this distinguishes

Christianity from all other religions how do we know that the God of Islam Allah and the

God of Christianity are not the same as a lot of people profess even the modern

Roman Catholic catechism says that it is the same God that they adore which is obviously really seriously heretical in fact

I had a Muslim years ago on my show to debate a

Christian apologist and I asked him do you adore the same one true

God as the Roman Catholics do he said absolutely not right they understand it's a different God why because the

God of Christianity is one God in three persons simultaneously no human being thought that up I mean no human being in a million years would have ever conceived that doctrine the only reason we talk about God of being one

God in three persons simultaneously is because that's what

God has revealed about himself in the Bible and so whenever we think of God without thinking about the

Trinity as Calvin said the word God is just an empty word that fits around in the brain there's no content to it but when the historic

Christian church talks about God it's very specific it's talking about the one and only

God there is and that one God exists simultaneously in three persons

God the Father God the Son God the Holy Spirit each of the three persons fully completely

God and yet each person distinct from the other in one

God for all eternity and those three persons that one God three persons are not just words or doctrines it's a reality those three persons love each other they are in an eternal fellowship with each other they know each other so that there is one

God and each of the three persons of that Trinity is fully and completely

God and yet distinct as persons the Bible teaches that from the very first verse of the

Bible as soon as you open the Bible in Genesis 1 you're confronted with the triune

God now of course the Old Testament is not as full in its revelation of the

Trinity as the New Testament but nevertheless the doctrine of the Trinity is there in the first verse of the

Bible in the beginning God created heavens and the earth by speaking and the

Spirit hovered over the waters now what's interesting is the word God there is plural the

Hebrews had a singular they had a dual that is if you were going to talk about two things and then they had a plural which means more than two and the word for God there is

Elohim but the verb is singular it's third person singular so you have one

God who exists in a plurality of persons and then you have three persons that one

God includes the Father who speaks the word the word is the instrument by which he created the world and the

Spirit hovered upon the waters and brought life and order and light to it so here the very first verse of the

Bible you're confronted with the triune God now going back to just briefly why or should

I say biblical proof that when we teach what is in the

Bible when we teach what is taught in the Bible the need for using words that aren't necessarily all in the

Bible is that an elder for instance according to the scriptures themselves needs to be apt to teach it doesn't say he needs to be literate and able to read the scriptures aloud which of course he would but he needs to be able to teach and teaching is more than just reading exactly the wording that's in the

Bible it's exegeting it it's drawing out of the Bible the truths that are contained in there which would require from time to time using words that are not in there am

I right? yes sir of course it involves showing how various doctrines are related to each other and how they dovetail into each other and flow out of each other and how you apply them that it's more than just a mere repetition of words it's teaching the meaning and what's sad in our culture is

I would say most professed Christians will at least profess that they believe that God is a trinity one

God in three persons but beyond that they don't know what that means and if you ask the average person what do you mean by trinity more than likely he'll give you an heretical answer more than likely he'll say well

God sometimes acts as a father and God other times reveals himself as the son and God at other times reveals himself as the

Holy Spirit well that's an old heresy that the early church condemned called modalism and civilianism correct?

yes sir that it's like God has three faces sometimes he reveals himself with one face another another face another another but you never know the

God behind the faces whereas the true living God is a

God who fully wholly completely reveals himself as father wholly reveals himself as the son and wholly reveals himself as the

Holy Spirit the three persons of the trinity are not parts of God God does not have any parts he is not made up of parts if he was he wouldn't be perfect which part came first he is fully revealed as God the entire

Godhead revealed in each person trinity and yet mysteriously the father is not the son and the son is not the

Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is not the father and yet they are all the full each is the full revelation of the one and only

God himself yes there is a very well known heretic who is an extremely popular author and speaker in fact he was at one time the best selling

Christian author in the United States if not the world and obviously

I use the term Christian loosely because that's the way he was described in this survey and his name is

T .D. Jakes and T .D. Jakes when

Trinitarians have urged him and even pled with him to be crystal clear on what he believes about God in reference to the trinity he has continually said acting as if he is taking higher ground and more biblical ground

I will not be forced to use a man -made term like the trinity and this is what

I believe about what and who God is and when he describes it in writing it's not the historical view that the church has embraced for two millennia over two millennia it is a modalist understanding that you were just describing that's a perfect illustration of those who say we don't want to use non -biblical words and they use that spiritual sounding language to veil actual heresy there is no other

God that can save you from sin except the triune God and I've even seen in I've seen on websites of churches sometimes

I'll get well in fact I frequently get requests from folks to be guests on this program and I have to vet them obviously and I will typically go to a website and look up what the church where they are a member where they may be a pastor an elder what their church teaches and when it comes to the description of God you will find on some occasions again a refusal to use the word trinity and they may begin in a good way that sounds orthodox but then as you read on you see things begin to fall apart and you will hear very often the

Holy Spirit for instance not described in the language of a person but of a force and the

Holy Spirit will be referred to it rather than he.

Well there's a lot of words that I dare say most of your hearers will use and believe the meaning of but they're not in the

Bible like the word inerrancy all evangelicals or they should anyway believe that the

Bible is incapable of error and that it is inerrant it's infallible there is no the word inerrant is not found in the

Bible the word infallibility is not found in the Bible so what are we saying we're saying that here are two perfectly good words that accurately communicate what the

Bible does teach you and we're not going to refuse to use them in order to veil our critical understanding of scripture.

We believe the Bible is inerrant because it claims to be inerrant that is it claims to be without error whatever it asserts on any subject as true as true.

We believe the Bible is infallible because it claims to be infallible even though it doesn't use the word it claims to be what the word infallible means and on and on and on and the same way as Trinity we believe in the

Trinity because the Bible teaches us that God is a Trinity although the word itself is not to be found in the

Bible. In fact the way the Bible reveals the truth about the

Trinity is it can be so profound that neither one of us can even plumb the depths of the meaning but it can also be simple enough to see so that the youngest

Christian can see that God is a Trinity. If you were to look for a verse in the

Bible if somebody says all right give me a chapter verse that says that God is one

God in three persons simultaneously there is no such verse but you see the

Bible reveals the truth in more than one way not just by express statements but by inescapable deductions.

For instance the Bible says speaks of God the

Father and God the Son and the Holy Spirit it gives each one of them perfections that you could only ascribe to God.

It gives each one of them names that only apply to God. It attributes to each one

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit actions that only pertain to God and the

Bible commands us to worship each one of them and we may only worship

God. In fact we have to pick up right where you left off on the point of worship because we have to go to our first break.

If anybody wants to join us on the air with a question of your own again our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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Thank you. Welcome back. This is Chris Armisen, the host of I Interrupt and Zion Radio, if you just tuned us in.

Our guest today is Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III, who is an author and pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia.

Today we are addressing the Holy Trinity, its implications on salvation, politics, and the structure of human society.

And right before the break, Dr. Moorcraft, you were beginning to discuss how each of the three co -eternal and co -equal persons of the

Godhead receive worship, and if you could continue. Yes, sir.

I was trying to show that although this is a profound doctrine that can overwhelm the most serious

Bible student, the basic argument for the Trinity is something that the average

Christian can see and understand, that each person of the Trinity in the

Bible is equally called God, given the names of God, given actions only

God can perform, perfections only true of God, and are to be worshipped, and only

God can be worshipped. The second point is that each of these three persons in the

Bible speak to each other. So what you have is one

God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and yet they're distinct enough they can address each other and speak to each other.

And one of the most important implications of the doctrine of the

Trinity is for worship. And I want to emphasize this is not just a doctrine, this is a reality.

The only God there is, the creator of the world, the governor of history, is the triune

God. And if God is one God in three persons, and one doesn't come before the other, one's not better than the other, one's not important than the other, they're all equal in power and glory and the same in essence, then that means that should be reflected in our worship of God.

In so many worship services we practice another ancient heresy concerning the

Trinity called subordinationism, that says one person of the

Trinity is more important than another person of the Trinity. And you go to many churches today and all you hear about is the

Son of God. Now I'm not complaining about preaching about the Son of God, but you don't hear much about God the

Father and God the Holy Spirit. The prayers should include prayers to God the

Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And our whole worship service must reflect the fact that we're worshiping a triune

God and the other aspect that I would say of subordinationism today is whereas some churches emphasize one person to the exclusion of the other, before I go on let me say what

Greg Monson said. He said, I understand fully the phrase

Christ -centered, that our worship must be Christ -centered. He said,

I understand that phrase because it means that no worship is possible apart from what

Christ has done in his life, death, and resurrection. He said, but I prefer the phrase

Trinity -centered, that we must not just be one person centered, but our faith must be centered and our worship on the

Trinity. In fact, you can gauge a person's growth in grace and his maturity by the way that he loves and worships each person of the

Trinity and not one to the exclusion of the other. The other way we commit subordinationism in our worship service today is that we emphasize one perfection of God over the other.

You go to most evangelical churches today and they'll talk about grace with a loud voice.

They'll talk about God's grace and God's mercy and God's love and praise the Lord for God's grace and God's mercy and God's love.

But then if they even mention some other attributes they say with a low voice, judgment, holiness, wrath, justice, as if to say that the most important thing we need to know about God is that God is a

God of grace and mercy and love and kindness. That's heresy. That all of God is his perfections.

That what God has he is. And that God is love. That God is a consuming fire.

That God is light. And that we're not to exalt one perfection in God above all the others because God is his perfections.

They're not characteristics about God. There's some hidden God behind these characteristics.

God is what he has. God is his perfections. And so we commit heresy in the evangelical church and we don't even know it.

Largely because our preachers aren't faithful in preaching the truth. Largely because they don't know it themselves.

They went to pathetic seminaries and they were never really taught these things in detail. Praise the

Lord. There's faithful men out there that do. There are faithful men that expound the word of God.

I've told you before when people ask me who my favorite preachers are, I don't tell them famous names.

I say, well, you would not know them. They're just faithful preachers of small churches that expound the truth of the word of God Sunday after Sunday.

And don't just give their congregation pablum, but feed them all the solid food and meat of the word of God.

So when we worship God, we are worshiping a triune

God who is his perfections and who never changes.

And every aspect of our worship must reflect that.

The Bible says we, in Ephesians 2, that we go to God through Christ by the power of the

Holy Spirit. And that nature of God must be declared and emphasized in every aspect of our worship service.

Sing songs. Sing hymns to God, praising God the Father. Sing hymns praising

God the Son. Sing hymns praising God the Holy Spirit. Pray in the service.

I think prayer should be predominantly to God the Father through God the Son by the

Holy Spirit. But also make your prayers to Christ. We pray to Christ many times during communion.

Right before we read the scriptures, we pray to the Holy Spirit. So the most important implication of the doctrine of the

Trinity is for the way we worship God. And the second is our understanding of salvation, as I'm sure you have had a lot of other guests on your program explain.

One of the reasons for the truncated view of salvation today, that basically salvation means you don't go to hell when you die.

Now praise the Lord, you don't go to hell when you die if you believe in Jesus. But salvation is a far richer thing.

The Bible speaks of the riches of God's grace, and it's because all three persons of the

Trinity are involved in our salvation. And in fact, if all three persons of the

Trinity were not involved in our salvation, we could not be saved. And so there's a simple way of teaching your smallest children.

Get them to memorize this, even though they might not be able to explain and understand everything about it.

Get them to memorize this. God the Father planned salvation. God the

Son accomplished salvation. God the Holy Spirit applied salvation. Notice the first two verbs are past tense.

The last verb is present tense. God the Father planned salvation before the beginning of time.

And there you have election predestination. God the Son accomplished salvation once for all when he obtained eternal redemption for us on the cross, in his death on that cross.

And now the Holy Spirit, present tense, applies salvation to our lives by bringing the powers and accomplishments of the cross into our own personal experiences and causes us to be born again and sanctified and experience the blessings and the powers that Jesus died to accomplish for us.

So you see how much bigger and glorious salvation is when we understand it and teach our children to understand it in terms of the work of the three persons of the

Trinity. So we can't just stop by saying, well, yes, I'm an evangelical Christian.

I believe in the triune God. Well, what do you believe? What do you mean when you say it's the triune

God? What's the implication of that for your worship? What's the implication of that for salvation?

And then most particularly in our program today, what's the implications of that for politics and the structure of human society?

Now it's interesting going back to the whole aspect of worship. I think one of the most clear proofs of the deity of Jesus, when you are having conversations with Jehovah's Witnesses or anybody else who has some form of view of God, of Christ, that they think is a high view of Christ, but it is actually a heretically low view of Christ, because Jehovah's Witnesses obviously do not believe in the deity of Jesus.

But one of the clearest proofs is the fact that he received worship, clearly, in the

New Testament. It's inescapable, isn't it? Oh, it is. That Thomas, particularly who you're thinking about,

Thomas worshiped him as God, and Jesus accepted his worship.

He didn't rebuke Thomas. He stood there and let Thomas worship him. This past Sunday I preached on a text.

All of my sermons are live streamed and they're on sermonaudio .com, and I'm going through the

Gospel of John. And last Sunday, yesterday, I preached on John 5, 1 through 18, which is quite a text.

It's about Jesus healing this man who had been an invalid for 38 years, and who was lying by the pool of Bethesda, because he believed it had certain healing qualities to it, but he couldn't get in it because everybody would always beat him to the punch.

And so Jesus comes to the pool of Bethesda, which is surrounded by hundreds of people that are seriously ill and withered.

And Jesus comes to this one man, and he asked this one man, do you want to get well?

Now in John, a lot of the things he brings out about Christ has double meanings.

So Jesus was asking on one level, do you want me to heal you of your sickness? But on another level he was saying, do you want me to heal you from the consequences of sin, body and soul?

The man didn't even know who Jesus was. He had no idea that he could heal him. He said, well, nobody can lead me into the pool.

He thought maybe Jesus could help him get into the pool and the waters would heal him. Everybody else would get before him.

And so Jesus looked at him and simply said, arise, take up your pallet and walk. And immediately and permanently he got up and walked, carried his little mattress with him.

And the Pharisees saw him, the scribes, the rabbis. They saw him and they said, who told you to carry the pallet on the

Sabbath? John tells us in the text, and this was the Sabbath on which this took place.

Now Jesus could have healed him on any other day of the week. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. But he chose to heal him on the

Sabbath. He could have said anything else. He could have said, I'm going to lay my hands on you and heal you.

Or he could have done like he did to the noble son and simply speak and the guy was healed. But no, on the

Sabbath, Jesus healed. And he said to him, arise, take up your pallet and walk. Now the rabbis had all kinds of rules and regulations as to how the

Sabbath was to be kept. And they made the Sabbath a heavy burden rather than a day of joy and gladness.

They forbid healing on the Sabbath. They forbid somebody picking up his mattress on the

Sabbath, carrying a heavy burden on the Sabbath. You couldn't eat an egg that was laid by a chicken on the

Sabbath. And on and on and on. And the Pharisee says, who told you this?

We don't want any adenomian, dangerous person walking around telling you you don't need to keep the

Sabbath according to the rabbis. The crippled guy said, I don't know who he was. I have no idea who he was.

All I know is he healed me. And so Jesus, the guy goes to the temple and Jesus goes to the temple.

Now this all has a point about Trinity. Jesus goes to the temple and finds him. He doesn't find

Christ. Christ finds him. He's at the temple and Jesus said, now that you're well,

I'm paraphrasing this. Now that you're well, don't sin anymore or something worse will come upon you.

In other words, just by healing his body, Jesus wasn't through with him. Jesus went to the temple to find him as if to say,

I'm not through with you yet, buddy. I didn't come just to heal you physically. I came to heal you and heal your spirit.

So I want you to change your life. I want you to quit serving sin. I want you to quit serving tradition and superstition.

I want you to quit being afraid of the rabbis. I want you to believe in me and follow me. In fact, we got a pickup right where you left off there because we have to go to our midway break.

Yes, sir. This is a longer than normal break, folks. Please be patient with us. Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida always requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because they have to localize this show to Lake City, Florida with their own public service announcements while we air our own globally heard commercials.

So please keep that in mind. And we'll be right back after these messages with more of Dr. Joseph C.

Moorcraft III on the Holy Trinity right after these messages from our sponsors. Iron Sharpens Iron Radio depends upon the financial support of fine

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In fact, there's a book that features an author it's a book that has multiple authors and someone that's our guest today

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and there's going to be a search engine type in The Risen Christ and you might even want to just type in Bonson B -A -H -N -S -E -N and there will be a number of books that come up and keep scrolling down until you see

The Risen Christ Conquers Mars Hill So, I hope that you take advantage of that book and mention

Chris Arnzen of Iron Trip and Zion Radio when you make your purchase Before we return to Dr.

Joseph C. Moorcraft III we just have a few very important announcements to make First of all, tomorrow we have returning to our program a dear friend of mine

Dr. Tom Askell who is the Executive Director of Founders Ministries which is a theologically reformed ministry within the

Southern Baptist Convention They are a minority in that huge denomination and have battlegrounds on many fronts and they continue to remain steadfast to the truth not only the truth of the

Bible which is first and foremost, obviously the truth of history but the truth of their own denomination's founding that's why they call it the

Founders Conference because the Southern Baptist Convention when it was founded was entirely comprised of thoroughly reformed men soteriologically so it is quite amazing how that denomination for the most part as far as percentages has abandoned these precious truths and some of them have become some of the pastors within that denomination have become enemies of these truths but Tom Askell has a big surprise that I don't even know what it is but he is going to be announcing this big news tomorrow on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio then on Wednesday we have a guest that was actually referred to me by Dr.

Joe Moorcraft my guest today his name is Phil Kaiser and I don't know yet what we're going to talk about I'm going to have to straighten it out with Phil tomorrow most likely but he has degrees in education theology and philosophy he's ordained he was ordained in 1987 and currently serves as Senior Pastor of Dominion Covenant Church a

Presbyterian church in Omaha Nebraska and he also serves as Professor of Ethics at Whitfield Theological Seminary and President of the

Providential History Festival and Dr. Moorcraft could you say a few more words about Phil Kaiser since you were the one that urged me to interview him?

He's one of my very favorite people he is a gem as far as preaching the word of God is concerned, his faithfulness preaching, his writing is extremely readable he is one of my very favorite preachers and defenders of the faith and pastors in the

United States I wish I lived closer to Nebraska so I could listen to him preach more frequently

Praise God well that's this Wednesday so mark down your calendar in fact

I think I'm going to urge him to discuss December 25th

Jewish style the ancient Jewish celebration anticipating the birth of Christ so that should be very timely

I don't know if he'll agree to that but that's one of the booklets that he wrote so I'm going to see if I can get him to discuss that on Thursday we've got

Ryan Denton returning to the program to discuss his book Even If None N -O -N -E

Reclaiming Biblical Evangelism and the foreword is by my very dear friend Dr.

Conrad Mbewe of Kibwata Baptist Church in Lusaka Zambia, Africa where he serves alongside

Vody Baucom and also serves alongside Dr. Baucom at African Christian University there in Zambia Africa so that should be a fascinating interview if Dr.

Mbewe wrote a foreword to this book it must be excellent, I have not yet read it but I'm looking forward to discussing it with Ryan Denton on Thursday and then on Friday we've got

Dr. Michael Haken who is a world -renowned Baptist historian and we are going to be addressing his book that he contributed to with other authors

Strangers and Pilgrims on Earth, Remembering the Mayflower Pilgrims from 1620 to 2020 and it actually features a contribution by the late

Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones, so I'm really looking forward to having Dr. Haken back on the program as well.

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I can't wrap my head around that how we can have so many listeners and so few contributors and please

I don't mean to undermine or devalue those few or comparatively few listeners who do donate they have been a godsend they are generous and loyal and faithful and they lift my spirits to heights

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I thank them for their sacrifices and their loyalty but if you listen to this program though and you have never given please prayerfully consider giving that is if you are blessed above and beyond your financial ability to provide for your church and family if you want to advertise with us send me an email to chrisarmson at gmail .com

and put advertising in the subject line we would love to help you launch an ad campaign because we truly do need your advertising dollars and last but not least if you are not a member of a local bible believing church

I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the planet earth I may be able to help you find a church as I have already done for many people in our audience in all parts of the globe so send me an email to chrisarmson at gmail .com

and put I need a church in the subject line that's also the email address to send in a question to Dr. Joseph C. Morecraft III on our discussion on the

Holy Trinity and the full title of our theme today is the Holy Trinity and its implications on salvation, politics and the structure of human society and if you could pick up where you left off I believe you were talking about the

Pool of Bethesda let me wrap that up real quick in answer to people who say that Jesus did not claim to be

God he healed this man in John 5 and the

Pharisees said in so many words who do you think you are and he said my father has worked and now

I work and then John 5 18 says the Pharisees understood that he was claiming to be equal with God he said and so I won't go into explaining that but the point is the

Pharisees of the first century understood what Jesus would say more than many of the cultists of our day they understood that he was saying he was equal to God himself in fact he was

God incarnate he was God their healer and so there are many throughout

John as well as the rest of the scriptures there's all kinds of verses where Jesus claims to be

God where Holy Spirit inspired apostles claimed that he was God where prophets in the

Old Testament claimed that he was God and so anybody that says that Jesus did not claim to be

God really hadn't read the Bible very well but I want to focus on the political implications of the

Trinity for the organization of human society Christians don't know how to think like that Christians today one of the rarest things in America is a

Christian mind that is a world view based upon the word of God where you look at every aspect of life and culture from the perspective of God's word and as much as you have opportunity to bring every aspect of your life and everything you have any influence over into conformity with that word

Christians today think when it comes to politics by and large they only have one of two choices you either got to be liberal or conservative and there's a third choice and until Christians start making that third choice we're not going to get anywhere liberal today by and large if you want to see a consistent liberal politically he is a collectivist that is if you were to ask him what's more important the individual or the group he would say the group and that individuals must maybe sacrifice for the sake of society society is far more important than the individual you see that particularly in Marxism, Communism in Stalin, Lenin Mao Zedong killing millions of their own people for the embitterment of society so that the state is sovereign society or the group is far more important than the individual and the individual does not have much value in a a collectivist society we see also in conservatives the idea of libertarianism that is the individual is sovereign and if you were to ask them which is more important the individual or the group they would say the individual and therefore libertarians are against any kind of laws that restrict the autonomy or the freedom of an individual that's why most libertarians are against laws forbidding abortion that's why they're against laws forbidding homosexuality because they believe that the individual is superior to the group and the group that is the state society may not put any restrictions on the individual and just if you don't mind me inserting here as you know there are though libertarians who are strongly pro -life and I know that you even supported the presidential candidacy in the past of Rand Paul Ron Paul I'm sorry who is a very pro -life medical doctor well my answer to that is inconsistency well they would say that the the individuals being murdered are a part of the individuals whose rights they're trying to protect yeah that's exactly right so praise the lord for those libertarians who are not consistent libertarians just like praise the lord for those liberals that are not consistent liberals but if you're to look right at the philosophy of each liberalism collectivism says the group, the society is more important than the individual libertarianism says the individual is more important than the group now

I don't believe in the sovereignty of the state or the sovereignty of the individual I don't believe the group is more important than the individual nor the individual more important than the group why?

because I'm a trinitarian and I ask people I ask Christians when it comes to which do you think is more important that God is one or that God is three if you say well it's more important to believe that God is one you're a heretic if you say well

I believe it's more important to believe that God is three you're a heretic God is one and God is three and they are of equal importance one is not more important than the other and so when you see how

God is to be reflected in human society because after all we are the image of God you see that in a godly society that worships the triune

God the individual is not more important than the group and the group is not more important than the individual hence we don't have the tyranny of collectivism hence we don't have the autonomy of individualism that we as Christians are not individualists we are not collectivists we believe that in a properly ordered society they are of equal ultimacy and equal importance therefore we respect the individual we respect individual rights but we also respect the rights and responsibilities and needs of human society and an individual just can't do anything he wants to do for instance when it comes to freedom of speech that doesn't mean he can say whatever he wants to say he can't go into a group of people on Sunday morning and shout fire where there's no fire and everybody tries to hurry out and many are killed in the process that freedom of speech has its limits that you just can't say anything because there is a human society that must be protected and therefore the human society cannot just pass any law at once upon the individual you must wear masks no matter what uh that because of the sake of the group the individual is not more important than the group and the group is not more important than the individual just like God is one is not more important than God is three and God is three is not more important than God is one so it's only in a society that takes the truth seriously that that society can be properly ordered where there is freedom for the individual and where there is respect for the group and I mentioned a while ago that if you have an unbiblical view of the trinity it always leads to tyranny for instance we talked about subordinationism a while ago where you emphasize one person of the trinity above the other when you do that it will always lead to tyranny in politics

I'll give you two examples very quickly you have Unitarianism in 18th century

New England that Unitarianism believed in God the Father didn't believe in the

Redeemer, didn't believe in a revelation of the word of God, didn't believe in the Holy Spirit it believed that God is

Father and Unitarianism led to the war between the states and to the total transformation of American life we live in a

Unitarian government today secondly in the Nicene Creed one of the early creeds of the early church in about the 6th century they added the word the

Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son to complete the doctrine of the trinity the

Eastern Church rejected that filioque clause which is the Latin for from the

Son and they said the Holy Spirit doesn't proceed from the Son but only from the

Father now I can't get into this because it's a complex thing but as a result of making the

Son and the Father equal in the gift of the Holy Spirit the Eastern Church encouraged charity all over the

East there is a great book that I would recommend to all of your hearers on the trinity and the deity of Christ and subordinationism and all these decisions of the early church and the language that we were taught to express these things in I've read many many books by R .J.

Rushtuni and they're all important but there's one book that is extremely important it's called the

Foundations of Social Order and it talks about the decisions of these early church councils and what they decided about the trinity what the

Bible taught about the trinity and deity of Christ in order to answer all of the heresies that swirled around in those early centuries and the political implications of those

Trinitarian decisions for us today for instance he talks about the

Council of Chalcedon that took place in 451 where they simply said not so simply but where they answered the heresies of the day by saying

Jesus is fully God and fully man in one person forever and therefore Lord of all and Rushtuni's title for that chapter is

Chalcedon the foundation of western liberty that we can't have liberty except in the

Trinitarian culture because if you only emphasize God the father, God the father is the one that created the world that's what we normally think of an average person without Christ and therefore nature becomes the standard by which everything is governed the state is not accountable to Christ, it's not accountable to the

Holy Spirit, it's accountable simply to the laws of nature and so you have a you have tyranny, you have apostasy in a culture that you don't have freedom and you have the perversion of justice and you have the critical race theory what is critical race theory?

Now I've opposed racism all my life but critical race theory is a modern heresy that's based upon a non -Trinitarian view of the world because what does critical race theory say?

It says that the important thing is the group you're a member of not as an individual but the group you're a member of if you are a member of the white race even though as an individual you might be a good guy, if you are a member of the white race then you are a racist by virtue of being a member of that group or if you are a member of a non -white race whatever you as an individual experience, you are being oppressed and therefore the white race should pay you reparations now that whole philosophy of race is based on an anti -Trinitarian understanding of life and society.

The group is more important than the individual so when these people come and try to make you feel guilty like a man running for Senate in Georgia a

Democrat, black man running for Senate but he's terrible and in a sermon he said white people need to repent of their whiteness who made white people white?

The point I'm getting at is that when you reject the doctrine of the

Trinity politically you cannot have freedom the freedom of the individual is infringed upon the orderliness of society is impossible and so I don't know of any more important doctrine and reality for Christians to be clear on both in what the

Bible teaches about it and its implications of the doctrine of the Trinity. If you were to ask me what's the most distinctive feature of Biblical Christianity, the

Reformed Faith and the Reformed Faith I would not say predestination I would not say the law of God, I would not say the covenant of God I would say the most distinguishing feature of Biblical Christianity and of the

Reformed Faith is the consistent understanding and application of the

Biblical doctrine of the Triune God there are countless numbers of books on this subject from a good perspective, recently there's been a lot of heretical books but there's countless good books, there's books for scholars that you can drown in there are books for non -scholars

Christians who simply want to understand the doctrine of the Trinity there's all kinds of books on the subject there's an old

Puritan book by a man named Bickerstaff that any Christian should be able to read and understand, he goes through the scriptures on the

Trinity Arthur Pink on the Trinity Lewis Burckhoff on the

Trinity if you want a book that really plumbs the depths on the perfections of God and the doctrine of the

Trinity I keep a copy here in my den and in my study so they're always within arm's reach and it's by Herman Babbitt B -A -V -I -N -C -K

Herman Babbitt called the Doctrine of God I mean every preacher should read that it's not light reading and not just preachers but anybody should read that and there's just so many books on the subject the larger catechism the

Westminster larger catechism the Westminster Confession of Faith the 1689

London Baptist Confession all have great statements on the doctrine of the

Trinity and if you look at commentaries on each of those you can get all kinds of explanations and applications the old

Puritan Watson, Thomas Watson did some great work, easy reading on the

Trinity in my commentary and this is not a commercial but I will tell you in my commentary on the larger catechism called

Authentic Christianity, I spend many many pages, I went back and reviewed them today just to see what all

I did right on it many many pages on explaining the doctrine of the

Trinity and all the aspects that I knew to explain it and the various applications to worship and salvation, politics social order you can get my sermons on those things on Sermon Audio for free there's just so much ask your preacher to preach on the doctrine of the

Trinity what does the Bible say about it how does it apply to worship why isn't our worship more

Trinitarian why do we have such a truncated view of salvation, only talk about being saved from the fires of hell when the salvation is such a richer, fuller doctrine why, how does being a

Trinitarian influence our political views and our understanding of society what's the difference between a

Trinitarian and a Libertarian and a Collectivist, do we emphasize the fact that we're conservative do we emphasize the fact that we're liberal, or do we emphasize the fact that we're

Trinitarian and are we dogmatic on it, Warfield Benjamin Warfield, one of the greatest scholars of all time died in 1921 has a magnificent article in one of his books called

The Dogmatic Spirit and he said if you're going to, if you believe that certain things are true and certain things are false you're going to be dogmatic about it, not in a mean sense but you're going to be confident you're going to be assertive you're going to not tolerate false views when you have people talking about toleration, toleration, toleration watch out for a new intolerance in fact we've got to pick up because we've got to go to our final break it's going to be a lot more brief than the others and we'll pick up on that phrase tolerance there very frequently heard word today, don't go away we're going to be right back with more of Joe Moorcraft right after these messages

Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music This is

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsin, and this is the final 15 minutes or so with our guest today,

Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III. And we have been discussing the

Holy Trinity and its implications on salvation politics and the structure of human society. If you have a question, send it in immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.

We do have a few people waiting to have their questions asked, but I wanted you to finish your thought on tolerance, where people are demanding tolerance in a day and age when those very same people refuse to tolerate the existence of a voice for Christianity in the

Bible in the public arena. They want us to tolerate everything, and they tolerate nothing.

They want us to tolerate evil, false doctrine, lawlessness, and they tolerate everything except for biblical

Christianity. We as Christians must stand firm. There are certain things we're not going to tolerate.

We're not going to let people believe and teach in the church whatever they want to teach. We want to teach people the truth.

We want to believe in the one true God, and we don't have any responsibility to defend anybody's so -called right to believe any other

God than the triune God. That God has not given anybody the right to worship the

God of his choice. God takes idolatry seriously, and if we worship any other

God than the God who is one God in three persons simultaneously, we will go to hell.

And we have no responsibility as Christians to tolerate other people's views or to defend other people's views of God if they're idolatrous because of the risk of repeating myself.

Because you cannot have freedom, liberty, justice for all, orderliness in an anti -Trinitarian society.

All you can have is tyranny, oppression, and racism in a society that does not take the triune

God seriously. Okay, well let's take some listener questions.

We have Christopher from Western Suffolk County, Long Island, New York.

In fact, he's asking a question that you actually confirmed what he is asking about is a very good book last night during our private phone conversation on the phone.

Obviously, every phone conversation is on the phone. There's a redundancy there. He asks,

Christopher asks, I have heard about a book by Dr. James E.

Dolezal titled All That Is In God, Evangelical Theology and the

Challenge of Classical Christian Theism. Is this a book you would recommend if you have ever heard of it?

Magnificent book, and I would recommend you read it three or four times because it's not easy to read.

But there is a false doctrine that has crept into conservative reformed churches today that reject the historical interpretation of the ancient confessions of the church that God is unchangeable and eternal without body, parts, or passion, self -contained, self -sustained, and it is a view that says that God is capable of change in some ways.

It all depends on his relationship to an individual. My son's baccalaureate many years ago had a doctor that gave a lecture, and he said this, and I thought it was extreme at the time, still think it's extreme, but now it's crept in to reformed churches.

He said when God loves you, it transforms him. That if there's really going to be a relationship with God, there's got to be things about God that are changeable, just like there's things about you that will be affected by your relationship to God.

There'll be things in God that will be changed and influenced by his relationship with you.

So the book is a very short little paperback. You've got to read it three or four times.

It's magnificent. All that is in God is the first part of a sentence by Augustine.

All that is in God is God. Like I said a few minutes ago,

God is his perfections. There's nothing about God that's changeable. Everything about God is eternal.

He doesn't have parts. You will be shocked as to who is introducing this new way of looking at God into reformed churches as over against the

Westminster Confession of Faith and the 1689 London Confession and all the rest,

Heidelberg Catechism, Belgian Confession, and all the rest. There is a rejection of the historic understanding of God in many of its fundamental aspects.

So I'm glad you brought that up so that I could recommend that book. I've read it twice already, and I'm going to read it again.

I'd love to memorize it. It is so important. Wow. Well, Christopher, you can also hear an interview

I did with James E. Dolezal on that book. We conducted it on August 28th of 2017.

If you go to www .irontriponsironradio .com, if you go to the podcast past shows section, type in D -O -L -E -Z -A -L, that's how you spell his last name, you will get that interview come up, the audio link.

Also, you can purchase the book from www .cvbbs .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, one of our sponsors, cv as in Cumberland Valley, bbs as in Bible Book Service, dot com, cvbbs .com.

We do have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, just for the sake of clarification, in the event that any of the listeners misunderstood you when you were trying to say we should not emphasize whether we are conservative or liberal when we are

Christians, there are some who might wrongly think you are saying that we should be moderately conservative, but I know, having heard you on this program, that it has nothing to do with what you are saying, so please clarify.

I think we should be distinctively Christian and distinctively

Trinitarian and not just generally or broadly conservative and certainly not liberal in any sense.

That we must go into this battle, not simply by electing good presidents or getting justice in the

Supreme Court, all those things. We must go into this battle for America with the goal that we will not rest until these states recognize that Jesus Christ is the

Son of God and King of Kings and Lord of Lords and these states will not allow any laws to be made in them contrary to the revealed will of God found in Holy Scripture.

We've got to be that distinctively Christian and not just generically conservative.

Thank you, Ronald. We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says,

I know that you just earlier were talking about not being conservative or liberal, but don't you think that the term conservative is helpful when we are actually addressing political areas outside of our own congregation or outside of our conversations with brothers and sisters in Christ, especially because labels can be helpful in differentiating us from other people.

There is a point that we must allow the people we're talking to to determine how we're going to express things.

But conservative is no longer a useful word. We must be

Christian. We must tell these people we're not just conservative like Bill Barr is conservative or like Mitch McConnell is conservative.

I'm not conservative like he's conservative. That I'm a Christian, and my goals in politics are distinctively

Christian, and that's the way we must begin to talk. That we want to, if we're going to conserve anything, we want to conserve historical

Trinitarian Christianity. There are very few genuine conservatives in the

United States Congress. Very, very few. Now, how would you respond to a person who you're trying to get people to vote for?

Let's say you have a candidate that you are supporting, and perhaps this candidate is a

Christian, perhaps even a Christian from your own congregation, and you are trying to get people in the community to support him.

How would you convince non -Christians to vote for this person when you're emphasizing, in fact, even exclusively, saying, well, we want to preserve

Trinitarian Christianity, so that's why we want... Well, that's a very good question, and a personal one, because I ran for the

United States Congress. I remember that. And you want to have a biblical campaign.

You want to have biblical goals, and the goal of a campaign is to get people to vote for you. You don't really care why they vote for you or want them to vote for you, and if you have to spend all your time in a political campaign teaching people, you will lose.

So I would have coffees in places, and I would speak in places, and it would all be the same message, but just like Paul, it all depended on the audience as to how

I framed what I would say for them. Audience adaptation.

Study audience adaptation in the book of Acts. J. Adams wrote a great book on the subject, that it all depends on the particular audience as to how you frame things.

You never want to compromise all of your goals, so that if... I'll give you an example. One time

I was at a Republican coffee in a very upper -middle -class neighborhood, and I knew that everybody there would be generally

Republican and country club Republicans, and I would speak, and I would speak on issues that I knew were important to them.

And then during a question -and -answer time, there was a young man that was very astute, and he asked me about various distinctively

Christian things, and I wasn't going to back down. And he said, are you for the government supporting abortion?

Well, I knew that my answer would probably lose all these country club Republicans whose daughters had abortion, probably.

So I said, no. I mean, I wasn't going to back down. I believe abortion is murder of unborn. I'm not supporting of the government paying for abortions or sponsoring abortions.

He said, are you for sanctions against South Africa? At the time, 1986.

And I said, no, I'm not. So I saw this coffee just slipping through my fingers.

They liked me at first. Now they knew just how radical I was. And then the young man said, well,

I'm going to vote for you because even though I believe in abortion, I don't think the government should sponsor it. So we must not compromise any of our views.

We must allow the audience that we're speaking to to determine how we're going to frame the...

Now, I'm talking about a political campaign now. I'm not talking about evangelism. I'm not talking about preaching.

The question was about a political campaign and how you get people to vote for you. And biblically, you adapt your message to the audience without changing the message.

For instance, there was a woman who worked very hard for my campaign to get me elected.

She gave out brochures. She gave money to my campaign. And she was an outspoken atheist, a professed atheist, a blaspheming atheist.

And she was working hard to get me elected. And I couldn't help but ask her one time. I said,

Ms. So -and -so, why in the world are you as an atheist trying to get me as a

Trinitarian Christian elected to the United States Congress? She said, because I know you as a

Christian would preserve my wealth and the liberals are robbing me blind. Well, we are actually out of time, but that was an excellent way to end the program.

And if anybody wants to find out more about our guest, Joe Moorcraft, go to HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com.

HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com. You can also go to ComprehensiveChristianity .com.

ComprehensiveChristianity .com, where some of Dr. Moorcraft's books are published and offered.

And then don't forget about WestminsterCommentary .com, WestminsterCommentary .com,

where you can purchase authentic Christianity, an exposition of the theology and ethics of the

Westminster larger catechism in eight volumes, is it? Yes, sir.

Eight volumes. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Moorcraft, for being such a superb guest again. Thank you, everybody who listened today, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater