December 1, 2022 Show with David Reece on “Controversies Over the Heart, Mind, & Soul of Man Confronted”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

Jim Thorpe. 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 very first day of September, of December, I'm sorry, 2022.

And I'm thrilled to have back as a returning guest, David Reese. He is pastor of Puritan Reform Church in Phoenix, Arizona, and CEO of Armored Republic.

Today we're going to be addressing controversies over the heart, mind, and soul of man confronted.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor David Reese. Chris, thanks for having me on.

It's an honor to be here, and I'm looking forward to talking through this. There's a lot of interesting doctrinal things here, and some of them go back for centuries, so I'm excited to get into this and to talk about how it's affecting the modern church.

I am as well, especially since, to my memory, if it serves me right, and it very often doesn't, but if it does serve me right,

I have never dedicated a two -hour program to these very important themes, the controversies over the heart, mind, and soul of man.

And before we get into that, for the sake of our listeners who have not yet heard you on this program or heard of you in any other way, shape, or form, tell our listeners about Puritan Reform Church of Phoenix, Arizona.

Thank you. So Puritan Reform Church is a confessional church, so we hold to the

Westminster Confession of Faith. So we're historic Presbyterians. We try to take the

Bible very seriously, the idea that it is the Word of God. And we call ourselves Puritans because the idea is that we want to be careful to maintain in the public authority of the church the doctrine according to what

Scripture teaches without adding or subtracting. And then the same with the worship, to be very careful to only use the worship that God has appointed to be used in His church and to not add or subtract from that.

And then when we look at the government of the church, trying to also be very careful there with doing the type of government that Christ has appointed for His new covenant church.

And so when we look at those functions of the church, what are often called the marks of the church, doctrine, worship, and government, our goal is to be very careful to maintain those properly.

And we don't think that the mere forms are going to save people. We don't think the mere forms are going to cause people to be converted or to cause people to be sanctified.

But we pray for the blessing of God on it, knowing that that's what He's appointed, and we should carefully guard what

He's given into our trust. And so as Puritan Reform Church, that's our goal, and that's what we try to do to be distinctive.

And so some of the things that other people might consider weird, you know, we sing psalms without musical instrumentation.

We spend... Exclusively sing psalms. That's right. That's right.

So exclusively. And then we have the careful preaching of the Word out of the

Bible, going through texts and trying to deal with those and to deal with them in detail and to try to help people to see how to deal with the text and to wrestle with it, to train them for that.

And we try to make sure that our philosophy of ministry is the idea that we want to, as opposed to having a bunch of classes based upon age and sex, what we have is we have an integrated worship where families come together, and our goal is to train men to pastor their homes as prophets, priests, and kings, and have them lead their families in daily family worship and to give the example of their own private worship as well.

And so those are... That's kind of our philosophy of ministry, and that's how we deal with things both in terms of families and also in terms of our church and how it functions in a public way.

Now on your website, you describe the church as a Reformed Presbyterian Church.

Now does that insinuate that you are a member of the denomination, the

Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America? We are not. So historically, the term

Reformed Presbyterian means that you're what's called a covenanter. And the idea there is you hold to the idea that not only should individuals be in covenant with God, and not only are households formed by a covenant in marriage, and not only do people join into churches by covenant with baptism and then also the renewing of that covenant in the

Lord's Supper. But thirdly, that we believe in the idea of a national covenant, and that national covenants would have an obligatory element that goes across generations.

So if a nation swears to honor Christ as the King of Kings and to have its laws be in submission to the

Word of God, then that would be binding across generations. So national covenanting is sort of the distinguisher between Presbyterians, what are called

Presbyterians historically, and Reformed Presbyterians is that idea of national covenanting. Yeah, and I believe the denomination to which you do not belong shares that opinion with you as well as the exclusive psalmody and exclusive a cappella worship.

That's right, and so you have that uniting principle of the idea of the continuing validity of a national covenant as something that there's also a

Reformed Presbyterian General Assembly, Reformed Presbyterian Church General Assembly, and there are some other groups that hold that as well.

So that's how that name, Reformed Presbyterian, is used. There's a few denominations that have that as a part of their name and use that to distinguish the fact that they are covenanters.

Now are you currently not affiliated with a denomination? No, we are in discussion with some churches in Phoenix about the possibility of forming a presbytery, and so we are looking into that and hoping to see that.

We believe that's the mature form of government, and we believe that we are in a less mature state by not being united with others in a presbytery right now.

Well, if anybody wants more information about Puritan Reformed Church of Phoenix, Arizona, go to their website, which is puritanphx, an abbreviation for phoenix .com,

puritanphx .com. Now let us know about something, especially, again, for the sake of those who missed your last interview.

And by the way, I want to highly recommend that our listeners, after this live show is over, look up our previous interview with Pastor David Reese on Iron Trumpet and Zion Radio that took place on October 21st of 2022.

He was the second guest during the second hour, unlike today where he is our guest for the entirety of the two -hour show.

But all you need to do is type in David Reese, and he spells his last name R -E -E -C -E, and that will come up immediately.

But for the sake of those that did not hear that, tell us about this fascinating business of which you are the

CEO, Armored Republic. Thank you, Chris. So Armored Republic is a company that manufactures body armor.

So we have a mission, and our mission is to honor Christ by providing tools of liberty to free men that are necessary to defend their

God -given rights. So we believe body armor is a tool of liberty, that it is something that individuals should own for the same reason that they should own a rifle.

And so I imagine a lot of your listeners own an AR -15 or own a semi -automatic rifle of some variety.

And the reason they typically own that is because they think, well, I need a pistol in order to be able to defend myself in ordinary life against criminals.

And maybe you have a pistol or something like that as well. It's easily accessible when you're asleep to quickly grab it and to go check out a thump that you hear in the night.

And so there's body armor that's useful for scenarios like that. We have backpacks that have armor built in, so you can have it as a part of an everyday carry set of gear.

There's also concealed body armor that a lot of people will use if they have a job where they're in a dangerous place, or if they are going into a situation where they don't know what's going to happen.

But the reason a lot of people will buy body armor that could stop a rifle round is the same reason they own a semi -automatic rifle, and that is you believe that you own that rifle because of the fact that you want to have something to be useful as a citizen in the event that there's a need to resist tyranny.

And so a rifle and body armor, those are the two basic pieces of kit that are necessary for a free man to be ready to resist tyranny.

And I believe that people owning firearms and owning body armor, those are the types of tools that help a people to be hardened against tyranny and to be ready to resist.

And so having those pieces of kit help you to prevent the need to use them.

And having that kind of gear is something that helps a people to maintain its freedom. And so readiness is often associated with the preservation of freedom, and it's a part of that readiness in terms of the types of armor that could stop a rifle round.

And so we encourage men to get that and to train and to also be connected.

I especially encourage free men, Christian men, to coordinate in terms of having people that they can train with and hold each other accountable because it's good exercise, it's good to be ready, and it helps you to be ready in the event of some sort of an emergency or, again, some sort of a need to resist some sort of a tyrannical action.

And I think we're all increasingly aware of the dangers of tyranny as we think about the churches that were shut down for prolonged periods of time by the government, and they need to be able to say no.

We look at what happened in Canada or Australia compared to what happened in the United States. The enforcement mechanisms, because the government was not afraid of the ability of the people to defend themselves in those places, the government simply was willing to act more tyrannically.

And so it's a pretty terrifying thing. You see some of those videos of these giant construction workers and things like that being hurled around by the police in the

United States that would be unlikely to happen because of the fact that people know that people are armed to be able to defend themselves against tyrannical action.

So that's what we do. We make body armor, and it's a tool of liberty. And having it helps you to be ready, to be prepared, and to be available in the event of a necessary act to protect your own rights and the rights of others.

And does this body armor come in all sizes, men, women, and children, et cetera? So there are different sizes, and there are some that are very small that could even be worn by a child to try to help to protect them and get them to be able to move and be transported.

Some people buy body armor that's built into a backpack. It adds about a half pound of weight, so it's essentially not noticeable in a backpack, so that children could have a backpack with armor built into it to take to school.

But I would encourage your listeners, any Christian that has their child in the public schools, I'd strongly encourage them to get them out and get them a

Christian education. But even in a Christian school, there's a danger of some sort of an attack, and having something like body armor built into the backpack is good.

But yes, we do have different sizes, and I would say that first and foremost, the man needs to be ready to protect his home, and then having gear to protect other people so they're available to be able to transport and defend themselves, that's good.

But being able to have something that's necessary for the basic duties of a man in the civil sphere is what

I would most want to emphasize. Now, just to ask a couple more questions about this business, because it is fascinating.

Is it comfortable? Is it cumbersome? How does this feel when you're wearing it?

Yeah, so different types of armor are going to feel pretty different.

So you have a concealment armor if you're wearing it. The armor itself is basically, it's

Kevlar -like material, it's going to be light, it's going to be flexible, the armor is going to be form -fitting, so it's not going to feel like you're wearing something that's particularly difficult to wear, it's going to be comfortable.

The backpack armor is also going to be that way. When you move into something that's more like a tactical kit, something that you could wear that would be effective in combat, that would be able to stop a rifle round, you start to have, it's hard, those plates are hard, and then you have the plate carrier that it's inside of.

And so the plate carrier can have padding or not, the larger it is, the more room it takes up, so it can start to feel bulky if you've got padding.

Some people, especially people who have a professional use, like a SWAT team or something where they're going to kick in a door, they prefer stuff that's sleeker, so typically not having padding, but if you're going to be wearing it for a long period of time, sometimes padding is preferable.

So if you're dealing with a situation where you're wearing it for a long period of time, so you can have that kind of thing.

And then the other thing is the types of armor can range from steel, which is typically heavier, or ceramic, which doesn't stop multiple rounds as well, it's going to stop less rounds than like steel.

And so then you also have what's called polyethylene, which is made out of plastics, and that's going to be very light, and at the same time, more expensive.

And so you have these range of options to reduce weight and to make it more comfortable and all that kind of stuff. And so I'd encourage people to check out the site, and you'll find that there's some pretty interesting armor options there.

But if you're looking for something that's economical, so you can have it and store it for a long period of time and have it still be relatively light,

I would really encourage people to check out what's called our A2 armor. It's kind of a lightweight steel, and that can sit in your closet for up to 20 years.

So if you just want to buy this, have it available so you can do your duty if anything ever were to come up, then you would have that and be able to sit for a long time and to be something that's available there.

But I'd also encourage people to train and to use that, it helps them to get into shape. I find that with hikes sometimes, it's good to wear that kind of stuff and get used to it, and it makes you get in better shape, but also it makes it so that you're more able to use it if duty were to require its use.

Yeah, tragically, New York, and it's not a shock. I just briefly glanced at an article, and someone can correct me if they're listening, and I am in error, but I know that the article headline was that New York outlawed body armor, which is another example of the insane left trying to strip the average

American citizen from the ability to defend his or herself. Absolutely mind -boggling.

Yeah, the state of New York making body armor illegal, why would a government make it illegal?

They make it illegal with the claim that there are going to be, look, here's mass shooters, look at all this stuff that's going on.

Why does a civilian need to own body armor? And so there's making much out of the mass shootings. I'll tell you what, since the 1990s until now, there are less than 2 ,000 people that have been killed in a mass shooting.

And at the same time, if you look at the previous century, the number of people that were killed by tyrannical governments, and this is not just people killed at all.

I'm not talking about war. I'm not talking about occupying forces. I'm talking only unarmed citizens killed by their own government without judicial process.

196 million people were killed, unarmed people were killed by their own governments in the previous century, 196 million.

So everybody wants to make much out of mass shootings. The danger is not the mass shooting. The danger is tyranny.

Overwhelmingly, there's a far greater danger of tyranny than there is of a mass shooting.

And the other thing is people forget that between 500 ,000 and 3 million crimes are prevented every year.

It depends on the source you look at. But even the FBI and the CDC did studies, and they each found, we're talking millions a year of crimes that are being stopped by firearms.

And so firearms, tactical gear, and those things are used to stop criminal behavior.

But also, tyranny is a far bigger risk than mass shooters. And what happens with the radical left is they are trying to make it so that mass shootings are as scary as possible in order to justify taking away people's rights.

And that equipment is necessary for the teeth of the people to be able to rally around sheriffs or governors who act as lesser magistrates and say no to tyrannical action.

Everybody became aware during the COVID situation that who you had as governor and who you had as sheriff mattered a lot for the kind of tyranny that could be gotten away with.

And so if you had a governor that said no to forced lockdowns, you had a sheriff that said no, your life was very different from having a sheriff or governor that said yes, we're going to force you to stay home.

Yeah, the irony is that those on the left, those that are most prone to imposing tyrannical dictates and mandates here in this country, they will mock the idea of conservatives being concerned about our government in this country becoming a tyrannical dictatorship.

And yet they simultaneously call us Nazis. And they use the slogan that democracy was at stake in their political campaigns, not that this country ever was or was it ever intended to be a democracy.

It's a constitutional republic, at least it's supposed to be. But they have that talking out of two sides of their mouths.

On the one hand, mocking conservatives for being guilty of conspiracy theories and invoking terror and fear into the minds of the citizens that a tyrannical government is taking over.

And at the same time, they call us Nazis and tell the voting public that conservatives are going to destroy the democracy of the

United States. Yeah, it's pretty wild. It's funny because Nazis are short for national socialists.

And you say that to people who are socialistic or to people in the Democratic Party, and you engage with them and they kind of go, oh, that's ridiculous.

There's no relationship there. I mean, the Nazis were highly socialistic. The government took over industries or it controlled the industries heavily and basically pretended as though they recognized ownership on occasion.

But they would say, yeah, you get to own this property, but you do what we say or we'll take it from you.

And I'll tell you what, if somebody tells you how to use the property, it's not yours. And if that's the case, we recognize the fact that the

Nazis were socialists. Socialism, the control of the economic means of a country is a way of controlling everything else.

And so the less economic freedom that we have, which is protected by the law of God, right, you shall not steal, includes princes, right?

Princes, people in government ought not to steal. And so we have the economic rights. We have the ability to defend ourselves.

You shall not murder applies to the government, too. And when we look at these things, the law of God gives us our rights.

And the more that the government steals our rights, the easier it is for them to steal more.

And so we have to we have to say no on the edges. We have to say no on the little things, because the more we give away in terms of our

God given rights, the more that we are going to see the state become a type of beast, a type of tyrannical empire.

And so you look at the size of government and the way that it's grown. There are 23 million employees of the government in the

United States of America, 23 million. We're talking about more than 10 percent of the wage earners in the country being people who live off of tax dollars.

And so we have this ever increasing government where there's tax and spend, borrow and spend, print and spend.

And the idea that we should not be worried about tyranny when that much power and that much economic influence and the extensive law books and regulation books that are being produced are out there is absurd.

Individual liberty involves being left alone, not being told what to do in every area of life and having thought police and having all of the money in your wallet extracted.

This is we certainly live in an increasingly concerning condition in terms of the overreach of government.

Oh, yeah. And the very first thing or one of the very first things that the Nazis did when they gained control of Germany was to confiscate weapons.

And and they were also they were littered with homosexuals, even in positions of high leadership.

In fact, I highly recommend a book called The Pink Swastika, Homosexuality in the

Nazi Party by Scott Lively. And you can even look that up on the Iron Trip and Zion Radio archive.

I have interviewed Scott several times on that book. But if anybody wants more information about Armored Republic, go to ArmoredRepublic .com,

ArmoredRepublic .com. And my friend, Dr. Joe Moorcraft of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, was very fascinated when he heard about your business because he when he ran for political office, wore body armor and was eager to find out more about your company.

So I just thought I'd throw that plug out there to my friend Joe Moorcraft. But to get to the theme, before we go to our first station break, let's give a summary of why there is such controversy over the heart, mind and soul of man that you have encountered, that you have heard and seen.

And what are Christians, many, if not even the majority of modern evangelicals, getting wrong about those element of humanity?

Yeah, thank you. So I think the basic problem is that there's an offense of the simplicity of the gospel, that the idea that all those who believe the gospel are justified, all those who believe the gospel are saved.

That is an offense to many who want to make salvation into something more complex than justification by faith alone.

And so what you end up with is people trying to make faith into something that is very complex or very unstable, as opposed to understanding and believing the revealed truth about who

Jesus Christ is and what he did. And so that idea that the key thing is the content, the revealed content from the mind of God delivered to man, that that content is the object of faith and that there's no difference between believing the gospel and believing

Jesus Christ, that that requires the work of the Holy Spirit. It is a supernatural gift, the gift of faith.

And people don't want to believe that if you believe the gospel, you're saved.

There's something they want to add. And there's a lot of Trinitarian heresies that relate to this as well.

So throughout history, there have been many heretical views that attack one point of doctrine or another, and they use a bad anthropology, a bad view of man.

And they try to use that in support of whatever heresy it is they're trying to push.

And so in the modern evangelical church, what I have found is experience and emotion or obedience are often the things that people want to add to a saving faith.

And they want to use that in order to support that. They want to redefine the nature of man and to make it so that man is more than the two components that God made him out of, right?

He made him from the dust of the earth and from the breath of his mouth. And that idea of those two components, the body and the soul, undermining those helps to support a wrong view of man, a wrong view of saving faith, and also a wrong view of the

Trinity. Yeah, I have observed two extremes that are opposite to one another in the church.

You have, on the one hand, the heresy that seems much more prevalent that we are to somehow bypass the mind in our relationship with Christ and our worship of God and our outreach to the community as we function as a church.

That has even been viewed as aberrant to tell people that they must diligently search the

They must separate from those that have serious error in their understanding of God and even in their understanding of man.

And we are to just lift up Jesus and bask in the warmth and joy of Jesus's love for us.

And when we complicate things by adding doctrine as being necessary, and even the

Scriptures as being necessary to rightly understand the Jesus that we claim we are worshiping, we are called

Pharisees, we are called people who are robbing, brethren of the joy of Christ, and that basically we're supposed to be just linking arms with everyone who says,

I love Jesus. And then, of course, you have those on the other end of the spectrum that are almost exclusively cerebral in their approach to Christianity.

This would be a minority, I believe, in this day. But those that do not demonstrate joy in their

Christian lives or their worship, those that are very harsh and sectarian, mean -spirited, bigoted, proud, and so on, and they base this all on their intellect very often.

Are you in agreement that those seem to be two extremes that exist in the church, with the first,

I mentioned, being more prevalent? Yeah, I think those both exist.

And I would suggest to you that both of them are caused by a wrong doctrine.

And ultimately, the beliefs that we have control what our goals are and what we think are the right means to use.

And so, if you think that Christianity is a philosophy, the true philosophy, but a philosophy that doesn't encourage you to have a zeal and a love for neighbor, a love for God, a desire to express in a beautiful life what it is that God has told us to do, if you don't have the desire to show forth in beauty what

God has commanded us to do, that there's a real failure there of doctrine, which is funny, right?

Because this idea that these people that are very cerebral, very focused on doctrine, they're still not getting the doctrine that we're commanded to have the beauty of holiness.

And so, that making ugly of Christianity is a travesty there.

And on the other side, like you said, the rejection of doctrine, when Christianity is at its heart, it's the truth.

And so, the rejection of the truth is that other error. So, I think that both of those are real errors.

I think the dominant error of our time is the rejection of the intellect, the rejection of truth. And to only think about the intellect and not be concerned about the other elements of life,

I think, is also a grievous error, but it's certainly not the dominant error of our time. I can remember years ago being at a barbecue that was hosted by my

Roman Catholic friend, Robert Posch. I hope he's listening today with his lovely wife,

Mary Lou. But this was in Baldwin, Long Island, New York, when they lived there.

And Bob Posch started these parties at his home back in the early 90s.

And the goal of these parties was to invite Protestants and Catholics over to his home so that they could eat, drink, and argue.

And Bob and I would always be the last two present in his home going back and forth over our very serious differences.

But in spite of Bob's strong opposition to my

Calvinism, I overheard him while I was sitting there at a picnic table in the backyard.

I overheard him speaking with a woman. And the woman said, Bob, you are so caught up in the spirit of religiosity.

It is so disturbing and distressing and depressing. Why don't we just agree to lift up Jesus together?

And Bob said, see that guy sitting there at that table, Chris Arnzen? I disagree with almost everything he believes, but he believes in something.

You don't believe in anything. So I just thought

I'd throw that in there. It's a funny memory. But we have to go to our first break right now.

If anybody wants to join us in the air with a question of your own for our guest today, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N 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. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Don't go away. We're going to be right back with David Reese of Puritan Reformed Church in Phoenix, Arizona, and our discussion on controversies over the heart, mind, and soul of man confronted.

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We are now back with our guest David Reese, Pastor of Puritan Reformed Church in Phoenix, Arizona and CEO of Armored Republic.

We are discussing controversies over the heart, mind, and soul of man confronted.

And perhaps you could start this segment, Pastor Reese, with what you consider the most dangerous element of the misunderstanding and the aberrant views and even heresies involved in the confusion over heart, mind, and soul.

Yeah, thank you, Chris. So I think the most dangerous thing is going to first of all be anything that results in a false gospel.

And so when you think about the gospel and in terms of the narrow sense of the gospel, the saving message, we're talking about Christ's death, burial, resurrection, and his ascension and the leaving of a witness behind by the

Holy Spirit, giving the apostles the message that was captured in Scripture. And so again, that's summarized in 1

Corinthians 15, when Paul says, I declare unto you the gospel. And so when you make it so that man's faith is not something that is intellectual, that is not engaging with the information, that is the first and most dangerous version.

The other one would be if you make it so that faith has things added to it. So those are the things that are result.

How does that happen? It happens when you try to break man into a bunch of compartments or have a bunch of different components that are different from the idea of the unified inner man.

So the scriptures, what we have are, for example, when you get to Deuteronomy chapter six, there's the famous verse in chapter six, verse five of Deuteronomy.

It says, you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And so that's the kind of verse that frequently gets cited to try to suggest, well, what we need is to have a bunch of different ways of seeing.

There's all these inner things that we have to do towards God or towards Christ or towards the gospel.

And if we're missing various components of that, you can turn it into making it very difficult to tell if anybody is saved or to make it so you're adding, again, feelings, experience, your own obedience to what faith is.

And so I think that that's the most dangerous element there. But the thing that becomes even dangerous for people even who are saved is when you start to make it so that sanctification, the process of growing in godliness, is something that is not based upon the truth.

And we see John 17, 17, the Lord Jesus Christ says, sanctify them by your truth.

Your word is truth. He's speaking to the Father in prayer. And so the idea that the truth is what sets us free.

The truth is what is used to save us. The preached message of the revealed truth, the gospel given to us.

When we undermine that, what we're doing is we're destroying the base of the faith and we can undermine our strength in our

Christian walk, even if we are saved in the midst of that error. And so what

I want to communicate is in contrast to that, the positive construction that is the biblical view.

And so if you go back to the creation narrative and look at what happens in the first two chapters of Genesis, you see

God making man out of the dust of the earth. That's how he transforms the body.

And he makes the soul, the nefesh is the Hebrew word. And the idea there is there's this, the breath of God is,

God obviously doesn't have a body. There hasn't been an incarnation of Jesus yet. What's the idea there?

There's this, the word spirit and the word wind or breath, those words are equated.

And that happens in the Greek as well, in the New Testament. You have these words that are, they both mean air or wind and also mean spirit.

And so this idea of God's breathing out is associated with him giving a soul to man, but it's also associated with his giving of words.

When you think about the scriptures are breathed out by God, is what we're told in second

Timothy in chapter three. And so the idea of the soul of man and of the word is there's a connection there, where there's this unity between the rational soul that God makes and the revelation that God gives, that it's understandable, that it's information.

And so God made man and he made man, we often say in his image, and that's fine language, that's biblical language, but it's man is the image of God.

Man is the image of God. And so that image is the soul, that image is reason.

We are differentiated from the beasts of the earth by being rational beings. And so we're told that we are renewed in the new man, we're renewed in knowledge, holiness and righteousness after the image of Christ.

And so that relates the idea of the image of God, the image of Christ, and this what we're being rebuilt to be.

And so the question, you know, the kind of we end up being stuck with is, okay, well, how does this image relate to knowledge and holiness and righteousness?

And so just to give the short version of that, you know, knowledge, we have content, we have truth or error in our minds.

And if we believe the truth, we have the knowledge of the truth. And then holiness is about what purposes you have, the goal that you've got.

And so then we look at righteousness and that's about the choices in terms of what we are to pursue, how we're supposed to pursue the goal with holiness.

With righteousness, it's about the choices of how to get there. And so unrighteousness is about using the wrong means to get there.

And so you could see how content, goal and choice all relate to rationality and how, you know, about the importance of not just being stuck on content, but also we have the beauty of holiness and we have the glories of righteousness expressed.

And so there's a lot that comes out here. And if you get the order wrong and you get the definitions wrong and you misconstruct man, you're gonna have a really hard time seeing the proper bearing of fruit out of that beauty there.

So I know there's a lot to unpack there, but I wanted to give you sort of a negative consequence that can occur in terms of the misconstruction, but also seeing here's this positive construction.

And so not sure where you wanna go from there. Well, we do have a listener who is remaining anonymous.

The anonymous listener says, I'm remaining anonymous because I am in the middle of a conflict with Reformed brethren, even those in my own congregation over the

Thomastic teachings that are being infiltrated into the

Reformed faith. I was wondering what your guests' views were. And I know that we who are

Reformed all claim to believe in sola scriptura, that the scriptures alone are the sole infallible and inerrant authority over the church.

But at the same time, most of us do have our heroes and we tend to more closely follow one of those heroes or another when it comes to our theology and practice.

I was wondering if you are on the Vantillian side, the side of Gordon Clark, or the side of Thomas Aquinas?

Yeah, so I would consider myself to be in alignment with what

Gordon Clark taught about how knowledge works. And so just for anybody who's not familiar here, basically, when you look about, this is closely related to the nature of man in terms of the soul of man, because the question of knowledge of the truth, where do we get knowledge of the truth?

That relates to this. So Thomas Aquinas is what's called an empiricist. So being a

Thomist, you're going to say you believe that knowledge ultimately comes through experience.

And so people are going to appeal to, they're going to say, hey, we need to prove God by saying, our senses show us that there's motion.

Motion is something that means there's change. If there's change, there can't be an infinite series of changes because you can never get from an infinite time ago to now.

And so based upon motion, we're going to say there has to be a God. And so you're going to base your belief in God on some sort of a experience and you're kind of interpreting experience.

And so there's this kind of Thomist revolution that's occurring in a lot of reformed churches where experience is the source of knowledge is being brought in.

And this is being done because people want to appeal to natural law. They want to appeal to laws that are derived from the observation of nature.

In fact, could you pick up right where you left off with natural law and Thomas Aquinas when we return from our midway break?

Sounds good. Okay. Well, if anybody wants to join us with your own questions, send it to ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

ChrisArnson at gmail .com. And remember, folks, please be patient. This is the longer than normal break in the middle of the show because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida requires of us a break that's a little longer in the middle because they air their public service announcements in order to be in alignment with the

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Give us your first name at least, your city and state and your country of residence. And before the break,

Pastor Reese, we were right in the middle of a conversation about natural theology and then specifically

Thomas Aquinas and how many in the Reformed faith have embraced Thomas Aquinas and his aristocratic philosophy.

So if you could pick up where we left off. Thank you. Yes. So we were talking about Thomas, the question was essentially, you know, am

I a Thomist? Am I a Clarkian or am I a Vantillian? I was explaining that, you know, Thomists have become a lot more popular in recent years.

And the reason is because people are concerned to be able to use natural law in public debate.

And that's because when you appeal to natural law, you don't have to cite scripture. So that's the idea that there's some sort of a way in which in the civil sphere, in the political sphere, people are able to use natural law.

And that allows us to escape from that. So I'm a Clarkian. I believe that Gordon Clark is right in terms of his view of knowledge.

And he and Vantill had a number of points of similarity. But there's a couple of other famous guys who are really similar to Clark.

And that's Bonson, Greg Bonson, and also Schaefer. When you hear both of them, they both agree with Clark that essentially you start with the

Bible. And what you do is you argue to show that the Bible is the only coherent worldview.

Now, the big difference between Vantill and those other guys is that Vantill argued that logic is created.

He argued that logic is not a part of the nature of God. Whereas Bonson, Clark, Schaefer, Francis Schaefer, they all agreed that logic itself was eternal, that it was a part of the nature of God.

And so that makes sense. You look at the Bible, it says in John, it says, you know, in the beginning was the logos.

And that certainly includes the idea of the reason or logic that is embedded in the scriptures.

So God is logical. The scriptures cannot be broken. Logic is not created. It's a part of the very nature of God.

And so that's why I would rather associate myself with Gordon Clark. And he has had a significant influence on me.

So if you read about his view of knowledge and about his view of the human soul, that's significant. So how does it all relate back to the soul?

Well, again, the question, how do you know anything? Is that question is going to drive the answers to the rest of what you believe.

And if the scriptures are truth that's available to man, that you say that sanctify them by your truth, your word is truth.

That's what John 17, 17 says. We have the mind of Christ revealed to us.

And so that's what the scriptures do is they communicate the mind of Christ. And so the information that God wants us to have with certainty is that which was given in the more sure word of prophecy that was captured in the scriptures was preserved and given to us.

And so I think that when we look at the scriptures, it provides for us a sure foundation for knowledge.

And we can tear down everything that raises itself up against the knowledge of God. Everything else is in error.

And the scriptures give us the tools to tear down everything else. And so when we think about the idea of the human soul and how it's constructed, going back to that Deuteronomy chapter, six, verse five, and talking about the heart, soul, my heart, soul and strength, the heart and the inner soul, we're talking about the same thing.

We're talking about the inner man. And the scriptures that are often cited to try to differentiate between the inner man, the outer man, starting to differentiate parts of the soul are sort of the things that are taken.

Like when Jesus talks about you say to me, Lord, Lord, but I never knew you.

Well, that's the lips in the inner man. And then we have similar texts where like Isaiah talks about the idea of, with your lips, you honor me, but your heart is far from me.

That's not a breaking up of the inner man. That's just the inward and the outward being contrasted.

And so Clark does an excellent job of pulling together, actually, a lot of these very things in a book that he wrote called

Saving Faith, or On Saving Faith. And he also has another book called The Johannine Logos, which is about the word logos used in the books that John wrote.

So Clark has had a great, a lot of work on that. And he's had a significant influence on me. Okay, we have

Bobby in Hartsdale, New York. And Bobby says, in hearing your explanation about the distinctions between Clarkian theology and philosophy with the other major views,

I was surprised to hear you describe Greg Bonson as Clarkian. I always thought he was a champion for Vantillian presuppositionalism.

So yeah, Greg Bonson would certainly have called himself a Vantillian. He absolutely did. He wrote some really interesting notes about the

Clark -Vantill controversy. And in those notes, he tries to explain how

Vantill's views are the same as Clark's views on the major point of controversy.

And so his view on the difference between the two was ironic. So he would try to make them agree.

And so his view was that there was a, that the Clark -Vantill controversy was essentially misunderstanding.

And so my understanding of Greg Bonson on the major point of controversy, which when you look at the major point of controversy, it boils down to how does logic relate to God?

What you have is Gordon Clark says that logic is eternal. And Vantill says that human logic is not the same as God's logic and is created.

And Greg Bonson agreed with Clark that the laws of logic are eternal.

And uncreated. And are part of God's attributes. And so Greg Bonson would certainly call himself

Vantillian. But I think on that major point, he in fact agreed with Clark. And I'm assuming that you must have just as much of an ironic view of the differences because I first met you at the

Fight, Laugh, Feast conference. And I'm assuming that the vast majority of those folks were Vantillian.

Yeah, I think most of those guys would have called themselves Vantillian. And I think that really they they're more influenced by Greg Bonson than by Vantill directly.

And so I think when you talk to somebody about whether they're Vantillian or Clarkian, I do think

Clark and Vantill disagreed. I really think they did. But I also think that most of the people that call themselves

Vantillian actually agree that logic is eternal, that it's a part of the nature of God, and that God's word is coherent.

The laws of logic are not created. And so those guys, for example,

I know that they agree that logic is a part of the nature of God.

And so I think that's the actual point of controversy. And I don't really ask people, are they Vantillian or are they

Clarkian? I ask them, hey, do you think do you think that logic is eternal, that it's a part of the nature of God, that God has given rationality to us as the image of God?

And I find overwhelmingly that presuppositionalists, no matter whether they call themselves Clarkian or Vantillian, they end up agreeing with that.

We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who says,

I have had confrontations with those that have described themselves as Clarkian and have particularly been influenced by the late

John Robbins of the Trinity Foundation. And I'm not sure if they are accurately representing

John Robbins, but they seem to believe that I am a heretic for insisting that good works must be evident in the lives of those that are truly saved, not that they in any way merit or cause regeneration in any way, shape or form, which is a total gift of God, 100 % by the

Holy Spirit. But at the same time, they seem to be angry by my inclusion in good works as a necessary fruit and evidence and litmus test of whether somebody has truly been born again.

What are your thoughts on this? That's a great question. So I think when we talk about the word must or necessary, we have to say necessary to what?

Or must for what? So in order, in terms of what is saving faith, saving faith does not include works.

Good works are not necessary to be justified before God. Good works are a necessary result or fruit of a saving faith.

They are not a part of saving faith. And what we need to do is differentiate two questions that follow from that.

One is how do I know that I am saved? And how does somebody else judge my profession of faith?

Well, for myself, if I look at my own works for my assurance, I'm going to find that every righteous deed

I've ever done is mixed with sin. I am going to see that all of my righteousnesses are filthy rags.

And so for my own assurance, I have to look to Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone.

And I have to say, because he paid for my sins and because he fulfilled the law of God on my behalf, in my place, in my stead, because of that,

I am saved. It's because of what he did outside of me. And he's the object of my faith.

That's what our assurance has to be based upon. And so if you compare what you believe to what the scriptures teach is the gospel, if it's the same, the degree to which you're certain that what you believe is the gospel that the scriptures teach is the degree to which you can have certainty of your own justification.

Now, when it comes to the claim of another person, if somebody else says, hey, I'm a Christian, I believe, I believe the gospel,

I believe Jesus paid for my sins. If they say that, and then they do not bear any fruit, if they say that, and when they sin, they don't repent when they're confronted so the

Christian conflict resolution is not able to be done, then you have no reason to believe that person's profession of faith.

And in fact, should treat them like their profession is hypocritical. And that's what church discipline does. It goes through a process of examining the profession and examining the behavior.

And when the person professes to be a Christian, but is unrepentant public sin, the person is to be removed from the church.

And we're saying they're essentially, they don't have a credible profession. So good works are necessary to the acceptance of a profession of faith by another person.

And good works are a necessary result of saving faith. They are fruit of it.

They flow from it. But saving faith is not inclusive of it. So if you're that clear about the difference there,

I think that that's going to avoid any sort of mixing in law and gospel. And I think sometimes

I run into some people who have been influenced by John Robbins, and they're not teaching what John Robbins taught, but they take it and they'll say, hey, if you think good works are a necessary result of saving faith, then you are mixing law and gospel.

That's simply wrong. That's not what John Robbins taught. Now, when you were just mentioning viewing others with discernment to see whether they are truly our brothers and sisters in Christ and are truly born again, what role does the works have in our self -examination?

And I will emphasize self -examination. For instance, those that Christ mentions in Matthew 7 seem to be shocked that they are being cast into hell.

There was something they were missing in their self -examination because Christ calls them workers of lawlessness.

So how do we filter in or factor in I have met multitudes of people who believe they're

Christians and who are completely content and at peace because they have raised their hand at Bible camp when they were eight or had some kind of other experience that gives them confidence they're truly a child of God.

And yet the person has no connection with the local church at all. They are living in sin.

They are perhaps even involved in all kinds of sexual immorality. And we could go on and on and on with things that are not marks of a character of a regenerate heart.

How are we to warn others about their self -examination in regard to these things?

Yeah, so Matthew 7, for example, you mentioned talks about those who say, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy?

Did we not cast out demons in your name? Did we not do many marvelous works in your name? So there's this appealing to works.

And so Jesus' response, you know, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. You know, I never knew you.

These people made appeal to good works in their justification.

And so what they show themselves to not understand the doctrine of justification by faith alone, to not understand the doctrine of the substitutionary active obedience of Christ and the substitutionary passive obedience of Christ.

So because they appeal to their works as the reason to be accepted. And so that's what they do.

And so they claim to understand the gospel, but do not. And what we do for self -examination, your own works are never going to provide a basis for assurance.

Your works will always be insufficient for it. However, your sin will destroy your happiness and it will cause you to doubt your salvation.

And so what sin does is it destroys our enjoyment. It destroys our sense of connection and it undermines our assurance.

And so in a true child of God, God is going to use sin to humble the believer and he's going to bring about greater obedience through that.

So in terms of assurance, sin can undermine our assurance. And what we should do whenever we sin and we come back to that, we were going,

I just sinned, that was sin. What we need to do is we need to go, why did I do that?

Am I, why would I do this if I believe the gospel that I have been saved from sin?

Why would I return to sin? And so you'd want to then go, do I believe the gospel?

I claim to believe, is what I believe actually what the scriptures teach? And so the falling into grievous sin is the sort of thing that makes you examine, what is it that I am claiming is the saving message and comparing it to the scriptures.

And so when somebody is not saved, but claiming to be saved, the bringing of trial, the praying for God to bring discipline, the separation from the church, these are all things that are used by God to cause self -examination.

But the examination has to always ultimately be, what is the gospel that I believe? Because you can never have enough good fruit to say, yes,

I'm sure I'm saved because of my good fruit. So sin plays a negative role in causing us to check ourselves, but works can never be sufficient in terms of a positive evidence that you're saved.

You can never do good enough works or enough good works to have assurance of your salvation. Your assurance always has to be in the work of Christ.

And of course, I'm sure you agree that continuation of sin, depending upon what kind of sin we are involved in, could actually destroy our lives physically.

It could take us out. I was in a season of backsliding as a

Christian where I lapsed back into serious form and level of drunkenness, unrepentant drunkenness after 18 years of sobriety.

And if I had not been placed under church discipline by my loving and caring and biblically faithful elders,

I have no question if I continued in the path I was going, I'd be dead. So I thank

God for that discipline and that it was restored fully and completely welcomed back into full membership with all its blessings.

And I just praise God for it. And I think, and I'm assuming you would agree with me that church discipline is an act of love that far too few churches are even practicing at all today.

Absolutely. And so I think it's so important to use church discipline in terms of rebuke and to choose to use admonition and to have the suspension from the table as things that are actually used and to have a part, you know, have public confession, where people are able to come back and be restored to the body.

And then there's also, besides just rebuke and admonition and suspension from the table, the actual casting out, which, you know, is something that oftentimes we just kind of let people shirk away or disappear when they're covenanted members, when they've been baptized, they've been coming to the table.

And the idea that when somebody departs the assembly for sin, there needs to be a public dealing with that so that people understand what's happened.

And so people are afraid of that. Churches are afraid of it. People are afraid of getting sued. And, you know, if you're afraid of a lawsuit for telling people about church discipline, then, you know, you're not cut out for the public ministry.

You just got to deal with it. And you just got to go through with public discipline for people with public sense.

Amen. And by the way, I want to, as I very typically do whenever I mention my own battle that Christ gave me victory over with drunkenness,

I love to mention Hebron Colony Ministries in Boone, North Carolina, where I admitted myself over a decade ago to be restored to sobriety and sanity and to a state of good membership in the church.

And it's absolutely free of charge. Hebroncolony .org Hebroncolony .org If you need a ministry like that for your own addictions or someone that you love,

I strongly urge you to visit that website. And we have

CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York. And CJ says, how does today's topic that you are addressing in regard to the heart, mind and soul of man involve those that are clinging too much to emotions and feelings as their arbiters of whether or not they are in a right standing with God?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think oftentimes people are looking for fruit of saving faith, fruit of justification to be the things that are themselves the basis of the justification or the basis of their assurance.

And so when you think about what are emotions, emotions are the effect of thought that changes, right?

So God is without passions. He has no emotions. He doesn't have an up and down, right?

God is eternal. He's outside of time. He's outside of change. But man is changeable.

And because our thoughts change and our expectations and valuations are affected across time, you know, if you have hope and expectation of getting something that you value and that's taken away from you, it makes the heart sick, what

Proverbs says. And so this idea that there are effects on us and so the ups and downs of the inward life are real and they are an effect of what we expected versus what happens and an effect of what we value.

And so we value something highly and we expect to get it. When we don't get it, that's going to make it so that we're brought low.

And so oftentimes, we expect things from God or we expect things from ourselves and we look at those things and we say, you know, because I got this or didn't get this because I had this experience or didn't have this experience that, you know,

I'm saved or not. And I think that that emotional running makes people looking to have kind of the public worship generate certain feelings, which makes worship not about the communication of God's truth to the minds of men, so the

Holy Spirit uses it to bear fruit, but instead makes it so that it's about a ginning up sort of process.

It's a factory of emotions is what you see in a lot of the church. And that makes preaching about motivational speaking as opposed to the communication of the true doctrine, the communication of applications of that doctrine and showing those things from the word of God.

And so when you have a focus on truth and the soul, the heart as a unitary thing, you know, the

Book of Proverbs says, as a man thinks, so is he. As a man thinks in his heart is the actual language, so is he.

And so this idea that also evil is devised in the heart. People often relate the emotions to the heart.

The heart in the Bible is just the inward man. The words devising, thinking, planning, they're all associated with the heart.

We store up the word in our hearts is also the way that the language is used in the Bible. So emotion is real.

Emotion is talked about in the Bible. And the idea that we can see what the causes of emotions are, it has to do with expectations versus what happens and how much we value things.

And so the idea of faith is that faith is steady. It's the knowledge of the truth and the knowledge of the truth is steady and it helps to regulate our emotions.

And so that's why you have to have the objective reality of the word of God and of Christ's work outside of us to pay for our sin so that it helps us to not go into the low valleys of despair and to not rise up to the exultant heights of pride.

But we're able to be stable knowing that God is for us, knowing that God has revealed the truth, that God has saved us.

And so that objectivity outside of us allows us to have stability and allows us to regulate our emotions, to have self -control.

And there's a really, really great book on controlling yourself by William Perkins called Epikeia or on Christian moderation or Christian equity that I would really encourage people to go look at.

I don't have time to talk about it here, but that idea of self -control and the moderation of self in relation to interacting with other people.

In fact, let me plug one of my sponsors where you can find almost anything by William Perkins, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CV for Cumberland Valley, bbsforbiblebookservice .com.

And if they don't have it, they will order it for you. Let's see.

We have another anonymous listener who says a very close friend has adopted the false notion of soul sleep.

How does this fit into your conversation today about aberrant views of the heart, mind, and soul?

Yeah, so soul sleep is an error not understanding what spiritual death is. So we go back to Genesis chapter 3 with the sin, the fall that occurs there.

And you look at the idea that there was this threat from God in the covenant of works that if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die.

Dying, you shall die is the more literal Hebrew. And the idea here is we have there's spiritual death, which is unbelief.

And then there's the physical death that exists. Spiritual death is not the spirit going to sleep.

What is spiritual life? John 17 3 says, this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true

God and Jesus Christ whom you sent. The knowledge of God is spiritual life. Now, spiritual death is unbelief.

Spiritual death is not a loss of consciousness. Spiritual death is unbelief. When God kicked

Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden and then put a cherubim with a flaming sword to keep them from eating of the tree of life, the purpose was to prevent them from gaining immortality in the cursed body.

And the danger was that if you are stuck with immortality under the curse and with unbelief, there would be that's hell.

Think about this. People are going to be resurrected under the curse and with unbelief, and they will be in a hellish condition.

In that resurrected state. So God prevented Adam and Eve from gaining access to the tree of life and from being immortal in the body with the curse, because his intention was to have them die in the body and resurrect them.

And his intention was giving them saving faith to then cause them to be in a glorified state.

And so those who are in hell, they have spiritual death. And when they are resurrected into the for the last judgment, they are going to continue to be in unbelief, have bodies and be under curse.

And there is going to be suffering in that condition. So this soul sleep idea is a perversion of what the scriptures teach.

The scriptures do not teach a loss of consciousness. They teach that spiritual death is unbelief and therefore results in not having what is spiritual life.

When you have one, you don't have the other. Yes, I don't understand because those that endorse soul sleep also believe that believers will go through this until they are awakened to be reunited with their physical bodies and glorified in heaven.

But how they could get beyond Christ's words to one of the thieves that he will be with them in paradise on that very day.

So that is a mystery to me how they can read that and still maintain an idea of soul sleep, even for believers.

But we are going to our final break and it's going to be a lot more brief than the other breaks.

If you have a question, send it in immediately because we are rapidly running out of time. We do have some people also still already waiting to have their questions asked and answered by David Reese on the air.

So if you have a question, send it in and get online as quickly as you can. chrisarnson at gmail .com

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That's ptlbiblerebinding .com. Welcome back, and we have another listener.

We have I was just looking at RJ in White Plains, New York. RJ wants to know,

I know this may sound like a silly question, but I was wondering why you believe

God in his own inspired word used the heart, this physical part of our body, which is necessary for us to survive physically as an allegorical term that has so much value and import in other ways spiritually.

I think that's a great question. I think that essentially you think about the heart as the listener mentioned, it is a physical object.

And so that physical object is used to talk about the core of the body, right?

And it's sort of the, it is the inward man. And so you think about the idea of the heart of stone and the heart of flesh and the replacing of the heart of stone with the heart of flesh.

And that language as well that we see in Ezekiel or the new heart in Jeremiah the writing of the law on the heart.

And so the language of a physical part is, as the listener mentioned, a figure of speech, but also it's a core part of the body that without it, the body cannot live.

And so, and it's inside of the body. It's at the center of the inward part of the body.

And so you see actually other languages used as well, like bowels or the kidneys or reams.

And so other things are used in terms of the inward man, but heart is certainly the most frequent one. And so the connection there,

I think is to the idea of the inward man. And then when we look at the other analogical language of things like a hard heart or a heart of stone versus a heart of flesh, that's about being able to be impressed upon.

It's about being able to be brought to repentance. And then you have the writing on the heart, and that has to do with information being in the mind, as opposed to the law being written on tablets of stone outside of man, which represents the external forms.

You have the writing of the law on the inward man, on the heart that is fleshy, on the heart that is soft.

And so those are the points of analogy and all that works together. And so I think that's what the scriptures are doing.

And God is trying to help us think about the inward man that's not visible to other people. And that's what the mind is.

And we have, let's see, I was just looking at another one that has avoided my vision right now.

We have, let's see. Oh, we have

Robert in Westchester County, Pennsylvania. I'm sorry, Westchester County, New York.

Who wants to know what would be three books that you would recommend that engage the subject that you are addressing today on the show?

So the first book would be this Faith and Saving Faith by Gordon Clark.

And the second one is also by Clark. It is the Johannine Logos. So that's just the word

John turned into an adjective. So you've got Johannine. So it's Logos as it is in John's writings.

And so those two things. But I also think that there's an interesting work that is not that widely known by somebody named

Sorendra Gangadine who wrote a book called Philosophical Foundation in which he talks about the idea of the inward man and the

Logos and the light that lights the minds of all men. And so he passed away recently.

And he, in that book, talks about the idea of man and takes from the

Westminster Shorter Catechism and the verses in the Bible that connect this, this idea of the inward man being the mind or the soul, the rational image of God, the rational soul, and talks about the idea of knowledge, holiness, and righteousness, and connects it to the offices that Christ held in terms of the prophetic, priestly, and kingly offices and how prophets are called to teach knowledge and priests are called to holiness and kings are called to righteousness and judgment.

And so he talks a little bit about that too in terms of that. It's not the focus of the book,

Philosophical Foundation, but there's certainly ideas about that there. So I think there's two books by Clark and I think

Sorendra Ganganeen's Philosophical Foundation. And by the way, since my guest recommended

William Perkins earlier, I wanted to also recommend to you some publications that solid -ground -books .com

have in stock. This is the complete exegetical and doctrinal works of William Perkins.

So if you go to solid -ground -books .com and type in their search engine William Perkins, this will come up amongst other things.

So keep scrolling down until you see the complete exegetical and doctrinal works of William Perkins offered by Solid Ground Christian Books at solid -ground -books .com.

Well, before we run out of time, I really want you, before we even take any more listener questions,

I want you to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners regarding this subject.

So I want you to have some uninterrupted time for a few minutes. Thank you.

So I think the first thing I want to make sure is clear is we have the body is made by God and the soul.

And those are the two components of man. And so we don't want to have some sort of a view where there's a body, a soul, and a spirit.

And those are all three different things. We understand that the inward man, the spirit, the mind, the heart, those are all referring to the same thing.

And so what I want to encourage also in this is this idea that the inward man is a unitary thing.

The spirit is a unitary thing that has knowledge or content that it thinks about goals or purposes that come from that.

And also choices that are made. The will is the mind choosing.

And so it is these inward actions and the introduction to religious affections by Jonathan Edwards, by the way, is another great way of looking at this.

He talks about these things and there's some excellent defining work on that, looking at the soul and the actions of the soul.

But that idea of the unitary inward man. And when we think about that, we think about how that results in what is faith.

Faith is understanding and believing the gospel. Saving faith is understanding and believing the gospel.

And that believing includes understanding that it applies. It includes believing that Christ's death was for you and that there's nothing else you have to do.

So that is often referred to as sort of resting on Christ. There's nothing else you have to do. That trusting in Christ is believing that Christ did this for you.

He paid for your sins. And so believing who Christ is and what he did, that he did it for you.

There's nothing else you have to do. That is what saving faith is. So understanding and believing the gospel.

And so when you see that the inward man is unified, that the inward man is the mind, that the inward man is to understand and believe the revealed truth that God has given, then all of our goals are going to be controlled upon, controlled by what we view as the good.

What's the good life? And then all the choices we make are going to be based upon what we think are the good ways of getting to that good life.

And so that's what we need to be renewed after the image of Christ in knowledge and holiness and righteousness means.

It's about having the right content from the word of God with the right goals from the word of God with the right means from the word of God.

And that's what being renewed after the image of Christ is about. And so we have to depend upon God to do that sovereignly by his

Holy Spirit. We need to apply the means that he's given to us. And those principally are taking in the word, praying, and the proper use of his ordinances, especially being baptized and continuing to take the

Lord's Supper in a local church. And so the use of those means is how God transforms us in the inward man.

And it's through knowledge. It's the knowledge of the truth. We're sanctified by the truth and his word is truth.

Amen. And we have time for one more question. And this is B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, are there any very popular ministers, authors, and televangelists that you can mention that are most in grievous error when it comes to the subject you are discussing today?

I think that honestly, I'd have a hard time picking one because of the fact that it's so widespread.

What's going to happen is there's going to be a being saved gets turned into sign this pledge card.

Being saved turns into get baptized. Being saved is something like that as opposed to you need to understand and believe the gospel.

And that faith is going to be preserved. And if you ever stop believing it, well, you never did believe the actual gospel.

You believe something else. And so those things are going to be denied. I mean, I'm sorry,

I don't have a particular heretical teacher to point to, but I would say if somebody is not pointing to the doctrinal content of the gospel as the thing to believe, then they're giving you another gospel.

Well, before we sign off, are there any special events or anything else that you want to highlight that our listeners may benefit from, either by attending something physically or listening and hearing and viewing over the

Internet? Anything in those realms? Thank you. So I don't have a particular event that's coming up soon other than the fact that, you know, we on the

Lord's Day at Puritan Reformed in Phoenix, we have a 10 a .m. morning service and we have a 4 p .m.

evening service and that occurs every Lord's Day. And so those are ongoing.

One of the interesting things about our service is that we allow for all of the voting members, the heads of household, to ask questions after any public teaching, which is a rare practice, but we believe is biblical.

And so there's an interesting opportunity to see the opportunity for people to ask questions or to express concern about something asked for clarification.

And so that's a part of what occurs in our worship service. And so 10 a .m. on the

Lord's Day and for the morning service and 4 p .m. in the evening. And you can find our location at PuritanPHX .com.

You'll be able to see worship with us as one of the options there. And it'll show you where we're at. We're right off of the 51 where Northern hits there.

So that is something where we welcome visitors and I'd love to have an opportunity to meet anybody and talk to anybody if they have any further questions or want to discuss anything.

And don't forget about the website for Armored Republic, the body armor manufacturing business that is owned and operated by my guest today.

ArmoredRepublic .com ArmoredRepublic .com I want to thank you so much,

Pastor David Reese, for being such an extraordinary guest today. And I look forward to your frequent return to this program as a guest.

And I'm looking forward to, God willing, seeing you again face to face at another conference someplace in the

United States because we travel a lot across the country here at Iron Trip and Zion Radio to represent the program at exhibitors booths, just like we did at the

Fight, Laugh, Feast conference. And I hope to see you again soon, brother. Thank you for having me on.

It was an honor and I enjoyed getting to talk with you. I look forward to talking more soon. Great. And if you could hold on because I'd like to give you a proper goodbye off the air once we conclude here.

I just want to thank everybody who listened and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater