September 29, 2020 Show with Dr. Joe Morecraft on “Authentic Christianity: The Theology & Ethics of the Westminster Larger Catechism” (Part 3)

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September 30, 2020

September 29, 2020 Dr. JOE MORECRAFT, pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, GA, who will address: PART *3* of “AUTHENTIC CHRISTIANITY: The THEOLOGY & ETHICS of the WESTMINSTER LARGER CATECHISM”

July 19, 2021 Show with Dr. Joe Morecraft on “Proper Heroes Put in Their Proper Place in the Lives of Christians” (Part 4)

00:04: Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister, George Norcross, in downtown
00:10: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,
00:23: Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:31: Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
00:38: Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
00:50: 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.
00:57: And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,
01:10: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet
01:15: Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.
01:20: This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 29th day of September 2020.
01:30: And I am thrilled to have back on the program someone who I have grown to love to interview and have grown to love as a brother and friend in the
01:40: Lord. His name is Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III, and he is the pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, and he's an author, and he has written a multi -volume commentary on the
02:01: Westminster Larger Catechism. In fact, it is an eight -volume commentary titled
02:09: An Exposition of the Theology and Ethics of the Westminster Larger Catechism. Its official title is
02:16: Authentic Christianity, and what I just read was the subtitle.
02:21: But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to discuss part three of your exposition of the
02:29: Westminster Larger Catechism, Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III. Always a pleasure and a privilege to be on your show,
02:36: Chris. It's always a pleasure and a privilege to have you on. If you could tell our listeners something about Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia.
02:46: Heritage Presbyterian Church is in Cumming, Georgia, which is Forsyth County, which is just north of Atlanta, about 40 or 50 miles.
02:57: And we founded that church about four years ago. God has blessed it.
03:02: We're still small, but as I often say, our influence far exceeds our numbers.
03:09: And God has blessed our people to be faithful to him in attendance, in their everyday life, in raising their children, in finances.
03:19: I really love these people. And I'll leave God for them and pray that as time goes on, there are three petitions
03:28: I'll make to God about our church. One is that God would deepen our spirituality.
03:35: Second, that God would increase our influence. And third, that God would increase our numbers.
03:41: We are a member of the Reformed Presbyterian Church Heritage Presbytery, which is a very small, conservative,
03:50: Reformed adomination with churches from coast to coast. Great.
03:55: And if anybody wants more information on Heritage Presbyterian Church, you could go to HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com,
04:06: HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com. And we are, as I said before, in Part 3.
04:14: We are entering Part 3 of the discussion on the Westminster Larger Catechism.
04:21: And by the way, if anybody wants to purchase the eight -volume set,
04:26: Authentic Christianity, an Exposition of the Theology and Ethics of the Westminster Larger Catechism, you could go to WestminsterCommentary .com,
04:36: WestminsterCommentary .com. But I understand that one of the things that sets apart the
04:45: Westminster Larger Catechism as being unique is its approach to the concept of the
04:51: Doctrine of God. If you could explain. I'm often asked by people who haven't been around Reformed churches, what's the difference about the
05:01: Reformed faith? What are the distinctives of the Reformed faith? Of which there are many.
05:08: I mean, predestination, covenant, all kinds of things. But the most distinctive teaching of the
05:16: Reformed faith is its teaching about God. Now, we'll talk about that today, but the thing that we need to see is, there are things about God that the
05:31: Reformed faith teaches that no other expression of Christianity teaches. In Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, or Eastern Orthodoxy.
05:41: And it's not that we follow blindly in men like Calvin and Luther, but it is we want to get all of our doctrines, everything we believe about anything, everything we believe about God from the
05:57: Bible and from the Bible alone. You know, you can't force information out of God.
06:05: You can't get to God and understand God simply by using human experience or human reason.
06:13: He's incomprehensible. That is, He is infinite, we're finite, and we cannot reach
06:20: Him by intellect or by sensations. We can't make God, we can't force information about Him.
06:28: You can force information out of a rock. You can put a rock under your microscope, you can put various chemicals on it, you can study it, and you can force all the information you want out of a rock.
06:40: But you can't do that to a person. You can't do it to a human person. You can't know a human person unless that person lets you know him or her.
06:51: And that's because we're made in the image of God. And so the only way that any human being can know
06:56: God is for God to reveal Himself, which He has done in Christ and the
07:02: Bible. The Bible says in John 1 that Jesus is the exposition of God.
07:10: Or to say it literally, He's the exegesis of God. So that if you want to know what
07:17: God's like, you look at Jesus. But God has also put the revelation of His character in black and white on pages in the
07:27: Bible. And has revealed to men who He is, what
07:33: He's like, what His perfections are, and there's absolutely no way a person can know
07:40: God apart from the Bible, apart from Christ. And the God of Christianity, and most particularly
07:48: Reformed Christianity, is not the God of Islam. It's not the
07:54: God of any other religions. It is the God who has revealed
07:59: Himself in Scripture. And I tell people, if your understanding of God is not in accordance with God's revelation of Himself, you worship an idol.
08:13: If somebody asks you, do you know Joe Moorcraft, and you say yes, and they ask you what he's like, and you say, well, he's short and skinny, which
08:23: I'm neither. Then that means you don't really know
08:29: Joe Moorcraft. And so when we say all these things about God, and everybody has their own opinion about God, but our opinions about God are worthless, and are idolatrous, unless they're in accord with what
08:44: God really is, and what He's really like. And the Westminster Standards, that is the
08:50: Westminster Confession of Faith, a larger catechism and a shorter catechism, which were written in the 1640s, to set forth for England and Scotland a basis for unity in Christianity and unity in the faith.
09:07: They're not perfect, but they are biblical Christianity in their purest human expression.
09:12: And the way these documents begin is by establishing the authority in Scripture, not in man.
09:22: And then the first thing we talk about after that is God, because the Bible is about God.
09:29: It's not about you. It's not about me. It is about God, and we only come into the picture in our relationship to Him.
09:41: Now what exactly, if you could, is unique about the way this particular creedal document, this catechism, the
09:54: Westminster larger catechism, what is different about the way it explains God? It presupposes the great distance between the creator and the creature.
10:10: That God is the infinite personal God. Man is the finite creature made in His image.
10:21: And the distance between them is infinite. I have a preacher friend who's great.
10:28: He uses a lot of southern idiom and expressions. He was talking about the transcendence of God and how
10:35: God is imminent in His creation, but He's also transcendent over His creation and far above His creation.
10:44: And then he said, you might say God ain't from around here. I mean, that is theologically profound.
10:54: He is not from around here. God is God, and we are creatures, and vast is the distance between us.
11:03: That reminded me of a brother that I know who's now with the Lord, originally from South Carolina, who during a, or in the very beginning of a sermon when he was a guest speaker at the church where I used to be a member on Long Island, he started out defining the doctrine of the sovereignty of God as God is the big boss of everything.
11:31: That's a good way of saying it, too. And that is one of the great distinctives of the
11:38: Reformed faith understanding of God. He is sovereign. That is,
11:43: He is the one to whom everybody is accountable.
11:49: We're accountable to a God that's not accountable to us. That's one of the most important things
11:56: I can tell you on your show today and tell your listeners. And it's one of the hardest lessons we have to learn, and that's the lesson that Job learned.
12:03: Read Job, and you'll see that's the lesson he learned. In fact, here God puts him through his time of grief and heartache and suffering, which
12:11: Job didn't understand, even though he was the godliest man in his culture. And God never did tell him why he had his children die and why he lost his wealth and why he lost his health and why he lost his wife's sympathy.
12:26: God never did tell him why in the book of Job. And He says in effect,
12:32: Job, I want you to learn that you are accountable to me. I'm not accountable to you.
12:38: Once you learn that, you'll be content with my will, whatever it is in life, even though you can't understand it.
12:44: So we're accountable to a god that's not accountable to us because he's the sovereign, but he is self -sufficient.
12:53: That's one of the distinctive emphases of the scriptures. That means a lot of things.
13:00: That means, first of all, that God does what He pleases. Now that's an actual statement,
13:07: Psalm 115, Psalm 135. God does what He pleases. He doesn't do anything because somebody's making
13:16: Him do it. He doesn't do it because somebody outside Him is causing
13:21: Him to be obligated to do it. God does not ask people's opinion.
13:27: God will do to every listener of your program. He will do to them and for them and through them whatever
13:34: He pleases, and He will not ask their permission or their approval. Now that is very distasteful to a man or a woman in rebellion against God, but it is a great source of encouragement to those who love
13:50: Him. God is self -sufficient. That is, He stands in need of nothing that He has made,
13:57: Acts 17. He stands in need of nothing that He has made.
14:04: We can look each other in the face and every human being in the face and say to them,
14:10: God does not need you. There's nothing about you at all that God needs.
14:17: You are of no benefit to God. You cannot give God anything that He has not given to you except your sin.
14:26: Now, I'm assuming then, from what you're telling us, that that story that has been told to children, in fact it's been told to adults for quite a long time, from pulpits everywhere or Sunday school classes, that God created
14:43: Adam in the Garden of Eden because he was lonely. There's a famous black spiritual, that that's the basis of the whole spiritual.
14:55: And that's what people believe today, that God needed somebody. He needed somebody to talk to.
15:02: He needed somebody to complete Himself. But there's nothing about us
15:07: God needs. I mean, think about it. If God needs me, I can pat myself on the back and I say, oh,
15:14: I must be far more important than I thought I was. God's not complete except He has me.
15:21: And so it boosts my pride. And it boosts my self -confidence. But when you say to somebody,
15:29: God does not need you, to a Christian, God does not need you but He loves you, that does not boost pride.
15:40: That humbles. That causes the believer to say, why in the world would a
15:46: God who stands in need of nothing He has made love a sinner like I am?
15:55: So when you say God loves you because He needs you, it boosts human pride.
16:01: I mean, if God needs me as much as I need Him, He's in worse shape than I am.
16:12: To say that God is self -sufficient is to say, as the Bible calls Him, a
16:18: God of blessedness, the blessed God. That is, God is completely content and happy in and of Himself.
16:29: And nothing outside of Him can diminish or increase that happiness.
16:36: If something outside of God can diminish God's happiness in and of Himself, then that means
16:44: God's not perfect. But God is a God of self -sufficiency, content in Himself, and He is thoroughly self -centered.
16:54: Everything God does, He does for His own glory. He does for His own honor.
17:00: He does for His own namesake. So people have asked me, well, isn't it sinful to be self -centered?
17:08: Well, it is sinful for us to be self -centered because we're not God. But I use this illustration.
17:17: It's not a true story, but it gives the point. About a man that had the highest IQ possible.
17:25: And he had PhDs in all kinds of subjects. And he called a press conference and said,
17:33: I'm going to dedicate the rest of my life to be rat -centered. Everything I'm going to do is to keep rats comfortable, to feed them, to have them around me.
17:48: I'm going to be rat -centered. And you and I would say to that, well, that is really foolish.
17:56: For a man whose mind is greater than all other human minds, to be centered on rats is the most important thing in his life.
18:06: Well, for God to be centered on anything outside Himself, other than Himself who is the highest, greatest, most majestic, wonderful person in the universe, for Him to be centered on anything else is even more foolish than the man to be centered on rats.
18:30: That God does all things for His own glory. He does whatever He pleases.
18:36: And He loves Himself. The Bible talks about God loving the
18:42: Son, and the Son loving God, the Holy Spirit. That these three persons of the
18:47: Trinity have loved each other throughout all eternity. Augustine used a little illustration.
18:53: It has its weaknesses to it. But he said God is the lover. God the
18:59: Father is the lover. God the Son is the beloved. And God the Holy Spirit is the love.
19:05: But the point is that this is not, the Trinity is not just an intellectual construct. We're talking about one
19:12: God who simultaneously is three persons in that one
19:18: God, and these three persons love themselves. In fact, God loves
19:23: Himself far more than He loves any of us. Jesus loves
19:28: God more than He loves any of us. And these are all some of the great distinctives of the
19:36: Reformed faith that we emphasize that God is God. He's not a man.
19:42: And the most important thing to God is God. He's sovereign. He does whatever
19:48: He pleases. He's forward -leaning whatsoever comes to pass in time. He does all things for His own glory.
19:55: He loves Himself supremely. He stands in need of nothing He has made.
20:02: That is God. And when a Christian hears those things, even though he's never heard them before sometimes, because some preachers don't preach these things, they make
20:13: God look like a big man. They forget the distance between the Creator and the creature.
20:19: But when a real Christian hears these things, he says, that's my God. I love that God.
20:26: And I love everything about Him. And I love all of His perfections. The God of most people today is too small.
20:41: A pathetic God that can't do anything unless we let Him do it. That God owes us things.
20:53: That in some sense God needs us. You know, I tell people there's two words. That God will never say to any human being.
21:04: Thank you. That's very true.
21:12: Never even thought of that, I don't think. One of the things that you mentioned that I want you to elaborate on that makes
21:22: Reformed Christianity and our understanding of God different than what all other expressions of Christendom believe about God is that we believe that God is never frustrated, never disappointed, and eternally joyful knowing that everyone whom
21:57: He chooses to save will be saved. He is not going to be eternally frustrated over the fact or eternally saddened by the fact that there are countless billions of people for whom
22:13: His Son, Jesus Christ, died who will be in hell nonetheless for eternity.
22:20: That is a wonderful thought to know that man cannot frustrate
22:25: God, cannot keep God from accomplishing His purposes. Like Isaiah says, once God stretches out
22:32: His arm to do something, who can hold it back? And the answer is nobody. That God is the only
22:41: God, the God of the Bible, besides whom there is no other. He creates light and He creates darkness.
22:49: He creates good times and He creates calamitous times.
22:56: One time I was on a talk show in Connecticut and I was here in Atlanta and they were asking me questions and you know
23:04: New England is pretty much gone ever since Unitarianism took it over in the early 1800s.
23:11: And so this talk show had me on asking questions about the relationship of Christianity and natural disasters.
23:19: And this lady asked me a question about that. I think
23:25: I offended her right off by my accent. But she asked me, what's the relation of God and natural disasters?
23:35: So I just quoted the text that I had just said from either Isaiah 45 or 46, I can't remember.
23:41: Where God says I am the Lord, besides me there is no other. I create light, I create darkness. I create good times,
23:48: I create calamities. I am the Lord who does all these things. I didn't say anything else.
23:55: And the lady in Connecticut said, well that's just your interpretation. And I said, ma 'am
24:01: I didn't interpret anything, I just read you what the Bible says. That God is in charge,
24:07: He is in complete control of everything that happens in the universe and nothing can go wrong. Somebody is in the driver's seat of the universe and it's not man.
24:18: It's the living God. And He accomplishes His will. And the only reason you and I have free will at all and can make decisions is because the sovereign
24:29: God has willed that we have wills. And people forget about that.
24:35: They think that the human will is so sacred that they think that any doctrine of the sovereignty of God will violate it.
24:44: And they forget that the only reason man can choose certain things or has the freedom, should
24:52: I say, to choose certain things is because the sovereign God has willed that He has it.
24:58: Now there are certain things that a sinful man can't do unless God gives him the power to do. Like believe in Jesus.
25:05: But man does have a will. We don't want to deny that. But man's will is not sovereign.
25:12: I was at a big crusade one time with a famous evangelist. And he said this.
25:18: In fact, it's this man that made me a Calvinist. Because I was, I mean, I loved this guy.
25:23: I wanted to be like him. I wanted to preach the same message he preached. And it was what he said at this crusade that made me go into the arms of the
25:33: Reformed faith. He said, God has given you a will to choose whatever you want to choose and He can't do a thing about it.
25:46: Wow. I thought then, poor God. Now God has given us wills.
25:53: But our wills are not sovereign. The average human being would say, well my will, it's everything.
26:00: It's the most valuable thing I own. It determines everything. Well, let me ask you. Did anybody out there in the audience will to be born?
26:10: Why don't you right now will to become a millionaire in the next five minutes? Why don't you will not to die?
26:22: Many of the most important things that happen to us do not happen to us because we will them, but because God willed them.
26:33: And so it is these understandings of God that the
26:39: Protestant Reformation recovered from the scriptures and from Augustine that the old medieval church had neglected.
26:50: And so after the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s and 1600s, these great truths held sway for generations.
27:04: In fact, the first several generations of Americans, the vast majority of them all believed these things.
27:12: And it wasn't until the late, late 18th century that things started to change when people started to put more confidence in their individual rights, their individual sanctity and autonomy and independence of God that caused
27:31: Christianity to collapse in New England and be replaced with Unitarianism.
27:37: It says the only way we can know God is by human reason and experience. That the
27:43: Bible's not the word of God, that man is basically good, that the Reformed faith is terrible for saying that man is totally depraved, and that man is perfectible by a civil government that has compulsory state education and controls every area of life.
28:01: So that view, departing from the historical Reformed view of God, took place in New England in the late 1700s, and then in the southern states it started changing in the late 1800s.
28:21: So that by the time we jump into the 20th century, the pulpits of this country, even those who didn't know it, or even those who called themselves
28:34: Reformed, many of them had already departed from the faith. So what we're seeing today in places like Portland and Seattle and Chicago and New York and Washington D .C.
28:48: and the Congress and all these other things, what we see happening in our culture is the inevitable outworking and consequences of the
29:00: West turning from the Reformed doctrine of God. I'll give you an example so that you'll know
29:07: I'm not exaggerating. In fact, could you give us the example after our first break? Yeah, sure. I don't want to interrupt you mid -sentence.
29:14: Yeah, don't let me forget, and I will. Okay. Folks, if you want to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dr.
29:21: Joseph C. Moorcraft III, send in your email to chrisarnson at gmail .com
29:27: chrisarnson at gmail .com As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the
29:36: USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away.
29:42: We'll be right back with Joe Moorcraft after these messages from our sponsors. Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, announcing a new website with an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a
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40:24: This is Chris Arnson at the North Carolina Trump & Zion Radio. If you just tuned in today, our guest today for the full two hours is
40:34: Joseph C. Moorcraft III. We are in our third part of a series that Dr.
40:41: Moorcraft began some time ago on Authentic Christianity, an exposition of the theology and ethics of the
40:49: Westminster Larger Catechism. As I said, this is part three. If you have a question that you would like to ask
40:57: Dr. Moorcraft, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com.
41:04: 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
41:10: USA. Before the break, Dr. Moorcraft, I believe what you were saying was that the
41:15: Western world has turned their back or has refused to believe in the
41:22: Reformed understanding of who God is, and that is the cause of all the great ills that we face.
41:29: I believe that's what you were saying, but if you could... Yes, sir. Well, you could pick up where you left off there. Everything we see going on today that grieves us and anguishes us is a result of the
41:39: West leaving its understanding of God. The founding pilgrims and Puritans that came to this country came with that view of God.
41:51: We see... My favorite patriotic hymn is... That's not a hymn, patriotic song, is my country tis of thee, great land of liberty, of thee
42:02: I sing. And the last stanza says that God is the author of liberty because He is, quote, the great
42:14: God our King. In other words, they understood that a society cannot be free unless it believes in the total sovereignty of Almighty God, because if it doesn't believe in the total unconditional sovereignty of Almighty God, it will believe in the sovereignty of man.
42:33: And if you believe in the sovereignty of man or if you believe that man is outside the control of God, that always breeds tyranny.
42:44: It's interesting that during the Reformation period in the early 1600s in England, when the
42:51: Puritans were trying to bring the power of the Word of God to bear upon every area of life, it was those
43:00: Arminians, that is, those who stood against the Reformed faith, that always sided with the tyrannical
43:08: Stuart kings like James and Charles, because these men claimed to be above the law.
43:19: Their will is the law. They are the sovereigns.
43:24: And so when we... Everybody believes in sovereignty. You're either going to believe in the sovereignty of God or you're going to believe in the sovereignty of man.
43:32: And when this culture quit believing that we have liberty only because we believe that God is king and in control of every area of life, then we started worshiping man and we started seeing the democratization of Christianity where the emphasis was taken off and the focus taken off of the sovereign
43:59: God and placed on the autonomy, independence, sovereignty of man.
44:06: I saw a bumper sticker one time that was produced by a right -wing organization, a political organization that has a lot of good views.
44:16: But I was shocked because the bumper sticker they were trying to get people to put on the car said sovereign forever.
44:26: And I thought, ooh, I didn't know this organization believed in the sovereignty of God, but they weren't talking about God.
44:33: They were talking about the people. We the people of the United States, we've got to be sovereign forever.
44:40: And that's why we oppose dictators because we want man, people, the states of the
44:47: United States to be sovereign. There's no such thing as the sovereignty of man.
44:54: God is sovereign. God is independent. Man is dependent. It's God that is the king, not we.
45:04: And so you see, in the early days of the Reformation, they understood these things.
45:11: They wrote out these things. In fact, it wasn't just the Reformed Presbyterians. As most of the people that wrote the
45:18: Westminster larger catechism were Presbyterians, but it was also the Reformed Baptists of the day where you and I both know,
45:26: Chris, that the Reformed Baptists came out with a confession. And I just checked during the commercials that the
45:34: Reformed Baptists came out with a confession in 1689, the Second London Baptist Confession, Westminster Confession, which was in the 1640s, predominantly
45:44: Presbyterian. And I'm going to read a paragraph that pretty much summarizes everything we've been saying this evening.
45:52: And it's identical. The Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 and the
46:01: Westminster Confession of Faith in the 1640s. So let me read this one paragraph.
46:09: God has all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself, and is alone, in and unto himself, all -sufficient, not standing in need of any creature which he has made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them.
46:33: He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things, and has most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them whatever he pleases.
46:50: In his sight all things are open and manifest. His knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature, so as nothing is to him contingent or uncertain.
47:04: He is most holy in all his counsels, in all his works, and in all his commands.
47:10: To him is due from angels and men and every other creature whatever work, service, or obedience he is pleased to require of them.
47:23: Now the only way we're going to stop all of this burning of America, both literally, morally, politically, culturally, as it rushes toward the precipice, the only way is not by Republicans or Democrats or third party, but by the church returning to the old reformed doctrine of God.
47:49: Amen. If we don't do that there's no hope because the Bible says in Proverbs those who hate me love death.
48:00: And that's why we see death all around us is because even among churches that claim to be
48:07: Bible believing churches and evangelical churches and fundamentalist churches they don't love the
48:14: God of their fathers anymore. I have a book which is terrible and I don't recommend it to anybody.
48:21: It's called The History of God. And the first sentence of the book says in the beginning man made
48:30: God in his own image. And then it goes through the various gods that people worship.
48:39: But then in the conclusion chapter it says now everybody needs a God. So pick the
48:44: God of your choice. It doesn't matter who he is except there's one God you don't want to pick.
48:51: And he's the cause of all hatred, prejudice, wars, oppression throughout history and his name is
49:00: Jehovah. So we see a deliberate rebellion against the
49:08: God of our fathers in this culture. They hate that God and so as a result they're dying.
49:15: Their policies produce death. And we see this departure from God beginning in the very early days of our republic when people said that every man has the right to worship the
49:39: God of his choice. Well I'll tell you if you worship the
49:47: God of your choice and it's not Jehovah you will go to hell when you die. Amen.
49:52: In fact years ago when I checked myself into a hospital for my addiction to alcohol
50:04: I was waiting for an open bed in a Christian rehab ministry in North Carolina called
50:10: Hebron Colony Ministries. I can never stop singing the praises. I know. That's a good place. HebronColony .org
50:17: is the website. HebronColony .org But before I went there
50:23: I checked into a hospital because they had a rehab wing and I just wanted to wait there until I could go to Hebron so I could at least isolate myself from the ability to drink myself to death.
50:39: And they had a secular psychologist that I had to see. It was a requirement that I had to see her for group therapy.
50:48: And one of the things that she said which is completely connected to the at least the modern version of the 12 -step program
51:00: AA and NA Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous was you could pick a higher power and it could be any higher power of your own choosing.
51:14: And I said to that woman that that is blasphemy. And she said well
51:23: I know that you're a Christian but why can't you just keep those views that you believe are very important?
51:30: Why can't you just keep them to yourself? And I said well for centuries before I was even born men, women and children were tortured and murdered for their faith in Jesus Christ and they went willfully to their deaths rather than deny
51:49: God. I'm supposed to keep my mouth shut just because it makes you feel uncomfortable? And I said it's absolutely blasphemous to think that you can make a tree your
52:01: God. No actually I said that you can make a chair your God.
52:07: And she said no you can't make a chair your God. It has to be something living like a tree. And I said well what about when they cut the tree down and make a chair out of it?
52:15: That's pretty good. Well I'll tell you what makes it worse is in the past 20 some years there have been these real heresies creep into what were once strong Reformed churches and strong Reformed seminaries so that today you find very respectable
52:40: Reformed preachers and scholars teaching things that are diametrically opposed to the faith of our fathers.
52:49: In fact we're going to have to have you bring that up when we come back because we have to get to our middle break right now.
52:58: And I hope that you all begin writing down your questions for Dr. Moorcraft.
53:05: We have some questions already that have come in and I hope that you will patiently wait for Dr.
53:11: Moorcraft to answer them. But this is the longer than normal break because Grace Life Radio 90 .1
53:18: FM in Lake City Florida requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because they have to by FCC regulations they have to localize
53:30: Iron Shepherds Iron Radio to Lake City Florida so they air their own public service announcements. While they do that we air our
53:36: Globally Heard commercials so please use this time wisely, write down as many or as much of the information as you possibly can for or from as many of our advertisers as you can so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize our advertisers because that will help keep them happy and that will help keep them sponsoring this program because we depend on our advertisers to exist.
54:03: So please at the very least contact our sponsors and thank them for sponsoring this show.
54:11: But send in your questions for Dr. Moorcraft at chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com
54:18: don't go away we're going to be right back right after these messages from our sponsors.
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56:44: In Psalm 139, verse 14, the psalmist offers praise to the Lord like this,
56:49: I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and wondrous are your works that my soul knows very well.
56:56: He saw God's goodness and mercy, kindness, and the beauty in what
57:02: God has designed, and he has erupted into praise. In any crisis or problem, brothers and sisters, our only fallback position is to trust
57:11: God's design, and once we do, there is nothing for us to do but to erupt in praise to Him.
57:18: When the whole world is searching for a solution, God, in His infinite mercy, has given us what we need to address this illness, which can be very serious.
57:28: Such is the beauty of His design. Knowing that design, how can we not erupt in praise to our great
57:34: God like the psalmist did? May God bless you and give all of us wisdom to see greater things in His design.
57:42: Thank you. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and the
57:56: Dividing Line webcast here. Although God has brought me all over the globe for many years to teach, preach, and debate at numerous venues, some of my very fondest memories are from those precious times of fellowship with Pastor Rich Jensen and the brethren at Hope Reform Baptist Church, now located at their new, beautiful facilities in Corham, Long Island, New York.
58:16: I've had the privilege of opening God's Word from their pulpit on many occasions, have led youth retreats for them, and have always been thrilled to see their members filling many seats at my
58:24: New York debates. I cannot hesitate to highly recommend Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island to anyone who wants to be accurately taught, discipled, and edified by the
58:34: Holy Scriptures, and to be surrounded by truly loving and caring brothers and sisters in Christ.
58:39: I also want to congratulate Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham for their recent appointment of Pastor Rich Jensen's co -elder,
58:46: Pastor Christopher McDowell. For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.
58:53: That's hopereformedli .net, or call 631 -696 -5711.
59:00: That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island that you heard about them from James White on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
59:38: Thank you. I'm Dr.
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01:02:11: That's liyfc .org. As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.
01:02:36: A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.
01:02:46: Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshiped and how he shall be represented in the world.
01:02:54: They believe churches need to turn to the Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship
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01:03:05: God -centered focus, reading, preaching, and hearing the word of God, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.
01:03:13: Baptism and communion are the scriptural elements of their corporate worship, performed with faith, joy, and sobriety.
01:03:20: Discover more about Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey at gcbcnj .squarespace
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01:03:36: Or call them at 908 -996 -7654. That's 908 -996 -7654.
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01:07:46: This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our
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01:10:18: Before we return to Joe Moorcraft, I just have a couple of important announcements to make.
01:10:25: First of all, tomorrow we are going to be joined by Pastor Josh Miller and also
01:10:34: Pastor Mike Riccardi. Pastor Josh Miller is the pastor of Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
01:10:43: And Pastor Mike Riccardi is the pastor of local outreach at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, the church where John MacArthur is the senior pastor, world -renowned
01:10:57: Bible teacher, radio and TV preacher and teacher, conference speaker and best -selling author.
01:11:07: Mike Riccardi is going to be speaking on One Hope of One Message and it's largely going to be a conference on the glorious doctrine of reconciliation.
01:11:20: That will be Saturday and Sunday as far as the conference is concerned. But Pastor Josh Miller and Pastor Mike Riccardi will be on the program tomorrow to discuss that great theme that we hope that you will come to hear tomorrow and we hope that you, if you're able to, will also go to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania this weekend to hear live and in person as both
01:11:45: Pastor Riccardi and Pastor Miller preach on these themes. Also, folks, if you love this program and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, please go to www .IronSharpensIronRadio
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01:14:33: click support, then click click to donate now. Also, folks, if you are not a member of a local
01:14:40: Bible believing church, you might not even be aware that there may be churches within a minute or two drive from your house that are biblically faithful.
01:14:50: I have found churches for people in this audience from all over the world that they didn't even know existed.
01:14:58: And I may be able to help you too. And I may be able to help your family, friends and loved ones who don't have church homes.
01:15:03: I may be able to help you when you're going on vacation and you want to honor God and visit the house of worship that is most biblically faithful in that area.
01:15:15: Well, I can possibly help you, God willing, because I do have extensive lists all over the planet.
01:15:21: So send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com, but I need a church in the subject line.
01:15:28: That's also the email address where you could send in a question to Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III.
01:15:35: That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the
01:15:44: USA. And Dr. Moorcraft, I believe before we went to the break, you were talking about institutions of higher learning and other establishments, organizations that were at one time faithful to Reformed theology, faithful to the catechisms and creeds and confessions of the
01:16:02: Reformed faith, and especially faithful to the Bible, but have turned their back on those very important things.
01:16:09: And if you could continue where you left off. Yes, sir. And there are Reformed churches,
01:16:16: Reformed scholars, Reformed seminaries, Reformed authors that are criticizing the faith of our
01:16:26: Westminster fathers on God. I'll give you an example.
01:16:32: There are people right now whose names you would know who are redefining what it means to say that God is immutable and eternal.
01:16:41: There is a sentence in the Confession of Faith and the Baptist Confession that says that God is unchangeable and eternal without body, parts, or passion.
01:16:53: And the point is that God is always the same. That God is not, what goes on in God is not determined by what happens outside of God.
01:17:05: Now that should be obvious, I mean. But there are now people, famous people saying that God is not unchangeable and eternal in the historical sense of those words.
01:17:18: That there are some things about God that are unchangeable and eternal, but there are other things in God that change according to His relationship to man.
01:17:30: And that God's relationship to Christians is a two -way street. That just like our lives are influenced and changed by our relationship with God, so God's life is influenced and changed by His relationship to us.
01:17:50: You see, all of these views puts man in the place of God. There was a man that preached at my son's baccalaureate at what was allegedly, or I should say ostensibly,
01:18:03: Presbyterian University. And he said this, quote,
01:18:12: Wow. Really?
01:18:29: They're not willing to be that blatant because they know they can't afford to be. But they are really holding into question the historic understanding of God by the
01:18:42: Westminster Standards. And there is a book I want to recommend.
01:18:48: It is a difficult book to read because it is so profound and so in -depth, but it is so biblical.
01:18:57: And it supports the Westminster larger catechism's understanding of God as blessed in and of Himself, self -sufficient, not standing in need of anything
01:19:10: He's made. It defends and explains that view against all of its critics, and then it goes to the critics one at a time and refutes them.
01:19:19: It is a great little short paperback book that I recommend to you.
01:19:24: It will require the exertion of intellectual and spiritual energy to understand it because it is really difficult to read.
01:19:36: I want to emphasize that. It's called All That Is In God.
01:19:43: Yeah, that's what Brother Dolezal, Brother Dolezal. Yes, I interviewed him on that actually.
01:19:49: D -O -L -E -Z -A -L. And All That Is In God is a part of a phrase from Augustine who said that all that is in God is
01:20:03: God. So that God, you change any of His perfections.
01:20:10: He's no longer God. If God's not sovereign or if He's just sort of partially sovereign,
01:20:15: He's not God. You can't fool around with God's perfections. God is
01:20:21: His perfections. It's not that God has characteristics. God is His perfections.
01:20:27: God is love. God is a consuming fire. And so when you change any of the perfections of God in any way,
01:20:37: God is no longer God. And if you have a God that is transformed or changed by what man does to Him, you have a
01:20:49: God that's less than the God who really is there. So All That Is In God by Dolezal.
01:20:58: I recommend you read it, but I recommend you buy it for your preacher. And there's another book
01:21:03: I would recommend for your preacher. I love this book so much. And it's not easy reading either.
01:21:10: But I keep a copy of it in my study and in my den so that I'm always within arm's reach of this book.
01:21:22: And it doesn't have an exciting title. It's called The Doctrine of God by a man named
01:21:29: Bavink. B -A -V -I -N -K. Herman Bavink. Yeah, not easy reading.
01:21:37: But those two books represent the historic view of who
01:21:43: God is. He is eternal. He is unchangeable. He's sovereign. He's self -sufficient.
01:21:49: And everything else we've been talking about. In fact, I want to direct our listeners, if you want to hear my interview with Dr.
01:21:56: James E. Dolezal, who wrote All That Is In God, the book that was just being promoted by Dr.
01:22:05: Moorcraft, All That Is In God, Evangelical Theology, and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism, you go to the search engine of Iron Trip and Zion Radio.
01:22:15: You click on podcast, or actually podcast, and then in parentheses it says past shows.
01:22:23: Podcast, past shows. You click on that. And if you type into the search engine D -O -L -E -Z -A -L, that interview will come up.
01:22:32: I conducted that interview some time ago. That was actually August 10th of a year or more ago.
01:22:42: And I think that you will be blessed by that. That was actually 2017. You will be blessed by that.
01:22:49: Oh, that is great. Yeah, in fact, you just put the bug in my ear to invite
01:22:55: Dr. Dolezal back on the show. Yeah, that would be good. I'm sure he'll be pleased to hear that you so enthusiastically endorsed his book.
01:23:05: We do have a couple of listeners that are waiting, and hopefully they're waiting patiently, to have their questions asked.
01:23:12: I usually don't give the full name of listeners, but since this is an individual who I know very well, and who, in fact,
01:23:21: I used to work with as a part -time employee when I worked for Calvary Press Publishing a number of years ago,
01:23:28: Joseph M. Bianchi is president of Calvary Press Publishing now in Greenville, South Carolina.
01:23:37: And let me give a plug to his website. It's calvarypress .com, calvarypress .com.
01:23:45: And I'll even throw in his toll -free number, 877 -775 -5479, 877 -775 -5479.
01:23:54: But Joseph M. Bianchi says, At what point do free -will churches fall into heresy?
01:24:01: Specifically, are they sub -biblical or outright heretical? Well, you know, there is a chapter in the
01:24:11: Westminster Confession of Faith, and I'm sure in the Baptist Confession, called Up Free Will.
01:24:17: Most people distinguish but say that Calvinism believes in the sovereignty of God, and anti -Calvinism or Arminianism believes in free will of man.
01:24:27: That is not accurate. Both of us, Arminians and Calvinists, have a doctrine of free will.
01:24:35: That is, that man has a will and that he has the freedom to choose whatever he wants to choose.
01:24:43: That he's not an atomic bomb. He's not a puppet. He has a free will to choose whatever he wants to choose.
01:24:50: And the key word is, whatever he wants to choose. Yeah, that's the point. The point is that his will is not some independent, autonomous thing that just acts.
01:25:00: But that his will is governed by the nature of his heart. And that if his heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, he'll never want anything good.
01:25:13: That heart will never want God. It'll never want Christ. And so, therefore, he will never choose
01:25:21: Christ because he doesn't want Christ. And the Bible says,
01:25:26: Keep your heart with all diligence for out of any of the issues of life. It is the heart that determines your choices, your wills, your preferences, everything.
01:25:36: So that we do have a free will. We can choose whatever we want to choose. But our will is governed by our hearts.
01:25:42: And it's like a cow eating grass, chewing its stud. A cow will never start eating little lambs like a lion and tearing the jugular vein out of a lion unless that cow's nature is changed into that of a lion.
01:26:02: And the same way with the human will, we would never will to serve Christ or to love him unless God changes our hearts.
01:26:10: And that's what the new birth is all about. Ezekiel 36 says that God changes the heart of the sinner from that which is evil and hard as a rock to something soft and pliable with God's law written in it, the
01:26:25: Holy Spirit filling it. And it is that change of heart that is the new birth. And until God changes a person's heart, he will never even want to believe in Jesus.
01:26:35: He won't be able to do anything pleasing unto God because his heart is evil, totally depraved.
01:26:44: So we believe that man has the freedom but not the ability to choose
01:26:50: Christ. God's not standing over him with a shotgun saying, don't you dare choose Christ.
01:26:56: I mean, anybody may choose Christ who will choose him.
01:27:02: But until we're born again, we can't because we're dead in our trespasses and sins.
01:27:09: But the other thing is, is that the Armenian or the average American, when he talks about free will, what he really means, as we said a while ago, is sovereign will.
01:27:23: What I will is what happens to me, which is one of the greatest myths of all times. Only God's will is sovereign.
01:27:31: So I think it is a terrible heresy to believe that man has a will that can override the will of Almighty God.
01:27:44: I mean, it's not heresy, it's idolatry. If my will can override the will of God, then
01:27:50: I am superior to God, and that's the worst form of idolatry.
01:27:56: Amen. I am, I don't know exactly where you are on this.
01:28:02: I am, however, very patient with those that I believe are my brothers and sisters in Christ, who for some reason have not reached a point of agreement with the
01:28:17: Reformed faith. I think that we do have to be careful not to think that somehow we were more discerning and brilliant than they in recognizing these truths in the
01:28:31: Scriptures and think that we are somehow superior when the doctrines of grace are actually meant to humble us.
01:28:37: And therefore, in fact, I learn from some of my brethren who are not Reformed because their lives may be a lot more holier than mine.
01:28:46: How true is that? That a lot of people don't know any better.
01:28:53: They have preachers that will not preach to them the truth. And here's the thing to realize.
01:29:02: The doctrines we profess to believe are not always the doctrines we live by.
01:29:09: That's good for Arminians, it's bad for Calvinists. The doctrines we profess to believe are not always the doctrines we live by.
01:29:17: I've learned through the years that you have some non -Calvinists who profess to believe certain doctrines but in their heart of hearts they don't.
01:29:28: Right. As J .I. Packer said, we're all Calvinists on our knees. I'll give you an example. I was preaching at a church in southwest
01:29:37: Virginia in the Appalachian Mountains and I went to see this very old lady at the most remote place
01:29:45: I've ever been to called Tom Bottom. And she went to this hyper -Pentecostal church.
01:29:54: I mean they were hyper -extreme and she would never even think about going to a
01:30:02: Presbyterian church but she liked me as a person. And I liked her and I liked her cooking.
01:30:10: So I would go to her house every now and then. She was an older woman and I would eat dinner with her.
01:30:17: And her name was Ms. Mullins. She lived up on top of a mountain above Tom Bottom. And she wanted me to sit with her one time and pray for her
01:30:27: Uncle John who was a drunk. Now she went to a church that said it despised the
01:30:35: Reformed faith or even mainstream Protestantism. It was extreme Pentecostalism.
01:30:43: So we're sitting in her living room and here's how she prays. She prays,
01:30:49: Oh Sovereign God if it is your will please save Uncle John from his drunkenness.
01:30:57: And that's as Calvinistic as you want to get. So the doctrines you profess to believe are not always the doctrines you live by and so there are
01:31:07: Armenians out there that don't live by what they profess. I can remember seeing a sermon, a horrible, horrible sermon by the man who was at the time
01:31:22: President of Liberty University and Seminary, Ergin Kainer, who was actually eventually proven to be a fraud.
01:31:33: He claimed to have been one time a Jihadist. He was raised in a very moderate
01:31:39: Muslim home before he became a Christian. So a lot of his story was just totally made up.
01:31:45: But he was a vehement anti -Calvinist and he preached this sermon trying to be humorous with the title
01:31:54: Why God predestined that I would not be a Calvinist. So he went on and on with this ridiculous and juvenile and self -contradictory sermon.
01:32:07: And when he was finished, Jerry Falwell got up to the podium and saying,
01:32:14: Oh, amen, amen. Wasn't that a wonderful sermon? Let's bow our heads in prayer. And then Jerry Falwell began to pray like a
01:32:20: Calvinist. Lord, open the eyes of the lost who are out there. Lord, give them new hearts, etc.,
01:32:27: etc. I mean, unbelievable. I'm just sitting there. How can he even be praying that if he rejects with a passion?
01:32:33: Well, you know, on the other hand, if the doctrines we profess are not the doctrines we live by, that not only means that there are some
01:32:44: Arminians out there that will go to heaven, it means there are some Calvinists out there that will go to hell.
01:32:50: That's right. In fact, I have actually heard, going back to the extreme of Arminianism, I have actually heard, and I'm just astonished at this,
01:33:09: I have heard at Christian or allegedly Christian funerals, the famous poem
01:33:15: Invictus. Oh, that's a damn good poem. Oh, yeah. It was authored by William Ernest Henley, and it has been read at the funerals even of Christians.
01:33:29: In fact, Congressman John Lewis, who just passed away,
01:33:35: I believe it was his granddaughter or some young girl in his family, read his favorite poem, and I'm going to quickly read through this poem because it is actually the logical outcome of Arminianism.
01:33:49: Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.
01:33:58: In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud under the bludgeonings of chance.
01:34:06: My head is bloody but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade, and yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid.
01:34:20: It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll.
01:34:26: I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. And that is one of the most blasphemous poems that has ever been written.
01:34:38: I preached a sermon for this guy at his funeral, and then his brother, who was a psychologist, got up right after I finished and read that poem.
01:34:47: Wow. I mean, that is, it puts shivers all through my spine to hear it. But even though the average person wouldn't say it, the average
01:34:57: Christian today believes I am the master of my fate, I'm the captain of my soul. I determined the way my will determines my future.
01:35:11: Even though the Bible says, in John 1, 12 and 13, as many as received him, to them he gave the right to be called the children of God, even those that believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but who were born of God.
01:35:32: In other words, the will of man is a man's most solid obstacle in coming to Christ.
01:35:42: That God's got to change that man's will. Amen. And we have to go to our final break right now.
01:35:50: It's going to be a lot more brief than the last two. So please, if you have any intention of sending in a question, do it immediately, because we're rapidly running out of time.
01:35:58: ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Don't go away.
01:36:04: We're going to be right back with Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III, right after these messages from our sponsors.
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01:46:22: Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen and this is our final segment of our interview today with Joseph C.
01:46:28: Moorcraft III. We are discussing the Westminster Larger Catechism.
01:46:33: This is actually part three of a series that we began on the
01:46:39: Westminster Catechism. And if you'd like to join us on the air, please do so immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.
01:46:47: Our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com ChrisArnzen at gmail .com We have
01:46:53: John in Peoria, Illinois who says, Dr. Moorcraft, do you recommend as worthy any other commentaries on the
01:47:02: Westminster Larger Catechism aside from your own? You know, giving your competition a little plug he's asking for, basically.
01:47:09: Well, that's okay. I don't know if either one of them are still in print, however. There's only been three.
01:47:16: And one, the first one was done in the early 1700s by a man named
01:47:21: Thomas Ridge Lee. And it's two volumes and it's very good.
01:47:28: And if you can find it, it's well worth getting two volumes of the
01:47:33: Larger Catechism by Thomas Ridge Lee. And then, 30 or 40 years ago, a man, a great man named
01:47:42: Johannes Bosch wrote one volume, about 800 or 900 page, commentary on the
01:47:52: Larger Catechism. And that is particularly good. Did you say Johannes? I thought it was
01:47:57: Gerhardus. Well, Gerhardus was his daddy. Oh, okay. And he taught at Princeton Seminary in the early part of the 20th century.
01:48:08: Johannes, I think, was a member of the Reformed Presbyterian Church Covenanter. And it is a big, fat paperback book and well worth getting.
01:48:19: But those are the only three that I know of since it was written in the 1640s, is mine, and Ridge Lee's, and Bosch.
01:48:30: Huh. We do have Beebe in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know,
01:48:38: I know of another theological heresy that flies in the face of the immutability of God, and that is
01:48:48: Open Theism. Have you heard of it and can you explain how dangerous this doctrine is?
01:48:53: It is terrible. Terrible doctrine. And it is the idea that just as the future is open to us, that is, we can't control the future, we do not know, even though God does, we don't even know what the future holds as human beings.
01:49:13: So is it for God that the whole future is open to God.
01:49:18: He hasn't controlled the future, and he doesn't know what's in store for him, so it is a terrible view of God.
01:49:29: Yes, in fact, I know that some advocates of that system, that heresy, have actually called themselves consistent
01:49:38: Arminians. Well, that's a good name for them. I think we ought to tell your people, they probably know, but while we refer to anti -Calvinists as Arminians, not
01:49:54: Armenians, Arminians is a country over in the Middle East. Rush Duny was an Arminian. R .J.
01:49:59: Rush Duny, a great Calvinist, was of Arminian descent. Arminius was the name of a man called
01:50:09: Jacob Arminius, who was taught at Geneva, and in private, he taught doctrines contrary to Calvin, and the
01:50:21: Protestant reformers. He taught that man is not totally brave, that, in fact, that's how the five points of Calvin came into existence.
01:50:34: The Synod of Dort, which was the council of the whole
01:50:39: Reformed Church of Europe, except for France, and the Catholic government wouldn't let them come. The whole
01:50:45: Reformed world of Europe gathered together at the Synod of Dort D -O -R -T, a city in Holland, and adjudicated this doctrine taught by Jacob Arminius, who publicly would say he was a
01:51:06: Reformed person, but in private, he would repudiate all the doctrines of the Reformed faith.
01:51:12: And when he was called on the carpet by the Synod of Dort, he had a heart attack and died. So, he did not go to the
01:51:21: Synod of Dort, but his disciples went and tried to defend themselves against the whole
01:51:27: Reformed world. They believed that man is not totally depraved, he's just flawed in his sin, that election is not unconditional, that God looked forward in time and saw who would believe and he chose them, so it's conditional, that Christ's death was not limited in its purpose to those that God chose, but it was for everybody in the whole wide world, that God's grace is not irresistible, it can be resisted, ultimately, by man, even if God wants it saved, and that a person who's a true
01:52:03: Christian can lose his faith and be lost. So, in answer to the five points of Arminianism, the
01:52:11: Synod of Dort answered him with the five points of Calvinism. Total depravity, man is dead, his trespasses and sins, and totally incapable of doing anything about his situation, apart from the new birth, that election is unconditional, that God didn't look forward in time and see who would believe, but people believed because God chose them before the beginning of time, that the atonement of Christ is designed to save God's people from their sins, hence, limited atonement, that God's grace is irresistible, that when
01:52:54: God sets his scopes on somebody to save that person, that person will be saved, and that once God has saved a person,
01:53:04: P, perseverance of the saints, that person is not only eternally secure, but that person will persevere in the path of godliness to one degree or another the rest of his life, so that's where the five points of Calvinism come from.
01:53:21: Calvinism is far bigger than the five points, and the five points of Calvinism are the
01:53:27: Reformed world's answer to Jacob Arminius, and they found him guilty of teaching heresy, they defrocked him from the ministry, and Holland expelled all preachers that believed it from Holland.
01:53:44: What's interesting is that Arminius basically believed old medieval scholasticism of the
01:53:53: Roman church in the Middle Ages. The technical name for that view is semi -Pelagianism.
01:54:00: That is the idea that you have to believe in Jesus in order to be born again, and Dort said to Arminius and to medieval scholasticism, you have to be born again in order to believe in Jesus, and so here we are in the 21st century, and most evangelical
01:54:25: Christians believe what was condemned of the senate of Dort, and believe the old medieval scholasticism of the
01:54:34: Roman Catholic church, and they don't know it. The average evangelical today believes you must believe in Jesus first in order to be born of God, whereas the historical faith of our fathers and the
01:54:52: Westminster standards is you must be born of God in order to believe in Jesus, in order to be saved.
01:55:00: Let me quote once again Romans 1, 12, and 13. I mean, excuse me, John 1, 12, and 13.
01:55:07: As many as received him, to them he gave the right to be called the children of God, even to those that believe in his name who were born, not of blood, nor the will of flesh, nor the will of man, but who were born of God, and that's the reason they believed.
01:55:25: Amen. And in Acts 13, 48, I've never heard an
01:55:30: Arminian give an adequate answer to that. Those who were ordained unto eternal life believed. Not the other way around.
01:55:37: Not those who believed were ordained unto eternal life. Those who were ordained unto eternal life believed.
01:55:43: Well, let me tell you how the Living Bible perverts that verse. The Living Bible is a
01:55:48: Bible that's not even good for kindling. And I used to have a
01:55:57: Pakistani Christian friend who referred to it as the broken Bible. But here's how,
01:56:05: I call it Kenneth Davis Bible storybook for children. But anyway, here's how he translates in quotes
01:56:12: Acts 13, 48. Because he knew he had to do something with that verse.
01:56:19: He said, it says, as many as wanted eternal life believed.
01:56:25: Wow. In other words, not only is it a gross mistranslation of the
01:56:30: Greek, but it takes salvation entirely out of the hands of God and puts it in the hands of men.
01:56:38: Wow. Very quickly, I think he's a mutual friend of yours and mine,
01:56:46: Jerry Johnson. He was involved in the production. Oh, yeah. I haven't seen him in years. Yes.
01:56:51: He was involved in the production of Amazing Grace, the History and Theology of Calvinism, a phenomenal, monumental
01:56:57: DVD series. In fact, I think you're a part of that, aren't you? Yes, sir, I am. That is a great thing that he did in producing that.
01:57:04: He said, I'm almost certain it was him, that Jacob Arminius' soteriology was even more severely heretical than your average non -Calvinist
01:57:17: Baptist or your average non -Calvinist who might be labeled an
01:57:23: Arminian by us. But the evangelical Arminian, although he is still an error, is less severe in his heresy.
01:57:32: Would you agree with that? I don't know what he's getting at, but modern evangelicalism is based on Arminius.
01:57:41: So Arminius would, in private, be very severe in his anti -Reform comments, though in public, because he knew he couldn't keep his job because he taught at Geneva.
01:57:53: He couldn't keep his job unless he, in public, said he agreed with the
01:57:58: Calvinists. But in private, he would try to pervert the students at Geneva. Well, it has been such a joy having you on the program.
01:58:06: I look forward to your return to this program frequently. And I want to make sure that our listeners have all the information that they need.
01:58:13: First of all, the website for Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia is
01:58:19: HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com. HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com.
01:58:26: If you want to purchase the eight -volume commentary on authentic Christianity, an exposition of the theology and ethics of the
01:58:35: Westminster Larger Catechism by our guest today, Dr. Joe Moorcraft, you can go to WestminsterCommentary .com.
01:58:45: WestminsterCommentary .com. And I just can't thank you enough,
01:58:51: Brother Moorcraft. You always do such a superb job on this program. And I hope that you actually remain on the air so we can schedule our next interview.
01:59:00: Yes, sir. You are very, very welcome. Okay, if you could hold on the line when we go off the air, that'd be great. Yes, sir.
01:59:06: I want to thank everybody who listened today. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater