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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 Monday on this eighth day of January 2024. I'm thrilled to have back on the program a returning guest who has written an extraordinarily valuable book.
I'm speaking of a pastor Andy Woodard, who pastors Providence Baptist Church, a Reformed Baptist congregation in New York City, Manhattan to be more specific, and we're going to be addressing his new book today, Great Reset Christianity, How Evangelicals Twist Scripture to Advance the Left's Agenda.
It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back onto Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Andy Woodard. Hey Chris, thanks for having me. And tell our listeners about Providence Baptist Church in Manhattan.
So we are a.
Confessionally Reformed Baptist Church that meets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at 62nd and Lexington. We have 60-something members, I'd say 53 members right now, and about 75 to 80 people on a typical Sunday.
We started during COVID.
And things have been rolling along since then. And I am very appreciative of the fact that your church is one of the only churches in Manhattan, or even in the five boroughs of New York City if you expand that, that takes a public, very strong stance against the woke movement and the social justice movement.
Are you aware of any other congregations that publicly take a bold stance such as the.
One you're taking? Publicly, I mean, I think if you say publicly, like they signed the Dallas Statement. I'm not sure, I don't know of other pastors that have signed the Dallas Statement in New York City.
There might be some, but I'm not aware of them. But like we put that on our website, hey, we oppose Marxism, critical race theory, etc. Now there are other churches that would be fairly conservative, but they're not willing to take that stand publicly.
Yeah, well.
There are conservative churches that are theologically conservative that are woke. Oh yeah, yeah, there's a lot of those. And even conservative Reformed and conservative Reformed Baptist churches that are woke.
I don't know of any that are confessional. The ones that I know of may be confessional, at least some of them might be. But I don't... Did you know, this is not in New York, but you.
Know that Thabiti Aniwile's church claims to hold to the 1689? I, you know, I.
Assumed that. I didn't know if he still did, because when I first began interviewing Thabiti, my last interview with him was about a decade ago, he would not be publicly saying the things that he is saying today.
Yeah. And in fact his book on the decline of African American theology, or the decline of African American churches, I should say, is a very good book. And when he was on my show, he publicly condemned not only the civil rights movement as one of the reasons that there was a serious and radical decline of biblical soundness in African American churches, but he even went back as far as the abolitionist movement when it became secular.
So I don't think that Thabiti would be saying that ever today. Yeah, that's interesting. I haven't read anything by him. Well, if you listen to my interviews, they're still archived. You can hear him say those very things.
You would never think in a million years that the man that I was interviewing would have eventually become a leader in the woke movement. You never would have thought that. But anyway, well, if anybody either lives in Manhattan, or is traveling through there, or has family, friends, and loved ones in Manhattan, and you'd like to recommend them to a solid Reformed Baptist Church, go to pbc .nyc.
Pbc, for Providence Baptist Church, dot NYC. And as we've already stated, it is a confessionally Reformed Baptist Church. Now, Andy, you and I both know that there have been quite a number of books that have come into print by conservative evangelicals, and even Reformed evangelicals, who were openly, and in writing, making a public protest against the woke movement and the social justice movement.
And so I'm wondering, why did you think that there was a need for Great Reset Christianity? What are you saying that may not be included in the other volumes already available? Yeah, so some of the other.
Volumes might be focused on doing like a deep dive into critical race theory, or exposing DEI, or some of these other theories or philosophies. I'm not trying to duplicate that. I think that other books do a good job of that.
My book is, specifically, the heart of the book is messages on these passages of scripture that have been often weaponized by woke evangelicals to push, as the subtitle says, to push the left agenda. I don't know of another book that does that.
I don't know of other books that, you know, talk about Leviticus 19 and Love Your Neighbor, or Romans 13, or Revelation 5, Diversity Around the Throne. Like, from the books that I've read, or I've seen, they're not necessarily going at it from that approach.
I also think that my chapter one is very unique. I mean, redundant to say very unique, but I think that there's nothing else like chapter one of my book that is in print, and chapter one is discussing or unpacking how some prominent evangelicals have worked really hard to create the current woke movement, and that those leaders are people who would call themselves conservative.
They would call themselves conservative evangelicals, some even reformed, and from what I've seen, the other books have a tendency to.
Either not name names—. Are you there, brother? You broke up. Other people told.
Me, hey, you need to get this in print, so I was a reluctant publisher that was.
Urged along by some friends. Okay, well, it would probably be good—I mean, this may sound unnecessary, but you never know who might be misunderstanding what we are saying and what the woke movement is saying.
Could you give us a working definition of the woke movement and the social justice movement? Yeah, so a friend.
Of mine defines woke—what it means to be woke is to adhere to critical consciousness. Critical consciousness is—there's a whole field, many fields of study that have the word critical in front of it, so critical biblical studies, critical legal theory, critical race theory.
Basically, that criticism, that word critical there, the idea is to deconstruct. It's to criticize, criticize, criticize. It's to tear down the existing systems and to expose the racism. The critical theory is rooted in Marxist thought, and then it's applied to a lot of other fields of study, and so the woke movement is a broad term that applies to having critical consciousness or basically a Marxist framework, a.
Marxist worldview. You mentioned before the Dallas Statement on social justice, which is, to my knowledge, the most thorough refutation and warning against the social justice movement and the woke movement by conservative Christians, I think, if not all Reformed, mainly Reformed, and even those who were involved in it will be honest enough to say that they don't believe it's a perfect statement, and there are levels of disagreement among those who signed it, but if you could give us an overview of that.
Yeah, so the Dallas Statement was.
Written by a number of men, maybe like 12, 15, I'm not sure the names are on it though, but the idea was to have a unified statement against these ideologies that are addressed in the statement to, you know, address these issues of critical race theory and feminism and the gender, like LGBT issues, and really to have this statement that was broad enough that a lot of people would sign it, so it's not explicitly Reformed, it's not a Baptist statement, it's not a Southern Baptist statement, so that people would come together who are conservative Christians to have a unified position, and honestly, part of it is awareness, because a lot of people are not aware of these issues because, you know, they're just living their lives, you know, they might be a pastor of a small church or a homeschool mom or dad, and so the issues that are assaulting, you know, broader society might go over their heads or they're just not aware of them, so the design of the statement was to kind of rally the troops to confront these issues, so that was the design of the statement, but I was not involved in that, I didn't know any of the signers at the time that it was written, but I've been able to meet a number of them since then.
But you did.
Sign it. Oh yeah, I signed it the day it came out. Right, as did I, actually. Well, the issue at hand is that both sides of this dispute, both those that are vehemently and vociferously and adamantly opposed to the woke movement and those that are equally passionate in defending it, we both believe it is extremely serious, which is more puzzling, I should say, is that there is a middle group that has concerns, they may even tend to side in a stronger way with those who are opposed to the woke movement, but they never say a word publicly, they never warn about it in any way, shape, or form from the pulpit, they don't go on the record publicly about it.
Do you think that that is dangerous, and do you have any reasons why they are doing that? First off, yes, I.
Think it's a problem, because ultimately you can't straddle the fence on it, like you're, the kids in your church that are being told that there's multiple genders, you have to have a position on that.
Do we go with that or do we oppose that? The kids in your church that are being told that they are racist because of their skin color, not because of any action or thing that they've stated or anything, but just because of who they are and what they look like, you can't be neutral on that.
And so you have to do something, you have to take a position, and that not taking a position, there's a famous saying that silence in the face of evil is itself evil. And so that's the issue, this cowardly approach of being silent when there's all of this horrible evil happening.
I mean, it's a huge problem. And I understand why, they're silent because of peer pressure, or fear of man, or fear of losing funding from the denomination, or losing the backing of a prominent woke leader who's very famous and is going to give them a speaking opportunity, or they don't want to lose their publishing contract, or, you know, there's all kinds of reasons, many of which are financial.
So I understand that, I understand the fear of the loss. But ultimately, if you know what time it is, if you see what's going on, not just in the church, but in the culture, you can't continue to stand by silently and let these things happen.
Now, there are some folks, I've even had conversations with a few of them, at least, who side more clearly and more aggressively with the woke side than the anti-woke side, who are theologically conservative and even Reformed Christians.
But they would compartmentalize, I should say, this issue because they would say, I'm not a Marxist. I don't promote Marxism or socialism. I am very much opposed to the sin of homosexuality and the transgendered movement.
I am merely identifying with a cause that I believe has been neglected, and that is the cause for equal treatment amongst minorities in the church. And they will make the claim that they can somehow pull that off.
And in fact, one individual that I had a conversation with about a year ago said he didn't know anybody who was a conservative Reformed and especially Reformed Baptist who was publicly defending the social justice movement, who was Marxist or socialist or soft on homosexuality.
So how do you respond to that group?
Sorry, can you re-state that two minutes ago?
There are people, apparently, who say that they are in favor of much of the rhetoric or on the same side of much of the rhetoric of those that would identify as woke or social justice advocates, who would say also, I'm not a socialist.
I never said anything that remotely looks like socialism or Marxism, and I'm definitely not in favor of people committing the damning sin of homosexual activity or transgenderism, but they still see the woke movement as, in some way, communicating the truths of Jesus Christ, in their opinion.
So how do you respond to those people?
Well, I would say that if what they're actually getting at is similar to when Ligon Duncan cried or fake cried at T4G and said that he was racist or that he's repenting of these things, or when Matt Hall said, I'm a racist.
If that's what we're talking about, like a leader or pastor saying, I acknowledge that I used to hate, fill in the blank, a certain people group based on their skin color. And if you want to repent of that and you recognize that you used to actually be racist, then praise the Lord.
I'm glad that you are stopping that sinful behavior. But I don't think that that's what is actually going on. I don't know too many people who actually are genuine racists. I'm not saying they don't exist, but that's not really what's going on with the woke movement.
And so anyway, the issue is that, well, one of the issues is that you're not going to be able to straddle the fence. Basically, the person might themselves say that they are conservative on points of doctrine and they do not endorse homosexuality, but that BLM just really is good and that they might be able to hold that together in their mind, but their kids can't because it doesn't make sense.
That system, that way of, that worldview is incoherent. And so it's not going to age well, like they might be able to stand on that position for the moment, but give it five years, give it 10 years. The woke evangelicals that I know in New York City, they've all taken the next logical steps that align with their beliefs.
And so, you know, let's say someone like Greg Thornberry is now supporting homosexuality and attacking the conservative movement on many fronts, attacking the anti-abortion movement. All kinds of things.
So, like, you start making these, you start taking these steps and the next thing you know, you know, take another step left, another step left, another step left, another step left. And then eventually you are in a place that you didn't think that you would ever be.
So now you're making you mentioned Greg Thornberry. He was at one time the president of the well-known evangelical seminary in Manhattan. And it escapes my mind the name of it. Can you can you let us know what that seminary was where he was at one time the president?
Yes. Well, he was most recently the president of the King's College.
Yes, yes.
A school in lower Manhattan.
Dinesh D'Souza was at one time also the president there and the and others that that were would not be considered by any stretch of the imagination proponents of wokeism.
Yes.
Yeah.
Before that, he was the VP at Union University with David Dockery. And before that, he was a VP at Southern Seminary with Al Mohler. So, yeah, Thornberry has gone very far left from where he would have been before.
He has a podcast. I'm not sure if it's still active, but, you know, as of a year ago, this podcast called.
Multiple Sources.
And in that podcast, he and the two co-hosts just openly ridicule all things conservative, whether that means attacking the pro-life movement, lots of things related to sexuality. So it's a tragedy.
But I do see it as a logical step, a series of logical steps based on other steps that he took. And frankly, the steps that he took were taken while in the in the favor of woke evangelicalism, you know, Great Reset Christianity, Manhattan Christianity, which is the mainstream of Manhattan Christianity is different from Christianity of the Bible.
So what makes it even more of a surprise, what makes Greg Thornberry's story even more of a surprise is that I've known his dad since the early 1990s. I'm not even sure his dad, John Thornberry, is still with us, but a real wonderful, biblically faithful pastor, author, church historian, conference speaker.
And I would love to I would love to touch base with John because I always enjoyed my communication with him, but I'm sure he must be heartbroken over this. I don't know if you heard anything about John or know who he is, but he never would resemble anything about what you're saying now about his son, Greg.
In fact, God helped me to dodge a bullet. God helped me to dodge a bullet because I tried on numerous occasions to interview Greg before I knew anything like that had happened. In fact, I think it was before anything public began to deteriorate as far as his theological views.
And something always happened that prevented it. And I'm thanking God right now that that we never had that interview.
Yeah, I know who John Thornberry is, but I've never met him or spoke to him. But yeah, he wrote that book, A Pastor in New York City or something about the.
Oh, yeah, that was that was the biography of Spencer Cone, a pastor in New York, the life and times of Spencer Cone, which still is my very favorite biography of a Christian of all time. Yeah.
And it was. I need to finish reading that. I have it on my shelf. Oh, good.
You should. That was originally published by Evangelical Press. But a really excellent book that I've said on many occasions should be turned into a movie. It's so fascinating. Well, we have to go to our first commercial break.
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Now when you say in your subtitle, how woke evangelicals twist the scripture to advance the left's agenda, is it of your opinion that some of these self-professed evangelicals are intentionally doing that to advance the left's agenda?
Yeah, I mean I've been in meetings, which I describe in the book, where leaders of those meetings are bragging about being at the White House and the president and his administration is telling them, here's what I want you to do.
And then they're glowingly describing how they did that.
You mean Joe Biden's White House?
What's that?
Joe Biden's White House?
I think it was Obama's White House.
Oh, okay.
I mean it was under, I mean we're talking like, let me think what year that was.
What was under a liberal president's occupation.
Yeah, yeah, but I mean I don't want to spoil all the tea, like you got to read the book. But yeah, like this is intentional. Also, I've done enough membership interviews with people who have come from some of these very, very prominent churches that push for leftward agendas.
And they're all like, Andy, this church's platform is the DNC platform. Like you realize that, right? And I'm like, oh, okay, that's good to know. And so I throw all that stuff out. And then I did some more digging and then we have the book.
And tell us about the primary concerns that you have about this. You know, as long as I've been a Christian, perhaps even especially in my younger years in the Christian faith in the 80s and the 90s, uh, there was a commonly held and perhaps even unspoken understanding, even amongst the most conservative of evangelicals and Reformed Baptists even, that somehow there was a disconnect from the conduct and belief system and worldview of members of any given church when it came to any area of life, except the voting booth and who you voted for and what kind of political activism that you were in.
There was something that was strangely held as a sacred thing. And it has to be defended at all costs. And we should never even inquire about what candidates a member of a church is voting for. We should never challenge them if they're public in trying to drum up support over people who might have as a part of their agenda the murder of unborn children and the sexual agenda of the public school systems, of the government school systems, that not only want to indoctrinate children about approving and exploring and experimenting with homosexuality and fornication, but even to the point that we've reached of children without even the knowledge of their parents getting drugs and so on, puberty blockers, and the promotion of surgical means to change the gender of a child as if that could actually happen.
But even though those things may not be a part of the accepted worldview of a Christian, they say that the other things that the left is doing are far more important, far too important to abandon, and that that is really the attitude and the behavior of Jesus Christ to look out for the downtrodden, the underdog, the less privileged, and on and on we could go.
So how alarming is this in mainstream conservative Christianity? We already know that for nearly 100 years leftism has been championed by mainline liberal apostate denominations, but I'm talking about people that you and I would call brothers in Christ, or at least we used to, and people who used to say exactly the same things we're saying, and something has radically changed.
Yeah, I mean, I agree with that. Sorry, what was the question?
What are the things that we should be most alarmed about when we hear more and more conservatives aligning themselves with the woke movement?
Yeah, I mean, there's a whole vocabulary of terms. Whenever I hear someone adopting the language like marginalized, whenever they start talking about, you know, we need to care for our marginalized brothers and sisters, I've never heard them use that term and refer to, let's say, Christians in northern Nigeria who are being persecuted by Boko Haram.
I would consider those to be marginalized brothers and sisters. I would not consider an individual who is, let's say, robbing a convenience store and happens to get shot while they're holding up the convenience store.
I would not consider that person to be a marginalized brother or sister. And further, I just don't think that, um, let's say, criminal justice reform. Criminal justice reform is a big topic, but people who are committing crimes are not marginalized.
They are marginalizing other people. They are the ones who are disregarding the humanity of the person that they are robbing or assaulting. Another term that's popular in these circles, in woke circles, is Imago Dei.
Imago Dei is image of God. Now, the concept of Imago Dei or image of God is not a woke concept. It's a biblical concept. But the ones who are talking about it are typically people who are coming from a further left perspective.
And the reason why they're talking about it is because of a political agenda, which is usually tied to things like abolishing the police and having free, uh, you know, a welfare state and, um, just like government taking care of us and paying for everything and taxing the rich and, you know, removing individual responsibility, removing individual rights, getting rid of private property, um, just like pushing a very hard left socialist perspective.
But the issue with it, well, what I'm, what I'm addressing is importing that which for a long time was widely understood to be, um, progressive Christianity, if you want to call it Christianity. Um, but then now bringing that into conservative evangelicalism, bringing that into the Southern Baptist Convention, into the PCA, into, um, reforms Christianity, um, like it makes, it makes sense if you are a resurrection denying, um, substitute substitutionary atonement denying quote unquote, progressive Christian, but for you to hold up the ethic of, uh, the world as the Christian ethic, while also saying that you affirm the Trinity and the atonement and the resurrection and the deity of Christ and the virgin birth and all that stuff.
It doesn't make sense to be merging these things together, except once you realize what's being taught in seminaries in the, you know, Reformed Theological Seminary, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, so on and so forth.
When you realize what's happening in these seminaries, then it makes sense what's happening in the churches.
Okay. We have an anonymous listener in the Bronx, New York, who said, what was it, in your opinion, that began the cracks in the foundation of some conservative Bible-believing Christians, at least those that profess to be, that began their welcoming woke ideology into their, not only minds, but into their pulpits?
A lot of it started through the Gospel Coalition. The Gospel Coalition, a long time, like 10 years ago, you know, publishing tons of great articles and just very insightful and addressing current issues.
But then they start tying it in with left-wing politics, and it's, you know, it's any sort of movement that takes place where it's a little step at a time. It's not, you're not taking giant leaps. You're inching forward, and in this inching forward, you're inching to the left.
And so, you know, whether it be like, you know, you started, you heard Sabeti Anubule back in the day, and you're like, wow, this guy's really solid. I like him. He's got good things to say. And then you keep reading him and keep reading him, and so you start getting shifted to the left as he is going to the left.
You know, you have a soft spot in your heart for other people, and you see, you know, let's say a tragic shooting or a mistaken identity situation. You know, there was the shooting in Louisville a number of years ago where a police officer went into the wrong home.
I believe the female cop got the wrong address and came into this home and then shot the lawful resident. And like, that's a tragedy. It was not, like, there's no other way around it. But this woke agenda then twists that tragedy and makes it about racism instead of making it about a mistake.
So then, you know, it ties in. It uses terms like systemic injustice or systemic racism instead of just saying, well, no, this was a mistake that this woman made that, like, mistakes happen. And we want to avoid those at all costs.
But, like, we call them accidents because they're accidents.
Yeah, well, the irony is that the ire is raised by those on the left when a minority is seriously injured or killed accidentally by law enforcement. And they will call that racism even when the police officers involved are indeed themselves Black or Hispanic or women like the one that you just mentioned.
And they will even call it white racism and that white supremacy is the root of it, even when there were no white police officers involved. That's mind-blowing, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Well, they would say that.
This person was killed by the system. They weren't killed by the individual. They were killed by the system. And that's the way that Thabiti Anyiwele described Martin Luther King. And when he was killed, he said—he wrote this article that became very famous.
It was titled White People, We Await Your Repentance for Killing MLK. And he said that if you're white, your grandparents were responsible for killing MLK, even though they had nothing to do with it.
And even may have marched on the—marched in the civil rights activist parades and so forth, along—maybe right next to MLK?
Yeah. So he's saying that you're responsible because your grandparents were part of the system, even if they opposed the system, even if they were not part of the system. And so that sequence of thought is only possible to string together those words when you have adopted these presuppositions, when you've adopted the woke mindset or the critical theory, critical consciousness, Marxism, Hegelianism, whatever you want to call it.
You're only able to come to those conclusions because of a radical shift in your worldview. And so then that worldview, a friend of mine described it as—he said, Andy, it's emotional abuse. That's what that is.
It's no matter what you say, you are wrong, even if you didn't participate in it, you stood against it. No matter what, there's always a way to attack. There's always a way in which you're wrong. And that's abuse.
But we don't really talk about that too much.
And I don't know if you'll be able to finish answering this question before the middle break, which is starting in two minutes, but we have Byron in Pigeon, Utah, who says, do you think a lot of the reasons why conservatives who are pastors or denominational leaders are buying into this woke movement is simply out of fear of somehow losing something, perhaps popularity and numbers?
Yeah, I mean, that's definitely part of it.
Popularity, numbers, money, opportunities. They don't want to get cut off from their friend groups. They don't want to get blocked from their networks, their associations, their pastors' fellowships. You're going to get blocked by people on social media.
You're going to get disinvited from local pastors' associations. These things will happen. But that's a small price to pay. Spurgeon was kicked out of his denomination by a vote of 2007, and his own brother seconded the motion.
So if you think that you're exempt from being criticized, or you should be exempt from criticism when you stand for truth, I think you're in the wrong line of work if you want to do that as a pastor.
That's right. And we have to go to our middle break right now. If anybody wants to join us on the air with a question of your own, send it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.
Give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and country of residence, and only remain anonymous if your question is a personal and private one. Please be patient with us, because this is a longer break than normal, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle, because the FCC requires of them to localize Iron Sharpens Iron Radio geographically to Lake City, Florida, where the radio station is located, and they do so with their own public service announcements and other local things, while we simultaneously, on the other hand, air our globally heard commercials.
Please use this time wisely. Write down as much of the contact information as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you can, so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to our advertisers, keeping in mind they are essential to our existence.
And send in your questions to Andy Woodard to chrisarnsen at gmail .com. We'll be right back.
Puritan Reformed is a Bible-believing, kingdom-building, devil-fighting church. We are devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone. Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image-bearing prophets, priests, and kings.
We teach families to worship together as families. Puritan is committed to teaching the whole counsel of God, so that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. We sing the Psalms, teach the law, proclaim the gospel, make disciples, maintain discipline, and exalt Christ.
This is Pastor David Reis of Puritan Reformed in Phoenix, Arizona. Join us in the glorious cause of advancing Christ's crown and covenant over the kings of the earth. Puritan Reformed Church. Believe.
Build. Fight. Puritanphx .com. Have you noticed the gap that exists between the Sunday morning sermon and the Sunday school classroom or the small group study? So often we experience great preaching from the pulpit, but when it comes time to study God's Word in those smaller settings, well, let's be honest, it leaves a lot to be desired.
It seems like it is nearly impossible to find good curriculum out there today that is true to the Word of God and is built upon sound doctrine, much less it's hard to find curriculum that will actually teach people how to study the Bible.
Hi there, my name is Jordan Tew, and I am the Executive Director of the Baptist Publishing House. Our ministry is dedicated to providing local churches with sound Bible study resources. Our quarterly curriculum is titled The Baptist Expositor, and for good reason.
We are Baptist and we exegete the scriptures. If you want to have a curriculum that teaches your people how to study the Word of God, I invite you go to our website, download a free study, baptistpublishinghouse .com.
May God bless you.
It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world. Here's Joe Riley, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show.
He really loves hearing interviewed, Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Italy in County Kildare, Ireland. Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft.
If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia are largely to thank since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.
Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards, and Dr. Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight-volume commentary on the larger catechism.
Heritage is a member of the Hanover Presbytery, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.
Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers, scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, and God's glory alone. Their primary goal is the worship of the Triune God that continues in eternity.
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Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in scripture through the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Every day at thousands of community centers, high schools, middle schools, juvenile institutions, coffee shops, and local hangouts, Long Island Youth for Christ staff and volunteers meet with young people who need Jesus.
We are rural and urban and we are always about the message of Jesus. Our mission is to have a noticeable spiritual impact on Long Island, New York by engaging young people in the lifelong journey of following Christ.
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Help honor our history by becoming a part of our future. Volunteer, donate, pray, or all of the above. For details call Long Island Youth for Christ at 631 -385 -8333. That's 631 -385 -8333.
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And Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love, Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.
It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in his holy word and to enthusiastically proclaim Christ Jesus the King and his doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island and beyond.
I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love as I have. For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.
That's hopereformedli .net. Or call 631 -696 -5711. That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Ironsharpensiron.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the Prince of Preachers to heart. The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.
Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God-centered, Christ-exalting books for all ages. We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid-ground-books .com. That's solid-ground-books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past to present you can unearth from Solid Ground.
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If you've never purchased books from them before, please make today your very first purchase. And even if you purchase every month from solid-ground-books .com, make today your largest purchase ever, if possible.
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So please go to solid-ground-books .com frequently, purchase generously, always mention that you heard about them from Chris Aronson of Ironsharpensiron Radio. Before I return to my guest Andy Woodard and our discussion on his new book, Great Reset Christianity, I have a couple of very important announcements to make.
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Go to ironsharpandzionradio .com, click support, then click, click to donate. Now, last but not least, if you're not a member of a Christ-honoring, biblically faithful, theologically sound, doctrinally solid church like Providence Baptist Church in Manhattan, New York, well, I have extensive lists spanning the globe of theologically sound churches, and I've helped many people in our audience all over the world find churches, sometimes with even just a couple of minutes from where they live.
That may be you, too, so if you are without a biblically sound church home, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Andy Woodard on the woke movement, on the social justice warrior movement, and anything in regard to his book, Great Reset Christianity, How Woke Evangelicals Twist Scripture to Advance the Left's Agenda.
That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA. By the way, I want to mention that if the anonymous listener in the Bronx and our other listener in Pigeon, Utah want to receive a free copy of the Great Reset Christianity book by our guest Andy Woodard, please send me your full mailing address as well as your full name so that we can have Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, that's cvbbs .com, ship those books out to you.
And always keep in mind, if you are a first-time questioner, not only do you receive a free book, you also receive a free New American Standard Bible, that is, if you're also a first-time questioner.
And can you give us some examples, before I go on to any listener questions, of specific ways where you believe evangelicals are actually twisting scripture in order to accommodate the Left Agenda?
Yeah, so in the book I address a number of these, but one that was wildly popular for a while there was, Submit to the Government, Romans 13, basically saying you need to close your church, close your business, just do anything the government tells you to do no matter what, because Romans 13, meanwhile, ignoring a host of other passages of scripture that actually give examples of what some would call civil disobedience, where, let's say, like the Apostle Paul is being beaten unjustly by a government official and he rebukes them, he says, wait a second, what you're doing is illegal.
So, you know, there's a lot of biblical examples of this resistance to tyranny in the Bible, and I mention a bunch of them in the book, so I would encourage people who are looking for a different perspective on that to buy the book and check out that chapter on Romans 13.
I think the title is Submit to the Government? So that's one popular one.
And there's nothing new about twisting scripture because every cult has done it, the left has always done it, and those who hate the doctrines of grace continue to do it. So that is what really compels us to be Bereans and not just take as a fact everything that we hear, even from the pulpits of our own churches.
Now, that's no disrespect to you, Andy, or any other pastor, as you would, I'm sure, heartily agree, that although we should not let our our suspicious minds get out of control when it comes to this, aren't we supposed to be testing everything according to the scriptures that we hear, even from our own pulpits?
Yeah, for sure. And we should not just be sitting there believing lies. Obviously not. Which is why it's important for us to, to the best of our abilities, read the Word, study, learn for ourselves as well.
Because we should not be participating in lies, we should not be going along with them. But we should be thinking critically and demanding that people tell the truth. And when things are not true, we should not go along with it.
We have a listener named Joshua in Sicily Island, Louisiana. And Joshua says, is one of those portions of scripture that you believe is frequently twisted by the left, Acts chapter 2, 42 through 45, which teaches that believers sold their possessions and had all things in common, and that this is a model for all Christians?
Yeah, that definitely happens. It's definitely a passage that gets twisted to support socialism. I didn't address that in my book. But I didn't address that text in my book. But yeah, it's definitely twisted to support socialism, which is antithetical to a biblical worldview.
Yeah, I mean, that text does not compel Christians to support governments that by force or by law, take money and possessions from its citizens to do this. This was a voluntary act, which is the whole reason that it was a wonderful sign of them being humbled by the gospel of Jesus Christ and being generous and so on.
If they were being forced to do this or compelled to do this by a government, it would be less to their praise and honor for doing it. Am I right?
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, that's one of the biggest differences between what you see demonstrated in the book of Acts and a welfare state system is that the giving in the book of Acts was voluntary.
It wasn't the same amount for each person. You could decide for yourself whether or not you wanted to give and how much you wanted to give. And then it was being given to the church and then distributed among the members of the church who had need.
It wasn't just money being thrown off a balcony or even just given to people who had needs. It was given to Christians who had needs. So the most similar comparison would be like if someone in your small group lost a job and the people in that small group decided to take up a collection amongst themselves to help their fellow church member pay their rent so they didn't get evicted or something.
And how much of this, the content of your book and the serious issues that are addressed in it, how much of it should compel us to actually separate and break off fellowship from other, even brothers in Christ who may believe in the gospel and may teach the gospel but have gone way too far in their not only toleration but their promotion of these leftist ideas?
Yeah. And the topic of separation is a tough one. I do think that you can't, the Bible says you can two men walk together unless they'd be agreed. But you can't meaningfully partner with people who have radically different belief systems.
And just being practical about this, like our church is involved in an anti-abortion ministry but we don't have other churches partnering with that organization that are woke. Like woke evangelicals don't stand in front of abortion mill advocating for the unborn.
That doesn't happen. Even though the theory would say, oh hey, we're united in the gospel but we can, and we have these differences on secondary issues, but we can participate together in social causes.
That's what the theory says. But practically speaking, not only are we, we have different theology but we also have different practical views as well. We have different applications in our social causes that we're concerned about.
I'm not I'm not interested in raising money to build housing. I think that capitalism has the right answer to a so-called housing crisis. The church does not need to be selling church property to build condos so that we can give local people apartments.
That's not the mission of the church, not the solution, but instead the free market provides the solution. And so what we need is less government regulation, less authoritarian control, and more freedom to take responsibility for ourselves and our own actions and our own livelihoods.
And so like the idea that everything is the business of the church or the mission of the church is a very flawed way of thinking because when everything is the mission of the church, then nothing is the mission of the church and the church loses its way.
It has what they call mission drift. So yeah, I don't think that we can have meaningful partnerships with woke evangelicals. Like sure, maybe your church can be in the SBC, and you are anti-woke, and you're giving money to the cooperative program, and then a woke church is giving money to the SBC, and they're giving to the cooperative program.
But then at the end of the day, the problem is that denomination or an association of churches is going to have a position. They're going to take a position on missionaries and missions. So they're going to have to decide, would we send a white man to be a missionary in a predominantly black culture?
Would they view that as oppressive? Would they view that as colonialism? So if they're going to have prejudice against certain skin-colored missionaries, that puts you in a difficult spot. Now I'm not saying that they're doing that.
I don't know if they're doing that or not, but that is a logical consequence of a woke worldview to say, actually our church, we have three small groups that are led by white people, and we need some diversity.
So I know you're the most qualified small group leader, but we're going to remove you from being a small group leader in order to elevate someone else who has a different skin color so that they can lead a small group, even if they are not suited to lead it for other reasons.
So those types of things, organizations are going to be making decisions one way or the other on those things. And for me, I would view it as a compromise of my belief system and my worldview to be funding organizations that are doing those types of things.
So as far as that goes, I don't see it as a possibility to associate for ministry with organizations that stand on the left side of these issues. So that's like a ministry partnership. And then as far as friendships, associations, hanging out, I don't want to be friends with people who think that I'm racist because I'm white.
That's ridiculous. My church is majority non-white, and those people in my church don't like hanging out with woke people either. So we can't meaningfully partner with these people in ministry. I'm not interested in being close friends with people who think this way.
I think that separation will naturally occur. Now, I'm not saying you can't be friends, and I'm not saying you shouldn't talk to these people, certainly. I mean, I play baseball with them. I interact with them on a regular basis, but that's very different from being friends with them or actually, you know, wanting to associate with them in the way that friends would.
But I do think separation is necessary.
How do you separate that from the fact that Jesus Christ is a friend to sinners, he was separate in the way he lived and behaved and the message he proclaimed, but at the same time, you can't win lost sinners to Christ if you shun them.
So how do you balance that out? Yeah, well, the previous question was about.
Separating from woke evangelicals. But I think that Paul addresses this with the issue of the professing brother who's living a sexually immoral life, and he says that you should withdraw from the one who claims to be a Christian who's walking this way, but that he's not talking about the unbeliever who's living a worldly unbelieving life.
So, yeah, I'm not limiting my baseball team to conservative reform Christians. My baseball team has conservative reform Christians and non-Christians. And so, yeah, we are friends with sinners. We are friends with unbelievers, and we do seek to evangelize them, but we don't seek them out as one to instruct us in a right worldview on Christian faith and, you know, these types of things.
Yeah, being a friend of sinners does not require ecumenism, religious ecumenism with people and cooperating with congregations that you believe are supporting dangerous or blatantly false ideas and harmful ideas.
By the way, Joshua, you have also won a free copy of Great Reset Christianity, and Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, will ship that out to you if you provide for us your full name and your full mailing address there in Sicily Island, Louisiana.
So, we look forward to getting that information from you. We have Dwight in Warrior, Alabama. What a cool name that is. And Dwight says, you laid at the feet of the gospel coalition the origins of the spread of wokeism into evangelical Christianity.
I have heard that Tim Keller, who just passed on not long ago, was open and very bold in his woke beliefs, but D .A. Carson is another story. I've never heard anything that he has said or written that would lend me to believe that he is woke.
How did these two work together?
So, I don't really know how they work together. I've never met Carson. I think the closest I ever came to him was I saw him at the gospel coalition conference back in 2015, but I think I asked a question in a panel discussion, but that was about it as far as interaction with Carson.
My interactions with Keller, I have met him in the past, but more so it's just interaction with those who were instructed by him. I would agree with what Dwight said in that Keller was very aggressively promoting all kinds of these woke ideas.
Also, I would agree with the caller that I've never heard Carson teach these things. I don't know what he thinks about these things. He's one of the most intelligent people alive, so I'm sure he is aware of these issues.
He gave a message. I listened to a message that he was preaching. I have to think of what it was from, but he specifically addressed the issue of societal decline into apostasy. He was addressing the situation in Amsterdam with the Dutch church, if I'm getting that right, with Abraham Kuyper.
These comments of his were at the very, very end of the sermon. When I heard that, I was amazed at what he was saying and its implications for the situation in which we find ourselves today. It seemed to contradict what the Gospel Coalition has been pushing.
As far as the listener's question that he asked, I'm not sure how they worked together. Obviously, they did. I'm not sure if these were issues where they had disagreements or if they had contentions. I really don't know.
I do know that in academia, there's a lot of cooperation and collaboration where people have different views and opposing views, and they might just say, oh, well, we agree to disagree and that this is a scholarly debate.
I think a lot of that is very misguided and a very bad decision to be allowing some of these issues to be agreed to disagree issues instead of saying, no, there is a right answer and a wrong answer and you're in the wrong.
I'm not sure precisely what Carson's view on these things. I don't know what it is. I also think that it's possible that Carson is simply not involved or not aware of the things that are being done and said.
I don't know. I don't know how technologically savvy he is. I know he's definitely fairly old, so it's quite possible that he's not even aware of what's being published on the Gospel Coalition website.
I have no idea.
Have you been aware or have you witnessed that there are men and perhaps women involved in the coalition that you actually support, enjoy, promote, who just have a disconnect when it comes to the more disturbing issues of wokeism?
So the question is, am I aware of men or women who.
Are involved in the Gospel Coalition yet? Okay.
You know, that they're sound, that you don't see them as parroting Tim Keller's woke views on things. Yeah. So, I mean, I think that description would probably,.
Like if a listener was asking that question, I think they would probably have Kevin DeYoung in mind. Kevin DeYoung always has come across as a very careful thinker, a very sober-minded, very sound, conservative individual.
And I certainly appreciate many things that DeYoung has said and written through the years. There's a lot of people like that who have written or published through the Gospel Coalition through the years.
So I'm not saying that every article that is by them is the same or that every author or speaker who has been published by them is on the same page. Of course not. And merely having an article published through them does not make you supportive of progressive or a woke reformed evangelicalism.
But I would say that overall, the purpose for the Gospel Coalition and the direction of it is to pull things to the left, to shift things in a progressive or a woke direction. But of course, many of their authors are not or have not been involved in any of that stuff.
Many of their authors are just average pastors or average scholars who got an invitation to write an article. So they did. And so they sent it in. And so I wouldn't blame them for having an article.
On that website. Yeah, it's ironic that D .A. Carson, 11 years ago, wrote the book, The Intolerance of Tolerance, which is basically a warning alarm that tolerance has morphed into a view that we should not hold firm convictions on things and be always in the middle and in a gray area or something.
And it's interesting how those who wave the banner of tolerance have become the most intolerant people on the planet. And now they're not just asking for tolerance. They want celebration. They want you to enthusiastically support what they are standing for, not just tolerating their existence.
Yeah. And so before we go to the final break, give us your idea of the most dangerous place a tolerance of the woke movement can lead the church into and individual Christians into. There's going to be very few people in my audience who are regular listeners and supporters who would be woke.
But you might have some. There are more in the area of, I don't want to make a fuss about it. How is this going? What is the most dangerous scenario you could see happening here? Well, any question that has a word like the most.
Requires a little bit more thinking. But what I'm seeing, I was reflecting on a comment you asked earlier about, do we really see conservative reform people embracing the LGBT movement and things like that?
And where they would say, well, I stand against progressive theology, but I just believe that there's a real problem with systemic injustice related to racial issues. You know, thinking about that question, what we do see, people who are inclined that way, do typically also go soft on the issue of sexuality.
And we see that through organizations like Revoice. And Revoice is, even the label of it, the name Revoice, the idea is to re-voice or to change the tune, to change the sound of the music that is played so that it is still the same song, but it sounds different.
That's the idea of revoicing a piano. You go in and you file down the hammers so that the hammers sound different than before, even if they're still playing the same tune. And so the woke Christian agenda is completely in line with Revoice.
Now, Revoice is trying to rebrand the church's position on homosexuality. And we all know where this is leading. This is not a secret. You can't even argue this. People who are pushing this, they're all the pronouns in their bio.
Here's my pronouns. Here's my, you know, identify as a sexual minority. They're defending the inherent goodness of homosexuality, even if it's saying it's not acted upon, but it's an identity. There's just so many issues with this.
There's nothing good about it. But people who are promoting these ideas are still calling themselves conservatives, conservative Christians who hold to a traditional sexual ethic. So that is a very, very big problem.
I don't know if I would call it the most dangerous thing. I think that it's equally as dangerous or problematic for people to be silent in the face of evil or to be silent in the face of the danger that they see.
That's definitely a big problem. Another problem would be to wrongly address the things. So if you're fighting against it in such a way that you're driving people away so that folks aren't even actually hearing what you're saying because you're just so angry all the time, I do think that it's important to pick your battles.
It's important to know what you're talking about and how to address the issues and not just be shooting at every single possible target as much as possible because no one's going to actually listen to you.
So I think it's important to establish credibility, to study, to understand the issues and understand the topics. So I'm not sure if that's even answering your question at all, but.
Those are my thoughts. Yes, it did answer them. And I'm going to my final break right now. If you have any intention on joining the conversation with your own question, please send us an email to ChrisArmzen at gmail .com immediately because we are rapidly running out of time.
That's C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries.
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Welcome back. Folks, you've been hearing for years every day the commercials for the Historical Bible Society, and please keep in mind that the Historical Bible Society was founded by its president, Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law.
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It's going to be held in Perry County, Pennsylvania, which is at the Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, and the date is Thursday, June 6, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. Send me an email to chrisarnzen at gmail .com and put Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line.
That's chrisarnzen at gmail .com. And Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, says, in my own experience, it seems that far more white evangelicals are promoting this woke stuff than those in the Black community.
Have you.
Experienced the same thing? Yeah, definitely. Here in New York City, there's no sure way, no more certain way to guarantee your church is exclusively wealthy white people than to preach social justice.
It's going to drive away the minorities that are Christians, and it's going to appeal to left-wing, upper-class white women because they spend too much time on social media, and they are heavily weighed down by so-called white guilt, and it's bad.
It's a huge problem.
And thank you very much for that excellent question, and you have also won a free copy of Great Reset Christianity. Please make sure you give us your mailing address so that cumberlandvalleybibleservice .com can ship out to you that copy.
And I really want to make sure that you summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today about this.
Issue before we go off the air. Yeah, so the summary of my book, which I would really love if folks would buy it for my publisher's sake. I'm not really making any money on this, but the publisher would like to recoup some of the money that they spent to pay somebody to edit the thing.
The idea is that the woke movement exists for a political purpose, and that political purpose is to promote the Great Reset. The Great Reset is a political movement built around the Agenda 2030. Agenda 2030 is to implement basically a new world order, a new humanity that is kind of a utopian vision.
And my argument in the beginning of the book is that the reason why the woke movement exists is to promote the Great Reset. And so that's why I coined the term Great Reset Christianity. So what I'm calling the woke movement is that this woke movement is Great Reset Christianity, and it is a different religion.
It is a different religion completely from the Christianity taught by the Bible. And so that's basically the summary of it, and I would love it if folks would go on Amazon and order my book, Great Reset Christianity by Andrew Woodard.
And it can be found there. Sometimes it's carried in Barnes and Noble. So if you go to Barnes and Noble and ask them if they have it, you don't have to request it because they have it in their warehouse.
So that's what I'd love for people to do.
Well, we got time for one more question from a listener. Darnell in Roosevelt, Long Island, New York. And Darnell says, isn't this movement really guilty of the racism that they pretend to oppose?
Yeah, for sure. It's a very racist movement. The presuppositions tied up in critical race theory are white supremacist presuppositions. The idea that persons of color cannot achieve the same as white people unless white people are held down or pushed back.
That's a very white supremacist presupposition. And that's the reason why it's not promoting equality, it's promoting equity. And the equity is equal outcomes instead of equal opportunities. So instead of saying we need justice, we need social justice.
Instead of justice, we need to push the balance of power so that those who currently have more are held down so that those who have less are pushed out. But I address all these things in the book with an illustration of, well, I address this situation with an illustration of $100.
If you gave everybody $100 and they all started out with $100, just in a matter of moments, people would very quickly become unequal again because they would make different choices. We're not the same.
So some people like candy and other people like investing. And so you can't have equal.
Outcomes because people are not the same. Well, we're out of time and I want to make sure our listeners have the website for Providence Baptist Church in New York, New York. That is pbc .nyc. Pbc .nyc.
I urge you, if you live in Manhattan, passing through there on vacation or a business trip, or if you have family, friends, and loved ones in or near Manhattan, please pay a visit to Providence Baptist Church, a Reformed congregation in Manhattan.
And also, you may want to consider inviting Andy Woodard to speak on this very subject at your church, parachurch ministry, school, anywhere else that you'd like him to speak. Go to pbc .nyc. Pbc .nyc.
And please don't forget, if you're a man in ministry leadership, to send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line if you'd like to register for the next free Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Pastor's Luncheon, featuring Dr. Joel Beeky as our speaker on Thursday, June 6th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania.
Not only is the admission free and the food free, but you'll get at least a heavy sack, maybe two heavy sacks of free brand-new books personally selected by me, donated by generous Christian publishers all over the United States and the United Kingdom.
And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.