Chris Arnzen's Opening Address: Iron Sharpens Iron Pastor's Luncheon 2022

Good morning, brothers. As I have your attention, the festivities are about to begin.

My name is Chris Arnzen. I am the host of the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program, and I'll be talking a little bit more about that in just a minute.

But before I say too much, I want to bathe this entire event with prayer and to start off with the initial prayer of the day.

I would like Pastor George Lawson of Baltimore Bible Church to come up and pray for all that will take place here in this event.

Amen. Thanks for coming, brother. Absolutely. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we are grateful to be here. Father, thank you for each man and the churches that they represent.

Father, I pray that you would equip them, encourage them during the time of the fellowship and through what we'll hear from James White.

Father, we are grateful for James White and for his faithful ministering. Father, we know that there are many rebellious men, empty talkers, deceivers, and Father, James White has just been an example to so many of us by standing on the truth of your word.

We thank you for his boldness, for his tenacity, for his just seeking clarity and even standing firm in the face of so many attacks against him.

Father, we pray that you would uphold him. Father, we thank you for the ways that he challenges us, Lord, to be more precise and asking those questions that we need to to make sure that we're holding to the line,

Lord, that we're being faithful to your word. Father, I pray that you would bless him, bless his ministry, and bless our time together.

We thank you for all these men, Lord. I just pray that they would be encouraged and that they would go back to their churches,

Lord, with just a new zeal to hold to your truth, Lord. Your word is truth. In Jesus' name we pray this and give you thanks.

Amen. Amen. Thank you, brother. Well, if you're wondering why you have been invited here, especially if you're a first -time attendee to the free

Iron Shepherds, Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon, back in the 1990s, my precious late wife,

Julie, during a Christmas season, said, instead of us exchanging gifts, why don't we use that money to treat your pastor friends to a free lunch?

And we can have the publishers that you know donate books, possibly.

You can invite a guest speaker to give a challenging and encouraging message to the pastors.

And my wife said that I had more pastor friends than anybody she had ever met because I had been involved in Christian radio for many years.

And she just thought that that would be a wonderful thing. And I took her up on her great idea and have been doing this luncheon every year since the 1990s.

Now it's twice a year. And since my wife went home to be with her

Lord, God, Savior, King, and friend, Christ Jesus, in 2010,

I have been conducting these luncheons in loving memory of her and in tribute to her.

So I am so thrilled that this event today is the largest turnout we have ever had since the 1990s of the

Iron Shepherds, Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon. I thank all of you for being here. It touches my heart very deeply.

A few things. Everybody at their table should have a flyer about my radio program, especially if you don't know about the program, you should become familiar with it.

It's everyday live. Of course, now I'm running a rerun while Dr. White's in town.

I'm doing that every day. But this is all the information you need to start listening to the program and also to hang these in your church, if you would, so your congregations find out about it.

Also, contact me if you have a good idea for a guest. It might even be you, that you have a subject that you're aching to talk about.

And we can discuss that and see if we can get you on the air. So please take those back to your church with you.

Some of you may not know that this Saturday at 4 p .m., right in this building upstairs, where Dr.

White will be actually giving his presentation later today, he'll be doing that upstairs.

But this Saturday at 4 p .m., we are having a debate, a free debate.

Unlike the luncheon where only men were invited, this is open for everyone, men, women, and children.

And the thesis is the textus receptus as the word of God is equal to the

New Testament autographs. And Dr. Peter Van Cleek is defending that thesis.

And Dr. James R. White is opposing that thesis. Anybody who knows that he wrote the King James Only Controversy will immediately know that he is taking the opposing position on that.

I hope that we fill all those seats upstairs. So please spread the word about this debate.

If you need any more fliers for the debate, they're over by the coffee over there. So I hope that you will attend that.

Also, for any of you willing to make the trip to Long Island, I don't know if you're familiar with Pete Hegseth of Fox News.

He is one of the very few genuine Christians on staff at Fox News.

He is going to be speaking at Grace Christian Academy's fundraising gala. Grace Christian Academy is a classical

Christian school that is affiliated with the church where I was a member before moving to Pennsylvania, Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick.

And they are having a fundraising gala for Grace Christian Academy in Merrick, New York. Pete Hegseth is the speaker, and there are fliers at every table, at every seat, at every table as well.

Now I'm going to have my friend Pastor Josh Miller of Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg tell you about another event that he is hosting.

I'll borrow your mic. Thank you, Chris. And a special thanks for this morning.

This is just wonderful to be able to get together with like -minded brothers, relax, fellowship, and enjoy a meal together.

So thank you for keeping that tradition going. This is a joy this morning. Yes, so we have an event at our church where I pastor.

I'm pastor of preaching and teaching at Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg, an event that would be open to any of you and any from your churches.

It's Reformation Weekend, so October 29th and 30th. We have hosted this conference the last six years.

And this year's theme is the church, the household of God. It does seem that each generation of the church faces a crisis regarding one of its core doctrines.

And I believe a case can be made that that core doctrine in this generation is an understanding of who the church is, why we exist, and what makes the church precious in the sight of God.

So this event is both a celebration of the household of God, who we are in Christ, but also we'll have some time of instruction.

That will be all day Saturday, October 29th. The theme goes into Sunday, October 30th.

Obviously, you have your own churches that you are worshiping and fellowshipping with. The speakers for this year's conference will be

Nate Pickowitz and Dustin Bench. We'll be speaking on those themes.

So this is a flyer. We'll find ways throughout the day to get one into your hand, but if you are interested, please seek me out.

We'd love to give you more information. Thanks, Chris. Thank you. Both of those men who are speaking, I've had them both on my program,

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. They are outstanding brothers. I've known

Nate Pickowitz for a much longer period of time, and he blows my mind.

He's a brilliant guy. He's also a historian and can talk a lot about, if you ever wanted to invite him to your church, he can talk a lot about how the northeast of the

United States began as a bastion of biblical theology and how it had become so corrupted by leftism that it is now almost nearly apostate with a few exceptions.

So I strongly recommend Nate Pickowitz. Well, we're doing things differently this year in regard to the book room.

There are a lot of books out there, so many generous publishers, Christian publishers, who have been doing this since the 1990s, donating books that I select from them so that every pastor in the room can receive one.

Since this is the largest registration that we've ever had here, probably because of Dr.

James R. White being our keynote speaker, we are going to request of you, if you're not a pastor, to wait until the pastors first move in and out of the book room to take what they want, and then the other books will be up for grabs for all the other men.

Since this is a pastor's luncheon, even though many of you who are not in pastoral ministry are here, and I'm thrilled that you are, we just wanted to make sure that since this is specifically primarily for pastors, that they get the first shot at the books.

And I want to highlight some of the things that you'll be getting. First of all, before I even talk about the books, my coffee!

Mike Lindell found out about what we're doing, and he has donated hundreds of bags of my coffee.

And different flavors, and there's also, if you're grabbing the coffee, make sure if you take the whole bean that you have a coffee grinder.

So this is from Honduras, and the last time I had a bunch of bags from anything from Honduras, they were duct taped to my chest at the airport.

But I don't want to go there. Long time ago, it must have been months ago.

Laughter A new sponsor of Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio, the

Baptist Expositor, they have materials, free materials for you to take with you.

I hope many of you do. And I was thrilled to hear within the first few weeks of them advertising with us that a church contacted them after hearing the ads, and there were,

I think a whole family at one of the churches got saved and were baptized, so I'm praising God for them.

A new contributor to the

Free Pastors Luncheon are the publishers of the Legacy Standard Bible, and they have given us the

New Testament and Book of Psalms here, so I hope that you take advantage of that.

Ligonier Ministries always donates books for my luncheons through their publishing wing,

Reformation Trust. The Heart of the Reformation book, make sure you get a hold of that. And the

New American Standard Bible, the publishers, the Lockwood Foundation, they have been sponsoring everything that I have been doing since the 1990s, even before I had my own radio program.

They were the very first sponsors of the debates that I began in the mid-'90s with Dr.

James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries. And ever since I started my program,

Iron Shelf is Iron, they were the first advertiser, and they continue to support my show and events like this, and so make sure you grab an

NASB. And I was wondering if my friend Pastor Rich Jensen could come up just to say a few words about the

NASB, because his church uses this version in their pews, and they preach from it, or at least

Pastor Rich does, and he'll be coming up momentarily. And this has been a delight to support them as they support me, fine folks at the

Lockwood Foundation. But Pastor Rich, tell our listeners a little bit about why you use the NASB. He's looking for duct tape.

He said he's looking for duct tape. Okay, I was first introduced by the

NASB as a young man. I had grown up in a Christian home, which was a King James -only church, and who would have told you

I was saved, but God didn't save me until I was in my mid -20s after a period of rebellion.

And I had a brother -in -law who was very faithful in the ministry. He was an euthetic counselor and was dedicated to that.

And when God saved me, he introduced me to the NASB. And as I would sit down and start reading through it, it made so much more sense to me.

I could understand with a more modern English than I had ever understood before.

And so I started using it myself in my own personal life. I wasn't a pastor back then.

My previous occupation, I was a homicide detective and did 20 years in the

PD. Now I came into the ministry and just kept using the NASB. One little quick story about it.

Oops. Wow. Dr. White was preaching at my church.

This is a number of years ago now. And we were sitting in my office before we were going out, and we had our

Bibles opening. He said, Would you look up this text for me? I don't remember the text. And I had worn the

Bible out so much that all the pages were loose. So I said, Well, here, you read it yourself. And I handed him the page.

And he just looked at me and said, You need a new Bible. And so when he went back home, he sent me one, a brand -new

NASB. He didn't autograph it, though. But it would have been worth more money.

Have him autograph one of those. And we use it all the time, and I just really love the

NASB. Thank you very much. And I obviously love them because they support everything

I do financially. But that's not the only reason I promote them. Dr.

White is a professor at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas.

He's a professor of history and apologetics. And connected with that seminary is

Free Grace Publishing, and they were kind enough to donate copies for all of you, the

Ten Essential Sermons of Charles Spurgeon. So I hope that you take advantage of that.

Crossway, another publisher that biannually donates copies of what

I select from them. This is their brand -new title, Be Thou My Vision, a

Liturgy for Daily Worship by Jonathan Gibson. And I hope that some of my non -liturgical pastors here are not going to be too terrified of that word, liturgy.

I mean, everybody has a liturgy. It's just order of worship. So it doesn't mean you're going to have to do everything like this.

But it smells a little bit like incense, but don't let that worry you. I have heard wonderful things about this, and I hope that you take advantage of this as well.

Another brand -new book, The Unwavering Pastor by the Good Book Company, Leading the

Church with Grace in Divisive Times, or as some might say, divisive. And that's

Jonathan Dodson's book, forward by Dane Ortlund. And, oh, this is a new treasure.

It's new only in that it was recently republished. But it is the biography of John Gill.

If you're not familiar with John Gill, he was a predecessor of Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

And a giant of the Christian faith, whether you are a Baptist or Presbyterian or Lutheran, you should really get a hold of this and familiarize yourself with John Gill.

Not even all Reformed Baptists agree with everything Gill taught. He was a particular

Baptist, as we who are Reformed Baptists used to be called. But it would be foolish to ignore everything somebody had to say just because of some minor differences you might have with them.

And this is just a tremendous new republishing of this biography by John Rickman.

So I hope that you will make sure you get that. This is a fascinating book that's been translated into English for the very first time.

The Montenegro Confession. This was used by God to stop the

Roman Catholic Church from completely devouring Germany after the

Protestant Reformation. And I urge all of you to get a hold of this. This is, as I said, the first time that this has been available in English.

And it is good to have in matters of all things regarding when the state oversteps their sphere of authority and when

Christians have the right to protest or not to be doormats for tyrannical governments that are seeking to destroy the

Church. So this is definitely something that you want to take home with you. And we thank

Matt Shuhela for donating these. Oh, here's another brand new book by our friends at Shepherd Press.

Wayne Mack's book, A Practical Guide for Effective Biblical Counseling. And Wayne Mack used to be affiliated with Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, where John MacArthur is pastor.

Now he is ministering in South Africa. And Shepherd Press donated these to us.

I strongly urge you to get a hold of this, especially if you're a pastor. It's obviously a no -bringer why that would be important for you.

This is a book that I have every year, in case some who have attended have not picked it up.

We have new people visiting or attending the pastors' luncheon all the time. In spite of the cover looking possibly to some a bit amateurish and self -published, the content is phenomenal.

Preaching with Biblical Passion, a scriptural and historical study by my dear friend Gabriel Grassi, who's a retired

Reformed Baptist pastor. And it has been strongly commended by such glowing, prominent names in the

Church as Dr. Joel Beakey and even the aforementioned Wayne Mack. So please get a hold of this.

I think it's a must -read for every pastor, primarily on the area of homiletics.

So please get a hold of that. With all that's been going on in the wake of the coronavirus and the tyrannical steps that governments all over the world have taken in their efforts to silence the

Church during this, Caesar and the Church, a Biblical study of government and church by Anthony Forsyth.

Make sure you get a hold of that. Many of you have been greatly benefited and blessed by Alexander Strauch.

We, a few years ago, gave away his book, Biblical Eldership. He's also got books on the diaconate and other things.

This is a brand -new book that he has written, Acts 20. Fierce wolves are coming to guard the flock, a study of Paul's final charge to the

Ephesian elders. So, strongly, obviously, recommend that you get a hold of that.

This is a fairly new publisher. If you look at this book when you go in there, they publish, even aesthetically, some of the finest books, the finest example of binding and so forth, that you'll see anywhere, even amongst the most well -known and prominent publishers.

Zurich Publishing. They were kind enough to donate for all the pastors here.

A New Day of Small Beginnings by Pierre Corthiol, who was a 20th -century

Reformed French theologian, virtually unknown by everybody, including theologically

Reformed Christians. And I strongly advise you, regardless of your theological positions on issues involving the

Reformation, get a hold of this. You will be blessed. And, as I said, the finest in binding and everything, but the content is more important, and that is absolutely extraordinary.

Here's an unusual book. This will be the last book I highlight. I've never seen a book on this subject.

Written by a doctor, an MD, J .Y. Jones, Worship Not the

Creature, Animal Rights and the Bible. Every hunter in here, and I'm assuming since we're in Pennsylvania that there'll be a number of them, will benefit greatly from this, especially.

The original title was Let's Kill Bambi. Subtitled without shedding a tear.

But I'm planning on having Dr. Jones on the program. I've never addressed this issue. So I hope that you pick this up.

Nordskog Publishing, another publisher that's not well -known to a lot of folks, but they do the finest in binding and so forth, and the authors that they have are extraordinary as well.

So I hope that you get a hold of that. Now, some of you may be having to defend yourself when you go home with all these books.

Your wives are going to say, You bought all those books? I told you, you've crossed your budget on books, and you go out there and you buy books, and you tell them, no,

Chris Arnton gave them for free. And of course, they'll say, you're lying. Well, don't let the wives think

I left them out, because they have a wonderful gift as well. See these bags here? What a guy.

Giant supermarkets donated these bags so that you could carry your books home. But they'll also come in handy when you have to yell out to your wife,

We're out of book wiser, honey. You can go to the supermarket and you can use this, so I don't get concerned about your back.

This will be easier for you to carry. So, this is a nice gift for the wife, and little nice sayings,

All you need is love, little play on words there, like kneading dough. But for the

Calvinists here, we wanted to make you feel more comfortable too, so we also have a version of the bag that said,

Don't forget, God hated Esau. So, that will be something that I'm sure you'll enjoy as well.

We are going to be served, and we will also give the announcement very soon, when the pastors can go into the book room and have their first shot at the books, and then we will go upstairs to the sanctuary at some point.

It's hard to rigidly time these things, but James White will be giving his special message for you in the sanctuary upstairs.

But I'd like to have someone pray for the meal. In fact, will

Angelo Valli please come up to pray for our food.

He is the pastor of Christ Reformed Church in the city of Pennsylvania, I forget. What is this?

Alexandria. Alexandria, Pennsylvania. He's been a guest in my program a number of times. If you could pray for the meal, brother.

Sure. Gentlemen, as I imagine most of you are excited for a very long prayer, we're going to disappoint you.

Let's just take a moment to pray and thank the Lord for his faithfulness. Father, we thank you for this opportunity that we can come together and be encouraged and to encourage one another.

We're so grateful for the family of God and strangers that we've never met before we can just simply sit with and just marvel at your grace and faithfulness.

And so, Father, we ask that even now that the hard work and effort that's been done behind the scenes would be blessed.

We thank you for those who've served us and for this meal. We pray that it would strengthen us, especially for all that's ahead and bless us in our time.

Thank you, Father. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. 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.