October 10, 2016 Show Including Discussions With Dr. E. Calvin Beisner and Ken Jones

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with 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 hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 10th day of October 2016.

I'm delighted that our Lord in his mercy spared our guest today from any serious damage or harm from the hurricane that just passed through Florida.

I'm speaking of Dr. E. Calvin Beisner and I'm delighted that he is our first guest today on Iron Sharpens Iron.

Dr. Beisner is founder and national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and following Dr.

Beisner in our second hour we have the pastor of New Life Community Church in Indianapolis, Indiana.

That is Pastor Andrew Hunter and we are going to be promoting the 2016

Midwest Annual Reformation Conference featuring Ken Jones, Victor Scholar, and Jarvis Williams.

But let me welcome you back. It's my honor to have you back on the program.

Dr. E. Calvin Beisner. Thank you very much Chris, good to be back with you. Kind of huffing and puffing,

I just finished taking down all the hurricane shutters from our house with the help of a couple of good friends, but it's a long long hard job.

And so tell us about the experience with that hurricane. I believe you evacuated the area for a bit?

No, we didn't need to evacuate. Our house was built after Hurricane Andrew to good high specs.

But besides that, although up to about eight hours or so beforehand we were forecast to be in an area that could sustain high damage, as a matter of fact our particular area got nothing.

It wasn't even like a tropical storm in our area, let alone a hurricane. We had very minor winds and very minor rain and that was it.

So all the work of putting up our shutters, taking about 12 -14 hours, and all the work of taking them back down was for naught.

Well at least it gave you peace of mind while you were waiting. We're thankful to the Lord for not just our safety but that of our many many friends here in far south

Florida. And we're grateful that no more great damage was done farther north.

There was quite a lot, but not as much as it would have been had the hurricane actually made landfall as a

Cat 4, which was early expected. Well, we'll praise God and we also just ask of you to pray, our listeners to pray, for those who actually did suffer damage and loss during this hurricane and perhaps even loss of life.

Do you know of a total of how many lives may have been lost during this hurricane?

The last I saw, for Florida anyway, was perhaps five, although it looks as if all five of those were situations where it wasn't so much the hurricane that caused the deaths as other problems that were exacerbated by the high winds and water problems up in those areas.

But there were hundreds of lives lost in Haiti and I don't know a number for the for the

Bahamas, but surely some there and eastern Cuba as well probably.

But as I say, you know, we were kind of busy here with our own stuff so we couldn't really follow all the news as closely as I might have liked to.

Well, we again thank God for his mercy upon you and the surrounding area where you live in Florida.

And we do this all the time because we never know who may be listening for the first time to Iron Sharpens Iron when any particular guest is on, so if you could let our listeners know about the

Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. Glad to. The Cornwall Alliance for the

Stewardship of Creation is a network of about 60, a little over 60, Christian scholars.

About a third of them are natural scientists, including especially many good climate scientists.

About a third of them are economists, specializing most of them in either environmental or developmental economics.

And about a third are theologians, ethicists, and pastors. And we work together through education, writing, teaching, and the like.

We work to promote three things simultaneously. The first is biblical earth stewardship, or what we also call godly dominion, picking up on the language of Genesis 128, where having made

Adam and Eve after his own image, male and female, God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and everything that moves on the face of the earth.

And we want this dominion to be godly, that is to reflect the way God himself rules.

And what we find out about that from the first 25 -26 verses of Genesis 1 is that God enhanced the order and the fruitfulness and the beauty and the safety of creation.

And so that's what we want to do. We want to enhance the fruitfulness, the beauty, and the safety of the earth to the glory of God and the benefit of our neighbors, so that we're really addressing two great commandments, to love

God and to love neighbor. The second major thing that we want to promote through our educational activities is economic development for the very poor,

I think primarily in terms of places like Sub -Saharan Africa or Haiti or parts of Asia and Latin America.

And this we see both from Scripture and from history, requires really two things.

On the one hand, a set of social conditions, social institutions of private property rights, free trade, entrepreneurship, limited government and the rule of law.

And on the other hand, access to abundant, affordable, reliable energy. Without either one of those, no society has ever grown out of poverty or can stay out of poverty.

And so we want to make sure that people understand the need for those and that we understand what it is that brings those things about.

And then third and most important, this is our most important work, is the propagation and defense of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The gospel that Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he rose again from the dead on the third day according to the scriptures.

This is the power of God's salvation to everyone who believes. To the Jew first and also to the

Gentile, because in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, from faith at the start to faith at the end.

For the righteous by faith shall live. And so this is what we want to promote.

And we do this in a world that is permeated by an environmental movement whose worldview, theology and ethics are overwhelmingly anti -christian, and whose science and economics are typically very pretty poorly done, and whose policies therefore typically are not very helpful to the natural world, but are very harmful to the poor by depriving them of those very things that are most necessary to rise out of poverty and stay out of poverty.

That is the private property rights, entrepreneurship, free trade, limited government, the rule of law, and access to abundant, affordable, reliable energy.

So we work through our website, CornwallAlliance .org, through our Facebook page, through Twitter, through a couple of blogs, one right on our website, and the other called

EarthRisingBlog .com, which specializes in reaching toward Millennials. We work to promote those three things, biblical earth stewardship, economic development for the poor, and the proclamation and defense of the gospel.

Great, well I'm going to give our listeners our email address if you have any question for Dr. Beisner, either about environmental issues, or it could be also theological issues.

Dr. Beisner is a theologically reformed scholar, a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and perhaps some of our listeners may even remember him being involved in a debate on the

John Ankerberg show many years ago. I believe that was with Oneness Pentecostals, if I'm not mistaken.

And if you would like to join us, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. One question

I have about the environmental issue is, unless I'm missing something,

I was wondering what your opinion is on this. It seems to me that those in the political arena who profess to be conservative, which would obviously mainly be coming from the

Republican Party, who have any kind of opposition to what appears to be a grossly exaggerated claim of climate hazards that have developed globally due to global warming and so on, and ranging from exaggerations to outright fraudulent claims, or you even have some of those professing to be conservative acquiescing and saying that they agree with the climate change alarmists.

But those that would be in opposition to this seem to be being very impotent, very inadequate, or very weak in their opposition to this.

Mainly they're seemingly on the defense and act very apologetically about the issue.

They are very often viewed as nuts, as people who are totally devoid of any modern scientific knowledge about this area, and where they should be really more aggressively on the attack, if you will, targeting the very issues that you just mentioned regarding the poor being robbed of livelihoods and so on.

It seems that those that are on the conservative side of the aisle just sit there waiting to be attacked by those on the left because of their disagreement or non -belief in the climate change hysteria.

Well I think that that probably describes some folks properly. It certainly doesn't describe the

Cornwall Alliance. We have been very proactive on this. We've published, in the last decade, we've published five major scholarly studies in this field, all of which have shown very profound empirical evidence that human contribution to global warming is very, very slight.

It's probably real. We don't really contest that. It's probably real. It's pretty basic physics, really, that tells us that.

But the empirical evidence is that it's very slight and that, in fact, all of the warming that has been experienced over the last century and a half or so has been very slight, probably under one degree

Celsius since 1850. And remember, most locations around the globe have about 20 times as much warming as that in any given 24 -hour period from low to high temperature of the day and 40 to 60 times as much as that from the highs in the summer to the lows in the winter.

So, you know, a degree of increase in global average temperature over a century and a half is certainly nothing significant, nothing that's going to cause great changes to any ecosystems or certainly not to human habitation, human thriving.

As a matter of fact, people tend to do better in a warmer world than in a colder world.

On average, you lose about ten times as many people per day, lives per day, from a cold snap as you do from a heat wave.

So global warming is actually probably more of a good thing than a bad thing. So, you know, we have been trying to present lots of good evidence on this.

And really, as I watch the debate over this around the world, and I'm reading on it every day, pretty much, except the

Lord stays, as I watch, I think really that our side is prevailing.

The top journals are publishing more and more articles that are estimating the amount of warming that comes from added

CO2 as less and less than what was previously thought.

They are publishing more and more articles, for instance, showing that sea level rise has not been as rapid as it was feared and that there's good reason to think that it will not accelerate significantly.

So I really think that that we're winning long haul. The problem is that it takes a long time,

Chris, for this kind of information to go from the high -level referee journals to the popular press and to the politicians.

And of course that is slowed down by the fact that there are major money interests in pushing the alarmist message.

And we do have Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who says, or asks,

I should say, are there any politicians that you can name who seem to be very strong in championing the movement against global warming hysteria that actually appears to be making positive headway in this arena in politics?

I'm sure the biggest name on that would be

Senator from Oklahoma. And I'm pulling a brain freeze at the moment, but he's the chairman right now of the

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Oh goodness.

At any rate, he has been a major opponent of global warming alarmism for quite a long time.

He actually wrote a full book on the subject, calling it a hoax. I frankly don't call it a hoax.

I think there are bits and pieces of the puzzle that are hoax, but not the whole thing. But he would be one.

There is a congressman from Illinois, and you have to forgive me,

I'm still kind of up on ladders around the house. Yes, I understand. But one congressman from Illinois who was on a house committee where I testified a number of years ago, actually started off his own comments by quoting

Genesis 8, 22, in which God promised, as long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, day and night, summer and winter will not cease.

And he said, look, God is in control. We don't need to be worried about this. And this,

I think, is quite right. But there are a number of others as well. Mike Pence, who is a

VP candidate on the Republican ticket at this point, has expressed his very strong reservations about the notion of dangerous man -made global warming.

As a matter of fact, most of the members of Congress who are Republicans are pretty skeptical, but most of them would agree that human activity probably does contribute something to global warming.

And frankly, that, I don't think, is a very controversial thing to say. Yes, well, it was quite interesting to hear that Mike Pence had done something that I was totally unaware of as governor of Indiana, where evangelicals had supported him in large part due to a bill that he was involved in to protect the freedom of speech of Christians.

And then it was reversed as a gay rights bill of some kind.

I don't know if you know what I'm speaking about, if you're familiar with what I'm speaking about. Just a little bit, just a little bit.

By the way, the senator from Oklahoma is James Inhofe. Well, it's unfortunate that most of the time politicians seem to be folks that you really can't bet the farm on, if you will, the way that they tell us one thing when they are behind closed doors in front of evangelicals and other conservatives when trying to gain popularity amongst us and secure our votes.

And then when they actually are doing the business of politicking, they often, you know, stab us in the back.

Well, this is why we must not trust in princes, but must trust in the Lord our God instead. Yes, amen.

One of the other things that I wanted to talk to you that is on a completely different issue is something that you have written about.

In fact, one of the reasons I wanted you to address this is because in the very near future,

I am having at least the anti -federal vision position presented on my program.

I would be in that camp as well of Christians that would be in opposition to the federal vision, also known as the

Auburn Avenue Theology. And I do intend to have a federal visionist defend his view, or their view, at some point, perhaps even the day following that.

This is still up in the air a bit right now. I might even have a debate if it is at all possible.

But just so our listeners have some kind of an understanding about this, I know that you are the editor of the book,

The Auburn Avenue Theology Pros and Cons, Debating the Federal Vision is the subtitle.

If you could tell us a bit about this theology that many of our listeners may be totally ignorant of.

Yeah, well, the book itself, by the way, came from a colloquium that I organized.

We had eight major proponents of the federal vision theology at the colloquium and eight major critics of it.

And each person had to present a major paper, a positive paper, and then each person also had to write a rebuttal to someone else's paper.

So that meant for a very balanced presentation. And it's the only book of that sort that I'm aware of, even though it came out clear back in 2004.

So it's been 12 years. And as you know, Chris, the federal vision theology seeks to provide what its proponents call a sort of a more objective way of assessing our relationship with God.

And in one sense, I'm actually very sympathetic to some of what motivated the early federal visionists.

There has been a real tendency in Reformed, especially Puritan circles, toward what

I would call a morbid introspectionism, where the assurance of salvation is very, very hard to get because we're constantly looking, you know, navel -gazing at ourselves.

And, you know, am I showing enough fruit to be confident that I really have saving faith?

And, gee, I sinned egregiously yesterday. You know, can that possibly be the act of someone who has been converted to Christ?

Or am I a false professor? And there's been a long history of morbid introspection of that sort in some

Reformed circles. And some of the federal visionists, I think, really thought that they were looking for a way to counter that.

And so what they wanted to do was to point to, particularly, baptism and the

Lord's Supper, the two sacraments, and say, look, if you've been baptized, you've been united with Christ.

And those who are united with Christ share in all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. And, therefore, when you wonder, am

I really a Christian? Am I really saved? Look to your baptism. And the

Lord's Supper is a sign and seal, too, of the covenant of grace.

And if you've been admitted to the Lord's Table, that is also an objective sign for you.

And so when you're worried about your salvation, remember, you have this beautiful sign of it from the

Lord in the Lord's Supper. Now, of course, the problem with that is that both of those signs and seals are sometimes applied to false professors, or in the case of some who are baptized as infants, which, as a

Reformed Christian, I believe they should be, nonetheless, they never come to a profession of faith.

They never have faith in Christ. Baptism does not guarantee salvation.

Neither does access to the Lord's Table. And so the result, actually, is something more akin to sort of a presumptive attitude, presumptive salvation on the part of the children of believers, that if they are the children of believers, well, the promises are to you and to your seed, your offspring, and, therefore, you can presume that your children are regenerate.

That then leads to a significant, I think, failure to take seriously the necessity of really preaching and teaching the gospel to our children, even though they are born into Christian families, even though they are in solid gospel -teaching, gospel -preaching churches week after week.

Parents have a responsibility to teach and preach the gospel to their children anyway. Now, there are a number of other issues related to the

Federal Vision, and it has not surprised me that a fair number of people have found

Federal Vision theology the beginning of a road that led them back to Roman Catholicism, because, ultimately, it's quite similar in its ecclesiology, in its sacramentology, and even, in some respects, in its soteriology to Roman Catholic thought.

Now, you, obviously, as the book that you edited indicates, there were some pros involved in this book, in favor of it.

Can you list anything that you actually think is a positive element of Federal Vision? Well, yes,

I can. In fact, what I started off with, in terms of trying to steer people away from morbid introspection,

I think that is a good thing. I've known many people, many very dear to me, who have struggled terribly over having assurance of salvation, and frankly,

I will tell you, some of these people, I'm much more confident of their salvation than I am of mine, but I'm also quite confident of mine.

I know whom I believe, and I'm persuaded that He is able to keep that which I've committed to Him against that day.

It breaks my heart to see people like this go through that, and so, in terms of the desire to set aside that morbid introspection,

I think that's a good thing. Another thing that I think is probably a healthy thing within the

Federal Vision movement is a fairly strong emphasis on church discipline, which is often not practiced, even in Reformed circles, even where in the books of church order, such as in the

PCA and the OPC, very often church discipline just doesn't, in fact, wind up getting practiced.

And that, I think, needs to be corrected, but you don't have to embrace Federal Vision theology to correct either one of those problems.

By the way, I should mention to you, Chris, you said earlier on that I'm a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

I was, but by the Lord's providence, about six years ago, we were moved out of an

OPC church, and we're now in a Reformed Southern Baptist church.

I remain, myself, thoroughly committed to the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, but, you know, the

Body of Christ is wonderful, and it's big, it's bigger than our Reformed churches, and at this stage in my life, the

Lord has me where He does now, so I'm no longer in the OPC. Well, being a Reformed Baptist, I'm glad that you're a little closer to home now.

Hey, my friend Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church is always trying to convert my Reformed Baptist friends, so...

Well, good for Bill. Yeah, in fact,

I'll be seeing him in about a week. He is starting a weekly radio program that I am actually involved in orchestrating, a visit to the pastor's study, which will be aired on Adonai Radio WLIE, very bad call letters for a

Christian station, W -L -I -E, but that's named after the Long Island Expressway, not the lie.

How about if it means, Life in the Evangel? Yeah, amen, there you go.

But he will also be heard globally via live streaming, just as I am.

So I'm looking forward to the launching of that program, which will be aired every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 .30

p .m. Eastern Time, so I'm looking forward to that. But we're going to our first break right now.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Don't go away, we'll be right back after these messages with Dr.

Calvin Beisner. I'm Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and here's one of my favorite guests,

Todd Friel, to tell you about a conference he and I are going to. Hello, this is Todd Friel, host of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV, and occasional guest on Chris's show,

Iron Criticizing Iron. I think that's what it's called.

Hoping that you can join Chris and me at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, my new hometown.

It is going to be a bang -up conference called the G3 Conference, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation, with Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Baucom, Conrad and Bayway, Phil Johnson, James White, and a bunch of other people.

We hope to see you there. Learn more at g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

Thanks, Todd, I think. See you at the Iron Sharpens Iron Exhibitor's booth.

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Solid Rock Remodeling, bringing new life to your home. Welcome back.

This is Chris Orrins, and if you just tuned us in, our guest for the first hour is Dr. E.

Calvin Beisner. With a half hour to go, Dr. Beisner is founder and national spokesman for the

Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. And we are discussing basically a broad spectrum of topics today, including environmental issues and theological issues, including the federal vision, which we were just discussing before the break.

If you have a question for Dr. Beisner, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. We do have Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York.

And I love these really practical questions. Are most Presbyterians superlapsarian, such as Calvin and Beza?

Well, if you could give a very brief, as brief as possible, summary of superlapsarianism versus infralapsarianism, and if you could answer

Tyler's question, whether or not you believe most Presbyterians are supra or infra.

Sure, I'll be glad to. My pretty strong impression is that infralapsarians outnumber supralapsarians among Presbyterians.

That is not from a careful survey, but simply from a wide reading and systematic theologies of various different Presbyterians, certainly in terms of the last century, two centuries or so, of Presbyterian theologians.

Infra tends to outnumber supra. B .B. Warfield would be one example of infra, and my good friend the late

Dr. Robert L. Raymond would be an example of supra. A quick little story here, a fun story.

My eldest daughter is a pianist and organist, and essentially memorized the entire

Trinity Hymnal, not just the music, but all the words to it as well. At the time she was about 19 years old or thereabouts, and she also sat in on all of the systematic theology courses at Knox Theological Seminary back when

I used to teach there. She sat in on the courses taught by Dr. Raymond, and she said afterward that in all five of those courses on systematic theology,

I never encountered a single doctrine that I had not already learned from the

Trinity Hymnal, except for supralapsarianism. So, I mean, if you want a good theological education, memorize the

Trinity Hymnal. It couldn't go worse than that. The publishers of the

Trinity Hymnal are delighted to hear that little plug there. Yeah, no doubt. The new

Trinity Hymnal from the Christian Education and Publications Committee of the

PCA, in conjunction also with the OPC, it's a marvelous hymnal.

I just absolutely love singing from it. Now, infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism, how do they differ?

Well, according to—they have to do with what is called the ordo salutis.

That is the order of the decrees of God, the logical order, not the temporal order, because there was no temporal order in God's mind.

He has always known all of his decrees. He's always made all of his decrees.

But the logical order of the decrees of God related to the salvation of human beings.

Supralapsarianism says that the decree of election of some people to salvation and others to damnation was logically prior to the decree of the fall, the lapse.

Okay, so supra is above or before, and lapse is fall, right?

So the idea is that God chose some for eternal life with himself and others for eternal condemnation out of the mass of unfallen humanity.

And so this puts the decree of election logically prior to the decree of the fall.

Infralapsarianism switches the order of those. And it says instead that God decreed the fall logically prior to his decreeing election of some fallen sinners to eternity with him in blessed fellowship.

And other sinners elected, reprobated to eternal condemnation.

So it's just simply the reversal of the order between those two decrees in the

Ordo Salutis. Now our listener, Tyler, believes that Calvin and Beza were supralapsarian.

Is that a fact? I don't know on Beza. I haven't read him enough. I'm pretty sure it is correct on Calvin.

But I have to say it's been about probably seven years now since I last read

Calvin's Institutes. I've read them five times. And frankly, I don't remember for sure, but I'm pretty confident that Calvin was supra.

And it's interesting. What do you think, Chris? Do you know the answer on that? I don't know the answer on that, but it kind of dovetails with another question

I had. And I am surprised that there are some Reformed folk who take this issue seriously and even go as far as labeling supralapsarians as hyper -Calvinists, which would be ironic if Calvin was a supralapsarian.

He couldn't be hyper -Calvinist if Calvin believed in it. And by the way, I don't think that one need connect those two at all.

For instance, the reputation of hyper -Calvinists as not being particularly evangelistic would be absolutely inapplicable to my old friend

Bob Raymond. Dr. Raymond was a wonderful evangelist, both preaching from the pulpit and individually speaking in personal evangelism to individuals.

He was dedicated to doing that, and he did it a great deal all through his life.

So supralapsarianism does not necessarily lead one to hyper -Calvinism.

Yes, I know that that was some of the reason that people have labeled John Gill, that great 18th century

Reformed Baptist, the predecessor of Charles Haddon Spurgeon at Metropolitan Tabernacle.

And he has been labeled as hyper -Calvinistic for that reason and for others.

There were other reasons that some have labeled him that, but there is dispute over whether or not he would warrant that title or that label.

I know that Dr. Tom Nettles of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary defends Gill as not being a hyper -Calvinist and being completely in alignment with historic biblical

Calvinism. Well, I think, too, we need to be careful about pinning labels on people from centuries past when those labels never arose until more recently.

I'm frankly not sure just when the labels infra - and supralapsarian originated, but I seriously doubt that they were around in the 16th century, or for that matter probably in the 17th century.

And when we devise labels like that, that's usually because positions have become increasingly refined, clarified, and contrasted with each other, whereas in earlier times they were not so contrasted.

And so often we run into the problem of anachronistic labeling when we try to apply labels like that as far back as, say,

John Calvin. A similar thing happens with the labels amillennial and postmillennial.

Postmillennialism as a label didn't come around until the early 20th century.

Now, some people refer to Benjamin Warfield as a postmillennial. He considered himself amillennial in contrast to premillennial.

But as a matter of fact, amill and postmill didn't become sufficiently distinguishable from each other until probably the 1930s or 40s, which was well after Benjamin Warfield had died.

And it's probably not a good idea to place Warfield in either one of those two camps.

And more recently, as a matter of fact, a number of significant postmill thinkers have said, for example, the late

David Chilton, that really there's not a dime's worth of difference in terms of the understanding of the sequence of events leading up to the second coming of Christ and the final judgment.

There's not a dime's worth of difference between amill and postmill. The difference really has more to do with the mental attitude of more pessimistic or more optimistic attitude about the church's impact on the world between now and then.

So, you know, we want to be careful not to toss labels around too vigorously.

And going back to supra and infralapsarianism, it would seem odd to me to really start a war over this or divide over this.

Oh, absolutely. Because when you're talking about something that is in the mind of God before humans were even on the earth, the fact that nothing takes

God by surprise, he is immutable, and he is eternal, and this wasn't some thought, this idea of election wasn't some thought that came into his mind later on in history or something, as if you could even use a phrase like that with God who is eternal.

But, you know, why would that even matter if God doesn't change his mind or new thoughts do not occur to him, how could there possibly be a serious difference in those two?

Well, of course, as I mentioned, the issue is not a temporal sequence between the two decrees of fall and election, but the logical sequence of them, which one presupposes the other.

And that means, of course, the question of the temporal sequence in God's mind disappears, because as omniscient,

God has always known for all eternity everything about every one of his decrees, and that means that all of his decrees were fixed in all eternity.

So we have to escape the temporal aspects of this.

And you know, Chris, also, as I said, I love the Westminster Confession and Catechism, so I am still a died -in -the -world

Westminsterian Presbyterian in terms of my theology and ecclesiology and sacramentology and so on, but you know something?

I will get along far better with a passionate, zealous, confessionally committed

Wesleyan or Lutheran or Baptist or Episcopalian than I will with a liberal

Presbyterian. And we need to be people who are committed to the

Scriptures, committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and I suppose I can steal a phrase from Benjamin Franklin, but we better all hang together or we're all going to hang separately.

We do have a listener in Clinton Township, Michigan, Jeff, who says,

How could anyone promise hope to a lost sinner by any ordinance within a church?

I've struggled too with assurance of salvation and found my comfort nowhere near my baptism, but by a thorough study of this topic in God's Word.

Chapter 18, verse 4 of the 1689 Confession addresses this as well.

Yeah, you know, the sacraments are given to us as signs and seals of the covenant of grace, but what that means is not that they guarantee salvation to anyone, but they signal to us what

God, through Christ, has done for his elect for their salvation.

And for us to know whether we are among the elect is not something that we can know a priori.

We cannot know that in advance. Instead, it is a conclusion of an old

Puritan syllogism. The Puritan syllogism is, All who believe in Christ are saved.

I believe in Christ, therefore I'm saved. Now, that's a valid, logical syllogism.

And then, too, we can say, as Jesus said,

No one comes to me unless the Father calls him. And, I've come to Christ, therefore the

Father must have called me. And so we can put those two syllogisms together, and that tells us that we're believers.

Well, if we're believers, then we can say that our baptism and our celebration of the

Lord's Supper are signs and seals of this to us. And so they can, in fact, encourage and comfort us, just as the reading of the

Word encourages and comforts us. St. Augustine, of course, said that a sacrament is a visible word.

That's the idea of a sacrament, is that the sacrament is a visible word. Well, we get our assurance from the

Scriptures. Baptism and the Lord's Supper tell us the same message as the

Scriptures, but they do so through visible signs rather than through propositions.

Well, thank you, Jeff, in Clinton Township, Michigan. Please keep contributing to Iron Sharpens Iron with your questions, and we look forward to hearing the next one in the future.

There have been other, obviously, I'm not asking you to give elaborate descriptions, because we only have ten minutes left in our interview, but if you have any comments about some of the other controversies that have fairly recently raised their heads amidst

Reformed folk, one of them involves the impassibility of God, primarily,

I think, a dispute amongst Reformed Baptists, although Presbyterians may be involved in that, and the other is the

Trinitarian controversy that seems to be predominantly a Presbyterian divide.

Chris, I have to say that I have been so much focused on the work of the

Cornwall Alliance, which just is outside of those issues, that I'm not up on what's happening in either one of those.

I would suggest this, that the question of whether God is passible or impassible, that is, whether he has emotions, passions, or does not have emotions or passions, that question is one that has been knocked back and forth for practically the entire history of the

Christian Church. It would not be terribly surprising to see it still being debated in our own day, including among Reformed thinkers.

What I do think is that we need to take very seriously the biblical language about God, and when the scriptures say that God loves, that he rejoices, that he is grieved, that he is angry, that he is filled with wrath, and so on, the scriptures say these things.

And we must not allow a Platonic or an

Aristotelian theism to determine our doctrine of God in this respect.

We have to be biblical. This is one of the reasons, frankly, why I so love Robert L.

Raymond's New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, is that Dr. Raymond, actually his

Ph .D. was not in Systematic Theology, it was in Old Testament, and Dr. Raymond's is one of the best exegetical

Systematic Theologies that I know, and that's part of why

I love it. It's the same reason why I so love John Calvin's Institutes, is that they just simply are built directly out of Scripture, and I think that's the way to go.

So in terms of a debate over the passability versus the impassability of God, I would come down on the passability side, so long as we recognize that this has to do with God's having passions, not with God's being vulnerable to harm, to suffering imposed from outside himself.

And obviously you would not think that that contradicts his immutability either. Right, right.

It doesn't contradict his immutability, and it doesn't contradict his omnipotence. Where you get into problems is where you say that God's creatures can cause him suffering that he has not intentionally taken on for himself.

That's exactly what Christ did in his suffering for our salvation. He suffered not only as man, but also as God, and he suffered the injuries that sinful men inflicted upon him, not only as man, but also as God.

But he did so not because he couldn't prevent it, but because he embraced it.

And I do want those of you who either are listening live, or who may be listening at some point in the future, from the archive, the recording of the program, that I do intend eventually to get representatives of each side to spend one or two hours to explain and defend their particular position on this.

So I don't want any of you to think I'm just going to gloss over this issue very briefly. I just thought

I'd mention that because I know that there are probably already people upset with me. And as far as the

Trinitarian controversy, it seems to be over economic subordinationism, that the son, even though he is co -equal and co -eternal with the father, has a, and I've been criticized for using the term role of subordination, but I don't know how else to phrase it, but he is subordinate to the father, which does not decrease his equality or power or authority.

And I don't know if you can comment at all on this controversy, because there are some who are viewing this, if not borderline heresy, they're viewing it as heresy, and any shades of gray in between that.

Well, I'd want to be careful because, as I said, I've not kept up on the controversy itself in reformed circles, and I'm sure that there are probably some highly technical things that have been said and written in this, with which

I'm not familiar, and so I'd want to tread lightly here. But interestingly enough,

I actually made some comments last night in teaching a home Bible study to my own home about this issue.

And that is that when we think about father and son as metaphors related to the first and second persons of the

Holy Trinity, we need to remember that the metaphors about God get their original meaning not from the creatures, not from us, but from God himself.

That is, when we speak of Christ as son of God, we're not saying, oh, he is son of God as, say, my son

David is son of Cal. In human relationships, father and son entail necessarily a temporal sequence.

The father precedes the son, and the son has a beginning of existence, and it's at that point that the father becomes a father.

Whereas with God, God has always been father and son, and Holy Spirit.

And so our understanding of what it is to be a father needs to be determined far more from how

God the Father relates to God the Son than from how a human father relates to his son.

And similarly, our understanding of what it means for Jesus Christ to be the son of God needs to be understood more from within the

Trinity than from between human beings. And so if we do that, then

I'm able to say, all right, look, in the doctrine of the Trinity, we clearly find from Scripture that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons, and that each one of them is fully

God, that each one of them is therefore infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his wisdom, power, justice, holiness, goodness, and truth.

And this means that there is no metaphysical subordination of one to another, no metaphysical dependence of one on another, no metaphysical priority or anything of that sort.

But for there to be, as you mentioned the word, an economic relationship, that is, a relationship in terms of how they function relative to each other internally in the

Trinity, and relative to the creatures externally, that,

I think, is revealed in Scripture to be an eternal thing. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternally distinct from each other, and the

Son has always been delighted to submit to his Father, and the

Father has for all eternity exercised a loving authority.

And similarly, Father and Son for all eternity have sent, dispensed the

Holy Spirit. So we can affirm simultaneously the essential unity and the economic diversity and the personal diversity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Beyond that, I wouldn't attempt to go at this point, simply because I'm not aware of probably a lot of very technical points that are going on in the debate.

Well, I really appreciate you being on in the midst of a very hard day of labor, 15 hours worth of work to get your house unprepared for the hurricane as you took shutters off your home and so on.

And I just really appreciate you squeezing us into your busy schedule today, Dr. Beisner. I know that your website is

CornwallAlliance .org, CornwallAlliance .org.

I look forward to having you back on the program in the very near future. Well, thank you very much, Chris, and God bless you.

God bless you too, brother. And coming up next, it was originally going to be Pastor Andrew Hunt, but rather than Pastor Andrew Hunt, we are going to,

God willing, be joined by an old friend of mine who is a part of a conference being held at the church where Pastor Andrew Hunt is the pastor.

That would be New Life Community Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. And we have coming up very soon,

God willing, Pastor Ken Jones, who is an old friend of mine, been on this program years ago on the old

Iron Sharpens Iron. Many of you may recognize Pastor Ken Jones' name from the

White Horse Inn program, a program that he has been a co -host on along with Dr.

Michael Horton, Dr. Rod Rosenblatt, and Pastor Kim Riddlebarger that has been on the air for quite a number of years going back to the 1990s.

And Ken Jones has been a part of that team. We'll find out if he still is because Ken and I had no time to discuss updates on his life before this program began today.

But hopefully we'll be hearing from Ken Jones momentarily to discuss the 2016

Midwest Annual Reformation Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana coming up on October 15th and the 16th.

I'm sorry, October 14th and the 15th at New Life Community Church in Indianapolis, Indiana.

And first of all, let me greet for the first time in a number of years,

Pastor Ken Jones. Yes. Hello, Chris. How are you?

Good, brother. It's great to have you on the program. And we are going to be going to a station break right now.

But first of all, let me just extend to you my greetings and welcome you to the program to discuss the

Midwest Annual Reformation Conference on the Order of Salvation, something that just came up briefly during my interview with Dr.

Calvin Beisner. But that was not even planned.

That was just a providential occurrence that during discussions on a number of things, when supra versus infralapsarianism came up, so did the

Ordo Salutis. But we're going to be right back to get more of an update on Pastor Ken Jones, what he is doing lately, and also what he will be speaking on October 14th and the 15th at the

Midwest Annual Reformation Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. So don't go away.

We're going to be right back after these messages with Ken Jones. Chris Arnzen here, and I can't wait to head down to Atlanta, Georgia.

And here's my friend Dr. James White to tell you why. Hi, I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

I hope you join me at the G3 Conference hosted by Pastor Josh Beis and Praise Mill Baptist Church at the

Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta January 19th through the 21st in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation. I'll be joined by Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Vody Balcom, Conrad Mbewe, Phil Johnson, Rosaria Butterfield, Todd Friel, and a host of other speakers who are dedicated to the pillars of what

G3 stands for, gospel, grace, and glory. For more details, go to G3conference .com.

That's G3conference .com. Thanks, James. Make sure you greet me at the

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Welcome back. This is Chris Sarnes. And if you just tuned us in, our guest for the second hour today is

Pastor Ken Jones. And he is currently a pastor of the

Missionary Baptist Church in Glendale, Florida, which is actually a suburb of Miami, Florida.

Well, actually, it's Glendale Missionary Baptist in Miami. Okay. It's Glendale Missionary Baptist in Miami.

I'm sorry. Yeah. And Dr. Jones is well known to many of our listeners as a co -host of the

White Horse Inn alongside Dr. Michael Horton, Kim Riddlebarger, and Rod Rosenblatt.

And I don't know if he is still co -hosting that program because we didn't have any time to catch up before the show today, but we'll find out about that and more things.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back after a long absence, Pastor Ken Jones. Thank you,

Chris. It's good to be with you again. And no, I am no longer with White Horse Inn. It's been a few years now.

I've been in Miami for six years, and I continued to travel back and forth for the first two years still doing the program.

But since then, I've been away. But we've been here in Miami at Glendale Baptist Church, and we're doing good.

Great. Well, why don't you tell our listeners something about Glendale Missionary Baptist Church. Well, Glendale is a

Southern Baptist church. We just celebrated, I believe it was the 53rd church anniversary.

It was the first predominantly African -American congregation to join the

Florida Southern Baptist Convention. And it's a church that was familiar with the doctrines of grace.

And in the time that I've been there, we've been more firmly established. So it's a good place, and the

Lord is blessed. Praise God. I don't know if you are officially affiliated with the

Founders Ministries, but I'm sure that you have contact with them being in Florida. Yes. Actually, I'm not a member, but I've spoken at some of their events in the past, and I'm familiar with some of the guys that are involved.

Well, I'm among the many Reformed Baptists who are delighted that Dr.

Horton did not convert you to paedo -baptism. It's been a long -standing friendly battle.

And you are coming up, God willing, going to be one of the speakers at the

Midwest Annual Reformation Conference on the subject of the

Order of Salvation. This is going to be held at the New Life Community Church in Indianapolis, Indiana.

And for more details, our listeners can go to newlife -indy .org.

That's newlife -indy .org. And if you scroll down to the bottom, they have a banner ad for the 2016

Midwest Annual Reformation Conference featuring my guest today, the Rev. Ken Jones, also

Rev. Victor Scholar. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Yes, I believe that's correct.

And Dr. Jarvis Williams. That's October 14th and the 15th at New Life Community Church in Indianapolis, Indiana.

And to register for free, if it's a free registration, go to marc .newlife

-indy .org. That's marc, standing for Midwest Annual Reformation Conference, newlife -indy .org.

But the Order of Salvation is something that is one of the primary things that is a dividing line between those

Christians who declare to have an affinity with the Protestant Reformation and, in particular, with Calvinistic soteriology, also nicknamed

Reformed soteriology or theology and the doctrines of sovereign grace.

It is something that I believe is highly misunderstood because it has been caricatured by those who are opponents of Reformed theology.

But if you could, in summary, explain the Ordo Salutis or the

Order of Salvation as Calvinistic or Reformed Christians understand it. Yeah, well, for one thing, the concept, the biblical basis for the idea of an

Order of Salvation is established in Romans 8, verses 29 and 30.

But the idea itself is an effort to put the salvation of God's grace in a particular sequence or logical order.

Now, it's not superimposed upon the text, but the problem with it is, and even some

Reformed people have a problem with a hard and fast commitment to a specific order of salvation, because the idea is salvation is of God, and the order in which it occurs in time is our effort to put those things in a logical sequence.

So it begins with predestination or the decree of God, and, again, there would be differences on how those things are fleshed out, and then you go to calling, and then regeneration, and faith, and perseverance.

You know, so it looks at the specific doctrines or aspects of salvation and puts them in a particular sequence.

Or, as one writer put it, it's an effort to look at the benefits of God's grace or to put the benefits of God's grace in Christ in a particular sequence.

The biggest issue, I would think anyway, the two biggest issues that would divide, as you mentioned, those who attempt to stand in the stream of historic

Protestantism versus those who may go in a different direction, namely Arminianism, would be one in terms of understanding the decree of God, and I think you alluded to it before the break, the infra - versus superlapsarian position.

Whether or not in the infralapsarian position, the idea is that God's plan of salvation is a result of the

Fall, whereas the superlapsarian position and most Reformed systematicians would say, this would come as a subset of God's decree.

I like Louis Burkhoff, who says that when we speak of the decree of God, we tend to speak of the decree, where in actuality, it's singular.

So there's a single decree for everything that God, in other words, He has determined in eternity, before He created,

He has determined what He would create and the end thereof for it. So within that, within His will to create, is included the creation of man.

Knowing, not making man sin, but certainly giving him the ability to sin or to remain in obedience, but knowing, and this is where foreknowledge,

I think a more biblical understanding of foreknowledge is, knowing that man would sin, even before He created him,

God provided a means by which man would be saved, which is really the language of the

New Testament, specifically Paul in Ephesians 1, where he says, before the foundation of the world,

He has chosen us in Christ. So that's one place of divergence with those who are

Reformed and those who are not. And the other one would be regeneration and faith. On the

Arminian, or Semi -Pelagian, if not Pelagian camp, or on their side, they would say that faith precedes regeneration, whereas historic

Protestants would say that first there is regeneration and then there is faith.

So those would be the major differences in terms of the order, and they are an effort to put in a sequence those benefits that we have in Christ by grace.

Well, it seems that Ephesians 2, and in particular verse 5, has a lot to do with this controversy, where the

Apostle Paul says, even when we were dead in our transgressions, we were made alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved.

That appears to be one of the texts that are right at the core of this controversy about the order of salvation.

And also, I might even add Romans 8, 7, which describes the nature of man, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so.

So the question would be, how can a sinner, dead in his trespasses and sins, before he is regenerate or born again, even please

God by obeying Him in offering Him a saving faith or trust?

Well, exactly. And in the spirit of what you've just mentioned in the passages that you've cited, one,

Ephesians 2, our condition. Our condition is one of being dead in trespasses and sins, and the language there implies an inability as well as a fixed state.

So there is, in being dead in trespasses and sins, it is a condition of sinfulness in which one does not have certain ability.

Furthermore, in Romans 3, where Paul is actually quoting from Psalm, he goes on to describe the character of fallen humanity, which he lumps together, both

Jew and Gentile, and he says there's none that's good, there's none that doeth good, there's none that seeketh after God, there's none who understands.

So, and then going back to Ephesians, Paul says you are not like the rest of the

Gentiles who walk according to the futility of their minds because their hearts, their understandings are darkened.

So, in order to do anything, and first what we're doing when you are awakened is to be aware of your condition.

The fallen man has no ability to really grasp the gravity of his condition, nor does he possess the ability to grasp the necessity for Christ.

And even if he is fallen and religious, he is misguided enough to think that he can do something on his own to rectify his position with God.

So all of that is a part of our fallen condition, and in regeneration, you are awakened, you are enlivened, and enlivened to the point of being able to recognize that in your natural state, you stand in a position of condemnation before God, and you are unable to do anything about your condition, but through the

Gospel, you have now been awakened to the mercies of God that are in Christ.

So repentance is a fruit of having been awakened by the Spirit to one's condition, and therefore grasping by faith the mercies of God set forth in Christ.

And we could even take this a little bit further, or should

I say a little earlier in the letter to the Ephesians, when we are trying to search for an answer why this is at all important.

Why is this order of salvation issue, why does it have any importance at all other than for ivory tower theologians to smoke their pipes, drink from their brandy snifters, and discuss things that have no importance to the

Church at large. But the reason why it's important is that it has to do with how much of the credit, or praise, honor, and glory does

God deserve for our salvation, and how much do we deserve, and according to Ephesians 2 verse 8, for grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast, for we are

His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

It seems that God is the one that deserves the credit for every step of our salvation, and even our faith is a gift, so therefore, this is not something summoned up from the dead lifeless soul of an unregenerate man, it is a gift of God, this faith which

He gives to those He quickens to life. Am I right? Right. Right, absolutely.

And it's just important, it has a number of very practical implications, as you mentioned in the end, if man's salvation is the result of him doing what is naturally within him, and then recognizing that he's a sinner in and of himself, and then he's able to do, perform some sort of work, then obviously

God's grace is nullified. But even at a more practical level, when a person is brought to saving faith,

I think understanding the order of salvation, that God is the author of it from start to finish, there are a number of steps along the way, as relates to our sanctification, where we are prone to either become cuffed up because we are inordinately proud of any small good that we do, or we become greatly discouraged because of failures that we see in our lives.

Then, through the order of salvation, it's a reminder that we are always, like Okipu says, we are to look unto

Christ who is the author and finisher of our faith, so that we don't become cuffed up on the one hand, and that we don't become overly distraught on the other.

Yeah, and one of the ways that this concept is caricatured by those who are strong opponents to Calvinism, or strong opponents to what they imagine

Calvinism is, because very often it's very far from the historic account of what those who wear that label actually believe, some will laughingly mock the concept of regeneration preceding faith, because they think that there is some huge gap of time that could be taking place here, where you have, as it were, born -again or regenerate zombies walking around without faith, and then all of a sudden, at one point, years after they're born -again or regenerate, somehow they receive this faith, but this is really an instantaneous thing, isn't it?

Well, yeah. Well, not only is it instantaneous, but I think one of the things that leads to that sort of miscomprehension or misrepresentation of that doctrine, or the distinction of that doctrine, is when we talk about regeneration, in many

Protestant circles, we talk about it almost as if it's just a spontaneous thing, and we forget the means by which we are brought into regeneration.

The agent of regeneration is the Holy Spirit, but the means of regeneration is the

Word of God, specifically the Gospel. That's the language of Peter, that you have been born, you have been regenerated through the

Spirit and the Word, the seed of the Spirit and the Word.

So the idea is, it's not just, you know, you're regenerated and then you don't know, but what brings that new life is specifically the

Spirit through the ministry of the Gospel itself. And in that awakening, now, the awakening itself is instantaneous through the ministry of Spirit and Word, and I think our

Lutheran brothers are very helpful in that regard. And the effect of being awakened by the

Spirit through the ministry of the Word is, as we mentioned, first, to recognize one's need of salvation, which is to be made conscious of one's sinful condition.

I like the way Jonathan Edwards states it. He says that God first makes men mindful of their misery before he makes them mindful of his mercy.

But even to be mindful of our misery is an effect of being regenerated.

Amen. It is an effect of having been awakened by the

Spirit of God through the ministry of the Word that we now see ourselves, as Paul says, having therefore known the terror of God, we persuade men.

And we are not made conscious of his terror until we are awakened by his

Spirit. Amen. And I think, I don't know what your opinion is on this issue, but I think that this is one of the best arguments against baptismal regeneration.

The connection is blurred when you are discussing infant baptism, because an infant is a very passive or totally passive participant in baptism when you are having it administered by either those of our

Presbyterian brethren who are practicing that, or Lutheran, or even the

Roman Catholics who obviously practice that, and other groups. But when you talk about the convert being an older person, somebody who is, you know, in their teen years, or perhaps an adult, perhaps even an elderly person, that person would not be enthusiastically and willingly standing there, either in a baptismal font or standing by a minister by the baptismal device that the

Presbyterians use. I'm not sure of the title that they use for it. But they wouldn't be standing there waiting to be obedient to Christ and enthusiastically be admitted into His church if they were still a dead, lifeless sinner.

That seems to be a very strange thing to believe that somebody who is dead and lifeless and still at enmity with God is going to be desiring and requesting to be baptized when they're not yet regenerate, according to that understanding of baptismal regeneration.

I do think that there would be problems both on the baptismal regeneration side of it, as well as Presbyterians who don't hold to baptismal regeneration, but they baptize infants for different reasons.

However, I would agree with them that the subject of baptism is at that point passively receiving the grace of God in the form of water.

Because that's the language of Paul in Romans 6, that we have died with Christ, and so we are not actively participating, but passively receiving the benefits externally of our being brought into union with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.

So, at that point, ministry of word and the sacrament of baptism is only confirming what the

Holy Spirit has awakened within that believer for that person to recognize their condemnation and the gift of God in Christ, and therefore to receive the graces that God has promised in the person and work of Christ.

So, I agree that if we understand that we are completely unable until the

Holy Spirit gives us life, I do think that that order presents some problems, probably, for our paedo -baptist brothers.

Yeah, and I didn't mean to indicate or imply that I believe Presbyterians believe in baptismal regeneration.

I was just mentioning them because they baptize infants, as do

Catholics and Lutherans who both do believe in baptismal regeneration. Exactly. Right, right.

And that is the major distinction between the two. And, yeah,

I do think that understanding... There are a number of reasons I would differ with them on infant baptism, but I do think in terms of consistency, the most consistent wrong position on that would probably be the

Lutheran position of baptismal regeneration, because they are acknowledging a grace conferred rather than a promise that's extended.

In other words, the Presbyterians and others, they will oftentimes cite

Acts chapter 2, this promise is to you and to your children, although they usually forget to mention in that verse, it also says, and to the strangers in your gate.

But they will therefore say that baptism of infants is only an extension of the promise to the parent, whereas the

Lutherans will say that baptism is a... It confers grace.

It's a visible manifestation and conferring of grace.

So I think there's more consistency even in that wrong position. We have to go to a break right now.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Pastor Ken Jones on the order of salvation, and we will accept a question on a broader area of theology than just that, but that is the primary focus of our discussion, since that is the focus of the upcoming conference sponsored by the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. And let me give them a plug and announce their website as well.

It's alliancenet .org alliancenet .org But they are sponsoring the upcoming

Reformation Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana at New Life Community Church.

That's the 2016 Midwest Annual Reformation Conference. And the website that you can register for that conference, for the free registration for that conference is

MARC .newlife -indy .org

MARC, standing for Midwest Annual Reformation Conference .newlife -indy .org

But we'll be back after these messages to discuss that further. So don't go away.

We'll be right back, God willing, with Pastor Ken Jones. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am

I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man,

I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Marc Lukens, Pastor of Providence Baptist Church. We are a

Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the Apostles' priority, it must not be ours either.

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Call Lindbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402.

Or visit LindbrookBaptist .org. That's LindbrookBaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in.

Our guest for the second hour, with about 20 minutes or so to go, is

Pastor Ken Jones of the Glendale Missionary Baptist Church in Miami, Florida.

He is one of the speakers at the upcoming Reformation Conference.

That's the Midwest Annual Reformation Conference, October 14th and the 15th at New Life Community Church in Indianapolis, Indiana.

And for more details, you can go to MARC, which stands for Midwest Annual Reformation Conference, .newlife

-indy .org. And you can register absolutely free of charge to go to the conference.

In fact, I know that we do have a number of listeners in Indiana and even in Indianapolis, so we hope that as many of you as possible will attend that conference.

And we have been discussing the Order of Salvation, which is the main theme of that conference.

And it is a highly disputed and controversial issue in the Christian church.

And we do have Arnie from Perry County, Pennsylvania, who has a question for Pastor Ken Jones.

He says, What do you make of those that profess to be Calvinist and profess to believe in unconditional election, and yet they strongly oppose the

Order of Salvation you describe, calling it hyper -Calvinism, and say instead that God does indeed give

His elect the gift of faith, but it is preceding the reception of that gift that the lost sinner is regenerate?

Oh, I'm sorry. Ken, you were accidentally on mute. Can you start your answer from the beginning? Okay. If I'm understanding the question correctly, there are a couple of issues there.

One, anyone that would call a

Reformed Christian hyper -Calvinist, because they hold to the Order of Salvation as established in most

Reformed systematics, they don't understand what hyper -Calvinism is.

Hyper -Calvinism is a particular error where the idea of election is of such that they believe that only

God can save and only God can change the heart to the extent that the gospel is only for the elect.

So in hyper -Calvinism, there is no emphasis on evangelism because if God has already chosen who

He's going to save, then you don't want to force it. So it's a particular error.

Yeah, they deny that God uses means. Exactly, exactly.

It goes back to what we were talking about before, the misconception that regeneration is just this spontaneous, or it's like spontaneous combustion.

You just blow up. So independent of any means, just all of a sudden you're walking down the street and the spirit, boom, gives you new life.

And that's not the teaching of most Reformed people that I know. The idea is, as you mentioned,

Chris, it's regeneration through, by the agency of the Holy Spirit, through the means of the preaching of the gospel, and understanding that causes us to be very much committed to preaching the gospel to all people, because it is the gospel that strengthens us in our faith, and it's the gospel, it's through the preaching of the gospel.

As Paul says in Romans chapter 10, faith comes through hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

And that describes the activity of the Spirit through the preaching of the gospel to bring life where there was death.

So it's really a misrepresentation of the Reformed position, or those who hold that, those in certain

Reformed camps who would say that to hold to the Ordos Ludus as presented is hyper -Calvinism.

It underplays, it assumes that we don't make any room for the means of God, or the means of grace.

And the means by which God communicates that grace is through the gospel, the ministry of the

Holy Spirit through the gospel. And we have, let's see, we have

CJ in Lyndonhurst, Long Island, New York, who says, or asks, if faith immediately follows regeneration, how do you explain the fact that some souls are regenerate within the womb, like John the

Baptist was? Well, John the Baptist being regenerate in the womb, we are told that he was full of the

Spirit while he was in the womb, but that does not necessarily imply regeneration.

But even if it did, that is an exceptional situation. And I like what

Spurgeon says about the Dying Feast. Spurgeon says of the Dying Feast, he says there's only one instance of a person coming to faith in the moment of their death so that we would be without despair, that we would always know that there's hope.

But there's only one, so that we would not be presumptuous. So even if that were the case, that is an exceptional situation.

But the Scripture does not say that John the Baptist was regenerated by the

Holy Spirit in his womb, in his mother's womb. It simply says that he was filled or influenced or led of the

Spirit in his mother's womb, that in the presence of Christ, he leaped in his mother's womb.

So we have to be clear on the language of Scripture there as well. Right, and you could also imply that there was a supernatural event, a miracle where the unborn

John the Baptist was given the gift of faith, because why else would he leap with joy? Yeah, to recognize, well certainly to recognize that he's in the presence of the

Savior. But again, we're talking about unusual situations.

He himself, John the Baptist, is a significant figure in redemptive history.

So this is an exception rather than a rule. Right. And it would be the normative way that dead sinners are brought to newness of life is when the

Gospel is preached to them and seeds are planted and God gives the increase when he chooses by giving that audience or those members of that audience that have been evangelized new hearts so that they can believe the things being preached to them, just like Lydia had to have her heart opened to understand the things that were spoken of by Paul.

And there's a great passage in the Old Testament in Ezekiel 36, where God promises,

I will take the heart of stone out of you and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you.

And then he goes on to say, and then you will loathe yourselves for your sin.

And the reason being, the inference being, is that when you have a heart of stone, you are unable to respond to either the law or the

Gospel. So therefore it takes the newness of the spirit, the creative work of the spirit to bring you life so that you can see your sins for what they are and you can see

God's grace for what it was. And faith is an exercise of the will towards that which

God has provided by his grace. We also have

Beebe in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says, why do you think that it has taken seemingly quite a long time for the doctrines of grace to get a foothold in the black church at large and are you encouraged by the progress being made in the

African -American community in regard to Reformed theology or is the statistical percentage still a very disappointing reality?

Well, I sort of take that subject up in a book that I contributed to called

Experiencing the Truth. Anthony Carter is the general editor and I have a chapter in there on spiritual worship and we kind of trace the history and the establishment of the black church.

So I think there are a few things here. Number one, Reformed theology has been on the decline in America for a number of years.

In fact, if you want to, you could probably go back to at least the

Second Great Awakening to see the decline of Reformed theology and the influx of variations to Protestantism in the

United States. And this would be involving all races and ethnic groups. Yes, exactly, exactly.

And so the theology that has dominated the American religious landscape going back to the mid -1800s it tends to lean more in an experiential way.

The individuals experience it focuses on human ability even before regeneration.

It focuses on, I think, a sort of a skewed understanding of the ministry of the

Holy Spirit. So there are a number of deviations. There are a number of things that took place during that span or beginning at that time that led away from the confessionalism that marked the early

Protestants here in this country. So that's number one. Secondly, the rise of the black church as an entity comes at the crux of that shift from historic

Protestantism. You know, when do you have your first black churches? And so the churches themselves were the individual entity of the black church is itself necessitated by certain social and spiritual conditions.

So they sort of inherited the theology of the day. Although not always consistent and it was across the board the various denominations.

So it's... Am I... Why has it taken so long?

It's taken a long time for a number of reasons. Many of the... This is not to rehash old rules or whatever.

It's just a fair analysis of history. And the history is many of those who did hold to Reformational theology, classic historic

Protestantism, they were slaveholders. So if you look at the early black churches, they might embrace some aspect of it, but because the theology of their slaveholder, which some of them were disciples yet, but because it was...

it supported the system of oppression and slavery, they sort of rejected many aspects of that theology.

Southern Presbyterianism and others. So it was... And it's not to say that the theology or the sociology that was practiced by these denominations was really consistent with their theology.

Certainly you would understand why it would be rejected. The other thing is that the rise of most early black churches were congregational.

And that allowed them sort of an autonomy where they could govern their own affairs rather than be subject to a larger infrastructure, a white infrastructure, where they were still compelled in subjugation.

That's ultimately what led to the AME church. They were part of the Christian Methodist church, and because they still received second -class treatment, they eventually broke away so they could govern their own affairs.

So there are a number of things historically and theologically that, for whatever reason,

God and His providence allowed to transpire so that there could be a sharpening of theological issues across the board.

But we can't forget the fact that both today and in earlier parts of American history going back to the 19th century, there was already a broad shift away from historic

Protestantism. Am I encouraged by what I see? I do see more

African American churches and pastors and leaders that are consciously committed to whatever degree to a reformed theology, and I think that is encouraging.

Yeah, I can say that when I came to faith in Christ in the mid -1980s and started to attend reformed

Bible conferences, the audiences very typically looked like fundraisers at very waspy yacht club catering halls.

And today when I go, there is a lot of ethnic groups that you didn't typically see in reformed or Calvinistic conferences, including a lot of African Americans, typically, unless, of course, for some geographical reason that they're not there, and Hispanics and so on.

So there has been quite a change for the better in regard to the complexion of Calvinism, no pun intended there.

Yeah, well, and you know, we can't say how much of that is because they were excluded.

Maybe there was some of that, but I think for the same reason that a person who is a member, even if they're

Anglo, and they're a member of a word -faith church, it's not likely that they would attend a reformed conference, because they don't have an interest in the topics.

They have a disagreement with the presuppositions of that conference, so therefore it's not going to appeal to them.

And so this is true. I mean, you look at many of the reformed churches. Our reformed churches pale in comparison in size and sometimes even in numbers within their denominations or their gathering for a reformed event versus a typical evangelical event.

I remember a number of years ago when I was with the Alliance of Confessed Evangelicals before Jim Boyce died, and we had a conference in Atlanta, and we were meeting at a hotel in Atlanta.

We had maybe a thousand or just under a thousand. I know it was under a thousand in attendance.

Well, right down the road from us, there was a prosperity gospel. I guess for lack of a better term, and I don't want to use that term too broadly, but it was certainly prosperity -oriented.

But there was another conference that was going on right down the road where they had about 5 ,000 people in attendance.

And I retract that. I think we may have had in the neighborhood of 600, but they had like 5 ,000 people in attendance.

And so even if you give the lineup of speakers and topics that are concerned, people who are not already reformed probably don't have an interest in those areas.

And we do have Christopher in Suffolk County, New York, who asks,

Why is it, in your opinion, that it seems the majority of African American churches are more focused on political issues rather than theological, and even those that appear to have a more conservative understanding or interpretation of the scriptures tend to be more attached to liberal politics?

Well, the rightness or wrongness of that can be debated. But I think before one can really answer that question, if you want to be honest about it, let's look at the influence of Christian and the conservative right.

So before we can talk about, well, why are black churches involved in social matters, I think that on the other side of it, conservative

Christians have very much been involved in political matters. Our politics may divide us.

And so what we have an interest in or what one particular community has a concern about socially or politically might differ from another.

And boy, I certainly hope the caller is not suggesting that there is one particular political party that is

Christian, because neither one of them are. That's right. Christians can be right.

What makes us Christian is being right on the doctrines of salvation that are set forth in the

Scriptures. Everything else we can be wrong on and still be Christian, including our politics.

Yeah, well, I think that one of the issues that may be in the listener's mind, just to give you one example, it seems that the vast majority of African -American -dominated churches and denominations are vehemently opposed to same -sex marriage.

And yet they will, at least those that you see in the limelight of the media, it appears, are every election cycle in favor of the more liberal political candidate.

They might even be personally opposed to abortion and personally opposed to many of the things that are the major platform issues that the

Democratic or Liberal politicians running for office celebrate and champion.

And yet, for some reason, even though the African -American pastors and their congregations perhaps even more dominantly, even though they oppose those things, they will typically pull the lever for a more liberal political candidate.

Well, but first off, I think it's wrong for any church, I personally would not anyway, support any political party or platform in the name of church.

That's number one. So whether it's liberal or conservative, it's nothing that I would promote.

Secondly, liberal agendas, they're not mandating. As far as I see it, they're not mandating people to go out and marry the same sex.

I don't expect my dog to give me milk, and I don't expect my cow to bark.

So the fact that the world allows these things, you know, that's something altogether different.

But before that can be a legitimate question as to why... First off, you don't know what the majority of black

Christians believe in terms of their politics, but why the ones that are usually in the spotlight are usually more liberal or lean towards a liberal candidate.

I don't think we have to give an answer to that. It's simply because we're free, and we can. Nobody has to...

Why is it okay for a group of conservative Christians to get up and back any candidate?

Well, brother, it's always a pleasure. We are actually out of time right now, and I know that your church website is

GlendaleBC... I'm sorry, GlendaleMBCChurch .org.

GlendaleM, for missionary, B for BaptistChurch .org. And I know that, again, the

New Life Community Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, to register for the conference, is

MARC .NewLife -Indy .org. And finally, the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, who's sponsoring that conference, is AllianceNet .org.

AllianceNet .org. I really appreciate you being on the program, Pastor Ken, and I hope that you come back on the program very soon.

It's been a long time, and I hope that you don't wait that long to be on again.

All right, Chris. Always a pleasure to talk to you. You too, brother. And I want to thank everybody who listened today, and also especially those who wrote in.

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. We look forward to hearing from you and your questions for our guests tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.