July 11, 2023 Show with Luke Saint on “The Sound Doctrine of Theocracy”

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

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

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Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

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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.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 11th day of July, 2023.

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And I'm thrilled to have a first -time guest today who is the son, or one of the sons, of one of my favorite guests who you've all heard interviewed on the program before, and I'm speaking of Joel Saint.

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I have his son, one of his sons, Luke Saint, on the program today. He is an author, and he's the chairman of Mid -Atlantic

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Reformation Society, and today we are going to be addressing Luke's book, The Sound Doctrine of Theocracy, or Statism and the

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Christian Mind. We're also going to be talking about an upcoming three -day event in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, featuring

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Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, but it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Luke Saint.

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Thanks for having me on, Chris, I appreciate it. And it's Lancaster, right? Lancaster, yeah, the emphasis is on the stir,

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Lancaster. Lancaster. I am, as everyone who lives in Pennsylvania now realizes, not a native of Pennsylvania.

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I am a native of New York who just happens to be living in Pennsylvania ever since 2014 after relocating here, so I still have the

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New York accent for everything, and that even includes my hometown of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, which the locals call

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Carlisle. So I don't know if I'll ever want to pronounce it that way, but Luke, first of all, tell us about Mid -Atlantic

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Reformation Society. The Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society was started probably a little over a decade ago with some guys who wanted to –

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I think it was started as a Bible study, and these guys wanted to basically talk about what they felt the church was not addressing.

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They wanted to address things that they felt the church was ignoring, and they were frustrated that the

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Bible talks about all areas of life and that the church was not talking about all areas of life. The church was putting much of the lamp underneath the bushel.

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And so they got together in Bible studies, and they were talking about – the biggest one, the big heavy hitter was politics.

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And so these guys would get together and talk about what does the Bible have to say about politics? What does the Bible have to say about money? What does the Bible have to say about taxation?

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And they realized out of this that they wanted to start an organization that would come alongside and help churches and pastors in addressing these things, and that's how the

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Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society was started. We found out very quickly – I think I joined back in 2016,

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I think is when I joined. And we found out very quickly that the churches and the pastors did not want to be helped.

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They knew about where the church was being silent, and most of them – not all of them – most of them wanted it that way.

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They didn't really want any sort of attention given to the areas that the

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Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society was frustrated with that they were ignoring. So we decided to basically – instead of cursing the darkness, we decided to light a candle and became an organization that does conferences, and we even did some parachurch ministries.

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And Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society is theologically reformed and confessional and theonomic and postmillennial, right?

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Yes, absolutely we are, yes. I mean, not all of us. I mean, we don't all –

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I mean, we're all – I believe we're all postmillennial. I believe we're all theonomic, all the board members anyway.

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But other than that, I don't think – you know, we've got some Baptists, we've got some Reformed Baptists, we're all Reformed. We've got some

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Presbyterians in there. So I'm not sure if we'd all fit those categories, but we're ballparking it at least.

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With the frequency of postmillennial and theonomic guests on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, people have been wondering in my audience if I have also jumped the amillennial ship and become postmillennial and theonomic.

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I have not yet done that in spite of the frequency of my guests being of that persuasion.

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But it just so happens that I have always, ever since I became a born -again believer, had close friendships with postmillennialists and theonomists.

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And in fact, the late R .J. Rushdooney was a client of mine on WMCA Radio, an affiliate of Salem Media.

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I had created a program called The Voice of Sovereign Grace, which was aired nightly,

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Monday through Friday. And every night there was a different individual whose sermon was aired, and all of the hosts obviously were

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Reformed. Obviously that's a no -brainer judging by the title of the show, The Voice of Sovereign Grace. But the

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Calcedon Foundation sponsored one night a week, and it was not a sermon.

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It was an interview conducted with R .J.

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Rushdooney, and the individual performing that interview was

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Steve Schlissel of Messiah's Congregation in Brooklyn, New York. And so I had gotten to know

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Brother Rushdooney a little bit and had him as a client, and have always benefited from the magazine,

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The Calcedon Report, and yet still have not yet jumped ship and become a theonomist.

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But I hold it as an orthodox option and the eschatology associated with it, whereas there are, unfortunately, people who agree with you and I, Luke, on every area of theology.

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But when it comes to that issue, for some reason there are Reformed brethren who really go ballistic when it comes to hearing about somebody becoming a post -millennialist or a theonomist.

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And I have never understood that, but I think a lot of it is because— I think a lot of that has to do with the world's goddess on the ropes, that if you subscribe to a certain—especially theonomy, if you subscribe to theonomy, then you want to chop off people's hands and put women in burkas and stuff like that.

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And they have people thinking that way, that as soon as you say that word, that that's what you want. And so the

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Christian community doesn't want to, by and large, countenance the law of God as an option.

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We're just like, if you even countenance the law of God as an option, that means I'm toying with the idea of putting women in burkas and chopping people's hands off.

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And we often associate those kinds of things with Muslim law, and we say, well, that's a theocracy, which is not a biblical theocracy anyway.

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And we just don't even want to go there. We don't even want to countenance it because we're too afraid to even ask the question, does the

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Bible even address justice? And we've bought this idea that, in the back of our minds,

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I know it's there because I've had conversations with people, and you push comes to shove, and you get them on the ropes, and you say, hey, listen, is the law of God just or is it unjust?

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And when push comes to shove, the answer is it's unjust. It's unjust. That's in the back of their minds saying the law of God is just unjust.

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That's what it is. God gave us bad ideas. His ideas were dumb, and it was good for them. I don't even think it was to say it was good for them.

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They'd say it was bad for them. They'd say, I'd hate to be an Israelite back in Old Testament Israel and all that kind of thing.

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So I think as soon as you say post -millennial or theonomic, I think people have this pre -wired idea of what it is to be a theonomist, because the secular culture has us on the ropes even before we even get to the conversation.

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Yes. Obviously, there's a very similar phenomenon with merely being a

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Calvinist with those outside of the Reformed faith. People have a knee -jerk reaction to Calvinism in general because of the slanderous false stereotypes that they have been brainwashed into believing.

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Most of the folks who are vehemently anti -Calvinist likely have never read a page from a

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Calvinist book and have only read or heard the anti -Calvinist rhetoric from their heroes.

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So people really have got to take a breath, all of us, even Reformed folk, have got to take a breath and make sure that we are accurately understanding what somebody is saying when they identify themselves in a certain way and describe their theological and religious affiliation.

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We have to make sure that we understand them accurately, especially when speaking about them publicly, because, unfortunately, a lot of slander goes on, where people, even sometimes well -intentioned people wanting to warn the flock, they wind up slandering people by saying things about a particular group that isn't even true.

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And we're not even allowed by God's law to bear false witness against heretics.

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Not that we are not supposed to warn people about them, but we have to get our facts straight when we do.

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And I've heard vehemently anti -Catholic fundamentalists, for instance, who from pulpits have basically slandered the

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Church of Rome. When you don't need to slander the Church of Rome, there is enough heresy and idolatry and superstition that truly exists in that religious system without making stuff up.

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I agree. But I'm also excited, very excited, about a three -day event that I am working on with Luke, his dad, and the folks at Mid -Atlantic

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Reformation Society, September 15th, 16th, and 17th. That's a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

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This is featuring Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, and it is going to be held.

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We can now officially announce that this three -day event will be held at the

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Spooky Nook sports meetings and events in Mannheim, Pennsylvania, which, according to Luke, is a gorgeous, magnificent facility, so I'm looking forward to this.

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And why don't you tell us about this three -day event, Luke? We are super excited to get that event.

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Spooky Nook is just a wonderful event. You know, when we were talking about venues initially, I think there were some board members who thought

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Spooky Nook. And then we're just like, no, it's just too nice for us. It's really too nice. And here we are a couple weeks after we started looking for a venue.

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We're looking at churches from 1975, and they're United Methodist churches, and they have drag queen story out there.

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And we're thinking about running that facility. That's how bad it got. I mean, we weren't seriously looking, but we were just talking about it.

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We were looking at pictures, things like that. We're like, man, where are we going to go? And then one of our board members, Dave, who you interviewed, just said, hey, what about Spooky Nook?

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And my sister, who's the executive secretary, said, okay, well, I'll take a look. And it was totally this, well,

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I guess, you know, what have we got to lose? And then she called back. She sent an email, said, hey, this is the only weekend that they don't have a sports event, and it's available.

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And, you know, had a really great relationship with the customer service rep that they had there. And thankfully, we just, you know, got all the paperwork finished yesterday, and we're ready and ready to go with Spooky Nook.

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It's a really nice facility, but that is going to be the host. It's going to be hosting our Future of Christendom conference, and this year we're doing the

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Gospel at War. We saw that there was another conference up in Canada, and they did the

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Church at War. And we loved the title so much, but we didn't really want to steal their thunder. So we titled it the

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Gospel at War because that's basically where we're at right now, especially with the agendas and narratives of secular culture and humanism.

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People are starting to have conversations about, you know, the real problem around here is it's not the conservatives.

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It's not the Republicans. It's the Christians. And they're starting to get more specific, and that was always the goal.

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You know, that was always the goal to put the focus on Christianity. It was never to put the focus on conservatives.

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I mean, that's a false battle. You know, liberals versus conservatives, that's a false battle.

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The real false battle is between the Church and the state and the powers of righteousness and the powers of darkness.

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So that is the theme of our conference this year. And a special thanks to you, Chris, for hooking us up with a communication between us and James White.

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And I know you've done a lot of work behind the scenes, so we want to officially thank you for that,

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Chris, and your role in getting this conference on its way. My pleasure and my joy, and I am so excited about it.

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I always love to be involved in events involving my dear friend,

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Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, who I have known since 1995, a dear friend who has dedicated one of his books to me,

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The Forgotten Trinity, who has been with me through thick and thin, through times of rejoicing and times of tragedy in my life.

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He has been an encouragement and comforter after the death of my father, after the death of my dearly beloved precious late wife, and the recent death of my oldest brother.

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And he is just, I believe, bar none, the most gifted debater of theology alive on the planet

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Earth. He would never say that about himself, but I happen to believe without hesitation that it is true, in addition to being one of the most brilliant theologians.

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And I am looking forward to this, and I'm not going to mention the name of the possible debate opponent yet, because it is not 100 percent solidified and confirmed, but I am in the process of attempting to arrange a debate with an individual who would be

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James White's opponent during this three -day event in Mannheim, Pennsylvania. He is an individual who shares with us the views, the scriptural views, of homosexuality, that it is a damnable sin, that the physical exploration and activity of this sin is prohibited by the scriptures and is damnable if one does not repent of participating in it.

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He does not believe in same -sex marriage, as we also do not believe in this thing, which is really a fiction.

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There is no such thing as a same -sex marriage. But where the debate comes in is he believes that it is completely proper for a same -sex attracted individual who professes to be a

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Christian to identify himself or herself as a gay

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Christian. And so this is the proposed debate.

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The actual debater, the candidate that I had approached, I approached quite a number of them.

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The one who actually has accepted the challenge, we still need to go through some conversations, or at least the board of Mid -Atlantic

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Reformation Society has to have some meetings and conversations with whether or not the honorarium that has been requested can or will be fulfilled.

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And there may be some haggling going on there. But we should know, according to Joel Saint, my guest's dad, we should know by tomorrow night or the day after tomorrow at the latest, whether or not we can proceed with a 100 % confirmed debate, which will take place on Saturday, September 16th.

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So, go to midatlanticreformation .org for updates on this, midatlanticreformation .org,

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and you can also go to futureofchristendom .org, futureofchristendom .org,

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and the updates will be there as we have them.

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You can also go to ironsharpensignradio .com and look for them there. Just out of curiosity,

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I forgot what your dad's new title is, because he was once the chairman of Mid -Atlantic

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Reformation Society. That is now your title. What is the title of your dad? My dad is the executive director, actually.

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We never had a chairman. I was actually elected first as the position of chairman.

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He was always the executive director. I don't know how I got chairman in my information about your dad, but I make mistakes all the time.

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You've got to explain, do you know how Spooky Nook came up with that name?

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It's on Spooky Nook Road, and I think the road came before the warehouse.

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It's an old warehouse that they repurposed. It's on Spooky Nook Road, so I think the name came from the road that it's on.

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I could be wrong about that. Is it a spooky road? Is there something ominous about it?

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No, you're in beautiful Lancaster County. There's cornfields right across the street there, and it's just such a beautiful area.

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There's nothing spooky about it. It's not exactly like Sleepy Hollow out there. It's a beautiful area. It's Manhattan Township, so it's a really nice place.

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I've got to do some research as to how that road got that name. But anyway, when we come back from our first commercial break, we're going to have

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Luke, before we enter into the subject of his book, The Sound Doctrine of Theocracy, we're going to have

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Luke participate in the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio tradition that we have, where whenever we have a first -time guest who is a

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Christian, which would be the vast majority of times, once in a blue moon I have a non -Christian on who may have something to say that is of value to the body of Christ in spite of their being a non -Christian.

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But when we have a Christian on for the first time, we have that brother or sister in Christ give a summary of their salvation testimony, which

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Luke will do when we come back from the first break. If any of you have any questions for Luke, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

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Don't go away. We'll be right back with Luke Saint right after these messages from our sponsors. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with Luke Saint, author and chairman of Mid -Atlantic

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Reformation Society. And we will be momentarily addressing his book, The Sound Doctrine of Theocracy.

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But first, we're going to have Luke do what all first -time Christian guests do on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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We're going to have him give a summary of his salvation testimony that would include the kind of religious atmosphere in which he was raised, and what kind of providential circumstances our

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Sovereign Lord raised up in his life that drew him to himself and saved him.

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So Luke, please give us your story. Yeah, sure, no problem. You said providential circumstances, and that is definitely a part of my testimony.

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I grew up in a very strong Christian home. We were homeschooled, five brothers and three sisters. Mom never worked.

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And despite growing up in this atmosphere, I would give lip service to all of the doctrine, all of the

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Christianese, and all that kind of stuff, the Sunday school answers. But when I was about 15, I remember

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I had a dream where we were up in heaven being interviewed to see if we would actually go to heaven.

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And I remember my family was being interviewed one by one. Every time someone came out of the office where we were interviewed, we'd all clap and cheer because they said, yeah,

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I'm going in. And then it came time for my turn to be interviewed for entrance into heaven.

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And I woke up before I was interviewed. And when I woke up, it was beyond the, when you wake up from a nightmare, usually you're scared for a little bit, but then this wave of relief comes over you like, oh, it's not real.

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But that wave of relief never came over me. I was still mortally afraid for a couple days because I couldn't think of all the things that I knew.

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I couldn't come to terms with the question of, well, why should God let me into heaven? I'm a sinner.

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I know I've sinned and I know I've sinned against him. I know he demands perfection. So why should he let me into heaven?

35:54

It was like a precursor to Way of the Master by Ray Comfort. It's that question of what did you ever do to get into heaven or why should

36:04

God let you into heaven? And I could not come up with an answer to that question. And so I started going to the

36:12

Bible and searching like, how is man justified? And that's basically the day

36:18

I became Reformed and the day I became a functioning spirit -filled

36:24

Christian because I essentially went to the Bible to find out how to answer the age -old question, how is man justified?

36:32

Is it by works? No, it's by faith. Ephesians 2 .11, it's by faith you're saved through faith and it's by grace you're saved through faith and this is not of yourself.

36:42

So I started really searching the scriptures and that is basically how I came to a saving knowledge of what

36:50

Christ did on the cross. Praise God. Well, let's now enter into the discussion of the sound doctrine of theocracy or statism in the

37:01

Christian mind. Now, even promoting this interview, there were people who were stunned, shocked, dismayed that I was entertaining the idea of in any way giving a platform to the idea of theocracy, and I'm talking about Christians, I'm talking about conservative

37:23

Christians and a lot of this, I think, is because it's a knee -jerk reaction that we were talking about before and it's not without warrant to be cautious when you hear about things like this because especially especially

37:42

Baptists who know history will know that they have been the brunt of or the target, the victims of persecution in theocratic governments in Europe and even before that, before the

38:01

Reformation where sadly you had brothers in Christ who believed in the souls of the

38:10

Reformation and believed in justification by faith alone through grace alone in Christ alone they cruelly and gruesomely at times, not all the

38:26

Reformers, but they not the Reformers themselves but those within their theological in their theological agreement with the

38:43

Reformers, those in the same nations and so forth, those involved in government did gruesomely and barbarically torture and murder brothers in Christ and even before that you had the

38:57

Roman Catholic Church doing that towards Anabaptists so and even closer to our modern day where we have

39:07

Puritans and mock baptism services drowning Baptists there was a

39:15

Baptist in England burned at the stake in 1611 the same year that the King James Bible was published so there are people even who are as conservative as us and maybe in great theological agreement with us and the

39:34

Reformed faith and so on, but they want to really stomp on the brakes when they hear anything about theocracy, so why don't you define theocracy according to how you understand it and promote it

39:51

Yes, so the reason I wrote this book is I felt the theonomists were lacking in some of their argumentation regarding the form of government.

40:05

I think there are many theonomists out there who make the mistake of saying things like yeah, we need to get theonomy so that we can put it into our constitution

40:13

I don't think that we can have the constitution and theonomy at the same time

40:19

I really don't. One of them has got to go The reason

40:24

I wrote this book is because I'm arguing for the form of government that is encouraged and detailed in the scriptures which is basically laid out in Exodus 18 where Moses is judging the people the people are coming to him with questions about problems that they have and he's judging between them and his father -in -law

40:49

Jethro says why don't you go ahead and set up judges of 10 judges of 50, judges of 100, judges of 1000 and let them solve the minor disputes and you take the difficult ones

40:59

I believe that right there is a theocratic system.

41:04

That's what I'm arguing for. It's the form of government. A theocracy is a form of government rightly understood biblically.

41:11

Biblical theocracy is a form of government where the judicial branch is basically the main branch and the executive branch is primarily fulfilled by the citizenry and secondarily fulfilled by the government

41:28

There is no legislative branch I argue for this in my book. This is probably one of the biggest points in my book. There is no legislator in a theocracy in a biblical theocracy.

41:37

There is nobody. This is the system, the political system that sets it apart from basically every other political system out there.

41:45

Anarcho -capitalist collectivist, communist, whatever you want to put in there. They all have a legislator

41:50

They all have someone up there saying new rule, you can do this. New rule, you can't do that and they all have somebody making up rules somewhere.

41:58

It's a bunch of people or it's one person or it's a small group of people but there is somebody making up rules and what

42:05

I'm saying and what was noticeable, one of the many things that are noticeable about a biblical theocracy is there is no legislator

42:14

So if I live in a theocracy and I die in a theocracy and 300 years later my great great great great great great great great grandchildren wake up in a theocracy, it's the same rules, it's the same laws.

42:26

Nothing has changed because there is nobody there to change it. God has given us as it says in 2

42:34

Peter chapter 1, I believe it's verse 3 His divine power has given us everything that pertains to life and godliness.

42:40

A legislator in a political system assumes that that is not true, right off the bat.

42:46

That we don't have enough. We need a little bit more. There's some humans out there that have got some insight about how we should be telling people how to live and I wrote this book because I wanted to make the point that right from the beginning, even of this country we got started on the wrong foot by implementing a legislator.

43:06

Any nation I say this in my book, any nation that implements a legislator is by definition not free because what you're doing when you implement a legislator or have a legislator in your country as part of your governmental system you're right off the bat assuming that god has left some vital things concerning politics out of the scriptures that we just don't know enough that these people are going to tell us these politicians of all people are going to communicate to us that here's some things god left out here's a crime that god that's not in the bible so it should be a crime here

43:39

Moses is always telling people don't add to it don't take away from it and what's noticeable about a theocracy is that it puts god as the king and when in 1st

43:52

Samuel 8 when the people rejected god what they didn't reject was theonomy they did not reject theonomy they rejected theocracy when god said they've rejected me that I should rule over him they're rejecting the form of government they want a physical representation of god here on earth that they can look to instead of looking to god instead of walking by faith the just shall live by faith so even our political system has to reflect that truth and the reason

44:20

I wrote this book is because I wanted to communicate to theonomists, listen we can't have our cake and eat it too we've got to realize that the constitution, if there was a reverse rapture tomorrow and all the pagans were taken away and only christians were left, that we are not equipped to build a godly government, we're not even remotely equipped to build a godly government, we're going to try and do the same thing, we're going to try and do the constitution all over again with a legislator and we're going to be in the same given how moral we are we'll probably be even worse conditioned in less time if we got a new nation, so I wrote this book, hopefully we're going to equip christians with, okay the constitution has a lot of good things in it and we should be utilizing those good things right now, there's a lot of people fighting for it and they're doing a lot of good things but we've got to have a long term view of the constitution that it's going to become a museum piece someday, someday it's going to be on a wall and we're going to be looking at it, oh

45:17

I guess that's how they did government, wow that's pretty crazy just like the Magna Carta, if you've ever read the

45:23

Magna Carta it's dated, it has wonderful things in it, it's got wonderful things in it man the Magna Carta's got some really great things but man there's a lot of stuff in there that's so dated and I think there's things in the constitution, as wonderful a document it is, we have to be operating with okay it's the constitution but guess what it's not the bible, it doesn't make the same claims as the bible, it doesn't even recognize christ as being king over this nation and it's a really bad idea and a dangerous idea to get our law from one document and a morality from a different document these should be one and the same,

45:55

I look forward to the day when christians are walking around in this country, where everyone really, everyone's walking around in this country with just a bible rather than a constitution plus the 10, 20 million laws that we have to hold and carry around and have to hire experts we have to hire experts in certain fields just to understand the law, and they don't even understand the law you know it's so complicated but God's law is simple, it gives wisdom to the simple, that's the claim in psalm 119 and I'm trying to communicate to people, listen the constitution has served its purpose, but it's going to go away

46:29

I don't think it's going to be christians that make it go away but the pagans are looking at it like, this is giving us too much freedom, the pagans hate it because it gives us too much freedom, or the haters of the constitution, but we need to look at it as christians and say you know what, as christians and what the bible the claims the bible makes, the constitution actually doesn't give us enough and even founding father

46:50

John Adams said our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people, it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other so in case anybody is overly shocked in a negative way in what my guest is saying there is a founding father who had his serious doubts about the longevity of the constitution and before I go into the specific reasons why you believe the constitution is not only inadequate but cannot legitimately maintain its existence in what you would call a christian theocracy

47:42

I have used the term very often, I don't even know for certain if you agree with me or not but I've used the term that I think

47:52

I first heard Gary Demar mention in an article years ago,

47:58

I'm not 100 % sure if that's where I first read it but in my memory that's as far back as I can remember becoming aware of this phrase but the phrase would be ecclesiocracy where that would be the thing that conjures up nightmares for baptists and others where a specific denomination is a ruling power in a country where the specific details of rights and ceremonies and all doctrines related to belief and practice are imposed upon a society robbing all others of any kind of religious freedom the

48:51

Roman Catholic Church obviously did that with everything that they taught and people who were otherwise faithful members of the

49:01

Roman Catholic Church John Hus being one being burned alive because of his differences on Sola Scriptura which he adhered to prior to the

49:14

Reformation and then of course you even have Protestants as I mentioned before persecuting other

49:20

Protestants because of disagreements, they wanted to impose infant baptism on the population and other things like that that would be more in line with an ecclesiocracy whereas a theocracy is

49:36

God's moral law being the judging authority in a nation, now are you in disagreement with what

49:45

I said or can you further clarify your opinion in reaction to what I said?

49:51

No, that's very accurate, you know there are, there is a negative connotation to theocracy,

49:59

I mean sometimes if you read the correct certain definition it will say a rule of a religious authority or a rule of priests but to be more specific that's actually an ecclesiocracy and that's what you get most people hating on when they hate on a theocracy is an ecclesiocracy and again that features a legislator, that features someone up there going okay

50:21

I spoke to God this week and this is what he said new rule, you got to do this and that's common in cults, cults usually have ecclesiocracies you know new rule all the wives are now my wife, you know new rule, now

50:33

I'm you know the son of God or whatever, new rule I mean now you have to By the way by the way brother

50:45

I just want to let you know for some reason you get choppy sometimes and you cut in and out I'm not sure what's going on there in fact

50:51

I know what I'm going to do Luke I'm going to go to our midway break right now folks if you would like to submit a question to Luke please send it to Chris Orensen at gmail .com

51:02

give us your first name at least city and state and country of residence please be patient with us during the middle break because it's always a bit longer than the other breaks in the show because Grace Life Radio 90 .1

51:14

FM in Lake City Florida requires of us a longer break in the middle because they are required by the

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FCC to localize Iron Sherpins Iron Radio geographically to Lake City Florida and they do so with their own public service announcements and other local things so please use this time wisely write down as much of the contact information as you possibly can for our advertisers so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to our advertisers because we need our advertisers to exist folks we need the finances that come from our advertisers so please respond to them at least by thanking them for sponsoring this show if indeed you want the show to continue and also send in your questions to Luke St.

51:59

to Chris Orensen at gmail .com Chris Orensen at gmail .com I'd like to remind my guest

52:04

Luke to please mute yourself during the break don't go away we'll be right back with Luke St. after these messages from our sponsors

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chrisorenson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. And before we go to our listener questions that have already come in,

01:12:52

Luke, can you please continue where you left off? You were responding to my distinction between an ecclesiocracy and a theocracy.

01:13:03

Yeah, the ecclesiocracy is one defined by what people often mistake and put as a theocracy.

01:13:13

They hear the term theocracy, and they put ecclesiocracy in there. I'm not arguing for that.

01:13:20

I'm arguing for what the Bible defines as a theocracy, which is basically a system of judges where you have one set of laws that you interact with that don't change.

01:13:30

There's nobody there to change them. And one of the things I want to talk about earlier, what you said was, you brought up what, it's at the beginning of my book actually, what

01:13:41

John Adams said, that this is for immoral and religious people. It's wholly unfit to govern anything else. And that is a foundational philosophical difference between what

01:13:50

John Adams says about the Bible, I mean, about government, and what the Bible says about government.

01:13:56

Because in the Bible, it says in 1 Timothy 1 verse 8, it says that the law is not laid down for the just.

01:14:12

It is for the unjust. And here's John Adams saying, basically, I hope everybody minds their P's and Q's. Now, to me, that is a foundational philosophical misunderstanding of what a government should be doing.

01:14:26

It's like a father giving everybody a cell phone and says, well, I hope everybody uses the cell phone correctly. Rather than a father saying, if I give this cell phone to my child,

01:14:35

I know he's going to be using it incorrectly, so I'm going to implement a system for when he uses it incorrectly, for discipline and for action and for prevention, things like that.

01:14:43

But that's a foundational difference between the two dads and giving their children cell phones.

01:14:49

John Adams is hoping that the kid just minds his P's and Q's and uses the cell phone right, whereas the other father says, if I'm giving you the cell phone,

01:14:58

I know you're not going to use it right. And so that is a huge difference between the philosophies, between the governmental systems of the law, of God's law,

01:15:07

God's theocratic system, and the Constitution, which basically says,

01:15:13

I just hope that everybody is nice to each other. And that is a huge difference between the two philosophies that govern a nation.

01:15:22

And being good Calvinists, we know that people are totally depraved. And John Adams is not figuring that into the

01:15:28

Constitution. People are totally depraved, and it shows 250 years later. And well, let me go to our one of our listener questions.

01:15:40

This is from Anthony in Hoshton, Georgia. And Anthony has never corrected me on my pronunciation of Hoshton, Georgia.

01:15:50

So I'm assuming I'm pronouncing it correctly. Thanks for having a program dealing with the renewed interest into what degree are

01:15:58

Christians theonomists? Does your book align itself with some of the views of the book

01:16:06

The Mission of God by Joe Boot? Or do you have a different view than he offers?

01:16:13

No, my book is, I wouldn't say it's similar, but I've read through Joe Boot's book.

01:16:20

It's a wonderful, excellent book that you can, total doorstop of a book that can, as I've heard a friend say, beat your professor over the head with.

01:16:29

I love that book so much. I love that book so much. Isn't it about 1 ,000 pages or something like that?

01:16:36

It's huge. It's massive. But it's a great introduction that will kind of get you maybe warmed up for what

01:16:44

I'm saying. I think I'm going a little bit farther than Joe Boot. I've never heard him interact with the idea of actually having a legislator in government.

01:16:53

All other political systems have it. The Bible is the only one that I know of that doesn't have a legislator. So I'm not sure what

01:17:00

Joe Boot would think about that because I know that there's a lot of general equity theonomists out there. And I agree with general equity as long as we're not legislating because if I use general equity in theonomy and I have a legislator,

01:17:14

I can start off with the principle of a parapet around my roof. But plus general equity and a legislator equals building codes.

01:17:21

And that's wrong. That's wicked. That's unjust. General equity, I believe, is only for adjudication and not for legislation.

01:17:29

It's for the judges to use and say, OK, an ox back then, a car now, things like that.

01:17:35

That's for adjudication. General equity is not for legislation. OK. And Anthony has one other question.

01:17:45

Does this book align itself with much of the Christian nationalism?

01:17:52

Oh, I'm so glad he brought that up. There are certain aspects of Christian nationalism

01:17:58

I agree with. You know, the people out there who say we have a lot of good things. We've got a lot of good heritage. Let's try and keep that.

01:18:03

Can we please keep the good things about this nation? And I agree about that. But my solution is a little bit different than theirs, and I'm hoping

01:18:12

I'm just using myself as an example. I'm arguing for the biblical solution. So Christian nationalism,

01:18:20

I believe, should—this is how I basically define Christian nationalism.

01:18:27

In Deuteronomy 4, verse 6, he says, Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say,

01:18:35

Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what great nation is there that has a God so near to it as our

01:18:41

God is to us whenever we call upon him? And what great nation is there that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?

01:18:51

I believe that Christian nationalism is a result. I do not believe it is a destination.

01:18:57

I believe faithfulness to the Bible is the destination, and Christian nationalism is the fruit.

01:19:02

When pagan nations start to identify us and look at this and start to say things like, Wow, look at these laws.

01:19:08

What other nation is like this? That, to me, is Christian nationalism, but we do not get there with an immigration policy.

01:19:14

We do not get there with a legislator. We do not get there with government regulating things and who's allowed to come in and who's allowed to leave, all that kind of thing.

01:19:22

You know, we don't get there that way. Christian nationalism, I believe in it as a fruit of biblical faithfulness.

01:19:29

I do not believe in it as a destination. I believe that every nation should be Christian, but we cannot have a

01:19:35

Christian nation if we reject God's form of government. Eventually, we're going to go the way of paganism if we give the pagans the option to institute injustice.

01:19:46

That's the big difference. Christian nationalism often, in its writing, when people define it, they give wicked people an option to institute injustice.

01:19:54

Even Christians, low -meaning, good -intentioned Christians. Christian nationalism, when it's spelled out in the nuts and bolts, there's an option there for people to institute injustice.

01:20:06

Theocracy cannot institute injustice because God's law is just.

01:20:12

So if you have God's law being the only set of laws for the nation, the nation, by definition, is just all the time.

01:20:19

You can have localized injustice. We see that in the book of Judges. But you cannot have institutionalized injustice, right?

01:20:26

So if a judge dies and another judge replaces him, that new judge has no obligation to be unjust. Whereas right now, if I'm a police officer and I swear to uphold all the laws,

01:20:36

I am obligated to be unjust in upholding these laws. And that is a major difference between what

01:20:42

I'm arguing for and what Christian nationalism argues for. Often, I've seen in their definitions, somebody's up there writing laws.

01:20:49

And whenever you do that, you're giving people the option to institute injustice. We should never have that option.

01:20:55

Well, Anthony in Hoshton, Georgia, please make sure that you give us your full mailing address so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service can ship to you a copy of the book that we are addressing,

01:21:10

The Sound Doctrine of Theocracy, by my guest, Luke Saint. And we want to thank Luke for providing with us a limited number of copies to give away today.

01:21:20

And thank you, CVBBS, as well, for shipping out to our listeners the free books and Bibles they receive for submitting questions at no cost to us or to the listener at CVBBS .com.

01:21:36

We have an anonymous listener who says, I'm embroiled in some serious disagreements with very close brothers and sisters in Christ over the very subjects you are addressing today.

01:21:50

One of the issues that comes up by opponents of theocracy and theonomy is that they envision a

01:21:58

Christian -run government being the persecutors of nonbelievers.

01:22:04

And obviously, that would also include if all unbelievers were banished from a particular nation, who would the

01:22:13

Christians be evangelizing other than possibly the nominal

01:22:18

Christian offspring of the Christians? Do you have any clarifying answers to this?

01:22:26

Oh, I'm so glad you asked that question, Mr. Anonymous or Mrs. Anonymous listener. I'm so glad.

01:22:33

The answer to that is, again, the people you're arguing against are people who don't know the law.

01:22:39

So there is no law against not being a Christian in Old Testament Israel.

01:22:45

You were allowed to be a pagan. There's nobody there. God never institutes a law that gives the government the right to go door to door and say, hey, are you a

01:22:53

Christian or not? Are you a believer or not? Let me see the circumcision, okay? I mean, that was hidden for a reason.

01:23:00

Circumcision was hidden for a reason. There is no government body in a theocracy that goes door to door to make sure that you're a

01:23:09

Christian. You are allowed to not be a Christian in a theocracy. The only thing you're not allowed to do is you're not allowed to proselytize towards atheism or towards idolatry.

01:23:22

That is a capital offense. But again, one of the reasons that I wrote this book is because the second title of it is

01:23:29

Statism in the Christian Mind, is we often take our statism and we put the Bible into a status context, right?

01:23:36

And so we come to the scriptures and we're like, okay, well, if we did this now, then there'd be witch hunts everywhere. But that's thinking like a statist.

01:23:44

That's how statists think. They like witch hunts. They want to do witch hunts. They're all about witch hunts. But the Bible never gives the people or the government the power to actually institute a witch hunt because the evidence must be on two or three witnesses.

01:23:58

And those same witnesses must be the ones to throw the first stone. But again, in the scriptures, there is no law saying you have to be a

01:24:07

Christian. God never institutes a body or a law or a rule that says if you're not a Christian or if you're not a believer, if you don't say these words right now, then we're going to kick you out.

01:24:16

Okay, again, that's more Hollywood stuff. That's more Hollywood stuff saying, well, if you did a theocracy, then you'd be witch hunting everybody who doesn't say the right thing.

01:24:23

No, no, no. That's not true. God gives people the legality to not be Christians.

01:24:29

You don't have to be Christians. You can even walk around and say, I am a Muslim. I am a Hindu. But you're not allowed to proselytize.

01:24:36

You're not allowed to bow down to idols. And the people to actually institute the executive process against these people is the neighborhood, right, is the people who actually see it, who view it.

01:24:52

There is no government body walking around saying, hey, are you – and this is, again, this is more Islam. There is no government body walking around saying, hey, did you put your lights out?

01:25:00

Did you do the curfew? Did you do this? Did you do that? It's just the people and their neighbors taking each other to court.

01:25:06

So, no, there is no government body out there kicking people out.

01:25:11

You're not allowed to exile people because they're not a believer. That's not a law in the Bible. Okay, that's just more Hollywood stuff. And you're not allowed to execute people because they don't say,

01:25:19

I believe Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. And as long as there is no legislator, it will never become that way because God never instituted it in the first place.

01:25:31

Anonymous, you've also won a free copy of the book that we are addressing, The Sound Doctrine of Theocracy, by my guest

01:25:38

Luke Saint. Make sure you give us your full name and full mailing address. Obviously, your name will not be disclosed over the air.

01:25:45

And CVBBS .com will ship out to you a free copy of Luke Saint's book.

01:25:51

And if you're a first -time questioner, you'll also get a free New American Standard Bible. So let us know if you are a first -time questioner.

01:25:59

We have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says,

01:26:05

In response to what you just said to the anonymous listener, I'm wondering how your vision of a theocracy is different from an

01:26:14

Islamic theocracy, where they only execute Christians and other people of different religions if they proselytize.

01:26:22

They usually just tax, in a more heavy fashion, those that disagree with them religiously.

01:26:29

But when it comes to evangelism and proselytizing, that's when they execute them. Is your view any different from theirs?

01:26:38

Oh, absolutely it is. Because, again, in their view, they might have a law in the

01:26:44

Koran somewhere saying it's okay to tax people if they believe differently than you. But again, this is somebody who –

01:26:51

I don't want to insult anyone's intelligence, but someone who's not familiar with biblical law. Because in biblical law, if you don't pay taxes, there's no penalty for you.

01:26:59

You don't have to pay taxes if you don't want to. Just in the same way your church doesn't come kicking down your door, if you don't pay tithe, in a theocracy, there is no government body to track you down and say,

01:27:11

Listen, you owe us this money, and if you don't, we get your house. The justice of a nation depends entirely upon the piety of the people.

01:27:22

So there is no government body to force taxation. If I'm living in a theocracy and I don't pay taxes, then

01:27:29

I don't pay taxes, just like I live right now. And my church doesn't come bashing down my door if I don't pay tithe.

01:27:38

So it's a similar thing. So it's way different than an Islamic state. Because, again, if you don't pay taxes in an

01:27:43

Islamic state, they're coming for you. But in a theocratic state, there is nobody to come and get you if you don't pay taxes.

01:27:49

This is, again, our statism putting it in there. We make peace with the idea of death and taxes.

01:27:55

But I said before, and I'll say it again, the same person who conquered death has also conquered taxes. And what

01:28:01

I'm trying to communicate here is that we airlift our statism into the scriptures, and we start using statist rules, like if I don't pay my taxes,

01:28:11

I lose my house. And we put that on the Bible. Well, the Bible never makes that claim. In fact, if you don't pay your taxes, nothing can happen to you.

01:28:18

So, yes, it's radically different than an Islamic state because an Islamic state is not biblical law.

01:28:26

And let me just say this too. Why are we worried about this? I mean, what the

01:28:31

Muslims are doing. Oh, you're not a Muslim, so you get the death penalty. You get heavily taxed. Well, right now, we live in a country where I don't want you, therefore you're dead.

01:28:40

Come on, people. Is this really the argument we're having? So many more people are being killed in the womb just for being an inconvenience, and we're worried about implementing a theocracy?

01:28:50

That's insane. We always get worse whenever we go to the conversations that the pagans are having.

01:28:55

That actually reminds me of something that adds weight to the argument of Christian nationalism and a theocracy and a theonomy is that, in reality, everyone, whether they are conscious of it or not or whether they are willing to admit it or not, everyone believes in a theocracy or either believing in a nation ruled by the true biblical laws of the true

01:29:27

God, Jehovah, the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or you're believing in a theocracy governed by the false laws of false gods.

01:29:41

And I know that leftists refuse to put their ideology in the category of religion, but no matter how you try to dance around it or escape from it, they're trying to impose upon society things that are by nature religious because once you say—

01:30:03

Once you try to impose a law that is in contradiction to the

01:30:08

Bible, you are saying God is wrong and the Bible is wrong. And when you say that, you are making a religious statement and you're making a religious law.

01:30:21

Yes. So no matter what people say, they cannot escape the religious nature of their anti -Christian and anti -biblical laws.

01:30:31

So I can hear you agreeing with me already. Yes, yes. And that's—it's somewhat frustrating when you have these discussions because people bring in the whatabouts.

01:30:41

And, you know, I mean, give me the day when we're talking—I've said this before and I'll say it again too, but give me the day when we're talking about how do we implement

01:30:49

God's law? And there's the discussion of the government, but how are we going to implement God's law in the most best way and most biblically faithful way?

01:30:58

Because right now, I want that discussion because right now we're having the discussion is when do I kill the baby? When do

01:31:03

I kill the child? Can I kill the child before it's out of the womb or after it's out of the womb? Or right now we're having the discussion of what is a man and what is a woman?

01:31:10

Those are the conversations we're having right now. And people are scared about looking at a theocracy and going, well, what about this?

01:31:17

What about that? Are you serious? You really want to have that discussion? You're scared of the discussion about God's law?

01:31:23

But right now the discussion we have is complete and total utter chaos. It's unbelievable. And we have

01:31:31

Gregory in Middle Island, St. Kitts in the

01:31:37

West Indies. He says, what do you think of Joel McDermott's two books,

01:31:43

A Consuming Fire, The Holy of Holies and Biblical Law, and number two,

01:31:48

The Bounds of Love, An Introduction to God's Law of Liberty, where he speaks the cherim principle and how it applies today biblically, and also where he makes his case that while homosexuality is still a sin and that all such who are unrepentant are to be excommunicated from the church, that it is no longer a civil crime and ought not to be punished civilly, biblically speaking, based on the biblical seed principle.

01:32:20

Are you familiar with any of this that our listeners... Yes, yes, the cherim principle.

01:32:26

Yes, yes, totally utterly devoted to destruction. I'm familiar with that book. And I actually interacted with Joel McDermott a little bit about it.

01:32:33

What seems to me... Okay, first off, let's set the record straight on homosexuality. The Bible never says that being a homosexual is a capital offense.

01:32:42

Okay? The Bible says that whoever lies with a man is with a woman, shall be put to death.

01:32:48

Okay? That is the crime. But if you say, hey, I'm a homosexual, the state, even in Israel, Old Testament Israel, nothing can be done to you.

01:32:56

There's no crime for a status. The Bible never puts crime as a status. Even the word witch is translated as poisoner.

01:33:03

It's not a status. So you can't say, well, I'm a witch. Oh, grab her. That's the kind of thing. And most of these witch hunts that we have is because we didn't have a theocracy, because we did punish people on crimes of status and hearsay.

01:33:14

And the Bible never allows for that to happen. So first, let me say that. Okay. Let's get the record straight on homosexuality.

01:33:20

Okay. It's not a crime to be a homosexual. It is a crime to lie with a man with a woman. That's the crime.

01:33:27

Secondly, the Karen principle seems to go out the door immediately in Romans chapter one, where it says those, they know

01:33:34

God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die. Okay. And what is he talking about there? Okay.

01:33:40

And where do we find God's righteous decree? And secondly, in first Timothy chapter one, and this is what I asked Joel McDermott about.

01:33:45

I said, hey, what about first Timothy chapter one, where it says the law is good if it's used lawfully? And he talks about homosexuality, he talks about adultery.

01:33:53

And so my question is, well, how do we use the law lawfully against somebody who is committing homosexual acts if we're getting rid of the

01:34:01

Karen principle? It doesn't make sense. So those two verses right there, in addition to some other ones, kind of just throw everything out the window for me, as far as the

01:34:11

Karen principle comes. I mean, I don't think it's a very strong argument at all. I think there's some theological gymnastics.

01:34:17

And that the New Testament re -institution of the law being good, if it's used lawfully, kind of throws everything out the window.

01:34:27

And Gregory, since you are overseas, CVBBS .com cannot ship to you a free copy of our guest book.

01:34:36

But if you have a friend or a family member in the 50 United States, and you would like the book shipped to them so that they can either keep it or send it to you, you can give us the name and address of that individual.

01:34:50

Thanks for your question. Now before I go to any other listener questions, let me hear your reasons, and we only have time for maybe one or two now, as to specifically why the

01:35:05

United States Constitution is not sufficient and adequate for a

01:35:11

Christian nation. Only two? Okay, I'm just joking. Okay, so the first thing is, as a nation, you cannot afford to not recognize

01:35:24

God. Okay? They gave the Constitution off with we the people, I believe was a big mistake.

01:35:31

It was such a colossal mistake that they were able to convince the Muslims, or the Turks if you will, the

01:35:37

Ottoman Empire, hey, we're not a Christian nation, see? And they gave them the Constitution, gave them all the documents, and the

01:35:43

Muslims were like, yeah, I guess they aren't. I can't find language in here that identifies these people as Christians.

01:35:49

Now, in the same way that I, you know, most Christians look at the Constitution, we see biblical principles.

01:35:56

There's the right, in the Declaration, right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Those are biblical principles.

01:36:03

But the Constitution doesn't specifically say, in the name of God, amen, Jesus Christ is Lord, and that's a mistake.

01:36:09

We can't afford to do that as a governing document as a nation. We can't afford to do that. That's too much of a mistake.

01:36:15

So, eventually, you're going to go towards humanism unless you acknowledge Christ right from the beginning.

01:36:21

You know, you read of Solomon's dedication to the temple, it's not this we the people stuff. I mean, it's like, oh Lord, you are so great, you are so magnificent, we recognize you as a nation, you know, we bow before you.

01:36:31

You've got to start off with language like that, you know, if you're going to make a document that's going to be the overarching document of a nation.

01:36:38

You've got to start off with biblical language. You've got to start off with Christian language, or else you're going to go the way of the world. Secondly, again,

01:36:45

I've said this before, any nation that makes a legislator, and again, the

01:36:51

Constitution, it says whatever the President signs from the legislator, it says it shall become law.

01:36:57

That plus 250 years of hindsight was a huge mistake.

01:37:02

Huge mistake. We should not have done that. The founding fathers, or let's just say the framers, should have never allowed for a legislator.

01:37:10

We should have used God's laws, God's rules, that's it. And as soon as you give man the option to institute injustice, he will.

01:37:18

And again, I say this, and I'm being very serious about this, but even the job, the job of the legislator, of the politician, it only attracts frauds by its very nature.

01:37:31

I'm not saying everybody who's a politician is a fraud, but it attracts frauds by its nature, because humble people want to be left alone to take dominion, and they want other people to take dominion.

01:37:41

So when you offer them a job of, hey, you get to tell people how to take dominion, a humble person by nature is going to say, no,

01:37:47

I'm not going to do that. What they're going to do is going to, they want to live and let live.

01:37:52

But a fraud, a person who does like pushing people around, a person who does think that their way is the best and like pushing people around, telling people how to live, they will by nature gravitate towards this position of legislator, of politician.

01:38:06

And that is a huge mistake in implementing these offices and this phraseology into our governing documents.

01:38:15

And very quickly, is the wording, in your opinion, of the

01:38:20

Declaration of Independence sufficient? Because it does acknowledge God and the Creator in the wording.

01:38:27

I don't know if that is too minimalist and not Christian enough as far as specificity, but what's your view on that?

01:38:36

The Declaration of Independence was transitionally the beginning of the end of Christianity, institutional

01:38:46

Christianity in this country. I like the phraseology of when they recognize

01:38:53

God, but here's the problem. When Benjamin Franklin said to Thomas Jefferson, we hold these truths to be sacred, that's what

01:39:01

Jefferson was going to put. Benjamin Franklin said, no, we hold these truths to be self -evident. Okay, that's the beginning of the end.

01:39:07

When you're starting to write out Christianity and write in humanism, then the rest of your government is going to reflect that.

01:39:13

That was another huge problem because, again, as Christians, a true

01:39:21

Christian who believes in total depravity is going to give God all glory and honor and praise. And when we start to say things like it's self -evident that we're all created equal, when this is actually a revelational statement, that is a huge mistake when you put that into your documents.

01:39:37

Okay, we have to go to our final break. Don't go away. We'll be right back. Back together again.

01:39:53

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here. I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the

01:40:04

G3 National Conference. That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd.

01:40:10

On a theme that I've been preaching, teaching, writing about, and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

01:40:17

I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott Anuel, and Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries.

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And there's more great news. Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio can get you a 30 % discount off the registration fee.

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Chris Arnson, I look forward to seeing you all Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd at the

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01:46:55

Please be sure to also give it a good review and pass it along to anyone who would benefit from the teaching and the many solidly

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Reformed guests that Chris Arnzen has on the show. Truth is so hard to come by these days, so don't waste your time with fluff or fake news.

01:47:10

Subscribe to the Iron Sharpens Iron radio podcast right now. And while you're at it, you can also sign up for the reformrookie .com

01:47:17

podcast and visit our website and the YouTube page. We are dedicated to teaching Christian theology from a

01:47:23

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01:47:29

Doctrines of Grace to the Olivet Discourse and the Book of Leviticus, the Reform Rookie podcast and YouTube channel is sure to have something to offer everyone seeking

01:47:38

Biblical truth. And finally, if you're looking to worship in a Reformed church that holds to the 1689

01:47:44

London Baptist Confession of Faith, please join us at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham, New York.

01:47:50

Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Avenio and thanks for listening. If you love

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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Getting a driver's license, running a cash register, flipping burgers, passing sixth grade.

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Do you know what they all have in common? They all require training, assessments, and certifications. But do you know what requires no training at all?

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01:52:41

Please visit us at truthloveparent .com. Welcome back. I just want to quickly tell our listeners to mark on your calendars the next interview that I have with a board member of the

01:52:55

Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society. Our next interview with a board member is on July 19th, which is next

01:53:05

Wednesday. And the guest will be Matt Kennitzer, who is pastor of St.

01:53:11

John's Reformed Church in Freidensburg, Pennsylvania. I do not have a topic yet that Pastor Matt will provide, but I'm sure it's going to be an excellent one.

01:53:22

So mark your calendars for that date, which is next Wednesday.

01:53:28

And, of course, tune in every day to Iron Trip and Zion Radio. I'd like you to summarize now,

01:53:35

Luke, what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners about this very controversial topic that divides brothers and sisters and hopefully something that will at least give enough clarity and understanding where there is more unity over this issue, even if there remains disagreement.

01:53:55

Sure, that's an easy one. Thanks for giving me the opportunity, Chris, and thanks for having me on today. So a couple of things

01:54:00

I want to say. We didn't need to storm the Vatican to have reformation in the church.

01:54:08

We don't need to storm the White House to have reformation in our state. We don't need to storm the White House. So the book is not arguing for that.

01:54:17

It's not arguing for revolution. It's arguing for reformation. Reformation is always superior to revolution. Secondly, I'd like to say that after reading

01:54:24

Psalm 119, you cannot conclude the Constitution. You just can't conclude the

01:54:30

Constitution after reading through Psalm 119. It keeps going back to God's law, your ways, you know, that kind of a thing.

01:54:36

The Constitution just doesn't fall into the purview of Psalm 119. It's just by its nature. If you read and compare, they compare and contrast.

01:54:44

It doesn't work. But that doesn't mean that we have to ditch the Constitution and we have to stop using it and look back and stop looking back at all the wonderful benefits.

01:54:53

There's a lot of people and a lot of good things that the Constitution has done. It protected us a lot more during COVID than other countries.

01:55:00

And third, I'd like to say this. Friends, if you love Christ, you've got to love theonomy and theocracy in this way.

01:55:09

What I'm trying to tell you is that they tried to use theocracy and theonomy to kill Christ. They tried to use it before they brought him to Rome.

01:55:16

They tried to use it. It didn't work. Before they brought him to Pilate, they tried to use God's governmental system against him, and it didn't work.

01:55:24

So even under the most innocent person to ever live was able to walk with freedom and righteousness and virtue and liberty under his own system.

01:55:34

Where did they go to kill Christ? They had to go to humanism. They had to go to statism. They had to go outside God's law to kill

01:55:40

Christ. So if we really love Christ, we've got to really love his law because he was able to walk in freedom.

01:55:47

It couldn't kill him. They tried. They tried to use the system, and it didn't work. They had to take

01:55:55

Christ and take him out of his own system to be able to effectively kill him and use statism and Rome to do that, to accomplish that.

01:56:03

They couldn't do it using theonomy and theocracy, and I think that's very telling. By the way,

01:56:10

Gregory and St. Kitts, thank you for your compliments over the opening theme music, the Iron Trap and Zion Radio.

01:56:15

I will try to get you a copy of that music that was created by a faithful listener of Iron Trap and Zion Radio, Jason Highwell -Martin, who is a member of a

01:56:31

Christian band in Canada who contacted me a few years ago asking if I wanted him and his band to create new opening theme music for us.

01:56:44

So I was just honored that he did that, and they also do the theme music for James White's webcast,

01:56:52

The Dividing Line. So I will try to get that for you. I want to remind our listeners, please don't forget about the three -day event that Mid -Atlantic

01:57:05

Reformation Society is hosting, featuring Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, September 15th, 16th, and 17th, which is a

01:57:15

Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It is going to be held at the Spooky Nook Sports and Events Center in Mannheim, Pennsylvania.

01:57:26

And for further information, go to midatlanticreformation .org, midatlanticreformation .org,

01:57:32

or futureofchristendom .org, futureofchristendom .org. You can also go to the

01:57:38

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio website, ironsharpensironradio .com, ironsharpensironradio .com.

01:57:44

Before we go, anything that you want to promote in regard to books that might be on the workbench there, where you're in the process of writing a new book, or anything else that we should know about in regard to Mid -Atlantic

01:58:00

Reformation Society? I'm thinking about writing a new book called

01:58:06

Cowboys, Outlaws, and Puritans, and that will have to do with biblical manhood. I'm thinking about writing a book like that.

01:58:13

But specifically for me, I host a podcast called The Brotherhood of the

01:58:19

Silver Screen, where we talk about movies. So that's a really fun one if you're into movies. I host that one. And I also am part of the podcast for the

01:58:28

Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society called Think and Reform. And right after I'm done here, I'm going to go record a new one with my friend

01:58:33

Tyrus. Well, don't forget as well about the Independence Reformed Bible Church, which is located in Morgantown, Pennsylvania, the suburb of Lancaster.

01:58:48

Their website is irbc .church, irbc .church. I want to thank you so much,

01:58:54

Luke, for being such an excellent, very informed, very articulate guest. I look forward to your return to the program.

01:59:01

Thank you, Chris. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater