November 1, 2022 Show with Ryan Weingard on “How a United Methodist Pastor Came to Embrace the Doctrines of Sovereign Grace Through His Own Preaching”

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

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

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation, to make one another wiser and better.

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

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this first day of November 2022.

And as many of you know, who listen to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio regularly, twice a year

I have the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon, and I invite guest speakers.

The last one that I had featured Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, who was actually my guest yesterday to discuss

Reformation Day. And I love meeting men of God that I have never met before at these luncheons.

I, of course, love rekindling old friendships and sharing fellowship with beloved friends that I've known for many years who sometimes just travel locally a short distance, and some of them have traveled many hours from Long Island, New York, and Georgia, and North Carolina, and other places.

But I do love meeting first -time folks, or folks for the first time,

I should say. As well, and one of those folks that I knew that I had to get on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is

Ryan Weingard. Ryan is a former United Methodist pastor who converted to Reformed Theology, and is now involved in a

Reformed church plant in Pennsylvania. Today we are going to be addressing his fascinating story, how a

United Methodist pastor came to embrace the doctrines of Sovereign Grace through his own preaching.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Ryan Weingard.

Hello, Chris. It's great to have you on, and you are such a gregarious, gracious, and humble man, in addition to having a fascinating testimony, that I was thrilled to hear your acceptance of my invitation and look forward to our discussion.

We have a tradition here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, whenever we have a first -time guest, that that guest gives a summary of their salvation testimony.

And before we move on to how you actually embraced the doctrines of Sovereign Grace, I would love to hear from you how you actually first became saved by the grace of God.

That story would include what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which you were raised, and what kind of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to Himself and saved you. So let's hear your story.

Well, very well. Deep down, I wish I had to say that I was just born and always believed, but as you often find, that is not the case.

I was raised in a Christian home. My parents, I believe, did a very good job of instilling the

Christian faith in me, and I considered myself a Christian right up into adulthood.

Since the age of three, when we moved to PA, I was in the

United Methodist Church in Townville, PA, and experienced many blessings there.

I considered myself a Christian and stayed away from all the party scenes and all that throughout school.

I did attend public school. But then, as I entered adulthood and I went to college,

I strayed from the path and had some rebellious time there.

So the real fascinating part of my salvation story, I would consider myself actually being saved as an adult, because I do not believe that I really believed, since I had strayed so far at one point.

But I was going through a rough patch, and I actually picked up a

Bob Marley album on vinyl at a local record store one day, and I brought that home.

And I had listened to Bob Marley, but didn't really know what he sang about, and I was sitting there on my apartment floor listening to this record

I had just bought, and I hadn't read my Bible in two years or so. I looked over and saw my

Bible sticking out under a stack of papers. I went over and I picked it up and I sat down and I just randomly opened it to a psalm.

And as I looked down at the page, I heard the lyrics that Bob was singing coming out of the speaker as I read them on the page.

And that really threw me for a loop. I immediately closed the Bible, shoved it back under the papers, and left.

That was my immediate reaction. So even Bob Marley, a Rastafarian, was preaching the

Gospel to you? Basically, yeah. He preached to me, but the sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

I believe it's... Well, anyway, I'm not going to struggle for this psalm. But yeah, and then two weeks later,

I went to that same record store and I bought a Peter Tosh album. Now, Peter Tosh was one of the

Wailers. It was Bob Marley and the Wailers. This was a solo album he did. And it was almost identical.

I threw this disc on the record player, sat down, saw the Bible, grabbed it, randomly opened it to another psalm, completely random, and as the words came out of the speaker,

I read them. So this time,

I did not just shove my Bible back under the papers. I had to sit and think about this. This is kind of like an

Augustine story, where he heard children playing and they were saying pick up and read, or take up and read.

And that was, to Augustine, a sign from God to pick up the

Bible and start reading it. Wow. I didn't know that story. Well, that's fascinating.

Well, yeah. It's very similar to that. I would love to say, then, that I immediately believed and ran off into the sunset being a

Christian. But that did not happen either. And how long did it take for your dreadlocks to grow out?

Well, you're good. Are you 17 years old?

I had no idea. That was just a joke. I know. You're 17.

I'm a young man. You have the best laugh on radio, and I went, I hope I can make him laugh. And if you don't mind, and let's not forget where you left off there, back up a little bit because the

United Methodist Church is not as monolithic as people may think.

It is not all leftist, not every congregation is apostate.

There, in fact, especially since I began conducting my pastor's luncheons here in Pennsylvania after moving here from New York, there have been a reasonable number, considerable number, of United Methodist pastors who have come who are evangelical,

Bible -believing. And so, what was the kind of United Methodist congregation in which you were raised?

And also, if you don't mind, I mean, obviously this will in some way reveal how old you are, but what years would this have been?

Because it's probably a lot harder these days to find a

United Methodist Church that is in any way faithful to the Scripture. And I know that there was even a recent split where the more conservative members who believed in biblical inerrancy and so on, and opposed the atrocities and the abominations of homosexuality and abortion and so on, left the

United Methodist Church to enter into or to form the global Methodist Church.

But tell us about this Methodist congregation in which you were raised. Yeah. So, Townsville United Methodist Church was considered to be a conservative congregation, even to this day.

And I was raised under what I would consider today to be some Bible -believing and Christian conservative, biblically conservative.

And that continued, so that would have been 1981, when I was three and we moved back to Pennsylvania.

So, my earliest memories of the church are, you know, running around playing with the pastor's kids.

I would still consider it a conservative church and Christian.

And they were up until, oh, I'm going to say I was around 13, so around 90, 91, early 90s in that area, we received our first female pastor.

So they sent us a female, and I'm sure you're familiar, but if listeners are not familiar, the

United Methodist system is itinerant, as they call it. It follows an old tradition of circuit -riding preachers.

And so the conference assigned you pastors, and you don't get a lot of choice. So, we liked our pastor at the time, but they decided it was time to make a change.

And we got our first woman pastor. That, I recall, that kind of blew up the church in some ways.

People weren't accepting of that due to what they read in Scripture. Now, I believe that that is a very serious violation of the

Scriptures. I'm not an egalitarian by any means. I am a firm believer in exclusively male headship in the church.

And I believe the husbands and fathers are to be leaders in their household.

But, having said that, I do know that there are women in pastoral ministry out there who are, amazingly, in every other way, conservative and even evangelical.

Would that be the case with this woman, or was she more of a feminist and liberal?

Well, yes, I agree with you on all of your points you just stated. And what

I'm realizing now, as I'm older and have thought through these issues, is that I do believe that she was also liberal.

But guardedly so. I think she realized that the time and place she was in that she could be full -out feminist with us.

I do recall a couple of anti -gun sermons that she preached. And we're very rural.

People are very proud of, you know, they enjoy their guns and proud of their hunting. And those did not go over well.

So, I believe that she was more liberal than I knew at the time. Yes, in fact, even being a conservative

United Methodist pastor doesn't guarantee that you'll be a Christian. I found that out the hard way when my show,

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, was being conducted out of WNYG Radio in Babylon, Long Island, New York.

And a Bible -believing, evangelical United Methodist pastor, who is a friend of mine, now retired,

Dick Williamson, Dr. Dick Williamson, who was for many years the pastor of the

Seaford United Methodist Church on Long Island. And he was able to remain there for decades, unlike the story that you just told.

I think it was because the denomination knew that the congregation would not stand for a minute for a liberal.

And Long Island, New York, it's very, very difficult to find a conservative, evangelical,

Bible -believing Methodist pastor, so they just left him be. But anyway, he told me, hey, you should give a call to the new pastor at Simpson United Methodist Church in Amityville, Long Island.

I hear he's a conservative, and Dick did not know much else about him. So I did a program on conservative, evangelical pastors in liberal denominations.

That was the theme. And I had an evangelical pastor in the

PCUSA on, and I had a pastor from, it may have been an

Episcopal church who was Bible -believing and evangelical. And I had the United Methodist pastor on.

And we were having a conversation before we went on the air in the studio. One of the pastors asked, hey, guys, what's your favorite

Bible translation? And one said, oh, I love my old King James.

And the other one said, I use the NASB in my pulpit. And the United Methodist pastor said,

I prefer the New World translation. I said, what? I said, excuse me? That's the Jehovah's Witness Bible.

He said, oh, yes, I'm an Arian. And then the engineer said,

Chris, you're going on the air in 30 seconds. And I had to scramble to know what to do.

I was in a panic, and I changed the theme at the last second to pastors in liberal denominations who are against abortion.

That way kept the topic away from theological issues, because there was no way

I was going to promote the idea that this guy was an Arian. So that was an amazing lesson, because I didn't know that you could actually be an

Arian at that time and be a United Methodist. Even though they allowed all kinds of liberal heresies in there,

I did not know that even the deity of Christ was up for grabs as far as ordination.

Wow. Well, yeah. It's quite difficult to end up in, isn't it?

Oh, yeah. I do a lot more diligent vetting these days.

Now you know that they hallucinate him.

But pick up where we left off. You were a dreadlock wearing guy.

Now, were you convinced that you actually became regenerate, became born again during these experiences or after these experiences listening to the reggae music, but it just so happened that the specific songs were quoting

Scripture? Yeah, it was the... Well, yeah. So to finish that up, whatever caused me to pull that Bible out and open it, and at the same time impressed upon me that there's more to this world than just what

I'm seeing anymore. You know, there is a spiritual realm. From there, it took a little more time, but I was actually at a music festival in southwest

New York up near Clymer, and a bunch of old reggae's from Jamaica were playing in a band up there.

I walked over. I felt like I needed

God, and they were singing Scripture, though in their Rastafarian way, which that's probably a whole other show if you want to talk about what they believe.

Oh, yeah. Are you very familiar with them enough to discuss them in detail? I think

I could do a decent job. Okay, yeah. They are varied and not consistent, but they do have a particular slant to their beliefs, and they all center around who they call

Rastafari or Burheel's philosophy of Ethiopia. And interestingly enough, some of them have fellowship with the

Black Hebrew Israelites, or should I just say Hebrew Israelites? They don't use the word

Black in the description of themselves, but they happen to be all Black. But they sometimes gather together at meetings, as I was told by Oscar Dunlap, who

I interviewed. He's a deacon at Apologia Church in Mesa, Arizona, and he was a

Black, or should I say a Hebrew Israelite, and came to Christ primarily after seeing

Dr. James R. White debate one of their leaders, and he saw his leader just utterly annihilated as far as the discussion went, and he was convinced he needed to further investigate the theology of Dr.

James R. White, and he, by the mercy of God, got saved. But anyway, I interrupted you there. Oh, that's fine.

Yes, you're correct. As a matter of fact, the Rastafarians may have come first with that type of theology, and inspired the others.

Or maybe they inspired each other. But yeah, I recall that with Elder Raka, I believe. But anyway,

I remember just feeling kind of overwhelmed, and I prayed a prayer.

I stood there, and I said, Lord, I don't know who this Rastafari they're singing about is, and this was literally my prayer.

I said, but I do know from growing up in the church that Jesus Christ is

God, and I just want to give my life to you now. And then I looked at the stage, and I added to the prayer, and I'll grow dreadlocks like theirs as a sign of my commitment.

And that's what I consider basically my salvation moment.

Now, from that point forward, I returned to my local Methodist church, um, to Townville.

And most Methodist churches are arranged in what they call a charge. So you have multiple churches in the charge.

And this particular charge had Townville and a church called Troy Center. And at that time,

I moved out of Meadville, where the zipper was invented, by the way.

Little fun historical fact. But I moved out of Meadville and over to Troy Center, which is about 20 miles east.

In the middle of nowhere. And there's Troy Center right at the bottom of the hill, about a half mile from my house.

So I played guitar, and I started playing some of this reggae music of Bob's that I was enjoying.

And my dad was a lay pastor at the time. So the lay speaker,

I should say. A layman who could preach sermons and was licensed to by the church.

And he was going to preach that week and wanted me to play a song. So I played with him at Townville.

I went down to Troy Center, where I'd never been. I played with him there. And I looked around, and I went, this is where I need to be.

Asked the pastor. And they already had a piano player, but she invited me in. And I started playing hymns for them on the guitar.

Now, right at that time, we started getting... We got another pastor who took a lot of money out of the church.

And people weren't happy with him. And the church started to kind of split over this pastor.

So he wasn't very biblically solid. So what I walked into, as I sought to reinforce this faith

I'd recommitted myself to, I walked into a pastoral leader who looked me straight in the eye and said, because I had a question about the

Old Testament. He said, it doesn't matter. It's Old Testament. We use the New Testament here.

And that kind of upset me, because I had the whole Bible in my hand. As every

Christian should. Not that they should never have the compact New Testaments, but that's not to be the sole basis of their faith.

It's the entire, the whole counsel of God. You don't even understand the New Testament rightly, unless you understand the

Old Testament. Exactly. Yeah. So he left.

Then we got another woman in, who I don't believe was a Christian. Then she left, and we got another woman behind her, who again,

I doubt the Christianity. And the one in between was very tight.

You mean her tenure as a pastor, not her life? No. And this woman looked at me, that was her name, and she said the same thing.

You don't need the Old Testament. We don't use that. So out of all of that, what

I'm trying to get at here is that I did not receive the training that I needed in order to understand the

Christianity I was pursuing. And because of that, it left me astray in a way.

And I don't know if you've heard of Steve Vanguard or Josh Pack or some people, but I kind of followed their path for a little while.

I decided that maybe I didn't understand the Bible. I didn't see healings happening. These miracles didn't happen anymore.

I had no leadership to help me understand why. I was given a

New Interpreter Study Bible. And I don't know if you're familiar with that group. Nope.

It is very liberal. And out of all of that,

I kind of started practicing a syncretism. I embraced the New Age and Christianity and was in some way trying to meld them together.

And I had to climb out of that on my own. So, in fact, let's pick up right where you left off there because we have to go to our first station break.

And if anybody has a question for Ryan Weingart about his journey from a

United Methodist pastor into the Reformed faith, and that was done by the grace and mercy of God and the power of the

Holy Spirit using his own preaching. And if you have a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Ryan Weingart right after these messages. It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.

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we are now back with Ryan Weingart if you just tuned us in he's a former United Methodist pastor who converted to reform theology and is now involved in a reform church plant in Pennsylvania and we are addressing how a

United Methodist pastor came to embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace through his own preaching our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com

c h r i s a r n z e n at gmail .com give us your first name at least your city and state and your country of residence and before the break

Ryan you were talking about how you became unfortunately involved in syncretism you were trying to meld the new age movement together with Christianity which seems to be something very common when people are involved in the new age or the occult or any other kind of aberrant religion they try very often to import elements of Christianity into what they teach there are very few people and very few religions that outright condemn

Jesus Christ and want nothing to do with him but obviously they in reality want nothing to do with the true

Christ of the scriptures but they will very often include him in some way in their rhetoric in their propaganda and their false teaching and so you were in this process if you could pick up where you left off yes

I was and for those who are in a confused position and correct to say their propaganda works well in those cases they are good at what they do and they kind of drew me in I don't want to dwell too much on that Steve Bankart there's

Melissa Doerr they tell a very similar story to mine so you know you can pursue their podcasts and stuff so these people that you're mentioning they're now evangelical

Christian? yeah okay yeah they're all they're being interviewed some of them have been on some of Apologia's shows places like that so for the most part

I would say you know they're Christian they may not follow the exact theology we do but there's one more strange providential event that really drew me out of that and back in the day

I would have called that prevenient grace of some sort now it's just provident you know not to interrupt you again but I have found for the first time ever now there may be folks that disagree with him but my dear friend

Roger Salter he has been on my program he is a reformed

Anglican he's a five -point Calvinist and he said that provenient grace on my show not long ago provenient grace is a title that was robbed by both

Roman Catholics and Armenians that has a reformed meaning and I believe he was referring to the effectual call and calling it provenient grace which

I've never heard any other reformed person do but I just thought I'd throw that out there because apparently there are reformed people who are truly reformed who use that term but have a different understanding of it than obviously

Rome and the Armenians would well that's very interesting

I'd be interested well to bring it to this point where things really started changing for me

I was well I found out okay I was at Penn State while Jerry Sandusky was there doing his horrible misdeeds with the young people and when he got arrested that really stood out to me because I thought wow there was a major evil group operating at this college

I was at and I think it was always on occasion would hear

Alex Jones and he brought up a book called The Franklin Cover -Up a book written by Senator John DeCamp in the early 90s just real quick it was about a satanic ritual abuse scandal that they uncovered while doing investigation into the savings and loans scandals of the 80s those who are alive remember that I'm sure they're investigating the

Franklin Credit Union in Omaha, Nebraska and they uncovered a ritual abuse ring and this all got covered up and the senator at the time felt like it was such an important story that at least he had to get it out so he wrote a book about it so this was an actual proven satanic ritual abuse story because there were especially in the 80s a lot of fraudulent stories that charlatans posing as Christian evangelists especially in the charismatic realm were peddling these things that turned out to be totally false so you're saying this was an actual true account?

As far as I can tell let's put it this way this is the most legitimate account I've ever found and there's corroborating evidence so I looked up you can find like victim testimonies from this case on YouTube where they released them onto YouTube and you can watch these interviews and see people flip into different voices very disturbing and the reason this book was brought up is because the president of the

University of Nebraska was named in the book and that's where Jerry Sandusky was working at the time so the idea might be that he continued the same practices that they were doing and moved it to Penn State so this is as legitimate as you can get when it comes to a book now the reason the book was written is because the grand jury investigation ended up convicting the witness the victim witnesses instead of going after the perpetrators so Senator DeCamp wrote the book trying to get it out and give all his info so that being said

I read that learned all about the satanic ritual abuse the real stuff and yeah

I am familiar with the satanic panic and I did watch the Geraldo episode that he had and there was some shadiness and there were some false stories peddled about but in this case another interest of mine popped up and that was in the

Nephilim which I enjoyed talking to your former co -host there at your pastor's luncheon about because I listened to your episode on that Oh Buzz Taylor you mean?

Pardon? Buzz Taylor my former co -host on the Iron Church Okay Yeah that's who

I talked about we had a good conversation there on the debate night so he

I was interested in it and this all came together in one random occurrence while I was at work

I found out about a conference in Newark, Ohio called Nephilim Mounds Conference about the

Nephilim and I went well that's that sounds fun you know and I saw there was this

L .A. Martinsville Lee was speaking who I'd heard talk about giants and then a man named

Russ Dizdar I'd never heard of him he passed away this year I consider him a friend and a brother so his passing was sad but he was speaking and I didn't know who he was and I saw he had a podcast and I'm I work in Meadville, PA and I turned this his last podcast on and I'm sitting there listening to it while I'm working and he starts talking about satanic ritual abuse of course the first thought was what in the world does this have to do with the

Nephilim? I was a little confused but the providential moment came when

I'm listening at work and he goes I was dealing with a victim and and then he hesitated he went oh this is

Meadville, PA and I just oh my goodness here and he had this horrible story he told and I just about fell off my chair and I went home said

Kelly we have to go what I gained from this conference that has to do with our story is he convinced me that satanism was real that it was pervasive and that it was extremely damaging and he also convinced me that the old and new testament did in fact fit together and that the bible should be our sole authority that we need to believe it's true and that's something that was being that was not being enforced in the church

I was in at the time so I became convinced that if we have the bible we need to understand it we need to believe it out of this this whole story

I don't want to lead you down these rabbit trails too far you know we need to get to me preaching and converting that right we do we do have about an hour left so that's fine yes so I came back to church and right around that time we got a new pastor and he was

Korean and just so you're aware and so everyone is the church the Methodist church was applying both critical gender theory and critical race theory okay the application of it was happening so the reason we got a

Korean pastor and we were basically I was told this at one point was to because our denomination was too uniform that our denominations should represent the diversity of God's kingdom and therefore we should have white and black and Asians and Latinas all these should be represented and if your church doesn't represent it well enough if they're too uniform then what they would do is take a woman pastor for instance critical gender theory placed her in your pulpit and force you to deal with her or in this case they took a

Korean from Korea with a thick accent and placed him in our church and according to the current rhetoric of critical race theory he's a white man because he's not black and Asians seem to be on a a peer level with Caucasians as far as being inherently bigoted and racist and they are not to receive preferential treatment as blacks are that's what

I've been hearing from the people who are keeping up to date on these heresies of critical race theory and so on well yeah that's definitely how it's being applied right now in our context

I would contend that these Marxist theories can be twisted and spun to whatever goal you have in mind and I believe this was their goal at the time and is still today so the good well he blew up our church too the church started splitting apart because they didn't want someone with he was very conservative bible believing pastor and I came back from this conference that I just told you about where I met this

Russ Dizdar and became convinced that scripture was true and I needed to understand it and he helped me on that path and he said oh yeah well

I came to the conclusion that I need to believe the bible when I read it and he reinforced that for me he also looked at my new interpreter study bible and he goes oh he goes that that bible no good he said no good

I said really because they don't believe in miracles he said they don't believe that you know the people who wrote the bible wrote the bible and he gave me a whole list of things he goes

I used to own one he goes you know what I did with it he goes I threw it in the trash he goes threw it right in the garbage well sounds like a good man yeah in fact let's pick up where we you left off because we have to go to our midway break right now and please be patient folks the midway break is always a little longer than the other breaks because Grace Life Radio 90 .1

FM in Lake City Florida needs to localize Iron Trip and Zion Radio geographically to Lake City Florida in order to fulfill

FCC requirements so they do so by using by airing their own public service announcements and other local things during the midway break we on the other hand simultaneously air our globally heard commercials please use this time wisely respond to our advertisers so that they know that you're listening and when you can't purchase anything please at the very least thank them for sponsoring

Iron Trip and Zion Radio if you love this program and are grateful that there are those out there who are sharing the wealth that God has blessed them with with Iron Trip and Zion Radio so if you're thankful for that please thank our sponsors we could not exist without our advertisers and also send in your emails to our guest today

Ryan Weingart chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com don't go away we'll be right back after these messages

When Iron Trip and Zion Radio first launched in 2005 the publishers of the

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Purchase frequently, purchase generously Always mention that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Before I return to my guest

Ryan Weingart who is a former United Methodist pastor who came to embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace through his own preaching before I return to that story we just have a couple of very important announcements to make

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click support then click click to donate now last but not least if you are not a member of a

Christ honoring biblically faithful theologically solid doctrinally sound church no matter where on the planet earth you live

I may be able to help you find a church sometimes even right around the corner from where you live as I have done with many people throughout the world in our

Iron Sharp and Zion Radio listening audience so if that describes you you do not have a

Christ honoring biblically faithful home please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put I need a search in the subject line I will do my best to help you find a church that's chrisarnson at gmail .com

I need a church in the subject line that's also the email address where you could send in a question for Ryan Weingart on his journey out of the

United Methodist Church after discovering and embracing the doctrines of sovereign grace that he was led to believe through his own preaching as a

United Methodist minister if you have a question send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com and give us your first name at least your city and state and country of residence so Ryan if you want to pick up where you left off in your journey and we will hopefully very soon get to the point in your life where you began to preach as a pastor and as I said already these things that you were preaching from the word of God began to trouble your heart and mind and soul and led you to abandon formerly held beliefs but if you could yes we're almost right there so I was recommended to throw away the

New Interpreter Study Bible I had Pastor Jay the Korean pastor encouraging me to pursue my scriptural understanding and that's when

I I'll say it this way I think that's when

I decided scripture had to be primary in my life not sola yet but primary and so it was at that time where I had seen such a mess made out of the church by the pastors

I had encountered just mishandling situations and stuff that I thought

I could possibly maybe benefit the church by becoming a pastor myself at this point

I was playing music there I was their lay leader so I led the liturgies in the service

I would stand in for the pastor when he was unavailable and preach sermons and was leading the adult

Sunday school class and God was equipping me in that way but so I pursued that and they have a path in the ministry called a local licensed pastor and the way that works is you apply, do an interview or two a few sessions and then you go to what they call licensing school which is a kind of an intensive program where they go over all the aspects of ministry and then they give you a license and a pulpit so you can marry people you can serve communion but then you have to take course of study so seminary courses on your own and complete it within a certain amount of time so I pursued that course went to the licensing school

I was already convinced enough of the Bible and Christianity that when

Bishop Tom Bickerton came and taught us about sacrament and told us that he doesn't use the word father in liturgy and by the way

Bishop Bickerton is now the bishop of I forget his name but the conference that encompasses

New York City he's the bishop of their conference now but he said he refuses to use the name father in the liturgy because people might have had bad experiences with fathers and that might drive them away from believing in Jesus and I went well that's absolutely horrible again

I guess he knew or knows more than Jesus because Jesus didn't stop using the term father apparently yeah and right after he got done saying it

I'm pleased to announce Chris that I had the somebody said well we're gonna have a meal would somebody like to bless it and I shot my hand up real quick right after he said it and I said

I'll pray and I raised I said bow your heads and I said father in heaven please bless this amen so I was already seeing some problems and it was also in that licensing school where I received my first critical race theory training and I mean

Michael O 'Fallon did a conference in 2016 where I had Jordan Peterson come to speak and Jordan Peterson talked about it and Jordan put the slides on the screen that I was handed out in my training for critical race theory so this is the milieu in which

I entered ministry I became a pastor of Brownhill United Methodist Church a rural congregation and I knew

Chris I just knew I had these sermons they needed to hear this word and I had about six of them and when

I finished those six sermons I went uh -oh this is a long haul I better really start understanding the bible better because I don't and so I started

I followed the lectionary the revised common lectionary and I started preaching the scriptures as I read them and I was

Westland you know I did believe the Westland theology free will you know the whole

Arminian concept was strong in my understanding but I kept encountering scriptures as I preached that seemed to contradict it so what

I did is I would preach them as I read them and let them lie and say well this is what it says and we have to get around that so it was at that time where I found this documentary on YouTube by this guy named

Stephen Anderson called New World Order Bible Translation and I thought looked at my wife they said you really think the

New World Order is messing with the bibles? I don't know we better watch it so we watched this and he's presenting this whole

King James argument and I'm like well okay and suddenly he interviewed this guy named

Dr. James White when the whole movie was over I looked at my wife and I said well that was kind of interesting

I don't know about Stephen Anderson's argument here but that Dr. White really made sense another

Romans 828 moment yeah never heard of him before and I found her interview with Stephen Anderson when

I was done with that I was confronted with a

Sola Scriptura reformed argument a Calvinist argument from him and I went okay this seems to make sense

I need to figure this out and that's when I started I found every debate he ever did on Calvinism versus Arminianism I think you hosted some of them if I remember correctly yes

I did okay I watched everyone I could find on YouTube Chris and I was angry and I was upset and I didn't agree with him yet I went well the scripture says it

I have to deal with it so I would go to the scripture passages and I distinctly remember doing a bible study in my church and I remember

I wanted to go through 1 Timothy because I thought the church could use some church building scripture like how to be a church because they were struggling and I got to 1

Timothy 2 and I went well who is everyone in this text because it reads first of all then

I urge the petitions prayers intercessions and thanksgivings be made for everyone for kings and all those in authority and then below that it indicates that Christ who gave himself as a ransom for all the testimony at the proper time and I remember looking up and going you guys might not like this but I don't think all means everyone in the world here and I indicated that I believed it indicated in the context kings those in authority all types of people and that was that stands out in my mind

Chris is one of the moments where I went okay I think I'm becoming a Calvinist now and I encountered some texts

I'm preaching like Ephesians 1 Ephesians 2 that seemed to indicate predestination of course we get to Romans 9

John 6 these texts I had to deal with as I was working through my sermon and as I dealt with them

I dedicated myself to sola scriptura I thought this is the only authority

I must follow it I have to deal with these texts and that is when

I started embracing the doctrine of sovereign grace to get us through this long process to the point where you wanted to have your show about now when

I came to believe in these things it was a lot more of a brief episode in my life

I was joining a reformed baptist church and I was interviewed for baptism and I said to the elders

I love you guys I want you to be my pastors I trust you I love the people here but I don't think

I'm ever going to become a Calvinist I just don't believe in that stuff that part of your whole message

I just don't believe it at all and don't think I ever will and they said to me well as long as you believe in the gospel we will not enforce upon you an immediate decision to believe in the doctrines of grace when you're not there yet we're going to be patient with the

Holy Spirit with your sanctification with your growing in grace and the knowledge of the

Lord so you will still be permitted into membership as long as you agree not to undermine these teachings and in other words not to bad mouth them the other members not to try to overturn sermons in the minds of fellow congregation members not to start a mutiny of Arminians so I agreed and within months a very short period of time a

British brother who is now with the Lord for eternity he approached me and said

I understand you're having trouble with doctrines of sovereign grace read this booklet and he gave me

George Whitfield's letter to John Wesley in election I read it and my first reaction after finishing reading it was oh no this is true but I still hate it but so it was even it was more infuriating because I recognized it was true and I still did not surrender to it but it was a very brief period of time after that that I bowed the knee rejoicing in these truths and fell in love with these truths now what was the case with you?

you came to these you came to an understanding of these truths that are exclusively reformed and you came to embrace them were you doing not saying you were doing this in the worship service but were you doing at least in your mind and heart cartwheels or were you pounding your chest and knocking your head against the wall even if it's allegorical because you didn't like these things even though you acknowledged they were true

I did not like them at first it was more of a wrestling with them even after you came to embrace them as fact yeah and I thought you know these are here and we have to deal with them and I can't see a way around them it really upset me to think that I couldn't make my own choice in salvation at first but that didn't last long

Chris one day I remember going you know what and I think it was

Dr. White who pushed me here because he and debates and stuff actually

I just re -listened to his radio show that Dave Hunt he did I listened to that again recently and he even said it there that is

Christ not powerful enough to save people and I went well no

God has to be sovereign over all things he made them and so once I got to that point realized that God was sovereign it was only

Christ it switched from being something

I was upset about and struggling with to one of the greatest comforts that I've ever experienced in my faith and I became convinced that if you pursued a true scriptural understanding and you promoted

Christ first and foremost that God would stand with you and be sovereign over every situation even with people you might be witnessing to or preaching to that weren't believing even though I had people leave that church while I was there not necessarily over these specific doctrinal issues but kind of peripheral to them

I was convinced that God was doing this to glorify himself and that it was okay so that's what it did to me it instilled that assurance of my salvation my faith and of God's sovereignty over every situation but yes

I wrestled a lot it took me at least a year of working through this to really decide this must be the truth now while you're coming to embrace these things during sermons that you're preaching yourself yeah did you start to have a red light going on in your mind saying uh -oh this also means

I'm going to have to leave the United Methodist Church did that ever enter into your mind while you were preaching or when did that come about?

oh well that was a whole different set of circumstances I became convinced that perhaps

I could reform this church and that if I kept preaching them people would have to recognize these truths and see them for what they are now within a few months of me taking that pulpit

I had to announce to my congregation that the United Methodist Church had ordained its first openly gay bishop in the

Rocky Mountain Conference and my church immediately they wanted to leave Methodism they did not want to be a part of this at all praise

God praise God and to their credit they wanted to do that and I was like no no no we should fight this from within I'm not going to lead you out so I think they were more right than me as I look back on it but so do

I I went to the annual conferences and I made it onto one of their little you know they were doing some legislation and I was able to I've stood up in the middle and opposed their legislation and utilized scripture and convinced them the scripture is correct and they changed a little bit and I said see you can do this work but then a situation broke out in our church that involved my family and it wasn't a good situation and the whole situation will remain anonymous but it forced me into a position where I felt like I just couldn't continue ministry there and so I left the pulpit for other reasons but once I left that pulpit

Chris I could not with a good conscience return to Methodism I knew

I had to find a reformed church just out of curiosity knowing that the

United Methodist Church I'm not sure how strict the standards are with the new global Methodists I know that they must be in some significant way a lot more strict than the

United Methodists because it's a conservative group but since the

United Methodist Church seemed to allow a host of all kinds of things including as you said the ordination of an openly homosexual bishop would they allow somebody to be a

Calvinist as a minister or bishop a five -point Calvinist etc. Yes I believe they would

Really? As a matter of fact you and I before the show were talking to me that has a

Yes and I don't know I don't know it's the first time I heard about it I don't know if the man is doing this out of or in a state of rebellion against the denomination or if they have allowed him to maintain that teaching there and remain there as a pastor

I knew folks in Pentecostal denominations that were permitted to remain where they were as Calvinists even though that was not the position of the denominations that these men were in but I just don't

I don't know enough about the denomination to know if they are fully aware that he is a

Calvinist and if they are saying ah that's okay things could be worse whatever

The way it was presented to me was it was called big tent theology they said we have a big tent our tent can encompass all sorts of theologies within the overarching tent of United Methodism is how they conveyed it to me so my impression is that if you are a

United Methodist pastor in a church right now and your church is not complaining about you and you're not just running out of money and dying they seem to be content to leave you where you are at the moment besides your theology yeah and you know what

I've also witnessed with some of the liberal denominations the denominations very often will leave alone churches that are predominantly in leadership and in the congregation ethnic minorities if they are theologically conservative they won't say a word they're just like let them alone let them do whatever they want because they don't want to appear to be racist or bigoted so they just leave those in let's say a predominantly black congregation or predominantly hispanic or asian congregation if they're preaching a very conservative biblically faithful word in a liberal denomination very often

I have seen that not all the time but I've very often seen that they have been left alone by the authorities of the denomination even if the authorities are as left -wing as you can get yeah yeah and we need to be clear about one point the denomination is governed by the book of so it's the same as it was when they founded this in the 60s the global methodists are ascribing to the book of discipline

I think the main difference between the two would be that the global methodists are claiming that they are willing to apply the discipline the removal of you know or excommunication if you would or defrocking of those who are straying from the christian faith whereas right now the judicial council won't remove anyone from their pulpit yeah that's another thing that I've noticed over the years is that sometimes when you have an evangelical pastor elders and congregation in a liberal denomination sometimes those congregations don't do any church discipline because they think it's enough that they're surviving there in a liberal denomination while preaching an antithetical message to the liberal denominations positions and they are preaching the bible and they are basically saying well we're going to let god separate the wheat from the tares and we're not going to do anything and I'm against that I think a church to function biblically needs to have church discipline but that's just something that I've noticed that very often

I'm not saying in every case I'm just saying very often I've noticed when I've gotten to know conservative bible -believing evangelical pastors in liberal denominations that they don't conduct church discipline

I don't know if you've seen that yeah the only case

I know of is there was a man I think this was 2015 or somewhere in that time period before the openly homosexual bishop was appointed there was a man in Pennsylvania who married a male couple and he was defrocked after that case there were no others the judicial council of the general conference which is the overarching global conference started refusing to prosecute cases so so he was defrocked by a liberal the liberal hierarchy of the

United Methodist Church he was yes wow but that was the last time okay and we're going to go to our final break it's going to be a lot shorter than the other breaks and we do have a number of people waiting patiently well

I hope they're waiting patiently they have their questions asked and answered by you Ryan so if you'd like to get in line please send in your email immediately to chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com give us your first name at least your city and state and your country of residence don't go away we're going to be right back after these messages we here at iron sharpens iron radio praise

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Dr. Moorcraft is pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation for details on the eight -volume commentary go to westminstercommentary .com

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Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our Sovereign Lord God Savior and King Jesus Christ today and always have been sticking with or switching to the

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And Ryan, we have some questions from our listeners that I want to get to before we run out of time We have an anonymous listener who says,

I am remaining anonymous because I am dreading the fact that I have to confront a dear brother in Christ who is an ordained minister in the

United Methodist Church He is a Bible believer He is an evangelical but he believes that other

United Methodists should stay put where they are and fight the good fight I cannot condone this ideology of his because it is a clear example of people being unevenly yoked with unbelievers especially since the

United Methodist Church has reached the depth of depravity that is currently teaching and practicing including in the area of homosexuality and other nightmarish sins

My question to you is do you think that it is legitimate for a

Bible -believing Christian to remain in the United Methodist Church and I have a follow -up question on the global Methodists and I will wait until you finish answering that question before I go to his global Methodist question

Um, sure That is a good question a situation

I heard one to answer but I would contend

I would agree with the questioner the point where if you're in a conference like this you're submitting to the authority of those above you and I struggled myself

I could not remain in it because I could not as he said yoke myself to this unbelief and this blatant you know, immorality that they're promoting

That being said I have family my own father and mother still attend the

United Methodist Church They have a different view than me and I'll give it to you accurately

My father says these churches exist in these communities We have over 85

United Methodist Churches just in the two counties here in my conference alone

The majority of churches were Methodist for a long time Yeah, Cumberland County is filled with them

Even on the same street in Mechanicsburg there's like four United Methodist Church within like a hundred yards of each other

Yeah, yeah And each of those churches has genuine Christians in them that are just showing up to church to worship

So he would contend that you need to have good solid

Christians in those churches to help these believers along and I think there's some validity to that But I will say this and I think this is very important If you yourself need the spiritual meat that a good solid

Christian church can provide or if you have a family a wife and children and they need that meat then

I think the only responsible thing to do is to find a faithful church and as a pastor boy,

I would I struggled myself and would struggle I would be dreading the confrontation just as the listener is but I would encourage him to try to have that conversation with his pastor and at least find out what his pastor said

All right, the second part is what do you know about the newly formed Global Methodist Church the conservative split from United Methodist Church Even conservatives can sometimes adopt heretical views and even

Oral Roberts the notorious charlatan faith healer from what

I understand remained a member of the United Methodist Church until he died If that is not the case

I know that he was a member of the United Methodist Church for decades nonetheless but there is seems to be a toleration of very aberrant word of faith

Pentecostal views even amongst the conservative United Methodists and also the ordination of women and some other things they may not be aware of What is your understanding of the

Global Methodists and are they a safe place for a Bible -believing Christian to enter?

They are going to adhere to the current book of discipline and they are affirming the traditional creed the

Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed They are still ordaining women and will continue to They are not getting rid of that They honor

John Wesley In 1761, John Wesley granted a license to Sarah Crosby to preach as far as I know one of the earliest women preachers and he allowed for that said that if they were under then they should be allowed to preach

I have a big problem with that I think that's probably going to be a linchpin in the future of the

Global Methodists that will cause problems They still uphold I'm sure they uphold what they would call the

Wesleyan quadrilateral that scripture is primary and not sola and you can also use tradition reason and experience to exegete scripture

So I see some issues in it and they aren't going to change that theology

They're going to keep it They're going to continue having women pastors and as for keeping heretical teachers in as you mentioned

I don't know I don't know how they're going to handle it I don't know when they'll be able to identify a heresy or how they will if they'll go through an excommunication or not

Okay, thank you Anonymous If you have never entered a question or submitted a question before your first time questioner you have won a new

American Standard Bible compliments of cvbbs .com and compliments of the publishers of the

NASB So give us your full name and mailing address and we'll have it shipped out to you

Obviously your identity will remain anonymous A friend of mine local

Orthodox Presbyterian pastor here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania Pastor Jeremy Brandenburg of Redeemer Presbyterian Church here in Carlisle has a question

Hello sir, what is one area for growth that you identified in the

Reformed Church since you joined it? One area for growth that you have identified in the

Reformed Church One area for growth I assume he means for the church to grow

I don't know It might be your own spiritual growth In fact, Pastor Jeremy if you want to clarify that question send in another email

But I don't know what she meant Okay, well, what we named recently

Providence Reformed Church a church plant So when I left Methodism I guess I'll answer they found a

Reformed Church in Meadville St. Paul's Reformed And we started attending it in 2019

Pastor Brian there was very good Brian Hazen Cope is his name He was very good at teaching a hermeneutic how to exegete and read scriptures

I learned a lot from him in that I was very blessed But over time

I came to realize that especially when COVID and all that started that the church probably needed to be taking some stands that a lot of churches weren't taking and proclaim dominion over the community in certain ways

And I wasn't necessarily finding that there So I pursued this church plant

So for me, I would contend that the areas of growth that the Reformed Church has before it is taking dominion over its community

You could, I know Christ Church and Canon Press is really pushing this

Christian nationalism book that's coming out and they're talking a lot about it You could, I would be looking in that area for our growth to take that dominion to start businesses to grow your families to participate on school boards if you feel so led to join your local township councils things like that and bring that Christian worldview into those areas and let

Christ do his work there Thank you, Pastor Jeremy And I want you now to Well, first of all,

I want to just quickly plug Pastor Jeremy's church It's such a good church The website is RedeemerOPC .org

RedeemerOPC for Orthodox Presbyterian Church dot org And that's here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania I would like you to now in about a minute or 90 seconds summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today

I want people to know that God is sovereign over all things and that it has to be sola scriptura

The doctrines of grace and the five solas are so amazing in life

That would be the number one thing Promote Christ as sovereign

Honor his word as the only authority Great Do you want our listeners if they have further questions to contact me and I'll pass on their emails or do you want to provide contact information?

Um, I could provide it It is a long and complicated email as you know

So I could give it here I'm fine Why don't I just have them send them to me because we don't have time for a long complicated email

Send it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com

and I will pass on any emails that you may have that you would like to begin a correspondence with Brian today

I want to thank you so much Brian for doing such an excellent job and it's amazing that this was your first interview

You certainly sounded very relaxed and there was no anxiety or fear that came through in your speech

You did a great job I look forward to having you back on the show and I look forward to sharing fellowship with you again in the near future

I want to thank everybody who listened today especially those who took the time to write in questions

I apologize to those of you who wrote in questions that we didn't have time to ask

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater