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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father, James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer, George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister, George Norcross, and sports legend, Jim Thorpe.
It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors and 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 Arnson.
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 Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 18th day of November, 2025.
I am thrilled to have a first-time guest today. His name is Daniel Holstege, and he is an author and pastor of Wingham Protestant Reformed Church in Ontario, Canada. Today, we're going to be addressing the theme of his new book, Go Into All the World, Embracing the Mission Mandate of God's Covenant.
And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for the very first time, Pastor Daniel Holstege.
Yes, thank you, Chris. It's a pleasure to be on your show today.
And I completely forgot to ask you before the program began if I was pronouncing your last name correctly.
Well, I hate to correct you right at the very beginning, but of the last part, you got a little bit wrong. We usually just say Holstege.
Holstege, okay. And I will hopefully remember that for the remainder of the show. Tell our listeners something about the Protestant Reformed Church in Ontario, Canada, the Wingham Protestant Reformed Church in Ontario, Canada.
Sure. The congregation here, probably one of the more unique things is that it's the only Protestant Reformed Church in Ontario, Canada. There are two other PRCs in Alberta, but we are the only one in Ontario, which, as you know, is a very large province.
There are many other Reformed churches here, Canadian Reformed, United Reformed, Christian Reformed, but we would be the only Protestant Reformed Church. We're just a small congregation in a small town.
Wingham is a town of about 3 ,000 people or so in a rural setting. So yeah, it's been a good place for my family and me for about the past four years.
Great.
And for those of you who might be traveling to Ontario, Canada, or perhaps you have family, friends, and loved ones that live there, and you'd like to pass on this website to them so that they may visit that congregation, the website is winghamprc .org, winghamprc .org, and wingham is spelt W-I-N-G-H-A-M.
And I'll, God willing, repeat that later on in the program. Well, Daniel, you are a first-time guest, as I announced in the beginning of the show, and we have a tradition on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
Whenever we have first-time guests, we have those guests give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include the religious atmosphere in which they were raised, if any, and the types of providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.
So we would love to hear your story.
Yeah, okay. Excuse me. So my salvation testimony begins when I was very young, and I wouldn't be able to tell you or pinpoint for you a particular day or time when I believe that God came into my life for the first time.
My view as Reformed is that salvation begins in our life when God the Holy Spirit comes for the first time into our hearts and makes his dwelling there. And I believe that he did that at some point when I was very young, and I don't know when that happened, but I believe that when the Holy Spirit first came into my life, that I was a young child, and he united me to the Lord Jesus Christ, and that's when I was saved, in my experience.
As I was growing up, I grew up in a Christian home, as it mentions in my book. In the introduction, I had Christian parents, a father and mother who were married, still married, and raised my three siblings and me in a healthy and solid Christian home.
We went to church every Sunday twice, and we were sent to a Christian school. So that was the kind of, yeah, it was a religious environment. It was a Christian, it was a Reformed environment in which I was raised, and very thankful for that.
It was a great blessing to be raised in a home like that. A father who set a good example, who read the scripture to us, had family devotions and prayed. So I think as I was young, from my earliest days into my teenage years, I was learning about the Bible, I was learning about God and Christ and the gospel, and I don't ever remember as a child refusing what I was learning.
I was absorbing it. I was learning and growing in my faith. Yeah, I went to a Protestant Reformed church. My parents also grew up in the PRC. Our church was located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which as you probably know, that's a place where there are many Reformed churches.
So yeah, I went to church there, and I would say when I was a teenager going through high school and college, I made public profession of my faith when I was 18. And that was, I think, a moment or a time when I was definitely being matured in my faith.
The Lord was deepening my understanding. I would say this too, that around that time, I learned more what it means that I'm a sinner, and I became more conscious of my sins and the seriousness and gravity of sin, my need for a Savior.
And since I was going to church regularly, there were definitely times when I heard sermons that had a more profound impact on me, sermons that really hit the heart, and the sermons that really got to the heart of the gospel and set forth Christ crucified and the forgiveness of sins and justification through him.
So when I was maturing and becoming an adult, my God was working that salvation in me at a deeper level. And then I would say, since we believe salvation includes justification and sanctification, my salvation testimony includes that as I was growing, becoming an adult, the Lord was sanctifying me.
As I was coming to see my sins, he was not only showing me that he forgives me, but also that he began that work of sanctification and continued it and deepened it and led me to confess my sins, to repent of them, and to strive to live a new and holy life.
So since I was in my young years until today, I'm 42, it's been an ongoing work of salvation. The Lord saves me every day. He delivers me from Satan, from sinful choices and actions. And he deepens in my mind, the knowledge of his love and his grace.
And as you know, probably too, Chris, salvation in that sense is kind of a, it's a thing that ebbs and flows. It's a process. There are unique, distinct elements in it, but there is certainly a process in which God sanctifies us.
And so I expect that he will continue to save me and preserve me in that faith until he calls me home. Amen.
Well, this is a very important topic that you have tackled in this book. It involves the Great Commission. We have a couple of texts in the scriptures that address the theme of your book. We've got one of them in Matthew 28, 16 through 20.
Well, actually it's, I'll begin at 19. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to follow all that I commanded you and behold, I am with you always.
And we also have the text in Mark 16, 15, where Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. This is a theme that throughout the centuries, faithful Christian men have written on this theme, have exegeted the scriptures on this theme.
Why did you come to the conclusion? You know, as much as I love a lot of what is already in print out there and have made use of it in my life as a Christian and in my service as a minister of Christ, there's some things of my own that I want to say about this.
Tell us about how this dawned on you to write this book, go into all the world, embracing the mission mandate of God's covenant.
Yeah, that's kind of a big question.
We have two hours.
Yeah, right. So we can take our time, I guess.
Yes.
In the introduction to my book, I tried to get into that a little bit and try to set down why I wrote this book. Part of that is personal, having grown up in a reformed church and a church that emphasizes the covenant, covenant theology and covenant thinking in life.
I felt that as I was growing and thinking and becoming a pastor, I felt that there was a need for more literature in my circles that I grew up in on this topic. We had lots of literature on various topics and I felt like there wasn't a lack in this area.
So I was, to a large degree, I was writing to the people in my own church community and denomination. And I tried to write the book in a way that anybody might be reading it. So I tried to make it a broad audience, but I was in a special way speaking to the people that I know, my own family, my own friends, my own fellow church members, and trying to stir them up as I feel the Lord has stirred me up and many others too in my denomination as well to continue that stirring process of getting us to see our calling to missions.
And I was struck too somewhere along the line and there was a friend that I mentioned in the introduction who, Alex Kelsby, who suggested this topic to me. But I was struck by the connection between the covenant and missions.
And I think a lot has been written about missions. There's lots of books on missiology and all kinds of theory of missions, practice of missions. But I didn't think there was a lot written about the covenant, the biblical doctrine of the covenant and missions, especially the reform doctrine of the covenant, certainly not in our circles.
So I started to think about that. Is there a connection between the two or is the covenant really just about us and our children, grandchildren, catechizing the children of the church, establishing good Christian schools, raising our children?
Is that all that the covenant is or is it broader than that? And I knew it was broader, but I think it was an area that seemed worth exploring. And then how it connected to missions. And the more I explored it, the more I realized there really is a big connection there.
And there were others who were saying things. There was a sermon I heard once from Professor Corey Grease, who kindly endorsed my book, Professor of Missions at our seminary, who preached a sermon in our church.
And I was sitting listening to the sermon. I think it was on God's promise to Abraham to make him a father of many nations. And he talked about this idea that God, his plan is to establish his covenant in these two different directions, not only within the church, but also out into the world through missions.
So yeah, long story short, all of these different things and other factors too, I think is what led me to write it.
And could you give us perhaps a more detailed definition on your understanding of the covenant? It's a very important word and concept in the scriptures and in the Christian life. And there are people who have varying views on what is called the covenant.
So why don't you tell me about where you're coming from and be just a little bit more detailed on that?
Yeah, that's a good point. The covenant is a massive subject in theology and there's a wide variety of views out there on the covenant. There's, of course, dispensational theology, which has a very different view of the covenant.
Roman Catholic theology would have a very different view of the covenant. The Reformed churches though, don't all have one view.
Right, exactly.
It'd be great if we did.
Yeah, in fact, I'm a Reformed Baptist and I know that our view is somewhat different than that of many Pato Baptists and not even all Pato Baptists agree.
Right, right. Even among Pato Baptists, there's pretty wide ranging views of the covenant from views that would call it a conditional covenant, those who would call it an unconditional covenant, those who would view the covenant as a pact or an agreement or an alliance between God and certain people.
There's the whole debate about covenant and election, whether the covenant is with the elect or is it with more than the elect, maybe with believers in all their children. There's a debate there. So where I'm coming from in the Protestant Reformed churches is that I grew up being taught this and quite frankly, although I've learned lots of views, studying theology over the years, and this is an area where I would say I definitely have grown stronger in my conviction that the covenant is in its essence, it's a relationship that God establishes with believers and believers in our definition as Reformed would be an elect child of God to whom God has given faith.
So God establishes this covenant with believers and with their children after them, the elect ones, but also he extends it out into the nations. But in its essence, I believe it's that relationship and it's a structured relationship.
And I've come to see that too. It's not like the relationship between two friends. There's similarities there, but there's a difference there too. God is always God and we are always humans. So God is always infinitely above us.
And yet he comes down to us and establishes this relationship, friendship with us, fellowship, like a father with his children. And I think the Bible uses two illustrations from human life, compares the covenant to that, the father-son relationship and the husband-wife relationship.
And when we look at both of those, it's clear that they are essentially a relationship of fellowship and friendship, intimacy, but there's also that the husband is the head of his wife and the father is over his children.
So there's that structure also. So yeah, that's what would make this book unique as well, coming from a PRC perspective on the covenant and then connecting that with missions.
Now, the way you described it, there is a lot of similarity between your understanding and the Reformed Baptist view, because we believe that the covenant is exclusively for the elect with Christ. And I know that there are many Pato Baptists who believe that children, by virtue of their baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are added to the covenant, even if they are not of the elect.
And therefore you can have people later on who become apostates or rebels and enemies of Christ, they can be kicked out of the covenant. I believe that is somewhat, I know I may get some of the federal visionists who may hear this interview angry that they think I'm misrepresenting them, but I think I've got their view understood correctly when I describe it that way.
Yeah.
That the covenant
Do you want me to reflect on that?
Yeah, the covenant in their minds is not a guarantee of eternal life. And that always has baffled me because you have Christ as a mediator between himself and the Father with those in the covenant. So how on earth could he lose anyone for whom he is mediating or intercessing?
Yeah. Right. Yeah, when I think about it too, I don't see how the covenant could be with more than the elect. You have to twist things around a bit to get to that, I think, because we'll just think of, for example, when Christ instituted the Lord's Supper and he said the bread and the wine, this, the wine is the blood of the new covenant.
So he's talking about the blood that he would shed on the cross. And he's calling that the blood of the covenant. So if the blood of Christ was shed for the elect, which that's what we believe in the Reformed tradition, then the covenant also would be with the elect.
And I think the Cans of Dork also bears that out and head to article eight, that Christ died for the elect and that in his death, he confirmed the new covenant. So just one avenue to reinforce what you're saying there.
We have to go to our first commercial break right now. And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.
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But if it's a general question, please give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence and send those questions to chrisarnson at gmail .com. We'll be right back. Please don't go away.
I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord and his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.
At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession. We embrace congregational church government and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost and the glory of our triune God.
We are also devoted to living out the one another commands of scripture, loving, encouraging and serving each other as the body of Christ. In our worship, we sing Psalms and the great hymns of the faith and we gather around the Lord's table every Sunday.
We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org. That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.
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Welcome back, if you just tuned us in, our guest today is Daniel Holsteg, and we are discussing his book, Go Into All the World, Embracing the Mission Mandate of God's Covenant. If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, and give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.
If you live outside the USA, before I continue with our discussion, I just want to read a commendation for this book, which was written by an old friend of mine, Pastor Paul T. Murphy of Messiah's Reform Fellowship in New York City.
He says of this book, all churches would benefit from reading through, absorbing, and putting into practice what is here written. And that reminds me, I've got to try to arrange another interview with Pastor Murphy since it has been quite a long time.
And one of the things that I think that we should discuss about this book is the biblical overview that we have from Adam to Noah, and the covenant in the very beginning. Can you begin at the beginning?
You'd like me to summarize that section?
Okay. So yeah, the first two chapters after the introduction, I just called that biblical overview. Chapter one is Adam to Noah, and then chapter two would be Abraham to Christ. So in that section, I just scanned the history of the covenant in scripture, beginning with the covenant with Adam in the beginning.
And I did that, tried to do that from the perspective of showing that from the very beginning of time, God in his covenant purposes had a plan to extend his covenant to the whole world. So his plan was never merely to establish his covenant with one nation, or today we would maybe sit in one ethnic group or even in one denomination or anything like that.
God's purposes was always to extend his covenant throughout the world. So yeah, in the first chapter, I start with Adam, and it's just striking when you think about, there's a lot of things you can say about the covenant of God with Adam, right?
There's the debate about the covenant of works. I don't agree with that notion depending on how it's articulated, but I prefer to call it a covenant of creation because I believe God established his covenant with Adam and Eve at the moment he created them and through his creation of them in his image.
So he established that relationship with them from the very start. But they were his elect, but they were also human beings, the first human beings, and that's just striking. It shows that God intends to establish his covenant with mankind.
And then mankind, of course, develops from there through the fall and then the flood. And we see there at the flood that God saves Noah and his family. So as I'm scanning this history, I'm trying to draw out what I call in the book, the particular and universal notes in the music of God's covenant.
So God is revealing and unfolding his covenant and he's showing us there's aspects in which it's particular. It's only with the elect, it's only with Noah and his family, only with Abraham, God is showing his election.
But then he's also showing that it's very broad, it's universal, cosmic. So like the rainbow after the flood is the sign of the covenant and the rainbow arches over the whole world. And Noah and his family are the ancestors of all human beings that exist today and God made his covenant with them.
So, and then especially when you get to Abraham, did you want me to keep going, Chris?
And yeah, sure.
So I think when you get to Abraham in Genesis 12, it gets really interesting and striking how explicit God is, that his plan is through Abraham to bless all nations, all families of the earth and be more particular to establish his covenant in all nations of the earth.
So he says that in chapter 12 already, but then later in the subsequent chapters, he tells Abraham, especially in chapter 17, I'm changing your name from Abram to Abraham, a father of many or a multitude because his plan was to establish his covenant with many nations or with his elect in many nations.
So yeah, then you just follow the Old Testament history from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the history of the nation of Israel, the judges, the kingdom period, and you just follow that whole history and you constantly are seeing these particular and universal aspects.
And the particularity is seen in, here God has his covenant with the nation of Israel in the middle of all these other nations God has chosen this one nation. There's something particular there, but then God is telling Israel the time is coming in the day of the Lord, when those Gentile nations, which right now they're heathen worshiping other gods, they're going to be converted, they're going to flow into the church, into the covenant, into the kingdom of God.
So when Jesus comes, the New Testament era begins, that's the day of the Lord. And now God is fulfilling these prophecies through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, preaching of the gospel in all the world, the great commission.
God is now extending his kingdom, his covenant into all nations as he promised. That's kind of a summary of how I see it.
Okay, well, we have a question from Lorraine in Garden City, New York. And Lorraine asks, do you think that one of the problems that exists in correctly understanding the covenant amongst Christians is that while those in dispensationalism might make the differences of the old and new covenants too stark in contradiction and contradicting, there are many in the Reformed community that seem to try to make the entirety of God's covenant with his people one covenant.
So there's nothing really new and better about the new covenant. Can you please give your own thoughts on that?
Yeah, that's a very interesting and perceptive question. Difficult question to answer. Covenant theology is a challenging subject. When you study the scripture, when you are a serious student of scripture, and you try to understand what the covenant is, and you try to piece together all the different parts, the old covenant, the new covenant, how are they all related?
And I have found in my own studies over the years that it has been challenging sometimes to interpret certain texts. For example, when Paul in Galatians 4, he speaks of the two covenants, one at Mount Sinai and one at Mount Zion, two covenants.
And then there's this relation or this teaching of scripture that there's an old covenant and a new covenant. So yes, it is difficult to understand it all and how it fits together. Can you remind me maybe what the main part of that question was or the main thrust of that question?
The listener, Lorraine, was asking if the problem in understanding the covenants correctly in the church is that there are those that go from one extreme to the other, and she, and I'm assuming that Lorraine is a she, not like Lorraine Bettner, but the extreme from dispensationalism of making perhaps too stark of a contrast between the two.
And you even have not all, but some dispensationalists would even say that there was a different way of salvation in the Old Testament, a different gospel. So that would be one abuse, and I think she's correct, or he, I'm sorry.
And the other one is the, I've even heard the phrase by some Pato Baptists that there's one covenant and two administrations. And the way that the covenant is explained, it really reduces the fact that the new covenant is better.
And so I think that's where Lorraine is coming from.
Yeah, and it's difficult to know exactly what's the best language to use. It's the covenant that God established with Adam in the beginning. We can debate what to call that, but then how is that connected to the covenant with Noah and the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the covenant with the nation of Israel, the covenant with David, the old covenant and the new covenant?
How are these all connected? And I think that whatever your overarching system of theology is, it's definitely going to impact that. I think the dispensationalists, or not only they, but others too sometimes can be simplistic and say, if you just study the Bible, then you'll come to our view, right?
If you just read the Bible for what it is, get away from your creeds and so on, then you'll certainly come to see it our way. So yeah, I mean, for me personally, I believe that the covenant with Adam and the covenant in Christ, they are distinct.
I don't think maybe it's quite accurate to say they're just two different administrations. I'm not sure if that's what you're referring to those two, but yeah, something unique with the covenant with Adam, because he was the head of the human race and then Christ is the head of the elect.
So there's something distinct there. And yet I do think that the essence of those two is still basically the same, that it's this relationship between God and his people, in which he says, I'm your God and you are my people.
So I think if you do look at scripture and you follow it all the way through, you will see that this covenant formula helps us to understand what the essence of the covenant is. I am your God, you are my people.
That's the relationship of fellowship, friendship, light, and love. And then you can see that all the way through, and then you can see that each of these times that God establishes his covenant, he's revealing something new and different about the covenant.
To me, at least, that makes a lot of sense. Then I can see that when he made his covenant with Noah, he was revealing something beautiful about the covenant. It includes the whole creation, the rainbow stretching over the whole world.
His covenant with Abraham, you see, he's establishing it with children of believers and generations, and it's a covenant of grace, particular grace. And then with David, you see his covenant with David shows that his covenant takes the form of a kingdom.
And there's this whole notion of the kingdom of God, the covenantal kingdom. But the whole of the old covenant, which is a term that basically summarizes the covenant as it was established in the Old Testament, is this administration of Moses, of the law.
And when you get to the new covenant, that is established with the coming of Christ. So the new covenant, the old covenant fades away when the new covenant comes. But in essence, it's the same thing. It's the relationship between God and his people.
But now you have the fulfillment or the full realization of the covenant in the coming of Christ. Obviously, the coming of the Messiah is extremely important for the covenant. So his coming, his life, his death, his resurrection and ascension, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, all of that is incredibly important for the unfolding and the full realization of God's covenant in history.
And so then you just keep going forward and you see in the very end of scripture in Revelation 21, God speaks of the final perfection of his covenant in the new heavens and the new earth. The tabernacle of God will be with men and there'll be no more sin or death or sorrow or crying.
God will be with us. He'll be our God. We will be his people. So the story of scripture is beautiful. It's amazing. It is unfortunate that the church on earth, that there's so much difference and disagreement about the covenant.
When we get to heaven, we will have that perfect understanding. And that's always our hope, I think. But that's how I see the covenant in scripture. And I think it's a wonderful doctrine. Amen.
Well, we've got Rodney in Shelburne, Vermont. And Rodney said, would I be correct in understanding that the old covenant is different than a salvific covenant that God had in the Old Testament, where he saved by grace through faith as he does now, but he had a covenant with Israel that was not meant to be permanent.
It was earthly and physical. And that's why people could be removed from it for disobedience. Whereas the new covenant is an eternal covenant and no one will ever be removed from it. Is this a correct understanding of the two covenants in your opinion?
Yeah, in my opinion, it will depend, your answer to that question will depend on what you believe the covenant is in its essence. If you do think that it's a kind of pact or agreement of some kind, then it could fall away when it's served its purpose.
But as I've said, in my view, I think the scripture teaches that the covenant in its essence is the relationship of fellowship, which that is the essence of salvation. What are we saved onto? We're saved into a relationship with God, which will never end.
So even the old covenant was essentially that relationship that God was establishing with his elect people in the nation of Israel, as well as those Gentiles that were grafted in. But the administration, I would use that word administration or the form of that covenant, the dispensation, if you will, of that covenant, that did come to an end.
And that was, it was the form of law. It was the laws of Moses. And the purpose of that particular form of the covenant was to show that the people of God, their sins, that they couldn't keep these laws.
God gave them their, his good laws. He said, I am the Lord, your God, keep my commandments and live, but they couldn't and they didn't. They worshiped idols over and over again. And that showed them their need for Christ.
The whole old covenant is pointing the church forward to Christ. And we can see ourselves in the children of Israel too. We are no better than them. We're just like them. So the old covenant, in a sense, still works today in the law.
And that it, the law shows us our sins and it points us to our need for Christ. But historically, we live in the period of the new covenant. I hope that kind of answers the question.
Yes. And perhaps you could at least start describing your section on biblical overview of Abraham to Christ, because there is a radical shift where in the old covenant, there was clearly a unique and special people of God who were the Israelites and those Gentiles that entered into that nation through circumcision and becoming a part of the family and nation of Israel.
And then you have this radical change in the new covenant where there is a call to the entire world. And at one point, at some point, the dominance of Christ's people became Gentile. And even to this day, they are Gentile believers.
And of course, there are many Christians, whether they're optimistic or millennialists or post-millennials who believe that one day all of the ethnic Jews will come to Christ before Christ returns. But tell us about your observation in that section.
The radical change that I notice?
Yes, and as far as it being other than those that have been proselytized and have adopted the faith of the Hebrew Christians and have been entered into the Israel that were Gentiles, it was dominantly and almost exclusively an ethnically Jewish body of believers in the old covenant.
And in fact, what I'm gonna do, since we're already at the point where we have to take our midway commercial break, I'll wait until we come back until you answer that and start describing that and what you've covered in your book.
And once again, if you have a question, submit it to chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Don't go away, we'll be right back.
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It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world. Here's Joe Reilly, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed, Dr. Joe Moorcraft.
I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai, in County Kildare, Ireland, going back to 2005. One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, are largely to thank since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.
Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards, and Dr. Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight-volume commentary on the larger catechism.
Heritage is a member of the Hanover Presbytery, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.
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Truly grateful for many things that the Trump administration has ushered in, but here's something that seriously concerns me. On July 18th, President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law. This new law allows financial institutions to convert your hard-earned dollars into stable coins, a digital token backed by $37 trillion in national debt.
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As many of you who listen regularly to this show know, we have lost two of our major financial supporters, one of which was Cumberland Valley Bible Book Services, a bookstore here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, which permanently closed its doors about a month ago.
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So if that fits your description, you do not have a biblically faithful church home, send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address to send in a question to Pastor Daniel Holsteg on his book, Go Into All the World.
Chrisarnsen at gmail .com, give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. And as I was asking right before the midway break, I wanted you to go into the aspect of the universal call of the gospel, where there was a radical shift in God's people being nearly exclusively ethnic Jews in the old covenant.
And then you have the gospel being offered to all the nations and you have people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation coming to Christ. Maybe you could tell us something more about that.
Yeah, in the Old Testament, as you mentioned, God primarily established his covenant within the nation of Israel with ethnic Jews, ethnic descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But at the same time, when you scan the Old Testament, you find many prophecies which show that God gave to his people in the Old Testament, the hope that the day was coming when he would open up his covenant into all the nations.
For example, Psalm 22, verse 27, David wrote, all the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. There's many in the book of Isaiah.
We think of Isaiah chapter two, where he speaks of the day when the nations will flow into Mount Zion. And think of the nations in the days of Isaiah, Assyria, Egypt, Babylon, all these hostile nations to Israel.
But Isaiah says that in the day of the Lord, they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and will be at peace with one another in Zion. In the church, there's a striking prophecy in Isaiah 19, where God actually says, blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, mine inheritance.
Blessed be Egypt and Assyria. For the prophet to say that in the days of Isaiah was striking, but it was pointing forward to the day when Christ would come. And I write in my book on page 31, finally at the high point of world history, God fulfilled his promise by sending his own son into human flesh.
And then on page 52, or rather 54, I point out that God's establishment of his covenant, his mode of doing that changed when the Messiah came into the world. And this we must allow to sink deeply into our minds and hearts.
When Christ came, and I'm just reading here, God made abundantly clear that this was the dawn of the last era of history in which he would enlarge his covenant by establishing it with men and women in all nations of the world through missions.
And I mentioned Jesus who said in Matthew 8, verse 11, many shall come from the east and west and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. So what you mentioned, Chris, earlier about in the Old Testament, God was primarily gathering his people from the nation of Israel.
And then when Christ comes, God opens that up and he, for the most part, stops gathering from the Jews and he begins to gather his people out of the Gentiles. And that's really an indisputable fact. We see it in the book of Acts.
Time and time again, Paul turned from the Jews and went to the Gentiles when the Jews rejected the gospel. And there were Jews who were saved, right? There were Jewish Christians in the early church, many of them.
And God did continue his covenant with them and their families. But as time went on, it primarily became a Gentile church. Gentiles were brought into the covenant beautifully from many, many different nations and languages all across the earth.
And we still see that happening today as the church is gathered in all nations. So I think what's really encouraging is to see that God prophesied this in advance in the Old Testament scriptures, and we can see it being fulfilled right before our eyes in the New Testament.
So God is fulfilling his cosmic promise to bring his covenant to all nations, to the whole world. God so loved the world that he gave his son.
Well, we have a listener question from Wilton in White Center, Washington. There's a lot of Ws in there. Wilton in White Center, Washington. Wilton says, I don't want to be insensitive to my Pentecostal and charismatic brothers and sisters in Christ, but would you say that the gift of tongues that God's people often received in the New Testament was not only a means by which God was spreading the gospel to people of all different ethnic backgrounds and nations, but it was also a sign of judgment on the nation of Israel because of the fact of the things that you just mentioned of the covenants switching from almost exclusively a Jewish covenant with God and the gospel going out to all people.
Sorry, I got a little distracted as you're reading there. The main question is, I think, is it whether the speaking in tongues was some kind of judgment from God?
Yeah, well, a sign of judgment against Israel because of the fact that they were no longer the exclusive people of God. I mean, you have Christians today that still say the Jews are the chosen people of God.
We who are Reformed say, no, the chosen people of God are Jews and Gentiles from out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation. So I have heard what Wilton has said myself, and I can't help but to agree with that idea that it was in part the gift of tongues, a judgment against the nation of Israel.
Ben, I don't know what your thoughts are on that.
Yeah, I think, to be honest, I think that's a new concept to me. I understand that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the speaking in tongues that happened on Pentecost was a sign of the outpouring of the Spirit.
I think you can show that the different signs, the tongues of fire that appeared on the heads of the 120 and the speaking in tongues and the sound of a mighty rushing wind, those were all somehow symbolizing what the Holy Spirit was doing.
And the speaking in tongues certainly symbolized that the covenant was now going to be going out into the nations and not just in Israel anymore because they were speaking Aramaic probably, and now they're speaking in all these real languages of real nations, which they never studied before, by the power of the Spirit as a sign.
And now the catholicity of the church, the church is going to spread out into all nations. So maybe in that sense, it was a sign that God was about to move beyond the Jews. And I do believe that there was a judgment of God on the Jewish people for rejecting Christ, the destruction of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, that's all evidence of God's judgment on them for rejecting Christ.
And they have no blood sacrifice any longer. Yeah, other than Christ himself, if they are of Christ's elect, that is the blood sacrifice, the one and only blood sacrifice that redeems anyone.
Amen to that. Yeah, the continuation of the Passover feast among religious Jews is a massive mistake. And I've taught that in catechism and to my own children too. When that time of year comes around, it says Passover maybe on the calendar and point out the fact that we shouldn't be still doing blood sacrifices.
Christ died once and shed his blood and it's finished. And there's salvation in him.
Wilton chimes in.
You can only see that, of course, if you believe Jesus is the Messiah.
Right. Wilton chimes in and says, the reason I was concerned about offending Pentecostals and Charismatics because I believe that is an evidence that tongues are no longer in active place in the new covenant now that we have gone beyond the apostolic era and the fact that Israel is no longer viewed as an exclusive people of God outside of the Christian faith.
So that's why Wilton was explaining what he meant by his apprehension in the beginning. Well, I'd like you to make sure that some of the time that we have left is spent by you delving into areas of your book that you definitely want to highlight within this program.
I wanna make sure that we don't get away from ourselves and take too many listener questions. And so why don't you continue highlighting some of the most important aspects of Go! Into All the World?
Yeah, sure. And I'm flexible too, Chris, whatever, however you wanna do the show. I totally enjoy taking questions too and doing my best to answer them. But I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to be on the show and highlighting the book and pointing out some things.
There is a chapter in the book called, let me check that a minute, it's about a culture for missions, a culture for missions in the covenantal community, that's chapter five. I think that's a important chapter.
It's important to me, it's very practical. And I think that's, especially for religious people, Reformed folk, at least in my own circles, but I think in others too. I had three different men from other Reformed denominations endorsed the book, and they all seem to have that same sense that our Reformed churches would do well to focus on developing a culture for missions in our circles.
Paul Murphy, that you mentioned, he has used that phrase, I quote him in the book, speaking of the need for a culture for evangelism. In his denomination, he's promoting that. Same thing, culture for missions.
Just the idea that we need to recognize we who hold so dearly to covenant theology and the continuation of God's covenant with us and our children, we have to recognize that God's plan includes his purpose to establish his covenant through missions, through outreach, through evangelism with those around us.
I really want to impress that on the people in my own denomination that I love, churches that I love, the people, encouraging and urging them to see the need to develop that culture. It's a culture, right?
It's gotta be a kind of almost like you take it for granted, you swim in those waters. I think that's the way our culture is right now, tends to be more weighted on the education of our own children, which is a wonderful thing.
And I know in many denominations, they perhaps would wish they had more of that kind of a culture, more of an emphasis on educating their own children. I think in my circles, there's no lack of that. There's much emphasis on that, and it's a good thing.
But also, it has to be balanced with, it has to be balanced against the culture for evangelism and missions as well. I think that really, that's what's behind me writing this book in the first place, is trying to urge that, trying to push us to be more evangelistic.
And Chris, for you, probably this is all just, you just say amen, you're running a, you're doing a radio program here. You're all about outreach, right? But you're all about reform theology too. Amen.
So yeah, how can we do that? How can we develop a culture in our homes, in our Christian schools, in our churches, that is balanced between, I call it in-reach and outreach. Right? I mean, you can be too focused on outreach, and then lo and behold, your children grow up, they know hardly anything about God and the Bible, and they're not well-rooted, and they're gone.
You have to give appropriate attention to the children of the church, training them, teaching them. But then we can't neglect, we may not neglect reaching out to our communities, whether it's through radio or literature, going to the local nursing homes, going to universities that are nearby, doing outreach there.
There's all kinds of ways to do evangelism. And then also supporting world missions, obviously, all of it. So that's something I would highlight and direct people to read that chapter and really soak in that idea.
And in fact, throughout history, the greatest missionaries known to mankind have been Reformed. There is something inherent in the doctrines of sovereign grace that has and should give God's people more zeal, passion, courage, and patience going into all the world with the gospel, because we know for a fact that a remnant will respond favorably to that message because they are of the elect, and given time, and God's good time, they will hear, understand, and believe by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And therefore, we don't have to go in fear, trusting in our own gifts of oratory or capabilities and so on. We know that His word shall not return void, and we know that He has a people that at some point will respond.
Am I making sense?
Absolutely. Yeah, amen to that as well. We're not Arminian in our thinking. I can't speak for all of your listeners, but I think I'm not, you're not, and probably many of your listeners, if not most of them, are Reformed in our thinking.
And so we hold to election. We believe God has, before the foundation of the world, chosen every single person that He will save through the Lord Jesus Christ, and He will give them faith. So it doesn't depend on us.
That's entirely liberating when we're doing missions, even when we're teaching our own children the sovereignty of God in salvation. If I had thought that it depends on me, that I have to try to manipulate and get these people to see what I'm saying is true, and get them into the church, and get them to come to Christ, I think we would probably deal with a lot of guilt and a lot of just nasty emotions of feeling like a failure, because we wouldn't, if we're not seeing people come.
But that can cut both ways too, you know? You can, on the other hand, we can't say, well, God will save His elect, so therefore, you know, the amount of evangelism we're doing is good enough. There has to be also room for self-examination and self-reflection and seeing if maybe there is something missing in our zeal, in our methods, in our approach, and maybe that's why God isn't using us to bring in some of His elect.
You see what I mean? We're trying to cut both ways, yeah.
Yes, God doesn't need us to bring His purposes to fulfillment, but He does choose to use us. And if we are going to be lazy, if we are going to be self-absorbed, unconcerned about evangelism, and by the way, to our non-Reformed listeners who think that those are only traits of those who call themselves Calvinists, that's ridiculous.
I know and have met many non-Reformed and even anti-Calvinist people who are not evangelizing anybody and they're not, you know, they're not doing what they accuse us of not doing. But the slander that there is something inherent in the Reformed faith that is against missions and evangelism is just totally slanderous.
Now, are there people that call themselves Reformed that fit that description? Yes, but as I said, there are people in all theological perspectives that fit that description. And
That's an interesting observation. If I could just jump in.
Oh, yeah, definitely.
That's an interesting observation. I think you're absolutely right. What holds people back from confessing Christ before men is not so much their theology, whether it's Arminian or Reformed, it's what's in that person's heart, right?
Is that person absorbed with themselves and an earthly life of riches and pleasures and so on? Or does that person know Christ truly and love Christ and desire to serve and follow Christ in their life, ready like Paul to count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ?
I think it has a lot more to do with the person. You can be a member of a church that is Arminian and claims to be very evangelistic, but people there are not doing any evangelism. They just don't care.
But you could also have that in Reformed churches. So it reminds me of one of the questions in the Heidelberg Catechism, which after it lays out the beautiful doctrine of justification by faith alone in Lourdes Day 23, then Lourdes Day 24, it says, but doesn't this doctrine make men careless and profane?
If you teach men that they're justified by grace alone and faith alone, won't that make them careless and profane? And the answer is no, by no means. The doctrine won't do that. People might be careless and profane.
There might be people who claim to believe this doctrine and they might be careless and profane, but it's not the doctrine's fault. So similarly with election, if there are Reformed people who are not busy in evangelism, it's not the fault of the Reformed doctrine of election or any other Reformed doctrines or the covenant.
It's the fault of that person. That person needs to understand and be thankful to God for what has been given him. And that will overflow in a life of evangelism and the whole flower of the Christian life.
Amen.
We have Jake in Norton Shores, Michigan. And Jake says, would you mind explaining why it is that many people have a misconception of your denomination and label it as hyper-Calvinist?
Sure, I can tackle that for a little bit. How that charge of hyper-Calvinism has been leveled against us. A book has been written explaining that by one of our men.
David Engelsma.
About hyper-Calvinism. Yeah, Professor David Engelsma wrote a book on that. Hyper-Calvinism and the Call of the Gospel.
And I believe John Gerstner wrote the foreword to that. Did he not?
Yes, he did.
Who is the mentor of R .C. Sproul.
Right, good. I think the reason that accusation has been leveled against the PRC is because of our teaching concerning the Call of the Gospel. This past summer, our denomination celebrated our 100th anniversary.
We came into existence back in 1925. In the Christian Reformed Church in the 1920s, there was a controversy that boiled over regarding common grace. And for Herman Hoeksema, George Uphoff, and Henry Danhoff, the main and most important issue was regarding the call or offer of the gospel.
And it was the idea that when the minister preaches the gospel, God himself is offering salvation to every single person who hears with the desire that every single person will receive it. And in their minds, that conflicted with predestination.
So, but those who held to that view of the offer of the gospel, that it is
That's called the well-meant offer, right?
It is, yeah. It goes by different names, the free offer, the well-meant offer. And the trouble was never with the word offer. The Canons of Dort uses that word. The Westminster Standards use that word, I believe.
The offer of the gospel. But the trouble that our churches and our forefathers had was with the idea that the offer of the gospel is God's well-meant, well-intentioned desire, his longing, his passion to save everyone who hears that preaching.
So the idea that God so loved the world means God loves every single person in the world, or at least every single person who hears the gospel. So we took objection to that, our churches did. And I was born and raised in these churches, so I came to understand that too.
So some people have said, well, if you can't preach the well-meant offer of the gospel, then you're hyper-Calvinist. Then you can't really preach the gospel to everyone. But our churches have always maintained, no, we don't, hyper-Calvinism, in my understanding, is the idea that somebody would say, we only should preach the gospel to the elect, or to the people that show the fruits of the Spirit, or the people who show fruits of regeneration, something like that.
We don't believe that, absolutely not.
You believe in indiscriminate evangelism from everyone to the most pious of preachers to the most perverse of prostitutes. Everything in between, you believe in evangelizing everybody, because we don't know who the elect are.
That's right. And certainly, in principle, we believe that, and whether every single member of the Protestant Reformed churches would be able to articulate that well, I can't say that. But in principle, and in our theology, and in doctrinal books, we've always maintained that we must preach the gospel to the whole world, to anyone.
Like you said, from the homeless drug addict on the street, to the university professor in a secular university, whoever it is, we can and we must preach the gospel to them. But then, the way we preach that gospel is we don't say to him, to any old person, regardless of whether they're a Christian or not, God loves you, God wants to save you, God is longing and trying to save you, please come to him.
We just wouldn't preach it like that, as some people would.
And in fact, most, at least if they are theologically knowledgeable in any reasonable degree, most Reformed people of all denominations don't evangelize that way. And we criticize our Arminian brethren for doing that, because you're giving people, you're stripping the fear away of rejecting Christ.
If you're being told over and over again, Jesus loves you, he died for you, well, if he loves me and he died for me, I guess I got nothing to worry about then. So, that's where it is odd that there would be Reformed people who use the ad hominem of hyper-Calvinism towards Protestant Reformed Christians, because most of them don't use that methodology either when evangelizing.
You know, that's interesting. And yeah, in practice, I'm glad when I see that. Yeah, what was I gonna say there?
Oh, I'm sorry for interrupting you.
No, no, no, you're fine. I just lost my train of thought.
But you were talking about
Well, I know what I was gonna say was, so I think that well-meant offer thinking, which is popular in some Reformed circles, is to me, it's a midway between Calvinism and Arminianism. So, there's hyper-Calvinism, that's a real thing, and then there's real Calvinism, and then there's Arminianism, and somewhere between Calvinism and Arminianism is this well-meant offer thinking, which in some cases, it turns into or shows up as basically a full-blown Arminianism.
But as you mentioned, Chris, there's others who would say we hold to the free offer or the well-meant offer theology, but when you listen to their preaching, you would say, well, that sounds pretty good, actually.
It doesn't sound like well-meant offer preaching. So, there is a variety there.
Right, we have to go to our final break. And once again, if you have a question, submit it immediately, because we are rapidly running out of time. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.
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Doug McMasters here, former Director of Pastoral Correspondence at Grace to You, the Radio Ministry of John MacArthur. In the film, Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner, Eric Liddell, remarked that he felt God's pleasure when he ran.
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My keynote speaker for the second time is my favorite preacher on the planet Earth, Dr. Conrad Mbewe, who is a Reformed Baptist Church planter and pastor in Zambia, Africa, a pastor of Kobwata Baptist Church of Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and he's planted dozens of Reformed Baptist churches in Africa.
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We are now back and we have a, let's see, we have a listener from Clay in Pearl, Mississippi and Clay wants to know, to your knowledge, are there any notable Christians of history who either predate your denomination or even after the forming of your denomination who also reject the well-meant offer?
Yeah, there are. Before our denomination came into existence, if you do the study, I did a study of this actually when I was in seminary, I wrote a paper on this and studied the history of Reformed theology on this question.
My contention in my paper was, and obviously I was biased, but my contention was that going back to Calvin, even back to Augustine, I think you could say that the idea of the well-meant offer, it was foreign to their thinking.
And especially with Calvin, if you would get the book, Calvin's Calvinism, there are a couple of his treatises in there.
That's by Dr. Engelsma, correct?
Sorry?
Is that by David Engelsma, Calvin's Calvinism?
No, that's by John Calvin.
Oh, okay. What am I thinking of? I know that Dr. Engelsma, or Professor Engelsma, I should say, wrote a biography of Calvin.
He wrote a summary of the institutes of John Calvin.
Okay, that's right.
But Calvin's Calvinism, it's named after him. Of course, John Calvin didn't give it that name.
Right, that's what bothered me a lot.
Right. It's been given that name, but it's got two treatises written by John Calvin. And in my opinion, it demonstrates very clearly that Calvin did not believe that was the proper way of preaching. And then when you go through the history from Calvin, I don't think you find the well-meant offer for kind of preaching in the Reformation, the major reformers, and I don't believe you find it either in subsequent theology, the Westminster Standards, the Three Forms of Unity.
You might, like I said before, you might find the word offer there. You will find the word offer there, but the full-fledged, well-meant offer theology is not there. It developed after the great creeds were written in the past few centuries, it developed.
And the contention of our denomination, and I share that, is that the well-meant offer theology is the fruits of Arminian thinking creeping into Reformed churches. So I hope that answers the question.
As far as denominations today, I can't say, I don't have exhaustive knowledge, obviously, of every denomination. There are a few very small ones that are sister churches with us, but as Chris and I were talking about earlier, I think there are a lot of people throughout Reformed Christendom who maybe have never heard of the well-meant offer as such, or who are aware of it, but they don't really preach that way.
So that's how I would answer that question.
Well, we are out of time, and I want to make sure that our audience has all the relevant websites. First of all, the website of the church where my guest serves as pastor, Wingham Protestant Reformed Church in Ontario, Canada, winghamprc .org, winghamprc .org.
The website of Reform Free Publishing, who published his book, Go Into All the World. That website is rfpa .org, rfpa .org. And my friend Angus Stewart of the Covenant Protestant Reformed Church wants everybody in the UK to know that you can order the book from his congregation in the UK.
And that website is cprc .co .uk, cprc .co .uk, and just click on Bookstore. Well, I really enjoyed my conversation with you, brother. I look forward to you coming back on the program. I want to thank everybody who listened today, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.