September 29, 2015 Show with Phil Johnson on “Will the Real Charles H. Spurgeon Please Stand Up! Separating Fact from Fiction About the Prince of Preachers”

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

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

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

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

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

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Well good afternoon

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

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 28th day of September 2015 and I'm so excited to have back on the program one of my very favorite guests.

He is probably somebody I've interviewed more than anyone else on the planet, maybe rivaling with Steve Camp, but he is a dear friend and I'm so delighted to be speaking to him today on a very important issue, and it's important, the issue, because of the fact that we are speaking about Charles Haddon Spurgeon and he is one of the most beloved figures in church history and people do disagree widely about what

Spurgeon actually believed and preached and stood for, which is amazing that people disagree over that because he is quite frequently published.

There are many things in print by him, but we're going to try to set the record straight as we address the subject.

Will the real Charles Haddon Spurgeon please stand up? Separating fact from fiction about the

Prince of Preachers and our guest today is Phil Johnson, the Executive Director of Grace to You, which is the

TV and radio ministry of John MacArthur. Phil has been closely associated with Dr.

John MacArthur since 1981 and edits most of his major books. Phil also maintains several popular websites, including the

Spurgeon Archive, which is spurgeon .org, the

Hall of Church History, and the Pyromaniacs blog. He's an ordained elder and pastor at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron once again,

Phil Johnson. Thank you, Chris. Good to be with you. Well, it's great to have you back, and I can't thank you enough for taking the time to spend two hours with us today to discuss the

Prince of Preachers, and I want to immediately give my email address for those of you listening who want to ask a question of Phil Johnson.

Please try to stick to the subject in regard to Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and the email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

When you email us, please include your first name, your city and state where you reside, and the country where you reside if you live outside of the

United States. That's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. We, just last

Monday, had the privilege of interviewing Tom Nettles, Phil, and Tom Nettles addressed specifically his book,

Living by Revealed Truth, the Life and Pastoral Theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and we did go over some of the background of Spurgeon's life, but since we're really going to be talking more directly about his theology and the controversies surrounding his theology in regard to, especially,

Calvinism, I'd like you to just give an abbreviated version of who Charles Haddon Spurgeon is.

Most of my listeners, I'm sure, know who Charles Spurgeon was, I should say, but there are listeners to Iron Trump and Zion who are not evangelical, and there are some who are certainly not

Calvinist, and there are listeners that we have that are Muslim and Roman Catholic and coming from all different kinds of backgrounds, so tell us something about this man that we are talking about today,

Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Well, as you said, he's one of the most beloved figures in church history, and everybody seems to want to claim him.

You know, I know Presbyterians, a few, who would like to turn Spurgeon into a

Presbyterian. The bigger problem is the Armenians who want to turn

Spurgeon into an Armenian, and there's quite a lot of confusing material sort of floating around there about what

Spurgeon actually believed, but he was unapologetically Calvinistic. His church subscribed to the 1689

Baptist Confession of Faith, which was a revised version, actually, of the

Westminster Confession, so it does have a lot of Presbyterianism in it, but it's adapted for Baptist doctrine, but not in the area of soteriology.

When it comes to soteriology, Spurgeon was solidly Calvinistic. He waged war on two fronts during the, really, the whole 50 years of his ministry, one against Hyper -Calvinism, which had become a serious problem in the

Baptist churches in England in the early part of the 19th century, and there were some virulent

Hyper -Calvinistic churches in and around London, and their pastors, many of them older than Spurgeon, opposed him from almost the first time he set foot in London, and so he defended himself against the

Hyper -Calvinists, who taught that, you know, you shouldn't even invite unbelievers to believe in Christ or issue any kind of summons to faith, because, you know, those who are elect will come to faith, and those who aren't shouldn't be encouraged to think that they have the free will to do so, and so he fought against Hyper -Calvinism, and on the other front, though, he fought against Arminianism, a continuous battle against the creeping influence of Arminianism in the

Baptist church, and so it is easy to find two different kinds of quotations in Spurgeon's sermons.

On the one hand, he was resisting the pressure to accommodate the Hyper -Calvinists, and on the other hand, he was resisting the influence of Arminianism, but he was very clear about where he stood, and really, you can study

Spurgeon from the time he set foot in the pulpit, well, actually from the time his sermons began to be printed, really the earliest examples we have of his preaching date back to about 1850 or so, 1850, and he starts with the

Doctrine of God, the very first published sermon in the Metropolitan Tabernacle pulpit, although in those days it was the

New Park Street pulpit, the very first sermon is a sermon on the Doctrine of God, theology proper, and Spurgeon was a young man at the time, he was building his theological convictions, but he wasn't a sort of shifting, you know, shape -shifting preacher when it came to doctrine.

He would study a doctrine before he preached on it, and he would come to fixed convictions, and so what he preached at the beginning of his ministry and what he preached at the end of his ministry is absolutely consistent.

He didn't waver or change, he grew in the depth of his understanding, but he didn't move around theologically.

He was a Calvinist at the beginning, and he remained a Calvinist at the end. Yeah, that's a very important thing to bring up, because that is one of the very charges you will occasionally hear from an anti -Calvinist who says that Spurgeon, as he got older, got wiser and may have been some kind of a

Calvinist in name only, but really was not truly consistent with the theology he held to on paper.

Now, obviously, just in an abbreviated way, if you could define what we're talking about, would you say that, in a very summarized way, that Calvinism is the belief that God is sovereign over all things, including the salvation of men and whom are to be saved, and hyper -Calvinism would be those who agree with that, but they go above not only

Calvin, but more importantly, beyond the scriptures, and teach that God uses no means to bring about the salvation of his elect, including the evangelism of the lost?

Yes, and hyper -Calvinism and Arminianism share a wrong presupposition in common.

Arminians and hyper -Calvinists believe wrongly that the sovereignty of God nullifies human responsibility, and the

Arminian response to that presupposition is that you can't nullify human responsibility, therefore

God must not be totally sovereign. The hyper -Calvinist says, no, God is totally sovereign, and therefore there's no such thing as human responsibility.

That's a simplification of the two views, but I think it's accurate to say they share that wrong presupposition in common, and that's what

Spurgeon rejected on both fronts, the idea that God's sovereignty would nullify human responsibility.

Now, when you say his ministry was Calvinistic from beginning to end, what about his home life?

I know that his father, I believe, was a pastor, a Congregationalist, I think, and was Calvinism taught in his home as he was being raised?

You know, it was. Actually, he grew up as a young child in his grandfather's home.

Victorian biographies are often discreet about issues like health problems and all that.

His mother must have had some complications when his younger sibling, one of his younger siblings, was born, because at the time his next youngest sibling was born, he was sent to live with his grandparents about 50 miles away, and he didn't actually come back to live in his own parents' home until he was five years old.

So whatever sort of health complications his mother must have had were probably fairly serious, but it worked out in the providence of God for Spurgeon to have this sort of hands -on training from an old maid aunt, on the one hand, who taught him early, very early, to read and comprehend what he was reading, and also from his grandfather, who was a

Congregationalist pastor. And he taught Spurgeon, by example, what it is to be a shepherd of the

Lord's flock. I don't think his Calvinism was as solid or explicit as Spurgeon's, but what he did have was a library full of Puritan works that Spurgeon began to read before he was even five years old.

And if you've ever read Puritan works in their original form, it's not necessarily easy reading, but Spurgeon had a very sharp mind and an amazing memory for details, and he was reading

John Owen by the time he was six years old. Yeah, and he wasn't converted until he was like 17, 16, or 17.

So he nevertheless had all this theological understanding that had been sort of put in his mind from reading all these

Puritan works, and from the influence of his grandfather, who I think was Calvinistic, though he wasn't as explicit or theologically oriented as his famous grandson.

Now why, I'm sure, well, I'm assuming you agree with me that this is a very important subject.

One of the reasons that I believe it's important is because of the defense of the truth, and if someone is being misrepresented by numerous

Christians as to what he believed, that's important. But it's also important because of people adopting heroes and misapplying what they taught to their own teachings and practice, and using this figure from history as their hero publicly, and yet this is not what their hero believed or practiced at all.

Tell us why you think the issue of Calvinism in and of itself is an important subject, because a lot of people, as you know,

Phil, they think this is ivory tower stuff for conversations amongst scholars as they sit around with snifters of brandy and smoking cigars, and it doesn't really need to go beyond the walls of these kind of discussions, and certainly shouldn't be a prominent part of our pulpits.

What do you think about Calvinism? Yeah, and I understand that perspective, because when I was a very young Christian, I had that perspective.

I was zealous for evangelism, and I didn't understand why anyone would want to sit in a room discussing theological fine points when we could be out giving the gospel.

And I still think there are people who are too prone to gravitate to debates on theological minutiae and ignore the duty we have to spread the gospel.

But this isn't that sort of issue where it's all just minutiae and it really doesn't make any difference.

What you believe about the sovereignty of God and the role of God versus the role of man in salvation does go to the gospel.

And so when you're out there evangelizing, what gospel are you going to proclaim? What is the good news?

And what does grace mean? What are these words that we all talk about when we share the gospel?

What do they mean? And Calvinism is often called the doctrines of grace.

I prefer that name, because I think it emphasizes the fact that what we're talking about here is the nature of God's grace and God's sovereign intervention into a human world that is bent on self -destruction.

And only Calvinists, I think, truly understand what that means.

Arminians always want to sort of take away something from the depravity of man.

They have to, because they believe ultimately it's up to the person himself to make the right choice, and he has to do that on his own and all of that.

And so he can't be as fallen as Scripture says he is. He can't be totally in bondage to sin if he has to make an unaided choice to follow

Christ. So ultimately, these are very important doctrines. How far do you think the human race has fallen?

How much do you think we need the grace of God? And how much credit does

God deserve for our salvation? All of those questions, if you attempt to answer them honestly and biblically, it will drive you to the doctrines of grace.

And many of us who would call ourselves Calvinists became Calvinists because of Scripture before we ever read a word of Calvinism, of what

Calvin wrote. It's not about following a man, that's just a nickname given to a system of theology that really stresses the grace of God, and that's why

I like the term the doctrines of grace. So it's a very important issue, and Spurgeon understood that instinctively almost from the beginning.

Yes, and I know I've brought this story up before, so I hope my listeners will bear with me if they've heard it and are already getting bored with it the moment

I speak. But to prove the point of how biblical these issues are, years ago

I received a phone call from an Orthodox Jewish journalist who was a retired journalist, elderly man, quite smart, quite brilliant.

And he said that he wanted to buy three hours of time on the Christian radio station

I work for to debate a local fundamentalist Baptist, and this individual happened to be anti -Calvinist, but the

Jewish caller had no knowledge of this, he just wanted to debate on the authenticity and reliability of the

New Testament and so on, because he considered himself a New Testament scholar. And during this debate with the fundamentalist

Baptist, he said to the the pastor, now let me get this straight, you believe that before the foundations of the world

God chose a certain number of people to be saved, and he passed the others by and let them die in their sin to be condemned, and the pastor interrupted him and said,

Ira, Ira, you've got it wrong, you're talking about Calvinism. And Ira said, what's that?

He said, I've read your New Testament, your Bible, your Bible, the Christian Bible, over a hundred times, and that's what it teaches, what are you, what's this

Calvinism? And he kept, every time he brought up something about unconditional election, not by that term, but using just biblical texts and so forth, the pastor kept interrupting him and insisting this was a

Calvinistic teaching, and the man was totally, the Jewish man was totally confused, because he thought that all

Christians believed these things that you and I are talking about. Yeah, yeah. And whenever you can, you can shoot to any quotes that you care to give, but the one thing that I wanted to bring up right off the bat, and I don't know if you have this specific quote in front of you by Spurgeon, but Spurgeon actually said that Calvinism is the gospel, and some people may get heart palpitations hearing that, because the immediate assumption is going to be by many, well, that means that if Calvin, I mean, if Spurgeon believed that Calvinism is the gospel, that means that those who disagree with Calvinism are certainly damned if they have a false gospel.

If you could give a further explanation on that quote, and why you think

Spurgeon said it, and what he meant by it. Yes, Spurgeon did say that. He actually wrote it in a famous pamphlet that he wrote called

A Defense of Calvinism, and you have to read the quote in context, and it has been taken out of context and abused by both

Calvinists and Arminians. When Spurgeon said that, what he's saying is, and the context of the quote makes it clear, that what he means is that the principle that underlies

Calvinism, the idea that God is sovereign and that salvation is the work of God, or in fact, in that context,

Spurgeon quotes from the book of Jonah, where Jonah says salvation is of the

Lord. He says that's the central principle of Calvinism. It's also the central principle of the gospel.

Salvation is of the Lord. If you're preaching to anyone that their salvation is something that hinges on something they do, then you are twisting the gospel.

So there are really two kinds of Arminianism. There's evangelical Arminianism, which recognizes the doctrine of justification by faith and properly credits

God for salvation, but I think muddles the issue of human free will and the role of grace, and yet an evangelical

Arminian would say, yes, salvation is entirely God's work. You have to say that in order to get the gospel right, and Spurgeon is simply pointing out that that really is the principle that underlies

Calvinism. That's the message that the doctrines of grace proclaim, that salvation is of the

Lord. Our salvation is God's work from beginning to end. It's the same thing Paul says in Romans 8, 29, that God foreordained us, he foreknew us, he chose us, predestinated us in eternity past, and he guarantees our glorification in eternity future, and every step of our salvation and sanctification along the way is ultimately the work of God and empowered by his grace, not by our free will.

Yes, and don't you think that another reason why this denial of Spurgeon's Calvinism exists is because people just totally misunderstand what

Calvinism is, and they think that all Calvinists are hyper -Calvinists.

They think that being a five -point Calvinist is equivalent to hyper -Calvinism, so therefore when they see or read

Spurgeon giving the free offer of the gospel and earnestly preaching to sinners to repent and believe and be saved and so on, they say, well, obviously he is not a

Calvinist, or at the very least, he's not consistent with his Calvinism, or perhaps he altogether abandoned any

Calvinism that he once had. If you could continue on that. Yeah, yeah, in fact you can trace the genealogy of that argument, you know, it goes back,

I think it was first popularized in the 1970s or so in a book that was written by a man named

Samuel Fiske, wrote a book called Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom, and in it he has a whole chapter called something like Spurgeon's Other Side or the

Other Side of Spurgeon or something like that, and you'll find that pretty much every anti -Calvinist writer who has written since Fiske has gone back and quoted the same sermon excerpts that Fiske dug out, and I mean, the ones who want to discredit

Spurgeon's Calvinism or question whether he really is a Calvinist, they always cite those same quotes.

So Fiske is the ultimate source, but his material has been repeated by everyone from, you know,

Vance to Dave Hunt. Dave Hunt actually almost practically started his book in the,

I think it's in the preface of the book or it's in the first 20 pages of his book, in the original edition, he claimed that Spurgeon despised the

Calvinistic doctrine of particular redemption. Right. You know, what most people would call limited atonement, that Spurgeon rejected that.

Spurgeon didn't reject that doctrine, and it's quite clear. In fact, I carried on quite an extensive exchange of letters and personal conversations with Dave Hunt over this very issue, and he never did acknowledge that he misrepresented

Spurgeon, but he kept changing the claim. He starts out in the book saying his exact words are that Spurgeon rejected the doctrine of limited atonement, and he did so with unequivocal language, but then when pressed on the point and people showed him quotations directly from Spurgeon, not from Samuel Fiske's book, but what

Spurgeon actually said to prove that Spurgeon did hold to the Calvinistic view of the atonement,

Dave Hunt changed his argument and basically said, well, Spurgeon contradicted himself. My question to Dave Hunt was what happened to the unequivocal language if he's contradicting himself?

And I actually met with Dave Hunt and challenged him on this and challenged him to acknowledge he got it wrong and he needs to correct the notion that Spurgeon held to an

Arminian view of the atonement. He never did, but in later editions of the book, he took those sections out.

He just quietly deleted them. I don't think he ever admitted that he got it wrong, but it was clear because I took

Dave Hunt's book and compared it to Fiske's book, and the language was so close that if you gave it to a typical college professor, he might conclude that Dave Hunt plagiarized what

Fiske had to say about Spurgeon. We know that Dave Hunt knows better now. In fact,

I think one of the things that he misquoted Spurgeon on, and if it wasn't him, it was some other very popular anti -Calvinist apologist who took half of Spurgeon's attack on limited atonement, and they didn't realize what he was saying was that the

Arminians truly limit the atonement because they limit its power. Not everyone for whom it was intended in the

Arminian theology will be saved, so therefore it is not as powerful as the

Calvinist atonement, which truly atones for everyone for whom it was intended. Do you think that Spurgeon, some folks believe

Spurgeon perhaps went too far when he compared the god of the Arminian who would once again punish in hell sinners for whom he had already died for and paid for their sins, he compared it to the god of all kinds of monstrous idolaters and so on?

Do you think that that was an overstep of his in his language and his fervor there? No, I don't.

I think it is a kind of hyperbole in the sense that I don't think any evangelical

Arminian really entertains monstrous views of God. I mean, they don't believe that God is monstrous, but when you break down their theology and, you know, look at what it means that actually if Christ was punished for Judas's sins and now

Judas is also paying for those sins, you know, in hell, then that makes

God in some sense unjust or that's a monstrous idea, and I think that's what Spurgeon was saying.

We all tend to use hyperbole in theological discussions at times.

Arminians certainly do that all the time. Yes, they do. In fact, Dave Hunt's book was full of accusations that the god of Calvinism is a monster, you know, and I think he genuinely believed that, but I don't think he understood

Calvinism. No, he didn't. In fact, it's interesting that James White has two separate recordings of our late brother,

Dave Hunt, where on one occasion when he debated James on the radio, it was just a friendly conversation really that was sort of a debate.

It wasn't like an officially moderated timed debate or anything like that, during a radio interview,

Dave Hunt said, I'm very ignorant of the reformers, and then six months later, also on a radio program, he said,

I think I know more about Calvinism than the average Calvinist. Yes, and he also at one point said that he had a library filled with their writings, and initially he said that he'd never read any of the reformers' teachings, so quite an interesting individual.

We're going to be going to our first break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, and we do already have some listeners from different parts of the country who have emailed us questions, if you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Phil Johnson, preferably on our subject,

Charles Adams Spurgeon, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and please include your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. We'll be right back, so don't go away. Charles Adams Spurgeon once said, give yourself unto reading.

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back. This is Chris Arns.

And if you've just tuned us in, we have on our program today Phil Johnson, who is the Executive Director of Grace to You, the television and radio ministry of John MacArthur.

And before we go back to our discussion, I just have a couple of events that I want to promote. One is including our guest today,

Phil Johnson. But first, I want to let you know that Pastor Bruce Bennett and the Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, invite you to join them at their 6th

Annual Bible Conference on October 2nd and 3rd. This year's topic will be Eschatology, a

Biblical Examination of the Four Major End Times Views. We are pleased to have

Pastors Chris Pandolfi, Dave Corson, Mark Rimaldi, and Rich Jensen presenting one of the four views each.

The conference will have five sessions. Session 1 will be on Friday, October 2nd at 7 p .m.

And Chris Pandolfi defends premillennial dispensationalism. Session 2 will be at 10 a .m.

on Saturday as Pastor Dave Corson defends historical premillennialism.

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as Pastor Rich Jensen defends postmillennialism. Dinner will be served at 5 .45 p .m.

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And also our guest, Phil Johnson, is a speaker at the upcoming From Dust to Glory Conference, A Tale of Two Adams, November 6th through the 7th in Princeton, New Jersey.

He and Philip Reichen will both be addressing this topic at this conference, the

Princeton Regional Conference on Reform Theology. For more information, go to alliancenet .org

and click on events. Well, we are back to our discussion now, and we do have some listeners who have taken the time to write us questions,

Phil. And first of all, we have a question from Liz in Holtzville, New York.

She says, I've tried to find out for years whether or not

Charles Dickens ever met or corresponded with Spurgeon. I guess they had to be the two of the most well -known figures of the day.

And as a teacher, I'd really appreciate any information Mr. Johnson could share.

The closest I've ever come to anything was when I spoke to Dickens' great -great -grandson last winter.

He was very intrigued by the question himself, and he claims to be a

Christian and said he would try to research it for me. Just really curious if your guest knows.

I don't believe they ever met. I had the same question actually years ago when the

Spurgeon Library was at William Jewell College in Kansas City. By the way, they've just reopened that now at Midwestern Seminary there in Kansas City.

But the Spurgeon Library was on display there, and I went there. One of the goals

I had was to find out if Spurgeon even owned a set of Dickens' novels, and he did. There are a few references to Dickens in Spurgeon's writings, and maybe even in a couple of his sermons.

In the autobiography, Spurgeon says this. He says, I'm looking for it.

Some of Charles Dickens' works are worth reading, although he has given gross caricatures of the religious life of his times.

As for the general run of novels being now issued in such shoals, you will probably be wise to leave them alone.

A few of them would probably be likely to do you any good, and many of them are tainted or worse. So I would say he didn't give gripping reviews to Dickens or the value of his works.

Yeah, but you don't know if they ever met. There's no mention of it there. No, and if they had ever met,

I'm sure someone would have mentioned it or recorded it somewhere. Well, what I wonder is if Dickens ever actually went to hear

Spurgeon preach, because pretty much everybody in London eventually did. It wouldn't surprise me to know that Dickens actually sat through a

Spurgeon sermon, but Dickens wasn't the most pious believer that ever lived. Well, the answer to Liz's question may have somewhat disappointed her, but Liz, I'm very happy to tell you that you are the winner of Charles Haddon Spurgeon's Lectures to My Students, and this is a massive 911 -page hardback volume given to you compliments of Banner of Truth.

And I know from your letter that you sent, your email, that you are the wife of a pastor, so I'm sure that both of you will get a lot of value out of this book, especially since you already know who

Charles Haddon Spurgeon is, and I'm quite certain that your husband does. So we will be shipping this off to you very soon, and we thank you for the question.

We have another listener, this one in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.

Christian asks, with all of the talk that we have all been enduring recently regarding Pope Francis's visit to the

United States, I was curious if Charles Haddon Spurgeon had anything significant to say about the papacy.

Yeah, yeah, quite a bit, actually. Just look up, I mean, every reference he ever made to the

Pope was negative. I think the most interesting thing in all of Spurgeon's published works are his travelogues of his visits to Rome.

And I put some of those online with the illustrations that were published in the original, and Spurgeon goes around Rome and looks at some

Catholic landmarks and comments about them. Very enlightening. He was strongly anti -Calvinistic.

I mean, anti -Catholic. And, you know,

I use that term anti -Catholic in the sense that, not that I think he was cruel or unduly prejudiced, his criticisms of the

Catholic Church had to do with their doctrinal stance on these issues. And he was very careful to represent them,

I think, fairly, and yet his criticisms are harsh. He didn't have a lot of patience for the

Catholic tendency to elevate the authority of popes and councils over Scripture.

And that's where most of his criticism was focused. And a typical Catholic apologist today would berate him for being anti -Catholic and say that, you know, anti -Catholicism is inherently bigoted and all of that.

But Spurgeon was a student of theology, and I think he gave a fair reading to Roman Catholicism before he was critical of it.

But he was definitely critical of Roman Catholicism, and he would not be one of those guys out there glad -handing the current pope.

So he would not be imitating Rick Warren during this event in our history.

Yeah, I can't imagine him taking a selfie with Pope Francis. And the issue,

I think, with Pope Francis would be just beyond the normal problems with Catholic theology, because Francis himself at times doesn't seem like a very good

Catholic. But his liberal social ideas and political ideas and all of that,

I think, would be—well, his liberal ideas are primarily on moral issues, when we're crawling to Spurgeon.

And one thing that perhaps you'd like to clarify, obviously the term anti -Catholic is often used as a pejorative term against people like you and I, and they try to equate that with bigotry.

Like, for instance, the Ku Klux Klan has a history of being anti -Catholic, and they're actually against individuals who are

Catholic. Whereas you really meant anti -Catholicism in more of the—

Yeah, that's what I mean. What I say is his complaint was not over petty or personal issues.

It had to do with the teaching of the Catholic Church and dogmas that go back to the time of the

Reformation, even, and before. That's where he focused his criticism.

It was never personal. I don't think he ever made fun of the Pope, but I don't even know who the Pope was during Spurgeon's time.

I'd have to look that up. But, you know, there are evangelical critics of Roman Catholicism who,

I think, use those tactics ungraciously, making fun of the Pope or mocking

Catholics for what they believe and all that. That wasn't Spurgeon's style at all, but he was very harshly critical of Roman Catholic doctrine, and particularly when it came to issues that are very close to the

Gospel. And in that, I share with him, if you want to label that anti -Catholic, I'll say, yeah,

I'm definitely not pro -Catholic, but it doesn't mean that I have any kind of ill will towards friends and relatives and people who are

Roman Catholic. Mm -hmm. And he lived, of course, there was no violent persecution of Protestants in Spurgeon's day by the

Church of Rome, but he lived closer to that day, and living in England, I'm sure, that was quite well known to folks that the streets ran red with blood when the

Catholic, when the royal throne in England was occupied by a

Roman Catholic. Right. And, you know, not just there, but all over Europe.

There's another interesting article from The Sword and the Trowel that I put online, Spurgeon's sort of recounting of the

St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, which was a day of slaughter that essentially attacked all of the

Protestants and Calvinists in France and, you know, unleashed a spirit of hatred and contempt towards Protestants that ultimately drove most of the

Protestants out of France. And I am almost certain, and perhaps you could either confirm this or disagree with it, but I'm almost certain he used the language of at least the original edition of the 1689

London Baptist Confession that identified the Pope as the Antichrist. Yeah, I think that's right.

He did make some revisions to the 1689 Confession. I can look that up real quickly for you if you like, but I don't think that was one of the things he revised.

I think he left the terminology that says the Pope is Antichrist.

Well, if you find that during the discussion, feel free to read it. We, let's see, we do have a listener in Lindenhurst, Long Island, CJ.

He writes, do you think that Charles Haddon Spurgeon has become an idol to many

Christians and that the level of reverence and discussion that surrounds him has bordered on sin and idolatry?

Yeah, I mean, I don't think that's a widespread problem, because those of us who love

Spurgeon generally are willing to acknowledge, you know, that he's not like the

Catholics view their Pope. He's not infallible. He doesn't speak with any kind of ex -cathedra authority.

But he was amazingly precise when he taught and when he dealt with theological issues.

And, you know, there aren't many men in church history who I would put on a higher pedestal, but, you know,

Spurgeon himself would say, don't put me on a pedestal at all. And I want to let both

Christian and CJ know that you are both receiving a copy of the same book I just mentioned before, this beautiful 911 -page volume,

C. H. Spurgeon's Lectures to My Students, Compliments of Banner of Truth.

And by the way, most of the books, if not all of the books, that we mentioned here on Iron Sharpens Iron can be obtained by going to solid -ground -books .com,

solid -ground -books .com, which is one of the sponsors of Iron Sharpens Iron.

And, of course, another sponsor, loyal sponsor of our program is

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. And their website is cv, as in valley, bb, as in bible book, s as in sam, service .com,

cvbbs .com. And a portion of all the books that you purchase from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, a portion of the money actually goes to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

So we thank those folks there. And you can rest assured that anything that they are offering in their catalog is theologically sound, so you don't have to be worried.

And Phil, as you know, most Christian bookstores or internet book warehouses should have a warning that says enter at your own risk.

Don't you agree? Yeah, that's true. The state of Christian publishing these days is deplorable.

I looked up Spurgeon's version of the 868 -89 Baptist Confession, and this is chapter 26, paragraph 4.

It says, The Lord Jesus Christ is the head of the church. In him, by the appointment of the Father, is vested in a supreme and sovereign manner all power for the calling, institution, order, and government of the church.

The Pope of Rome cannot in any sense be head of the church, but he is that antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition, who exalts himself in the church against Christ and all that is called

God, whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of his coming. Now, I want you perhaps to come back on this show to focus on some of what

I'm about to say, but the thing that I've been getting a lot of heat from Roman Catholic friends of mine,

I actually was raised Roman Catholic, went to Catholic school for eight years, was an altar boy, have a number of Catholic friends who are wonderful people, and they have gotten quite upset, some of them, with posts that I have put on Facebook and so on in related to the

Pope's visit. They see this kind, gentle, soft -spoken, grandfatherly man who all he wants to do is spread peace and love, peace and love.

How on earth could you have a problem with that and tear a man like that down? If you could comment on that, maybe answer that question for me.

Yeah, well, you know, that just doesn't carry a lot of weight with me because there've been a lot of, over the course of human history, there've been a lot of evil men who've risen to positions of great power by portraying themselves as more kindly than they are, and Scripture warns us that even

Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light, and so Paul says it's no wonder that his ministers also disguise themselves as angels of light.

What a person comes across as is really not any gauge of whether he's reliable theologically or not.

You have to, in fact, we're commanded by Scripture to test their fruit, and that starts with the fruit of their teaching, the soundness of their doctrine.

Do they agree with Scripture, or do they oppose it? And I think it's fairly simple to demonstrate with this

Pope that there are some pretty clear teachings in Scripture that he opposes, starting with the idea that Christ is the head of the

Church. He claims to be the head of the Church, and I mean, that's been a problem with every

Pope. That is the problem with the Papacy. Yeah, and I had

Robert St. Genes, who is a Roman Catholic apologist, I had him on my program because I wanted someone from the

Roman Catholic Church who is a communicant member in good standing. He's not under discipline.

He hasn't been excommunicated. He hasn't been silenced by a bishop or anything, and he was one of the reasons

I had him on my program, and some people misunderstood this as a platform for modern ecumenism or something.

It had nothing to do with that because I made it clear throughout the entire program that Robert St.

Genes and I had different Gospels, but Robert had the courage to say very critical things about Pope Francis, not only denying things that were clearly biblical and historically

Christian, but even things that would fly in the face of Catholic history, and he was,

Robert, admitted to being fired from EWTN, the Eternal Word Television Network, probably the most well -known

Roman Catholic TV network, because he was critical of Pope John Paul II in the same light of because he was having ecumenical prayer meetings with pagans and all kinds of people.

So this has nothing to do with hating people or trying to be nasty, and of course some people can be hateful and nasty when they oppose a figure like the

Pope, but this has to do with a love of truth, does it not? Yeah, it does, it does, and you know,

I don't understand how the groups like Catholic Answers and those

Catholics who've devoted themselves to actually answering

Protestant objections to Roman Catholicism, I don't see how they stay in business under this

Pope. It seems to me that his positions pretty much undermine everything they've ever tried to do.

Mm -hmm, we do have another listener, his name is

Cornel, no, I'm sorry, it's Richard, I'm sorry, looking at the wrong name there, Richard in Patterson, New Jersey.

He says, I was planning on attending the conference that Phil Johnson is speaking at in November, until I discovered that the conference is being held at a

PCUSA church, which is an extremely liberal denomination. So my question is, why is it being held there, and does

Phil see any problems with this? And that resonates with home because I was attending a church a number of years ago, a couple of years ago, that was worshiping in an

Episcopal church that they were renting, an Episcopal church that had a female minister, they were definitely towards the liberal end, and people were highly insulted and upset that we would dare worship in a place like that, and the pastor made sure that all icons and things of that nature were covered, so there was nothing like that on display, but obviously you're speaking at this church, so you couldn't be too upset about that, but what is your opinion about renting a facility where the owners of that facility have a false gospel?

Yeah, actually, I'm just looking it up. The correspondence

I have, this is being sponsored by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, the correspondence I have with them says that the conference was to be held at Miller Chapel on the campus of Princeton Theological Seminary.

Now, I don't know if that's a PCUSA church, or it sounds to me like it's the campus chapel.

I don't know. I don't know. Either way, if it's a rented facility, it's not necessarily cooperation with that church.

If it's a rented facility, I don't have a problem. I wouldn't have a problem speaking anywhere as long as they didn't tell me what

I could or couldn't say. If somebody says to me, now this is a PCUSA church, so you can't say these certain things, then

I'd be out of there, but they're not going to say that to me. I mean, I've done conferences with the

Alliance in the past, and it's one of my favorite groups to work with, because they've encouraged us to be candid and biblical, and there's no limit on what

I can and can't say. So, I don't know. I would assume if it's a... and I don't know.

I don't know what the venue is yet. I don't have that in the correspondence I've had with them, but I would assume if it's a

PCUSA church, it's simply a rented facility. They rented the auditorium.

There won't be any sort of promotion of PCUSA activities or the church itself or any of that, and if it's necessary in someone's mind for me to be clear about it,

I'll say that in my message from their pulpit. And of course, there are evangelical

Bible -believing members of the PCUSA, and obviously that's another question whether they should remain there.

I don't think they should. And even John Gerstner remained in one very long before he finally left, the late

John Gerstner. But in fact, Dr. R .C. Sproul was in that denomination, but eventually left, obviously.

So, obviously, you think they should leave, but there are... we have to make sure that we don't broad brush all of their pastors as being...

Yeah, well, hey, I'm a Baptist. I think they ought to all become Baptists. And I agree with you.

We're going to be going to a break right now, and, oh, by the way, I just wanted to let Richard know that although you can't have one of the

Spurgeon's Lectures to my students, because we're all out of those, Banner of Truth has also provided us with Christ's glorious achievements, which you're going to be receiving free of charge in the mail, and please just email me your address so I can have that shipped out to you,

Richard. And this is Richard in Patterson, New Jersey. We're going to be going to a break right now, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Phil Johnson about Charles Haddon Spurgeon, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back. Don't go away.

Don't go away. Don't go away. Don't go away.

Don't go away. Don't go away. We know we were made for so much more than ordinary life.

Lending faith, finances, and generosity. That's the Thrivent story. We were made to thrive.

We were made to thrive. Lynnbrook Baptist Church on 225

Earl Avenue in Lynnbrook, Long Island is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century. Our church is far more than a

Sunday worship service. It's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant.

It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement. It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people and healing.

We're a diverse family of all ages, enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ in fellowship, play, and together.

Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman and I invite you to come and join us here at Lynnbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

Call Lynnbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402 or visit lynnbrookbaptist .org.

That's lynnbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Arns. And if you just joined us, our guest today is

Phil Johnson, the Executive Director of Grace to You, which is the television and radio ministry of world -renowned author and Bible teacher

John MacArthur. And I just had to chuckle because we got an email from Josh in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, who says, as a question,

Mr. Johnson, will you please ask Chris to give me a copy of Lectures to My Students?

Now, that doesn't count as a question. You have to have a question that actually can be an interesting contribution to the discussion,

Josh. So if you have another question, you can send another email.

And we don't have any of that book left, but you can send us another email for another book by Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

But anyway, and our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And by the way, I had to just quickly tell you a funny story,

Phil. I'm actually fighting a depression today because right before I came into the studio,

I went to Wendy's to get two cups of coffee to last me through the program. And the receipt that I got back from the young teenage girl behind the register, the receipt was zero, zero, zero, zero.

And I said, I don't understand why is this zero on the receipt here? And she said very rudely, because seniors get coffee free.

I'm 53 years old. I'm not quite at that point yet. It's just a reminder to me

I have to shave my white beard. It grows in very light. Yeah, there you go. But anyway, we do have another listener.

And it's obviously somebody that you know, Phil, Frank Turk from Pyromaniac.

I do know Frank. Yes. And Frank asks, Does Phil miss internet ministry?

And what is his advice for anyone who thinks he wants to get into speaking for Christianity through the internet?

Yeah, you know, I quit blogging more than two years ago now. I can't even remember, is it two or three years ago, it's been a long time since I wrote for the blog

Pyromaniacs. I started that blog back in 2005, because I saw the emerging church movement sort of beginning to explode in popularity.

And there just didn't seem to be any outspoken critics or really clear critics, there was a the only written material

I'd seen criticizing the emerging church movement was an early book by DA Carson.

And he was pilloried for it. And I thought, you know, this movement needs some, some more criticisms, because it was, it was very troublesome.

And so I started the blog, really to take on the emerging church movement, it died around that movement died around,

I don't know, 2012 or 2013. Finally, the last gasp.

And I started to realize it's hard for me to write daily blog posts, because I've run out of opinions.

I don't I don't have any new opinions, everything I feel strongly about, I've already written about. And so finally made the decision to stop just before my 60th birthday.

And it was the best decision I ever made, I've never regretted it. There have only been maybe two times in the intervening years where I thought, if I was still blogging,

I'd put that on. But then my next very next thought was, I'm glad I don't have the pressure to do that.

So no, I don't miss that. I haven't left the internet completely. I still do, you know,

Twitter and Facebook. So occasionally, I'll make a snide remark on Twitter or something like that.

But other than that, no, I really don't miss it. And enjoyed it,

I did enjoy it. That's not to say that it was a drudgery. I, I think those years of writing for the blog were very stimulating.

And I especially appreciated the the back and forth. It was the only venue where you could write and on that same day, have three to 5000 people read what you wrote.

And those who felt strongly about it could react one way or the other either agree or disagree with you.

And, you know, it provokes you to think and rethink and, and I think it was a good exercise.

But I did it for a decade and just got burned out on it. And I'm in my 60s now.

So I'm not likely to get enough energy back to start that up again. I miss

Frank, though, he was my blog partner. He and Dan Phillips, and they've more or less kept the blog going.

I looked at it today. And it looks to me like, you know, they've lost a little steam as well. I still love those guys.

We got together in January and did a conference in Houston at Dan Phillips Church. And so we got the band back together.

And that was fun. Well, Frank, if you shoot me your address, you will get a free copy of Christ's glorious achievements by Charles Haddon Spurgeon compliments of the banner of truth.

And we thank banner of truth for their generosity and, and giving these books to our listeners.

Going back to the confusion of Charles Haddon Spurgeon over whether or not he was a full fledged dyed in the wool, thoroughgoing five point

Calvinist. One of the obvious reasons why those who dislike or even despise

Calvinism say that Spurgeon was not is because they see his opposition to hyper

Calvinism to real hyper Calvinism. The strict Baptist, I think were the largest group among them at the time, were they not?

Right. Yeah. And as I said, you know, when Spurgeon began preaching in the 1850s in London, hyper

Calvinism was a pretty significant problem among Baptists. And a lot of the churches had begun to die and lose their evangelistic zeal and all because of the influx of hyper

Calvinism or the slow poison of hyper Calvinism. Spurgeon recognized too that his famous predecessor,

John Gill, had sort of given some steam to that movement.

And he loved Gill's writings, but he constantly, whenever he mentioned

Gill, almost every time, he cautioned people that you mustn't go any further than Gill in, you know, seeking a high position of Calvinism or because Gill's doctrines had led to coldness in a lot of churches.

Now, you're saying that the doctrines themselves were not hyper Calvinist, but they led to hyper

Calvinism in cases? Yeah, I mean, the debates in those days were over duty faith.

Is faith the duty of an unbeliever? And as Spurgeon would say, yes,

Gill was a little iffy on that. And if not denying that faith is a

And he seemed to balk at the idea of making indiscriminate calls for repentance and faith.

And so people who followed him in that direction became even higher Calvinists than Gill.

And our mutual friend,

Tom Nettles, would defend Gill as not being a hyper Calvinist himself.

In fact, he does so and by his grace and for his glory. Yeah, there's a big debate on that. And I'm kind of in the middle.

I see hyper Calvinistic tendencies in some of what Gill wrote, but I don't think it's fair to just label him a hyper

Calvinist. You have the same issue with Pink. Pink wrote some things that smack of hyper

Calvinism. And yet Pink himself waged war against those who denied that faith is the duty of unbelievers.

He was strongly in favor of duty faith, but also pretty strongly opposed to the notion that God's demeanor towards the reprobate can never be labeled love, you know?

So he almost seemed to say that the appearance of compassion that God shows to the reprobate is kind of a false front, which

I think that's problematic. So I'm somewhere in the middle. I have a friend who did his doctoral thesis,

Kurt Daniel, did a massive doctoral thesis on the question of whether Gill was a hyper

Calvinist or not. He concluded that Gill is a hyper Calvinist. He's got 900 pages of documentation making that argument.

So it's an argument that can't be lightly dismissed. And I'd say I'm probably somewhere in between Kurt Daniel and...

Right. And Ian Murray also would side with Kurt Daniel on that issue.

Yeah. By the way, Ian Murray's book on Spurgeon and hyper Calvinism, that's the title of it.

Spurgeon and hyper Calvinism. Actually, it's Spurgeon versus hyper Calvinism. That's right. That's right. That would do a lot to dispel the myth that Spurgeon was self -contradictory or uncertain about certain

Calvinistic doctrines or whatever. The other thing is, I often... When people use these arguments with me, well,

Spurgeon recognized human responsibility and he preached the free offer and all that, so he could not have been a

Calvinist. I always tell people, look, read Spurgeon for yourself. Stop reading these anti -Calvinistic rants that selectively quote from Spurgeon and take him out of context and just read what

Spurgeon had to say. Because often, in the very same context where these cherry -picked quotes come from,

Spurgeon clarifies his position and he is unwaveringly Calvinistic and unashamed to use that term to describe himself.

In fact, it's one of his most popular and most famous... It's actually, I think, on my website, the

Spurgeon Archive, the one page that gets more hits than any other is the booklet that Spurgeon wrote called

A Defense of Calvinism. And I think that comes right out of his autobiography, because I have his three -volume, his original three -volume autobiography, and I think it's an excerpt right out of it.

I think that's right. I think you're right. That's a chapter in the autobiography, which, by the way, was four volumes.

Don't you have all four? Oh, yeah, actually, you're right. Yeah. And we have another question, this time a serious one, from Josh in Riverhead, Long Island, New York.

He says, will you recommend, in your opinion, the best book about Spurgeon?

And his follow -up question is, what would you say it is about Spurgeon that makes him love seemingly so much more than his contemporaries?

Let me answer the first question. Those are both hard questions, because they're multiple answers.

I'm tempted to say Tom Nettles' book. It's the newest biography of Spurgeon. I've probably read 30 biographies of Spurgeon, and I think

Nettles is probably the most interesting of all. It's gripping and well -written, and he digs up some...

You read all those biographies of Spurgeon, you find you're reading the same tales over and over. A lot of the biographies are indistinguishable from one another, but Tom Nettles dug up some interesting facts about Spurgeon that I'd never seen anywhere before.

It's very enlightening, and I think a sympathetic look at Spurgeon's theology. The previous biggest volume on Spurgeon was by Louis Drummond, who also had some interesting facts that I'd never read anywhere else, and yet he wasn't sympathetic to Spurgeon's theology, and he made some ridiculous comments there.

He said he thought that Spurgeon and Charles Finney should have met, that they would each other because they had a lot in common.

I'm thinking, that's not the Spurgeon I read. Yeah, I don't know how you could hardly get that out of...

Although, if you're an Arminian yourself and you read Finney sympathetically, then

I think you might want to believe that. One of the interesting facts that Drummond dug up that I'd never seen anywhere was that Finney and Spurgeon had a mutual friend.

A man named Pottow Brown, who had hosted Spurgeon when he was a young man, very young man, and got into a theological debate with him over Calvinism, because Pottow Brown was a

Finneyite and an Arminian, and he told Spurgeon, you should stick to teaching theology because you're never going to make a successful preacher.

And yet Spurgeon sort of admired him in a way. He was a farmer who had an interest in theology, and when he died,

Spurgeon wrote a tribute to him in the Sword and the Trowel. He was also,

Pottow Brown was the man who brought Finney over on one of his trips to England, so he personally knew both

Finney and Spurgeon, and I think that's as close a connection as Spurgeon and Finney ever made.

They had a mutual friend. Well, if any of you listening cares to look up on the archive my two -hour interview with Jerry Johnson on Charles Finney, he has very irrefutable evidence right from Finney's own pen that Finney was a raw

Pelagian. Of course, Finney didn't call himself that. Right, he was. He's right about that.

I have an article online also that I wrote about Finney, and Finney's admirers write to me on a monthly basis and scold me for it, but it contains tons of quotes from Finney proving that he was a

Pelagian. Which basically means that grace was not necessity for salvation.

Right, he didn't believe in the doctrine of original sin. He didn't believe that people are born fallen and with guilt and a tendency towards sin, guilt and corruption.

And he also denied substitutionary atonement. Yes. And from his own writings, which were voluminous that Jerry and I were reading on the air, he basically believed that the purpose of the cross was to show

God's anger towards sin. Right, he argued that it would be unjust for one person to be punished as a substitute for another person, which of course takes away the whole basis for the atonement biblically.

And yeah, Finney was the rankest of heretics, and I partly blame the more orthodox

Presbyterians of his day for not actually defrocking him and silencing his ministry.

It's left a taint on American evangelicalism for 200 years. Right, it's amazing the people that have applauded him and count him among their heroes, you wonder, could they have possibly read more than five sentences by the man?

Yeah, well, you have to read his original unedited works. Some of the

Baker editions of his autobiography and all have kind of carefully expunged some of the more troublesome passages.

But recently, people have republished his unedited, unabridged autobiography and his systematic theology, and it's very clear that he denied pretty much everything that's essential about justification by faith and substitutionary atonement.

Right. But back to the question, the other books that you need to read about Spurgeon, we're talking about biographies, right?

Well, yeah, I guess so, because he says about Spurgeon. Yeah, I would say, and two others that I would recommend as must -read.

One is the autobiography, either the original four -volume set or the Banner of Truth two -volume edition.

Banner of Truth has all the material there, but not necessarily all of the illustrations and woodcuts that were in the original version.

And I think they've reorganized the order of some of the material. It doesn't make a big difference, you get it all anyway.

But I still like the original four -volume edition. And then a two -volume work, it was actually originally,

I think, four volumes, but Banner of Truth has combined two volumes apiece into, so the four -volume work now becomes a two -volume work, but it's complete and unedited by G.

Holden Pike, called The Life and Work of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Pike was a personal friend of Spurgeon's, and he has a lot of anecdotes and personal illustrations that you don't get in some of the other autobiographies.

It's more complete and a more personal insight into Spurgeon than some of the others. I think

Pike is probably my favorite of the biographies that were contemporary with Spurgeon.

Talks about the controversy over Spurgeon smoking cigars and things like that, that are left out of some of the other popular biographies.

Well, Josh, you should be very happy to know that the first book that our guest

Phil Johnson mentioned, Living by Revealed Truth, The Life and Pastoral Theology of Charles Haddon Spurgeon by Tom Nettles.

You're getting that book. That's over 700 pages. It's a hardback, and you're getting that today absolutely free of charge for your question today, and that was published by Christian Focus Publications.

So we also want to thank them for their generosity and for providing us with this book.

We only have one copy of this left, so you're the one getting it since you providentially emailed at the right time with the right question that evoked

Phil Johnson's endorsement. That's a real treasure. Now, there were two prongs to his question.

The other one was, what is it that makes Spurgeon so popular? I feel compelled to point out that near the end of his life,

Spurgeon wasn't popular at all. He was subject to more vicious criticism than John MacArthur got when he criticized

Mark Driscoll. It was the same kind of thing. People calling him a theological dinosaur and an old man who was partly senile, and you don't need to pay much attention to him because he's just winding down his ministry and all.

Spurgeon himself said that the downgrade controversy was hastening his death, and in the end it did.

So when he died, he wasn't really thought of as a particularly popular person. Even some of the students he himself had invested his life in and trained thought he was too rigid and too resistant to the modernism of that time, which was popular.

Of course, we know from our perspective that modernism killed the mainline denominations, destroyed all of them, and Spurgeon was right in his criticism.

It wasn't really until the middle part of the 20th century that Spurgeon's popularity began to rebound.

Pilgrim publications in Texas began to republish his sermons, and then the internet came along, and we started putting

Spurgeon on the internet. His popularity has grown just more in recent years, and everybody loves him because he spoke the truth without fear, and time has vindicated him.

He said it would, but time has vindicated every stand he took. People love that.

What they fail to see is that history works in cycles, and the same thing is happening over again.

It's always been ironic to me that there are people who, on the one hand, love Spurgeon, and yet on the other hand, they're attracted to every novel thing that comes along, every new fad that hits the evangelical movement.

These young guys want to chase while they're hanging on to their love for Spurgeon, and my hope and prayer is that their love for what made

Spurgeon great outlasts their curiosity about all these novelties that they chase.

I wonder if, in light of what I experienced today at Wendy's, I wonder if this person who said

Spurgeon was a senile old man was a cashier at Wendy's in the 1800s.

I'm sure that's the case. Because Spurgeon was only in his 50s when he died, right?

Yeah, I think that's right. I think he was 58 or something like that. Yeah, he was too young to die, that's for sure, but he had

Gout and Bright's disease, which is a kidney ailment, and just that plus the stress of his ministry ultimately just wore him down.

He would preach even when he didn't feel good, and people said he practically had to be carried into the pulpit at times, but once he started preaching, it was the same energy all the time, just this powerful voice and powerful, persuasive preaching, but then he would finish his sermon and leave the pulpit and nearly collapse again.

And years and years of that kind of rigorous schedule that he kept publishing things, writing things, and all of that, he was burning his candle at both ends.

Yeah, and going to just some more things, whether they are fact or fiction or part of folklore, perhaps you know some of those things.

I know one story, perhaps you can confirm whether or not it is true, but there was this story

I remember reading where a man approached Spurgeon and said that he had reached a point where he no longer committed sin, and Spurgeon stomped on his foot, and when the man blurted out some nasty remarks,

Spurgeon said something like, you know, well, you're sinning now or something like that.

Is that, you know what I'm talking about? Have you heard that incident? I've heard that story, but I've heard it attributed to D .L.

Moody as well, and you know, that doesn't sound very

Spurgeon -esque to me. So there are a bunch of stories like that that people write to me all the time and say, what's the source of this?

Can you track it down? And it is amazing the lore that's grown up about Spurgeon that really has no basis in truth.

When I got on the internet with Spurgeon, people started asking me about this illustration that apparently was very popular for years in Southern Baptist circles that Spurgeon was taking someone on a tour of his church, and he says, let me show you the power plant.

And he takes him into a room in the basement, and there's all these men in there praying for him while he's upstairs preaching, and he says, that's the source of our power.

That's a totally apocryphal tale. It doesn't exist in any biography of Spurgeon from anyone who knew him.

The earliest place I found it was, I think, around 1930 or so in a book of sermon illustrations.

But one of the good things about Drummond's biography was he tracked that down and said, no, this absolutely didn't happen, that the prayer meetings at the

Metropolitan Tabernacle were all held upstairs anyway. And so when you hear that tale, which apparently is common in some circles,

I just know that's not true. And there are quotes that are attributed to Spurgeon that I'm sure didn't originate with him.

I've got one that I love, and perhaps you confirm whether or not this is true. I do know from reading it right out of his own writings, or writings by contemporaries, that he did not believe in using musical instruments in worship.

And I heard that someone asked him, Pastor Spurgeon, is it appropriate to have an organ in a church?

And Spurgeon said, yes, it is. It's completely acceptable as long as the pipes are filled with cement.

Did he say that? I don't know. That's a good story.

But I do know that when, you know, he was friends with D .L. Moody, and Moody traveled with a popular singer called

Ira Sankey. And Sankey had this little box the size of a big sewing machine, you know, that actually had pipes, and it was a pedal organ,

I think. The Scots did not permit him to use it when he preached in Scotland when

Sankey sang there. The Scots derisively referred to it as a case of whistles. You can't use your case of whistles here.

Spurgeon did let him use it in the tabernacle, but only in the basement. What was he doing in the basement?

There's no meaning down there where Sankey sang. But I think while Spurgeon loved

Moody and loved the fact that he preached the gospel in such simple and almost rustic terms,

I don't get the impression that Spurgeon was really taken with Ira Sankey.

But since they traveled together, he let him sing in the basement. Well, there you go. There's an example that perhaps many of our

Calvinist brethren can learn from in regard to Spurgeon's charity toward non -Calvinists, because D .L.

Moody certainly was not a Calvinist. And yet he permitted Moody to man his pulpit, obviously a very sacred place to be.

Yeah, that's right. And also, it's worth saying in that final controversy, the downgrade controversy, a lot of Spurgeon's critics accused him of drumming up this whole controversy over doctrinaire

Calvinism. It's all about Calvinism, he said, they said. And Spurgeon wrote a few articles about this, saying, no, it isn't about Calvinism.

And he cited a number of Arminian evangelicals who shared his concerns about the erosion of confidence in biblical authority and biblical inerrancy.

And he said, you know, we stand with these Arminian brothers over against these, you know, self -styled

Calvinists who question the authority of Scripture. He realized that there are truths that would even trump the differences that Arminians and Calvinists have, and one being the authority of Scripture.

If you call yourself a Calvinist and doubt the authority of Scripture, I'll stand with my

Arminian brother who believes in the authority of Scripture before I'll stand with you. Well, we're going to be going to our final break.

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That's the Thriving Story. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arms and if you've just tuned us in, our guest has been for the last 90 minutes, Phil Johnson, the

Executive Director of Grace to You Ministries, which is the TV and radio teaching ministry of renowned

Bible scholar and teacher John MacArthur. We've been discussing, will the real

Charles Spurgeon please stand up, separating fact from fiction in the life and teaching of the

Prince of Preachers. And before we go back to our discussion, I want to remind you of a couple of events.

Pastor Bruce Bennett and the Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, New York, invite you to join them for their sixth annual

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alliancenet .org, and click on Events. We do,

Phil, have a listener in Newville, Pennsylvania, who has a question for you,

Susan in Newville. She says, Spurgeon's 1857 sermon called

The Independence of Christianity in it he says that churches were befooled, that the

Christian soldier has no gun and sword, for he fighteth not with men, but with spiritual forces.

He believed that war was an enormous crime and regarded all battles as but murder on a large scale.

Can you elaborate more on that? Yeah, I think it misrepresents his position.

When he said that church doesn't fight with guns, he's speaking there specifically about the church's role in, you know, dealing with heretics and so on.

He believed that the early reformers were wrong, Calvin included, to use the threat of capital punishment against heretics.

He believed, like all Baptists and the Anabaptists even, that the highest punishment the church has at its disposal for heretics is excommunication.

And even further than that, he contrasted the church's role in our spiritual warfare with the

Muslim idea of holy war. And he was saying that church is not a political movement, you know, brandishing the sword and using the weapons of conventional warfare against those whom we disagree with.

Same thing the Apostle Paul says in Colossians, or rather 2

Corinthians 10, that our warfare is not carnal. We fight with spiritual weapons.

That's what he was saying. He also wasn't a strict pacifist. He recognized the necessity of just wars.

He was a critic, I think, of how the British armies were often abusing their power in India and other places.

And that was, of course, a very controversial thing in his time. And so, yeah, he wasn't like a warmonger either, but he wasn't a strict pacifist.

And by the way, Susan in Newville, Pennsylvania, you are receiving Christ's Glorious Achievements by Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Compliments of Banner of Truth.

So look out for that in the mail. And that is thanks to Banner of Truth.

They've been very generous to us today. That raises an interesting, that question raises an interesting point, too, that I'd like to make that a lot of people don't get.

Spurgeon, in his era, would have been classified as a political liberal. Remember, this was the time of Dickens when the

Tories ran harsh workhouses for children and orphans and unemployed people weren't, you know, there was very little social concern for people in poverty and abject poverty.

And the class system of England at the time just perpetuated the cruelties against the poor.

And Spurgeon opposed all of that. And, you know, he voted against, when he voted, he voted against the

Tories. Huh. That's interesting. But obviously, a liberal hearing you say that today, he would, of course, never been in favor of men marrying men.

Well, the issues in his time were economic and true matters of justice and injustice.

They weren't moral issues like they are today. Spurgeon certainly would not have been in favor of abortion or gay marriage or any of the issues that, you know, seem to get all the headlines today.

And I don't think hardly anyone on the most left -wing end of the scale, other than practicing sodomites, would have ever endorsed anything like that.

And, of course, you did have people murdering unborn babies, but those are, I don't think anybody would be publicly standing for it back then, at least not to my knowledge.

But one of the things, going back to the Calvinistic controversy in regard to Spurgeon, where people are denying his

Calvinism or at least lessening it or softening it, saying that he was really a non -Calvinist in his heart, although on paper he may have been some kind of a

Calvinist, what do you make of those who defend altar calls because they said, well,

Charles Spurgeon had an inquiry room and people were invited to see him or one of the elders for counsel after the services were over to bring them to Christ, etc.?

What do you have to say about that? Yeah, I think you have to make a distinction between an altar call and an invitation.

We tend to blend those things together because, and particularly in Baptist circles, Baptists in the

South, especially in America, tend to equate the invitation with an altar call. Spurgeon would have opposed altar calls, but he gave invitations in the sense that he never preached a sermon without preaching the gospel and making a call to unbelievers to come to faith, an invitation.

It was a verbal invitation. It wasn't a request to come to the front of the church while we sing 15 stanzas of Just As I Am.

He would never have done that or countenanced anything manipulative like that. I don't even think that the architecture of the

Metropolitan Tabernacle would have allowed that back then. No, it wouldn't have. If you look at pictures of it, you would.

But more than that, theologically, that was the very kind of sort of showmanship that he opposed and was very suspicious of in Finney and those who followed

Finney. He was opposed to that kind of manipulation. And yet, he did believe that the gospel should be preached in every sermon, because he had spent years, four or five years, as a young man going from church to church, hoping to find the way of salvation.

And he heard sermons on the law and sermons on eschatology and sermons on all kinds of subjects, but never a simple message on the gospel.

And it was a rough layman who wasn't even scheduled to preach who gave an off -the -cuff message that ultimately opened

Spurgeon's eyes to the simplicity of the gospel. And he purposed never to preach without preaching the gospel and calling unbelievers to faith, and so he always did that.

But he didn't ask them to come forward in the church service. The inquiry room was simply a place you could go after the service if you had questions or if you wanted to understand more fully the way of salvation, somebody would help you.

And I even remember, I distinctly remember, reading a quote by Spurgeon where he said something like,

I've become more suspicious of the inquiry room because much mischief is wrought in there, or something like that.

Yeah, that's exactly how he said it, and I forget the context in which he said that. And what he's talking about there is the manipulative tactics that counselors often were trained to use in order to elicit a positive response, you know, a positive verbal response.

And I think even his friend Moody fell into that trap a bit, and Spurgeon, who would have been loathe to criticize

Moody publicly because he appreciated the boldness with which Moody proclaimed the gospel,

I don't think he necessarily approved of all of Moody's tactics. And yeah, we do see the heart of Spurgeon, and even the way that he has described

John Wesley and people from the past, even from his past, who were Arminian, who he still upheld as great men of faith, and so on.

He wasn't just... Yeah, that's right. His critique of Wesley is exemplary, I think.

You know, it was in a time when Calvinists were inclined to write Wesley and his influence off completely, and Spurgeon had read enough of the history of that era.

His favorite figure in church history was George Whitefield. He had a lot in common with Spurgeon.

And Whitefield, of course, was personal friends with Wesley, and had wrestled through these issues with him.

And Spurgeon said that he felt because Wesley actually taught justification by faith, and when he taught on the doctrine of justification, he understood the principle of imputation, the imputation of Christ's righteousness, and all of that, that he was sound enough in the gospel that Spurgeon was confident that he's a brother in Christ.

He expects to see him in heaven. Whitefield said the same thing, because he got the gospel right.

But at the same time, both Spurgeon and Whitefield were pretty harsh critics of Wesley's Arminian tendencies, which led other people out of the evangelical position, and more towards, you know,

Phineas -style Pelagianism. Now, I know that Spurgeon was a great lover of the

Puritans. Did he have any comment about the atrocious way with which, on occasion, and not wholesale across -the -board persecution, but as you and I know, being

Baptists, that the Puritans have been known, on occasion, to brutally, even physically, treat

Baptists in horrendous ways, and even to the point of death. Did Spurgeon, in any way, publicly or in writing, separate those two aspects of the

Puritans? No, not that I know of. But he did recommend some resources on church history that I wouldn't recommend.

I think he was, at least for a while, taken with the trail of blood view of Baptist church history, which, you know, it would take a time to explain.

But the idea is that you can trace...the claim is, of course, that you can trace a thread of Baptist belief all the way back to, you know,

John the Baptist. And in order to make that genealogy hold up, you have to embrace some groups that really were kind of monstrously heretical, and I don't think it's a good view of Baptist church history, and I don't think it's even legitimate.

And Spurgeon, who lived closer to, you know, the time of...in fact, the church he pastored came out of a more

Reformed Baptist tradition. I'm kind of surprised that he was ever, you know, intrigued by the trail of blood view.

Right. In fact, I've heard him in writing state that he was not a Protestant. I don't know if he always said that, but he said the

Baptists were never among them or something. Yeah. And, you know, that's an issue

I wish he had studied a little bit more carefully. I don't think he would have...but he never actually taught on it.

He would make these offhanded references like you just quoted, and you know he'd been reading trail of blood material, and he had that view, but I don't think it was a carefully considered view on his part.

I don't know. I don't know, but he...no, that's not an issue he ever brought out as far as I've read.

In any of his writings or sermons, everything, pretty much everything he had to say about the

Puritans was generally positive. Now, we have...I've

read both historic pre -millennialists and post -millennialists battle over Spurgeon's eschatological identity.

What do you think he was? There's no question he was a pre -millennialist. He said so, and he...in

the downgrade controversy towards the end of his life, he said he'd come to regard pre -millennialism as virtually an essential doctrine.

Wow. He was pretty strong on that, and yet he was a historic pre -millennialist, not a

Darby -ite, you know, but a historic pre -millennialist. And yet, if you read

Ian Murray's book, for example, I think Ian Murray would like for Spurgeon to have been a post -millennialist.

That's right, the Puritan Hope book. Yeah, but, you know,

I spoke to Ian Murray about this, and he more or less reluctantly acknowledged, yeah, Spurgeon was a pre -mill, but he didn't think he really understood the issues that well.

Regarding alcohol, it is fairly well known that Spurgeon believed in the moderate consumption of alcohol, and then you have...

Actually, no. He adopted a teetotaler position. His whole ministerial life?

I don't know when, but he came...no, he didn't start out as a teetotaler, but he did adopt that,

I think, pretty early. So he was not a wine drinker. He wouldn't drink alcoholic beverages.

He did smoke cigars. Right. Oh, that's interesting. He was a teetotaler. He became a teetotaler.

Okay, yeah, because what I was going to say is, although I've heard about him drinking, in fact,

I can still remember a fundamentalist Baptist when he was making fun of me for being a

Calvinist, and I said, well, don't forget Spurgeon was a Calvinist, and he said, well, do you drink hot toddies just like he did?

He certainly didn't drink hot toddies, and in fact, that would have made his issues with gout even more complex.

So he also had medical reasons for being a teetotaler, but he accepted the argument of those who said, you know, it's just too risky in this day and age with alcoholism, such a social problem in England then as it is now.

Right. And he didn't believe that was a biblically mandated position.

He wouldn't have said, Scripture commands us to be teetotalers. So he would have been fine with someone who wasn't, but his personal standard was he did not consume alcoholic beverages.

Yeah, and I did read his commendation of the ladies' temperance movement in some fashion.

So that struck me because I had thought that he did imbibe in alcoholic beverages, but perhaps he had at that time already given them up.

Yeah, I'm going to look it up and find out when that occurred, how early in his ministry, and I'll send you documentation on it.

But yeah, he definitely swore off any kind of alcoholic beverages, not because he believed that was a biblical standard, but because it was the standard he determined to maintain.

Right. And regarding his cigar smoking, there was a bit of folklore, perhaps you could dismiss it as being completely false or confirm it as being true, that Spurgeon quit cigar smoking when he saw at a tobacconist shop a sign saying, this is

Spurgeon's favorite brand. Yeah, that is absolutely false. And the proof of it is the proof of it is his grandson inherited his cigar case along with the last half cigar that Spurgeon was smoking on the day he died.

Wow. And he sent me a picture of it. I have it on my website. So if you do a Google search for Spurgeon and cigars,

I have a whole page on that, along with some never before published letters that Spurgeon wrote.

I've got pictures of the letter in his own handwriting and, you know, explaining his view on smoking.

Now, the most serious conflict that he had theologically in his life that he battled against was the downgrade controversy.

You mentioned a little bit about it earlier and Tom Nettles did last Monday. But if you could, before we close, because we've got about seven minutes left to describe that and what can we learn today from the downgrade controversy?

The whole controversy started with two articles that Spurgeon published. He didn't write them. A man named

Schindler wrote them, two -part articles that were published in the Sword in the Trial called

The Downgrade, in which Schindler was saying that there's a discernible pattern in church history of decline among sound churches.

Rarely do churches or educational institutions or evangelical groups of any kind remain faithful to their core principles longer than a century or so.

In fact, one of the outstanding counters to that general pattern is the

Metropolitan Tabernacle, which today is perhaps certainly the oldest well -known church that has remained evangelical and essentially

Calvinistic throughout its whole 350 -year history. It'd be hard to find any organization older than that that has remained faithful to their fundamental principles for that long.

But anyway, all that aside, Schindler was pointing out that most churches that decline do so on a gradual scale that is traceable.

It's like a downgrade, he says, that once you get on that downward slope and momentum carries you, it becomes impossible to put on the brakes.

You're headed for the bottom. He documented cases of this going back even to the

Reformation. The Reformation spawned a Socinianism that was essentially theological liberalism.

Within 100 years or so, a lot of the original Reformed churches had imbibed different flavors of Socinianism.

Then the Puritan movement revived Reformation principles, but Puritanism died out with Unitarianism and Deism, which were just different flavors of Socinianism.

Now, in Spurgeon's generation, they were seeing the influx of Modernism, which looked like Socinianism in a new coat.

That was their argument, that what we're going to see here, if Modernism has its way, is the same pattern of decline that we've seen repeatedly in church history.

I think Schindler made a convincing case, but in the process, he made some sort of vague references to Baptist churches, churches that were in the

Baptist Union, that had already begun to decline. That offended a lot of people in the Baptist Union.

They said, you're accusing our churches of being on the downgrade? And he said, yes.

Spurgeon came to Schindler's defense, and then Spurgeon wrote a series of four or five more articles, preached several sermons on the subject, saying, look, the downgrade is real, and it is affecting the

Baptist Union. The Baptist Union had no doctrinal statement, really, so there were no doctrinal standards by which to measure whether their churches were faithful or not.

The only principle they had was you had to believe in believers' baptism. So a lot of the member churches were already well down the downgrade towards Modernism and skepticism and unbelief, because Spurgeon refused to name names and give documentation, because he didn't feel it was necessary.

The decline was really fairly obvious, and I think Spurgeon was right about that. They pretty much voted him out of the

Baptist Union. And in your final summation of what we can learn from the life of Charles Adams Spurgeon today, you have about three minutes.

I think the real secret to Spurgeon's enduring influence was his faithfulness to Scripture, his refusal to chase after whatever new fads came along in an era that was devoted to, just like our era is today, devoted to whatever's stylish, whatever's new, whatever's currently popular.

Spurgeon stood against that and kept his ministry and his church anchored in the unchanging truth of Scripture.

And when he preached, it was Scripture. He said, I want to be so that if you prick me,

I bleed biblene. I want the Word of God so much running through my veins that it's not blood but biblene that emanates.

And that's also the way he described John Bunyan. Yeah, that's right. And Bunyan was another great hero of his, because Bunyan and and Whitfield and Spurgeon all had this sort of same driving passion to just preach the truth of the

Word in simple, common language to common people and let the

Holy Spirit convert people and see what happens. And all of them left a major impact on their generations.

And that's what I think we need to learn, is all these fads and programs and the latest popular books that people want to read and fashion their churches after, and everybody wants to be missional or contextualizing or whatever, and you just don't hear people talking about proclaiming the simple truth of Scripture in simple language.

That's what really would make an impact, because after all, it is the gospel that's the power of God unto salvation.

It's not our gimmicks. It's not our cleverness. It's not our techniques or our ability to contextualize or whatever.

It's the simple truth of Scripture and specifically the gospel that is the power of God unto salvation.

And if this generation of evangelicals really wants to leave an impact on the next generation, the thing we need to get to doing is preaching the gospel.

Amen. Thank you so much for being a part of our broadcast today, Phil Johnson. I eagerly look forward to having you back, perhaps in November, right before your conference,

From Dust to Glory, which is going to be November 6th through the 7th with Philip Ryken in Princeton, New Jersey.

For more information, go to AllianceNet .org, AllianceNet .org,

and click on Events. Thank you so much, Phil, for being a part of our broadcast today. Thank you for having me.

And I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to send in emails. I want to thank

Banner of Truth and also Christian Focus Publications for providing us with the free books.

And don't forget that on Tuesday the 6th of October, we have Todd Friel on the broadcast.

And on the 14th, Wednesday the 14th of October, we have Ken Ham, the world -renowned creationist.

And we have many other things this week as well in the weeks to follow. I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater