October 1, 2025 Show with Josh Miller AND Scott Aniol on “The Presence & the Power of the Holy Spirit”

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, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this very first day of October 2025.

I'm absolutely thrilled to have two wonderful brothers in Christ and friends on the program today. We are going to be joined by Josh Miller, pastor of Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and accompanying him is Scott Anial, author, conference speaker, and president of G3 Ministries and professor of pastoral theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas.

Today both of these brethren are going to be addressing the theme, The Presence and the Power of the Holy Spirit, and we're also going to be announcing the upcoming conference this October at Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, featuring keynote speaker Scott Anial on the very same theme, The Presence and the Power of the Holy Spirit.

Well, first of all, let me welcome back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Josh Miller.

Hi, Chris. Good to be with you.

It's great to have you back, and please tell us about Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. All right.

Well, Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We are actually celebrating our 100th anniversary of proclaiming the gospel here in Harrisburg. And I have only been here 14 of those years as a preaching pastor, but praise the Lord for that ministry.

And you started when you were six years old. When you started. No, go ahead. I'm sorry. I interrupted you.

No, that's all right. Our church is a part of a smaller denomination of Bible Fellowship churches. We are mostly scattered throughout the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania, but have churches in New Jersey and New York and Maryland.

And some, actually, we have a church in Florida and a church in New Mexico. And in Mexico, we have a couple churches.

And that denomination, wasn't it formed from those who left the Mennonites? And most of those congregations are theologically Reformed and Baptistic, from what I understand.

Correct. That is correct. We actually, up until the late 1950s, were under the name Mennonite Brethren in Christ. So we always joke about, you can't get more Anabaptists, you can get Mennonite and Brethren into your church name.

But Mennonite Brethren in Christ, yep. And there, by God's grace, we shifted theologically through the 50s and 60s under various influences. But some key leaders really came under the influence of other Reformers, went to Westminster Theological Seminary and Faith Theological Seminary at that time.

And at this juncture, we subscribe to a Calvinistic understanding of the application of redemption practice. As far as our polity, it would be an elder-ruled local congregations. The highest office within our denomination is the local elder.

There's no hierarchy outside of that. And I can answer any more questions you want to know, but that kind of summarizes who we are.

And the website, for those of you who are interested in finding out more about Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is gracebfc .com, gracebfc .com. And please send my greetings to my dear friend and one of your elders, Don Maurer.

I believe I saw him in the very large audience at my recent Iron Trip and Zion Radio Free Pastors Luncheon. And I was so busy with the large crowd that I forgot to make my way over to him and greet him.

So not only say hello to him for me, but send my apologies that I never greeted him. I'm almost positive it was him that I saw.

Yes, I believe he was there, and I will pass that along to him, Chris.

You should also rebuke him that he didn't bring flyers for this conference. And we also have, as I mentioned earlier, Scott Anial with us today on the show. And it's such a great joy to have you on the program again, brother.

Yeah, Chris, great to be with you again.

Well, please, even though I'm sure most of my listeners are familiar with G3 Ministries, I do know that we have a growing audience, some of whom may not have heard of G3, especially since not all of our listeners are Reformed.

So why don't you tell our listeners about G3 Ministries, where you serve as president?

Yeah, absolutely. We're always interested in sort of introducing ourselves to new audiences. So G3 Ministries exists to educate, equip, and encourage God's people with biblical truth for faithful living.

And it started as a conference, and we still host conferences. We have a conference coming up in February, February 12th through 14th, here in Atlanta, and expanded a couple of years ago now to being a content-producing ministry.

So we have a publishing ministry where we publish lots of books, a streaming service, G3 a church network, just lots of different ministry arms in order to accomplish our mission. And so we just encourage people to visit g3men .org, where they can find a lot of those resources, and subscribe to G3 and come to our conference in February.

Great. And I'm sure all of those details for the conference will also be at g3men .org.

Right.

Grace Bible Theological Seminary and Pastoral Theology

And now tell us about this wonderful seminary where you serve on the faculty alongside my longtime dear friend, Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, who was just recently my keynote speaker at my most recent Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon.

But tell us about Grace Bible Theological Seminary and your role as professor of pastoral theology.

Yeah, so it's a wonderful seminary located in Conway, Arkansas. Some of the students are there in Arkansas, but the MDiv degree, as well as some other programs, can be accomplished from a distance as well.

And Dr. Jeff Johnson started the seminary out of the church a number of years ago, and it's really grown. The Lord has blessed it. A wonderful training ground for particularly Reformed Baptists, although we have even some Presbyterian students and some others there as well.

And I serve on faculty and teach regularly. I teach every year a course on research and writing, intro to seminary, and then I'll teach various courses throughout the year. Theology, taught a course in Christology recently, the Psalms, worship, various doctrinal issues, pastoral theology, systematic theology, those sorts of things.

Well, if anybody wants more details about Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas, visit their website, which is gbtseminary .org. If you could also, Pastor Miller, tell us about the conference that is coming up, where Scott Anuel is your keynote speaker in October on the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Tell us about that, and also tell us about why you were led to choose that topic.

So the conference will be a Saturday to a Sunday. So it's a mini conference of sorts on October 25th to the 26th. And as Chris mentioned, the title of that conference and theme is The Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit.

This has been something we've done now for eight years. This is our eighth annual little mini conference, thematic conference in October. They've been smaller. They've been as far as it's been. Sometimes we've done them three days.

This one's just a two-day one. And it really is meant to be a gift to our congregation that we open up to anybody who wants to come. We bring in a speaker who has written on a topic, specialized in an area to speak to that issue regarding and why this specific issue really came out of preaching through the gospel of Luke and coming to the end of Luke and the promise of the Holy Spirit and lots of questions I had and excitement about it and then going into Acts.

And at that same time, I was doing ministry in West Africa and Sierra Leone and was reading and studying on the topic of revival and revivalism. I was reading Ian Murray's book, Revival and Revivalism, his book Pentecost Today.

And yeah, I was just influenced by that and said, well, why don't we do a concentrated look at this? And that's really how the conference came about, those themes coming together, the continued ministry of the Holy Spirit.

If you are familiar with what goes on in big tent Christianity, you know there's quite a bit of perversion regarding that topic. But also don't want to miss what the expectation should be about this promise of the Holy Spirit.

Out of fear of maybe going into error and emphasizing things that shouldn't be emphasized, seeking things that shouldn't be sought. We don't want to miss where the Spirit is moving presently in powerful ways and to expect that and to pray for that.

And yeah, so that's really the impetus behind it.

Amen. And once again, for details on the conference, go to gracebfc .com. Gracebfc .com, I always love attending the conferences at Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And Pastor Scott, you are thoroughly equipped to be a keynote speaker on this issue.

One of the reasons is that you have written a book, Holy Spirit, God of Order. Why don't you tell us about that book?

Yeah, I think this is such an important topic because, as Pastor Josh mentioned a moment ago, there is so much abuse in the modern charismatic movement that's worldwide. That's really wreaking havoc upon the church.

But it has often led to us being afraid to talk about the Holy Spirit. So that's really why I wrote the book. We at G3 did a conference last fall, about a year ago this time, on the doctrine of cessationism, kind of addressing some of the abuses of the charismatic movement.

And we had published a book, a fantastic book, by Tom Pennington on the doctrine. And so we felt like that was a necessary thing that we needed to do. However, I thought, well, I want to write something that's sort of a positive presentation on what the Holy Spirit's active work is today and how we should be understanding and anticipating the work of the Holy Spirit.

And that's essentially what I'm doing in that book, Holy Spirit, God of Order. And as the subtitle communicates, what I'm arguing in the book is that, of course, the Holy Spirit of God, as the third person of the triunity of the Godhead, has been actively at work since the opening of Genesis in creation and throughout the Old Testament, throughout the New Testament.

His coming at Pentecost introduces certainly a new stage in his work among the church, Christ's body. But the Holy Spirit has always been at work. And if we look at how the Holy Spirit actively works, whether it be in creation, the giving of revelation, even the miraculous works he did in the Old Testament and in the New Testament during the ministry of Jesus and his apostles, even those, and then certainly his work today present among his church, you really could summarize the Holy Spirit's work as one of bringing to order the purposes and plans of God.

And I think if we understand the Holy Spirit's work through that framework, then we shouldn't be afraid to talk about the Spirit's current presence and active work among his people, but rather we can celebrate it, we can recognize it as something that we need, that without which no one would be saved and no one would be sanctified and believers wouldn't be comforted and convicted by him.

There are so many things that would not be taking place to bring sinners to salvation and to sanctify God's people, if not for the active work of the Holy Spirit to bring God's plan to order. And so really, that book is a sort of positive presentation.

It certainly addresses some of the questions surrounding charismatic theology, but it's more from a perspective not of attacking them, but of presenting what does the Bible say that the Holy Spirit's work has been throughout history and what ought to be our expectation today regarding his work among us.

And Pastor Josh Miller, feel free to chime in whenever you want to, to ask a question of Scott Anial, and just as long as you see a break or hear a break in the conversation. But I wanted to ask you, Pastor Josh, as a pastor, what have you, in your experience as a pastor, seen and heard from congregation members and visitors over the years that reflect somewhat of, for lack of a better term, ignorance of the person and work of the Holy Spirit, and just perhaps a shallowness and so on, that needed correction?

One of the reasons, I'm sure, that you are holding this conference is because of their existing in the church such confusion and falsehood about the Holy Spirit, not that there may be a rampant problem like that in your congregation under your teaching and so on, but even in the best of churches, you will meet folks that you could tell after a conversation are having a bit of a hard time understanding certain biblical truths.

So over the years, what have been, in your memory, the most prominent errors that people carry on about the Holy Spirit?

That's a good question, Chris. I can honestly say that, again, the impetus behind the focus of this conference isn't necessarily error or wanting to correct error in some way. But in answer to your question, I could definitely see that there is this attraction to connect some type of ecstatic experience with the Holy Spirit.

And I want to be careful because I think that we hold out exaltation as a goal every Sunday. We should be moved in our affections. We should be directed in our love toward the Lord. So I don't want to diminish some type of emotional response to the Lord to disparage that in any way.

But we can sometimes equate, like, we need to feel the Spirit in some ecstatic way as some verification that the Spirit is moving. So there is both this caution to, we don't want to despise the day of small things.

Like, what is the Spirit doing? What is the phrase in 2 Corinthians 3 .18? And so that can be seen as a small thing, one degree to another. And so I don't want to fall into the error, and I've seen that error of connecting it with some level of ecstasy, an ecstatic experience.

I think we can correct that error. But also, maybe on the other side of the road, the other guardrail is not to diminish those movements of the Spirit, of an outpouring in a special way. That the Spirit moves in a concentrated way, where there are, I mentioned Ian Murray's book Pentecost Today, he refers to them as larger measures of the Spirit of God.

And to pray for those, we might call those revivals. And of course, that needs a definition of what is a biblical revival. But in conjunction with what I'm reading, I'm reading numerous books on the Great Awakening and evaluation of those things.

So those would be, I guess, the two guardrails that I'm seeing is one like this equation of the movement of the Spirit to some ecstatic experience. And unless you have that, you don't reckon the Spirit isn't moving.

But as Scott just detailed, the only efficient means in the application of redemption is the Holy Spirit. And so people are getting saved, the Spirit is moving, and we need to celebrate that. There is no salvation apart from the active movement of the Holy Spirit and bringing that and applying that redemption to the soul of man.

And then on the other side is you might have those who are scared of any, again, that phrase larger measure of the Holy Spirit that could manifest itself in conversions, large amounts of conversions, conviction of sin, restoration of relationships, humility, and the fruits of the Spirit that would blossom in a concentrated form in the congregation.

So, yeah, walking down that road.

And we're going to pick up the conversation when we return from our first commercial break. If you have a question for my guests today, Pastor Josh Miller of Grace Bible Fellowship in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and also Dr. Scott Anuel of G3 Ministries.

Our email address for your questions is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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And we are now back with Pastor Josh Miller of Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and also Scott Anuel, the president of G3 Ministries, and we are discussing the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. If you have questions, give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Scott Anuel, the misconception that many people have outside of the Reformed faith, and perhaps even especially within Charismatic and Pentecostal churches, is that if you are Reformed, and they would probably hurl this accusation against anybody that's a cessationist or a non-Charismatic individual, pastor, or church, but especially it's ironic that they would hurl this accusation against the Reformed, that we are denying the power of the Holy Spirit, when we are the ones who actually believe that we are more dependent upon the Holy Spirit than they are, because we believe the Holy Spirit is necessary for us to even believe savingly, and we believe that we need to be quickened first by the Holy Spirit and brought to new life before we can even please God with a saving faith, before we can repent.

And so therefore, we do not have an impotent or anemic or weak Holy Spirit. We have a Holy Spirit that always accomplishes what it seeks to do, what He seeks to do. Am I off base here?

No, I think you're exactly right. I hear those charges a lot. We're accused a lot of denying the existence of the Holy Spirit or the continuing work of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we're claimed to be deists who believe that God just sort of set things in motion and then left us alone.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, as you mentioned, we need to learn to delight and marvel even more at the continual present work of the Spirit when, as Josh mentioned, sometimes we don't even see that activity of the Spirit in some sort of visible, ecstatic, external way.

But rather, we need to be looking for the ways in which He continually works in and through His Word to save, to sanctify, to comfort, and to convict. I think it actually is the opposite, because when your expectation is that the Holy Spirit is only working when there's something extraordinary, something miraculous, something ecstatic, and you're seeking for that, then there are several problems with that.

Number one, when those things don't happen, then people begin to wonder, well, is God really present? Is God really active? I'm not seeing this ecstatic experience, or I'm not feeling this ecstatic experience myself.

And so they begin to wonder, is God really present? And that also leads them then not to recognize the manifold ways in which He is working through the ordinary. Like Pastor Josh mentioned, the small things, which seem small, the preaching of the Word, the sanctification of sinners, sinners coming to salvation, maybe not this massive external emotional experience, but simply coming under conviction of the Holy Spirit, repenting of their sins, putting their faith in Jesus Christ.

These are seemingly small things and ordinary things. Sometimes we refer to these things as the ordinary means of grace, reading the scriptures, preaching, prayer. These are the ordinary means of grace.

But if we recognize that the Spirit is working in and through all of these things, then they're anything but ordinary. And we need to learn to marvel and delight in the ways in which the Holy Spirit is actively working.

And then I completely agree with what Pastor Josh mentioned. There are times in which the Holy Spirit will, in the sovereignty of God, He will determine through His Spirit to do this in a larger measure, to bring many, many people at once to faith in Christ, or to sanctify many, many believers and give them kind of an extra jolt of sanctification in a short amount of time.

But even then, He's still doing the same things in the same way. He's just doing more of them at once. It's still through the preaching of the word, through prayer, through the reading of scripture, through these ordinary means of grace, and it's up to God.

Like, we're not changing our methods. We're not trying to do something in order to create revival. This is the difference between revival and revivalism. Now, the difference between the first great awakening and the second great awakening, the difference between Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney, Jonathan Edwards referred to the great awakening as a surprising work of God.

He was simply faithfully preaching, faithfully praying, faithfully urging people to repentance, and God chose to work miraculously. Finney and those during the second great awakening tried to do things in order to create revival when it ultimately is God's work.

So, we need to learn to delight in and marvel at the way that the Holy Spirit continues to work, and then, yes, absolutely pray that in His timing and according to His good pleasure, He will bring many people to a saving faith of Jesus Christ and many believers to a greater depth of sanctification.

Amen.

And wouldn't you say you could both respond to this? We'll start with Josh since Scott was the last to speak. Wouldn't you say that there is definitely an element within our theological circles that unfortunately and sadly gives the impression to those outsiders, for instance, those who are Charismatics and Pentecostals, it gives them the impression that we are devoid of the Holy Spirit because sometimes in some congregations, there is an appearance of joyless, dry, stale, lifeless worship and even the way that people perhaps conduct themselves on a regular basis in the body of the church.

I don't think that I'm exaggerating that that exists. Do we not need to be careful about that?

So, I totally understand what you're saying, and I would agree to an extent. Obviously, you have to be careful to try and correct impressions. I'm not in the game of trying to correct people's impression of me.

I definitely want to protect against error. I want to protect against maybe swinging the pendulum the other way in an exaggerated way where you diminish, you know, joy is a fruit of the Spirit. So, we want to demonstrate joy.

I would be open to that critique. Of course, I would respond to, you know, I would need specific instances of that. So, I agree with you. My concern is not so much to change an impression, but to exalt the greatness of the Holy Spirit in such a way that there is a genuine, dare I say it, exaltation, even an ecstatic response to the Holy Spirit.

Scott's book, his subtitle, The God of Order, The Holy Spirit, The God of Order, it may give indication of what you're getting at there, Chris, where, you know, the 1 Corinthians 12, yeah, where we want to be, where we recognize that our Lord is a Lord of order.

And so, we do have a concern for things that demonstrate chaos. And maybe if that's what you're alluding to, but...

I can't honestly say... No, go ahead. Go ahead, brother. I was just going to say, I can honestly say without being guilty of flattery or hyperbole or kissing up to you, that I've never gotten that impression from Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg.

You have a very exuberant way about you as a preacher and teacher, and the people there in the congregation are far from being lifeless and the frozen chosen. So, I just wanted to let you know that I was not asking that question because I sense something like that while visiting you.

You are voicing a very common statement or a common observation. You said people in our theological camp are conviction.

Do you have anything to add, Scott?

I would respond similarly. Of course, yes, there probably are churches like that, people like that. But I do think we need to be careful that we don't measure the Spirit's work or even the piety of a people by external factors.

Sometimes it's just personality. Yes, joy is a fruit of the Spirit, but there's a difference between the affections of the soul. So, I'm using language that Jonathan Edwards used here. There's a difference between the affections of the soul and the manifest emotional expressiveness that sometimes might accompany that.

So, in other words, sometimes when we truly have spiritual joy, that can and may manifest itself in a kind of exuberance, something that people can see and identify. That happens. There's nothing wrong with that.

But it doesn't have to. Someone can experience true joy of the Holy Spirit without there being necessarily something outward and external that you can look at and say, oh, that person is joyful or that person's exuberant.

And Edwards addressed this head on in his book, The Religious Affections. He has a whole list of things that he refers to as signs of nothing. And he's trying to give a careful balance between two opposing parties.

One were those who were looking at some of the emotional exuberance of the Great Awakening and they were defining revival by the exuberance. And on the other hand, people were looking at the exuberance and they were saying, that's a sign that God is not at work.

And Edwards came right in the middle and he said, you can't tell one way or the other whether the Holy Spirit's at work through some sort of emotional exuberance. That's a sign of nothing. The only way you can really discern the active work of the Holy Spirit is by long-term sanctification in the life of a believer.

If you see somebody who, over the course of a period of time, is exhibiting the fruits of the Spirit, is pursuing holiness, has a deep relationship with God through Christ, if you see those evidences, those are the evidences of the Spirit.

We do have to be careful of measuring the Spirit's activity and work by simply emotional observable responses of an individual Christian or a whole congregation.

We have a question from Manny in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Manny says, could you please define and describe what the baptism of the Holy Spirit is and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit or the filling of the Holy Spirit?

Those seem to be concepts that add confusion to discussion between the non-charismatic and the charismatic.

Yeah, so baptism of the Holy Spirit, just briefly, the key text on this is 1 Corinthians 12, verse 13. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slave or free. So every word in that phrase is key.

First of all, it says we were, past tense, all baptized. So what that indicates is if Paul can say to the believers in Corinth, we were, past tense, all baptized. That means that that spirit baptism is something that happens for all Christians.

It's not just a select few, which is what many charismatics would argue that baptism of the Holy Spirit only occurs for certain individuals. And also the fact that he uses the past tense indicates that it happened sometime in the past for all Christians, which means it had to have happened at the moment of conversion.

So it's not like many charismatics and even Methodist holiness advocates and some others, even Charles Finney. It's not something subsequent to conversion and something only true of some believers. Spirit baptism is something that happens at the moment of conversion.

It is true for all believers. And what we find here in the context of 1 Corinthians 12 is that spirit baptism is being immersed by the Spirit or in the Spirit into one body, into the body of Christ. So spirit baptism is the means by which we are united to Christ and made one with his body.

It is something, again, that occurs for all Christians. So in that sense, it is what we would call experiential. It is something that we experience, but it's not something that, as charismatics argue, necessarily will produce ecstatic feelings or certainly miraculous sign gifts like tongues and prophecy and these sorts of things.

No, it is something that occurs as a result of regeneration, as a result of justification at the moment of conversion, wherein a believer in the Spirit is united to Christ. So that's a really important, that's really the key verse to understand the nature of spirit baptism.

Do I have anything to add, Pastor Josh?

Yeah, I think Scott hit the nail on the head. So that 1 Corinthians 12, that is an experience that we all have as believers and should expect. That is the work of the spirit baptizing. Now, baptism is an analogy.