July 15, 2016 Show with Mack Tomlinson on “Biblical Ecumenism & Catholicity vs. Unevenly Yoked” and “Starting a Library”

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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.

Biblical Ecumenism, Catholicity, and Being Unequally Yoked

Arntzen. Good afternoon Cumberland County, 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 Friday on this 15th day of July 2016 and I'm delighted to have back on the program once again my friend Pastor Mac Tomlinson and he is the pastor at Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas and I am excited that we are going to be talking about a very important subject.

I've examined this topic on my program on several other occasions but I don't think that we can talk about it too much because it's something that is a prevalent issue in the body of Christ especially in the 21st century and that is the issue of biblical ecumenism and Catholicity versus unevenly yoked.

The rampant modern ecumenical gatherings that are taking place everywhere which used to be the sole backyard, if you will, of the liberal denominations, the mainline churches and so on, but now evangelical churches are participating in these kinds of events and not only participating, they're leading them and we're going to discuss what real biblical ecumenism is and Catholicity versus being unevenly yoked and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor Mac Tomlinson.

Hello Chris, always great to be with you. It's great to be with you brother and first of all, as we always do, let our.

Listeners know something about Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas. We're a Reformed Baptistic Church in Denton, 30 miles north of Dallas-Fort Worth, Providence Chapel. Anyone could find us in Denton, find our website at ProvidenceDenton .org and we love the Lord Jesus Christ and love his word and love his gospel and we're trying to be a light for the gospel here.

Great and tell our listeners about this.

Conference that you are participating in this August 4th through the 6th, Fellowship Conference New England in Portland, Maine. Well this will be the.

Fourth annual conference in Portland. The website is NewEngland .com, all lowercase fellowshipconferenceNewEngland .com and as you said the dates are August 4th through the 6th and it will be three days of biblical preaching.

Believers have been coming every year from Canada, Nova Scotia, around New England and as far down as New York City and Long Island and it's a wonderful time. We don't have a conference that majors on the great doctrinal and pastoral truths of the gospel so we invite anyone who could come to Portland that first week of August to join and you would have to register at the website and come if.

Possible. Now tell us about some of the speakers that are going to be joining.

You. Ben Preaching, Pastor Charles Leiter from Lake Road Chapel in Kirksville, Missouri, from Grace Life Church in Dallas, Texas, Pastor Michael Jurch in Paducah, Kentucky and then myself. For three days there will be nine sessions divided up pretty evenly among the three days and so we just hope that the Lord will bring all those He wants here to feed them and encourage them.

Great and it's on the theme of the impossible. Can you expand on that a bit? Well I think the trailer on the website is from one of the sermons from last year and so there is no theme except the preaching will be pastoral, evangelistic, doctrinal and we don't really even have a theme except Christ and Him crucified and declaring the whole counsel of God.

Oh is that all? We'll give a genuine effort but we sure.

Won't get to do that in three days. I hope to go, I can't guarantee it but I definitely want to go to this one. In fact might interest you to know that one of my listeners already contacted me and said that he has registered for it so it looks like the promotion that we've been doing at least so far at the very least that you won registration because at least that's the only one I know about right now but as far as from this program that is.

I would say.

That the atmosphere of that conference is not large. It's usually less than 200 but they are serious minded Christians from the northeastern part of the U .S. and as I said over and but it's a loving atmosphere of loving Christ, loving his truth, loving the brethren and that's why we call it the Fellowship Conference because Christians really do find true fellowship with like-minded.

Brethren there. And that is also Reverend Buzz Taylor's old stomping grounds. He lived in Maine for quite a number of years. For ten years. And once again that that website is fellowshipconferencenewengland .com fellowshipconferencenewengland .com.

Well this is a interesting providential occurrence Pastor Mac because we had probably close to a month ago scheduled this topic of biblical ecumenism and Catholicity versus unevenly yoked. We had already had this arranged for today and it just so happens that today is the day before a major ecumenical event in Washington DC and the brother of a friend of mine actually this person's my friend as well he said you've got to do a program on this big event that's happening in Washington DC and he was disturbed by some of the participants there being side-by-side with men that I would respect and even men that I've interviewed and so on.

So I looked into it and it's very difficult to discern what their actual guidelines are in regard to how a speaker is qualified to be there or how a church or parachurch ministry is being permitted to work with them.

There doesn't seem there's no doctrinal statement on their website and I'd rather not identify the name of the the activity because I don't want to unnecessarily advertise it. But it's one of these big events that involves a group that even has is well known for having a very soft approach to homosexuality and this whole thing is disturbing.

It seems that there are many Christians even ones that have theologically sound doctrine who are lured by massive crowds and they think that somehow this is an ideal place to be spreading the seeds of the gospel because of the largeness of the crowds.

But can that also not be counterproductive because of the message you are sending to those large crowds? You may even have the gospel presented but can not the gospel be undermined by everything else you're doing and the people with whom you are identifying?

One famous example of Pastor Mac would be Billy Graham. He has a lot to be, he has a lot of things about him that are highly respectable. He's a man who's very advanced in age and in his entire public ministry there has never been a scandal of any kind.

There's never been a sexual scandal, a financial scandal. There are many wonderful and admirable things that we could say about Billy Graham but he has, unlike any other figure that I can think of, introduced liberal ecumenism into evangelicalism.

I don't know of any other person who pioneered that with the magnitude and strength of Billy Graham and he has even had people on his platform who have denied essential truths of the faith like the deity of Christ and his bodily resurrection.

He has had Bill and Hillary Clinton sitting on his platform in places of honor and even said that Bill Clinton would make a fine preacher and Hillary Clinton would make a fine president and unfortunately his wish may be coming true.

We can't find out. Don't tell me Bill's becoming a preacher. Who knows but you understand what I'm saying here that even though Billy Graham very often, if not even all the time, has the core elements of the gospel in his presentations, how much is that undermined when someone can say, well I really don't need to leave my false religion to follow Christ.

I really don't need to leave the Roman Catholic Church or even the Mormon Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or my liberal mainline church. You know the main thing is that I recite a prayer and so on and what do you make of what I just said Pastor Mack?

The Catholic Association, a parachurch organization that are compromised on the gospel and they do not have a biblical doctrinal foundation. Our working with them, our association with them does send a bad message because no matter how much we would we would try to speak the truth.

Let's say I'm on a platform and I'm speaking with the Roman Catholic priest in a conference for a liberal high church Anglican, which I've never done and I know that I'll never be invited to do so. But if I were invited I would not do it.

Why? Because my presence, my participation gives approval to those people's message and their position. In recent years it was a very well-known evangelical who spoke in Tabernacle, Salt Lake City. And I believe he endeavored to truly state the truth as he saw it.

And he began at the very outset to say that he did not at all hold to a doctrinal agreement with them. Still, I thought in my own mind, is it not in the Mormon's mind, does that not, his coming, not make them feel like he's accepting of us.

He's including us. And so I couldn't agree more. And Billy Graham, you know, I've studied his ministry over the years closely. And I remember I used to listen to his sermons in the 1960s and 70s. And some of them were clear gospel, a call to repentance and yield to the lordship of Christ.

But the longer his ministry became popular, it was when he was in London, doing his famous London crusade, that he had liberal Anglicans and liberal churchmen who totally denied the basic historic doctrine of the Christian faith.

And he had them on his platform. He would not take Catholics out of the Catholic Church. His ministry purposely said to their counselors, we cannot encourage anyone to leave the Catholic Church or a dead, liberal Anglican church.

We're going to send our converts back into those churches to be an influence. Well, Martin Lloyd-Jones challenged this greatly. Lloyd-Jones knew altar call, and he didn't say everyone that made a decision in Graham's meeting, but the majority, many who made decisions in Graham's meeting.

And his crusades ended up not being truly converted. And so Martin Lloyd-Jones challenged public altar call. He was greatly criticized.

I mean, as much as I disagree with the so-called altar call, which I know was born out of Charles Finney and his heretical movement in the 19th century, but as much as I disagree with it, I do know a conservative fundamentalist and even a minority of Calvinists who have altar calls.

But they are very clear that when you are coming forward and reciting any kind of a prayer, that does not necessarily mean you're saved. I'm just giving you the opportunity now to publicly confess faith in Christ and so on.

So they do it with more responsibility than some of the other folks that have these altar calls. And even though, as I said, I don't like any kind of an altar call, I think that that is at least the more responsible thing to do, especially when he's acknowledging, unlike some ministries or some pastors or religious leaders who actually pronounce that all those people who come forward are without question saved, he's actually admitting that only a small percentage are.

So why doesn't he not worry? I mean, why does he not warn these individuals that this is not a guarantee that they will be in heaven?

Right. Well, you know, I've often told others, I answered the altar call so often and with so many public decisions that I wore the carpet out in our church because I walked to the front so many times to answer the altar call.

And the simple fact is, the danger is that in his wonderful little booklet, The Invitation System, he says the problem is that people are given the idea that simply because they respond outwardly and go to the front of a church, they make that synonymous with salvation.

And they think automatically if they go and they do what the preacher tells them that they've been saved and no greater mistake could be made because if the Holy Spirit has not produced conviction and regeneration and true saving faith, then they're only going to get false assurance.

But the second major mistake about that is, Mr. Murray says that preachers using altar calls to try to get people down the aisle, it's really at the root of it is unbelief to produce conversion.

But that actually goes right along with Finney's theology because he did not believe that the Holy Spirit... As Jerry Johnson very rightly put it, Charles Finney was not a synergist, he was a monergist, but not the good kind of monergist.

He believed that salvation was entirely in the hands of a man. But if you could, I'm sorry I interrupted you there, I'm sorry.

Well that's fine.

I used to work for an organization that required us to give, when we traveled we were required to give altar calls and I didn't like altar calls either and I certainly didn't want to give anybody a false assurance of salvation.

So when I gave the altar calls I would say now I want every head up, I want every eye open, I want you to take a stand for Christ in front of all your friends. Instead of trying to make it the secret thing like don't let anybody else find out.

Because it's really tricking people. Because it's making people who are uncomfortable raise their hand, but then everybody's going to see them when they go forward.

But then they're told also, you listen to some of these radio shows where they'll tell you, they'll pray that prayer and say now if you said this and you meant it, welcome to the kingdom of God. And it's like how do they know?

And you talk about false assurances all over the place.

Now I don't want the subject obviously to be derailed to just be speaking about altar calls because I actually do want to have Jim Elliff or someone from Christian Communicators Worldwide who have written on that extensively to come on.

I don't know if you're familiar with Jim, he's a great brother, Pastor Mac.

Yes, he's a good friend of mine.

But one thing to clarify before we move on from that part, and I'm not saying that we can't return to it, but don't we have to make it clear that we are not saying that a pastor should not be, or a preacher or a vandalist should not be inviting people to Christ.

Absolutely right. Every true preacher should call people to immediate faith and repentance. There's a great difference between trying to get people down the aisle in a public decision and calling people to come to Christ.

Some of the greatest evangelists in history were passionate about calling people to come to Jesus Christ and yet they did not use a public altar call.

I just want to reassure our Bible-believing conservative Christian listeners who have a passion to see the lost come to Christ, I want them to see that we are not rejecting an altar call for the same reason that a liberal mainline church would not have one.

They would not have one because they have no concern or even belief that the lost individuals in their midst are lost or need to be saved, for the most part. And they have a totally different reason for not doing that.

My guest today, Pastor Mac Tomlinson, and the majority, I would say, of theologically reformed Christians do not do this because, number one, it's not biblical, you can't find this anywhere. Number two, it hasn't even been practiced in history longer than 150 years or so.

And number three, it can be dangerous. It can mislead people into thinking that because of a physical action on their part, like walking down an aisle, saying a prayer, and just repeating very often what a pastor is leading them to say, that that is going to save them.

And as my Roman Catholic friend Bob, now living in Colorado, but he was a friend of mine on Long Island, he used to say when we would get into theological disputes with each other, he would broad brush me with Billy Graham and all those that do altar calls, even though I would constantly correct him and tell him that I don't do that.

He would say, you believe that you can just walk down an aisle in a church, say a prayer, and then you can cry up to heaven to God, you're stuck with me now, nothing you can do about it. And obviously there is some truth in his humorous analogy, but I obviously, and no truly biblically faithful person, believes that that is the case.

But going back to our issue at hand, these events, when our listeners see an event like this, that is calling upon, basically indiscriminately, churches, pastors, ministers, lay leaders, parachurch groups, to join them for a major event, should not our listeners either do thorough research or reject the invitation altogether if there is no doctrinal statement at all to be found in any of their publicity?

Well, I would say so, yes. I think we need to be. If I join in cooperation with an event, be it a citywide crusade, be it in the city, usually there's not even the most basic doctrinal unity. I'm not talking about everyone having to be a Calvinist.

I'm not talking about not being able to even work with, or fellowship with, say a godly Arminian. I'm talking about they will not let there be any biblical truth set as a minimal standard for what we mean by what is a Christian, what is the gospel, and what is true fellowship and cooperation based on.

And when groups are silent and they're very vague, it's a warning sign that they're wanting to be one and be in agreement, but when you ask them what, they say, well, we all just need to love each other.

And they might say Jesus is Lord, it means different things to different people.

Yeah, there are people who say that we are all just united under the banner of Jesus, but some of the people there may have a Jesus that is no more God than Jesus, the guy that runs the Mexican restaurant in your neighborhood.

That's right. It's good to remember that the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, he warned about another Jesus, another gospel, and another spirit, none of which were the genuine article.

And we have to go to break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Pastor Mac Tomlinson on biblical ecumenism versus being unevenly yoked, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

That's C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, your country of residence, if you live outside of the USA. And if you are asking a personal or a private question where you feel more comfortable not identifying yourself, you can be our guest and we will respect your wishes.

That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away, we'll be right back with Pastor Mac Tomlinson of Providence Chapel. Hi, I'm Chris Arnsen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a Christian perspective.

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Find Harvey Cedars on Facebook or at hcbible .org, hcbible .org. Call 609 -494 -5689, 609 -494 -5689. Harvey Cedars, where Christ finds people and changes lives. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today, as we are doing it live from the seashore here, our guest today is Pastor Mack Tomlinson of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas.

We are discussing biblical ecumenism and Catholicity versus unevenly yoked. Later on, we hope to get also into a topic about starting your own personal library and what should be required elements in that library, or at least highly suggested.

Required reading.

We would love to hear from you and your own questions. At ChrisArnsen at gmail .com, we already have a few people patiently waiting to have their questions asked. As Buzz, my co-host, has said to me, how do you know they're waiting patiently?

I really don't know if they're waiting patiently, but they're at least waiting. Before I return to our discussion, though, I just have a couple of brief announcements. Tonight through Monday in Salt Lake City, Utah, Christ Presbyterian Church, a congregation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, Utah, is having a four-day Bible conference with Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, who happens to be a mutual friend of both mine and my guest, Pastor Mac Tomlinson.

Dr. White is going to be including in those four days a dialogue with a Mormon, Alma Alred, who is an instructor at the LDS Institute of Religion at the University of Utah. That's actually going to be tonight at 7 p .m., 7 p .m. Utah time, I'm sure.

And then tomorrow, Saturday, July 16th at 7 p .m., Who is Jesus? is the theme. And he is going to be having, under that theme, a dialogue with a Muslim imam. I'm not even going to try to pronounce that imam's name right now.

And then on Sunday at 9 .45 a .m., Dr. White will be addressing the theme, The Forgotten Trinity, a theme that's near and dear to my heart because Dr. White's book on that same title, or with that same title, was dedicated to me.

And I will never be able to thank him enough for doing that. It was one of the most precious gifts I've ever received, to have the honor of having my name in that book as it being dedicated to me. And Sunday the 11th, I'm sorry, Sunday the 17th at 11 a .m., and also Sunday evening at 5 .30 p .m., and Monday night at 7 p .m. there are other sessions.

The final session is Proclaiming Jesus Christ in a Hostile Culture. For more information on all of those sessions, for those of you who live near or in Salt Lake City, or have the means to hop in a plane and get there as soon as possible, the website for more information is GospelUtah .org.

That's GospelUtah .org. And we hope that you enjoy and are blessed by this conference. But last but not least, there is a conference that we've already mentioned that we want you to attend, and you've got a lot more time to make plans for.

That's August 4th through the 6th, the Fellowship Conference New England, that our guest today, Mack Tomlinson, will be speaking at. He will also be joined by Jesse Barrington and Charles Leiter and Michael Durham.

And this is going to be a time of fellowship, praise, and teaching from very solid biblical men of God. And we hope that you go to that website to register as soon as possible, fellowshipconferencenewengland .com, fellowshipconferencenewengland .com, and God willing, we will be repeating that information before the end of the program.

And we do have a listener that we'd like to go to right now, Pastor Jeremy in Laredo, Texas. A question I'd love to hear Mack's response to is, in this struggle between knowing whether or not an issue requires division, for an example, the deity of Christ, or agree to disagree yet remain in fellowship, example, differing perspective on church membership, where do the doctrines of grace fall into line in Mack's understanding?

Well, that's a great question.

Well, thank you, Jeremy, for that question. This, in my opinion, it takes time to process this. But my brief answer would be, and it is my firm conviction, that speaking of the doctrines of grace, of course, most people who know what we're talking about is referring to the five points of Calvinism historically.

Total depravity, unconditional election, limited or, and the final perseverance. I believe there are many true Christians who know and love the Lord who do not hold to that system. In fact, probably a majority of people, when they get converted, have never even heard of the doctrines of grace.

And so, and then in God's goodness and in His time, they begin to learn the truth and they grow in the knowledge of the truth as they're taught biblically. I believe it's a mistake to require doctrinal unity, even on that level, as a basis of true fellowship.

Because the basis, Martyn Lloyd-Jones has a wonderful little book, The Basis of Christian Unity, and that book is well worth reading on this point. He talks about the fact that the basis of true unity is a belief in the gospel itself, the death of Jesus Christ for our sins, and that salvation is only in Him, and that a person must be truly converted and come to know and love Christ.

If that is true, then any believers who share that common salvation, they already have a spiritual unity and they should love one another and be able to have fellowship and not let other differences hinder their fellowship.

And I could go on here, giving a historic example.

Yeah, sure.

It's well known. The two British Methodist evangelists, George Whitefield and John Wesley, were a great example of this. John Wesley were Anglicans. They were the leaders of what became known as the Calvinistic Methodists and Calvinist Armenians.

And Wesley not only rejected the doctrine of election and predestination, he seemed to hate it and he wrote publicly against it, even publicly showing his disagreement with George Whitefield. And Whitefield, the gentleman, he would respond, but he would not let their differences on some major doctrine cause him to cease loving John Wesley.

Their differences were improved toward the end of when he preached at Whitefield's funeral and he made great statements of respect and love and true Catholic unity. I don't personally think that unity is based on the five points of Calvinism or the doctrines of grace.

I do believe ministry unity, men pastoring together, ministering together, elders in a church, or local church unity will be greatly increased when there's doctrinal unity on that level. But for Christian fellowship in general, I can have true fellowship with and love for godly Armenians who do not agree with me.

My view on...

Right, and of course, as you were saying, though, for unity in a church, not only for pastors, elders, deacons, but Sunday school teachers and so on, there's everything that would be right about excluding those that do not agree with the church's confessional statement or system of theology, etc.

Exactly right. When churches have elders agree theologically and are not truly like-minded, it's only going to cause problems.

Oh, I've seen it. I've seen it happen.

I've seen it too. Because a man will either be silent about his differences and he'll compromise his conscience, or finally, in his teaching, his differences will come out, and then you have confusion in the church because the elders don't agree with one another.

So there must be doctrinal unity at every level when we're talking about church leadership and the local church. Now, we'll say we probably have people who attend our church who come in and they're receiving well from the ministry of the church, and they don't fully yet know what the church believes, and we don't hide any of it, but we don't treat them in a lesser way because they may not have theological understanding.

If we see that they have sincere love for the Lord and the truth, then we embrace them as we otherwise.

Right.

There is also, I'm sure you would agree, room for disagreement over less serious issues, even amongst an elder board. Like, I'm assuming that you would find no difficulty with a church having one elder who is a non-millennialist, one elder who's a post-millennialist, one elder who is historic pre-mill, and that kind of thing.

I don't know. Maybe you don't think that there should be diversity on those amongst elders, but what is your comment about that? And other things of unsalvific, non-salvific in nature.

Yeah. There's a funny story, and probably apocryphal, but you may have heard it, that a man was walking across a bridge in London, and he saw a man who was preparing to jump off the bridge and end his life.

And he began to talk to him, found out that he was a professing Christian, that he was a Baptist. When he found out he was a super-lapsarian, he said, Jump, Heretic, jump.

I've told that joke maybe a little bit differently in a lot longer version of it.

Yeah.

We're definitely much more long-winded.

I agree. I agree with you. Secondary issues. And it's important for Christians to come to understand what are essential issues that are non-negotiable.

Why don't you go through that, actually, in summary form.

Yeah.

Well, the gospel, the inspiration and authority of the Bible, the doctrine of the Trinity, the deity of Christ, justification by faith, the bodily resurrection, the orthodox tenets of the faith. There can be no fellowship with people who don't hold to those.

No, obviously. Okay, I'm sorry.

On secondary issues, eschatology, the millennium, even baptism, some of my closest friends are Presbyterians who hold to them.

Yeah, the man sitting next to me does.

Well, I'm a credo Baptist. I'm a Baptist by conviction, and I believe I would be willing to die for that conviction. Brethren that I'm close to and love and who preach in our church at times hold to a different position.

Now, because that's an ordinance, though, would you not say a church would be very right to exclude people who disagree on baptism from their teaching or elder positions?

I would say probably so. I've known of churches where he was not fully convinced of his position on baptism, and he still taught or preached at times, and he was so mature in his views that he agreed never to address it in his teaching in church.

And church leaders on those type of issues generally do need to be in agreement. But on other secondary things, as I said, eschatology, ecclesiology issues, those are not essential.

Right, and when I posed my question to you about harmony on the ordinances, I wasn't saying that it is always wrong for a specific church to allow diversity on that. I'm just saying that I don't think it's wrong for specific churches, like those who adhere to the 1689 London Baptist Confession or those who adhere to the Westminster, to say, although you are our brothers, if you disagree on the ordinance of baptism, you cannot participate in the leading or teaching of our congregation.

So I think that those are two different issues, whether a church can have diversity on that or if they must have diversity on that.

Right.

Do you recall the early days of fundamentalism, when they were obviously concerned about liberalism in the pulpits? Of course, we're talking about people involved. I believe it was Moody and Spurgeon, and I can't remember all the names of those who were involved in the founding of fundamentalism.

But it seems that what they came around as a basis of fellowship was, if I remember this correctly, was the inspiration of the Bible, the deity and virgin birth of Jesus, the blood atonement, the physical resurrection, and a bodily return of Jesus.

Right. Exactly right. And you know what's interesting in that era of early fundamentalism in the 20th century in America? J. Gresham Machen, one of the great defenders of Christian faith and one of the greatest scholars in evangelical history, really, he had a proper ecumenical spirit, a proper Catholic spirit, and he invited Billy Sunday to preach at Princeton Seminary.

It was either at Princeton or Westminster. It may have been Westminster in the early days. But he loved Billy Sunday because Machen said, he powerfully preaches the blood of Christ. And that's also why Spurgeon had Moody preach at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, even though Moody was not a doctrinally accurate, precise evangelist.