June 19, 2020 Show with Os Guiness on “Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion” AND Gary DeMar on “Greg L. Bahnsen’s Book: ‘Against All Opposition: Defending the Christian Worldview'”

The Program Opens and the Day’s Guests Are Introduced

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 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 Friday on this 19th day of June, Juneteenth as it is known, the anniversary of the emancipation or the freedom of American slaves.

And this is 2020. And we've got a packed two hours on today's program. The second hour, starting a little bit after five o 'clock p .m. Eastern time, we're going to be joined by a revisiting guest, Gary DeMar, one of my favorite guests to interview.

He is founder and president of American Vision. Actually, he's not the founder, but he is the president of American Vision. And he's going to be discussing a new book that he has brought back into print by the late Greg Bonson, Against All Opposition, Defending the Christian Worldview.

These are lectures that have been transcribed and brought into print in a book form that Dr. Bonson gave quite a number of years ago, prior to 1995 sometime. So I'm looking forward to talking to Gary about that.

But I am absolutely thrilled for the first hour to be interviewing somebody that I've wanted to interview for years. And I finally have the opportunity by God's providence. This is our first time together with Oz Guinness, world-renowned Christian author and social critic.

And we're going to be addressing his book, which is considered his magnum opus, Fool's Talk, Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Oz Guinness.

Thank you, Chris. A real delight to be with you.

I'm going to give our listeners our email address right away if they want to join us on the air with a question. It's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. As always, please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

Oz Guinness’s Testimony and Call to Christian Ministry

Oz, we have a tradition here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, whenever we have a first-time guest, we like to get a brief summary of their testimony of salvation. I understand that that varies widely, not that the gospel is different for different people or that Jesus saves people differently, but the background stories are different.

And sometimes you have somebody who's raised in a Christian home, and when they reach adulthood, they can't even remember a time when they didn't love and follow the Lord. But then you have others who have more of a stark contrast in their life where they may have been an enemy, perhaps even a scandalous sinner for a great many years, and then the Lord rescues them out of that being a more day and night or night and day stark contrast in their lives.

Can you tell us something about your own upbringing, the religious upbringing of your youth, if any, and how either you came to be saved or how you came to take very, very seriously the things of the Lord?

Well, thank you, Chris. You can tell from my surname I come from a prominent Irish family.

That's right.

And my grandfather was one of the first Western doctors who went to China as a missionary. And it happened that both my parents were born in China, and I and my two brothers were born in China. During World War II, we lived in an area where, on the one hand, you had the Japanese army, 17 million killed in their invasion, and we were caught in a deadly famine in which 5 million died in three months, including my two brothers.

My mother, who was a surgeon, could do nothing, no food, no medicine. Then we moved to Nanking, which is the capital of China in those days. So I remember, as a boy, the climax of the Chinese Revolution.

So I have a missionary background, strong, loving, full of faith. But when the Chinese arrested my parents after two years of house arrest, they were allowed to send me back to England. So I went to a typical English boarding school, thousands of miles from my parents.

So clearly they loved me and prayed for me, but I had no particular Christian influence immediately in my life. And my own journey to faith was actually partly through a friend and partly intellectual.

I read the great atheists like Nietzsche and Sartre, and my hero is Albert Camus. And on the other side, people like Pascal and G .K. Chesterton, and then C .S. Lewis. And I came to faith in my last year.

It was actually something else that made a far greater impact, almost more important. I was a student in London in the 60s, drug, sex, rock and roll, free speech movement, films of Fellini, Antonioni, all that.

Christians we had gave us rich, deep blocks of faith and theology, but nothing about the culture. And then I came across a little man with Swiss knickers and a goatee called Francis Schaeffer, and he connected all the dots.

And when I went out to think, you can think about anything and everything and be free to. So that actually, in a practical way, made a huge difference in my life and just as much as my conversion.

Well, praise God. And what were the providential circumstances in your life that made you realize, I'm going to spend my entire life focused on Christian ministry, on evangelism, on teaching, on writing?

When was it that you knew this was your life?

Well, I would say trial and error. And the significant thing was, Chris, I came to faith in 1960. And talking to the great John Stott many years later, who was a friend, we both agreed that in that time, if you were, that was it.

It wasn't actually stated explicitly, but it's sort of understood that in parts of this. And I, my parents were missionaries. I knew that wasn't for me. I actually tried to be an evangelist with comic results.

And so I went down to a church in the south of England, thinking, well, maybe the Lord's called me to that. And after I loved the people I was doing, I talked to them.

Well, praise God for that. And the body of Christ is all the better for it, since we have been so blessed by you and the legacy of your work. And I'm going to read a commendation written by the late Ravi Zacharias for the book that we are addressing today, your magnum opus, as I mentioned before, Fool's Talk, Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion.

And Ravi Zacharias, who has been beloved by many for many years, and as many of you know, he has very recently gone home to be with the Lord he so loved and faithfully served for eternity. And he says, in a battle of ideas, unlike a battle between nations, the goal is not to vanquish the opponents, but to win them.

Making that challenge even more difficult is the oftentimes what we win them with is what we win them to. The art and science of dialoguing and debate must bring together the message and the method in concert.

No one does this better than my colleague, Oz Guinness. For years, I have benefited from his incisive thinking and carefully studied presentations. Here he wisely observes that our urgent need today is to reunite evangelism and apologetics and make sure that our best arguments are directed toward winning people and not just winning arguments.

I am thrilled to see his unique thinking on these crucial subjects, coextensive with a lifetime of doing apologetics. It is a must-read for anyone interested in engaging the skeptic or seeker. Few thinkers today rise to the level that Oz does, even as he plumbs the depth of vital issues in defense of the historic Christian faith.

With a powerful commendation like that from a powerful brother in Christ like Ravi, anybody listening should definitely get a hold of this book. Now, it's got a very interesting title, obviously, Fool's Talk.

And immediately what comes to mind are verses like Proverbs 26, 24, where we are told, Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. And then in the very next verse, we read, Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.

And then, of course, in 1 Corinthians 1, 21, we read that for since the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

So I'm wondering, are any of those verses, do they have anything to do with the title of this book?

It certainly does. Because in my thinking, there are three. First one doesn't help us at all. The fool proper, an idiot, because he lacks the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom,.

And makes fools.

The second fool is what you might call the retreated and seen as a fool for Christ's sake. That's 1 Corinthians 4. Actually a fool is seen as one out of faithfulness. And of course, the supreme fool bearer is our Lord, who was made a mock by the Roman soldiers.

You know, the one I'm interested in is the fool. You have the idea of the Jezebel to use that position back and make points to the high and mighty. And that, of course, is the incarnation to dynamism of a good apologetic.

I mean, there's far too much apologetics and doesn't try and something. And we need to do that today because private life has become infinitely more diverse and public life has become infinitely more teasing, but a thousand and one reasons why Jesus rose from the dead.

It's still very important for anyone who's, oh, people are not open, not interested, not needy. And then we finally have answers.

What Christian Apologetics Means

Now, briefly, for the sake, especially of our listeners who are either new believers or perhaps they're not believers at all. I do have listeners on occasion who contact me or atheists and Muslim and members of other world religions and cults and so on.

But can you please define apologetics? People may immediately think that people are apologizing in the classic sense that we use that term today. Like, I am sorry that I'm a Christian, but let me tell you about what I mean by that.

Yeah, no, it has nothing to do with that at all. It comes from the old Greek word apologia, which means a defense in a court case. But it's not only an offense, it's also prosecution. So, say in 1 Peter 3, be always ready to give a reason for the hope that's within you.

Defend your faith, present your faith.

And the subtitle, also interesting, especially a key word here, recovering the art of Christian persuasion. Obviously, you believe that this art had either been lost or greatly diminished in the minds and lives of not only those in ministry, but in the activities and lives of lay people.

Why do you think that that occurred? And what were we, Christians, replacing this art with?

Look at it this way, Chris. When people are open, interested, and needy, but whenever people are not open, not interested, and not needy, you have to be more persuasive. Subversive, roundabout. It's questions.

You take something like a Sunday sermon. A Sunday sermon assumes that the great majority of people in the church are just ready. So, preaching doesn't have to be live and indirect and subversive. But as we move out, talk, say, to atheists or Muslims or people who think that Christians are immediately bigots or whatever, you can't be simple and straightforward in that situation.

You have to be roundabout. So when our Lord, for example, when he's asked tricky questions, he doesn't answer them. He asks even trickier ones. There's nothing more subversive than a question. The first thing is a question.

And we begin by asking questions to find out one of the key ideas, to try and discern the treasure of the heart. What makes a person tick? What do they really love supremely? You have to ask questions to get down to that.

You know, there's too much talk today in apologetics about worldviews, as if someone missed or whatever. And they're a card-carrying version of it. No one's a card-carrying version of anything. They may believe certain things, and that story, if you know it, then you get down to what really matters to the first part, then you ask questions.

Persuading the Postmodern Mind and Answering the Fool

We do have a question from a listener in Queens, New York. We have Johnny in Queens, New York. And he begins by citing that passage, one of the passages I began with earlier. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.

Proverbs 26, 5. Our modern culture seems to be characterized by emotionally-charged post-modern relativism. Everyone is entitled to their own brand of truth, as long as your version does not impose upon mine.

How should a believer answer a fool and engage in a meaningful persuasive discussion in areas of religion, politics, and the likes, without being foolish like him?

Oh my goodness, you need a long answer to that one. Great question. We're not only in a post-modern era. No truth. So you have a combination of religion, and a combination of that, and emotivism. For many people, it's what they feel is what matters.

Rousseau says, what I feel is good, is good. What I feel is bad, is bad. But they make it difficult to communicate in the old way. And then you add things like, say, Twitter and the social media. It's extremely difficult.

But I would say today, remember that the first chap, we can count on the fact, you just say Christian, you're immediately categorized as a... You want to find out what they believe. And then take... He's got 850 false prophets against him.

He's a little outnumbered. The people are sitting on the fence. They're not with him. And the royal court... What does he do? He does not say, come back to God. He says, follow Baal. Extraordinary. Of course, he can say that, knowing Baal is not God.

Wait for them to see that, to try and see if Baal will answer their prayers. And he can't. And then he shows that the Lord is God, and so on. But the lesson there, when you find out what makes a person...

Then focus on that. And then press them out to see if they can be true. If Baal is God, follow Baal. If you believe in X, Y, or Z, we've got to be question askers. Probing and pushing for interesting answers.

The straightforward answer to a skeptic will simply be like water...

Yes, and by the way, Johnny. Make sure we have your full mailing address in Queens, New York. Because you have just won a free copy of Fool's Talk. Compliments of InterVarsity Press. And also compliments of the Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

Who will actually be shipping it to you, at no charge to you or to us. You know, I'm old enough that I remember what was typically called liberalism. For quite a number of decades in my life. Where liberals wanted really everybody to have an equal say in the public arena.

And that it was wicked and harsh and mean to judge anyone. It seems that we have something quite different right now. We have real dogmatic leftist orthodoxy, if you will. We wouldn't call it orthodox.

But they would believe that their beliefs are not to be challenged. And the beliefs of Christians and even one might say Jews and others. Who uphold the inerrant scriptures in high regard. We are the ones that are heretics.

We are the ones that are to be banished from the public arena. And be silenced and to lose our careers. And to lose our places on school boards. And in politics and so on. There's really a different approach with those types of folks than the old-fashioned liberal would be challenged.

Am I right?

Theological are deeply in trouble. They've gone nowhere. But you're raising a very important point, I think, Chris. Apologetics and evangelism are one. But I think evangelism addressing the issues of our day.

Now when you look at it at any moment.

But why?

Social media. Some people say it's the Coastals against the Nationalists. I think the deepest who understand America and freedom. From the perspective of 1776. The American Revolution decisively banned America and freedom.

From the perspective of ideas coming from the French Revolution. And then came Napoleon dictatorship. He said the ideas flowing out have in America today. The third of the great streams that have flown out.

We can ignore the other two. Marxism. And you know, I first came to this country. A hundred cities were on fire. Martin Luther King. Later, Bobby Kennedy. Both of them knew they wouldn't win. And they had to win through what they called the long march through the institutions.

In other words, when the colleges and universities. When the press and the media. When the world of Hollywood and entertainment. The ideas world. The cultural gatekeepers. Then you in America.

One.

So Antifa and Black Lives Matter may be the radical face of that. But you've got ideas that are culturally Marxist. Right across the board. And that's what we're really up against today. In a very powerful way.

So I think our apologetics and evangelism. Has to be equally. Adept.

In.

Prophetic understanding with a small p. In other words. We can't say. That says the Lord. But we're bringing to bear a Christian thinking. Christian worldview. On the issues. And we're up against very radical things.

So a lot of Christians I know around here. And I mean, live in Washington. They mentioned the word justice. They'll salute. They don't start to ask is. Is this evil? Which is evil. Should we respond in a biblical prophetic way?

Addressing it.

Confession.

Repentance. Forgiveness. Reconciliation. Marxist left-wing way. The American Revolution. Defended by people who understand it. And you almost need American apologists. On my point. We're talking about Christian.

And we do have a listener. Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. She says. According to the parable of the sower. Also known as the parable of the soils. That some plant some water. And it is God who gives the increase.

If it is true that God gives the increase. Why is it necessary for us to persuade anyone?

Well, always in scripture. You have a wonderful partnership. Between the sovereignty of God. And the significance of God's people. Made in his image. And just as you can't distinguish. And what's human.

Not the mystery of how they're related. So we can't fully explain. How God's sovereignty and our significance work. And you know the hyper-Calvinists go one way. And the hyper-Arminians the other way.

And it becomes a fruitless argument. And you see in scripture. That both are real. And we need to count on both of them. In other words. We are called. We're very much very junior. Part great apologist.

Is the Holy Spirit. Convicts and convinces. But we don't just sit back and pray and watch. We're there to witness. To all that our Lord has done for us. It's certainly not up to us. So I personally don't believe in the theistic proofs.

I don't believe. I think that's an insult. To the God who's Yahweh. The God of Sinai and so on. We witness to him. With powerful arguments. And we destroy strongholds. That's apologetics of ideas. That help people resist God.

But we can never prove God. And it's never all up to us. We need the Holy Spirit. We're merely junior partners. Working with the Holy Spirit.

And by the way Susan Margaret. You've also won a free copy of Fool's Talk. Compliments of InterVarsity Press. And Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. Cvbbs .com. So please make sure we have your full mailing address.

So you can have this book shipped out to you in a timely fashion. We're going to our first break right now. If anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question for Oz Guinness. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Always give us your first name at least. Your city and state of residence. And your country of residence. If you live outside the USA. Please only remain anonymous. If your question involves a personal and private matter.

We'll be right back with Oz Guinness. Right after these messages. So please do not go away.

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa. Wishing you all the richest blessings. Of our Sovereign Lord God Savior and King Jesus Christ. Today and always. Welcome back. If you just tuned to SIN our guest today is Oz Guinness.

And we are discussing his magnum opus Fool's Talk. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Oz. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. And we do have Arnie in Perry County Pennsylvania.

Who asks. It seems inevitable every single time. I have a discussion on important matters with an unbeliever. That if this person is vociferous enough and gets angry enough. I start to follow in my own anger.

How do I constantly remind myself your wonderful words. That we are not supposed to be winning arguments. But winning souls.

A great question. Frustrating today. We've got to remember that the ultimate persuasion. And our prime witness is not winning the argument. It's witnessing by loving the person. And then just sharing what our Lord has done for us.

He's called us to be witnesses. That's first and foremost about who he is. And what the Lord has done to us. And so how people respond. That's up to them. In other words we should have a responsibility.

The very best showing them. Putting the best. But at the end of the day. And sometimes it reduces you to tears. Because people can be so close and still turn away. The idea that we're kind of the great white hope in boxing.

We've got to knock out all comers. Answer every. In other words the end of the day. If you think like that. You begin to think that the faith. Is no more certain than our defense of the faith. And that's a terrible misunderstanding.

We can really blow it badly. By not loving someone. Or arguing extremely badly. Or saying something very stupid. Even if we're not so good at defending him. So we've got to get out of the way of thinking it's all up to us.

And if we do it well. They'll come to faith. And if we don't. They won't. And that's our. But what really matters.

We have. Oh by the way Arnie. You also won a free copy of Foolstalk. Please get us your mailing address. In Perry County Pennsylvania. So that cvbbs .com can ship it out to you. And thanks again to IVP Publishing.

InterVarsity Press. For being so generous with these books. We have CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York. Who says isn't there a real danger. When we are having a dispute theologically. With somebody who does not know Christ.

Or is even an enemy of Christ. That we can have sometimes according to our personality. A tendency to be too nice.

Well maybe. Right. And our Lord was incredibly loving. But he talked about people as whitewashed. And you see the prophets evil and outrageous and hypocritical. And so on. So no. Our ideal is never loving as we can.

And of course we know our own hearts. And one trouble is that we rationalize. Say we're getting angry. Some realize that as sort of righteous anger. Certainly never just nice. Always loving. But beware of your own heart.

Some people are naturally a little controlling and authoritarian. And so on. So know yourself when you witness. And watch how we act when people. Don't want to watch yourself rationalizing something. But never nice.

Now do you think sometimes how we distinguish. Being loving and nice. Is the manner with which we speak truth. To those who with whom we disagree. It could have an entirely different impact on the person.

And even the audience perhaps watching. If there are people sitting around. Or if this is even a formal public debate. Uh we can say some very. Uh startling. And uh very serious. Statements of warning.

And calls to repentance. And so on to people. But if we have a tone of voice. And a manner about us. That reveals that we are truly saying these things. Because we love the person. Rather than shouting at the top of our lungs.

Veins popping out of our. Forehead and our neck. And I'm not saying that that's never appropriate either. But uh. But uh. Isn't that the manner a very important thing.

Oh absolutely. And love wins haltingly. Or maybe not the best way. If you're really loving someone who went through. One helpful thing that I try and think of. A lot of people you hear. Remarkable stories.

A great evangelist. Plane and have a 10 minute talk. And they've led three people. You know most of them. I always think that. If you think. The first thing is. You know you meet someone. Where are they?

If they're at 97. But say they've been stuck. Say I remember talking to a family. Where his father was a deacon. And he'd abused domestic abuse. He'd abused his mother. Boy's mother. And every time you mention God.

He'd been stuck. Let's say the whole 14. It's worth it. You can only take someone. As far as the time you have with them. And the depth of the many witnesses. And we may take them so far. But intrigue them.

The trouble with a person who wants to. Blur it all out and get them the whole way. Is often they just leave. And then the next Christian he meets. Well he thinks back of the bad way. We did it. So we've got to find out where people are.

And try and get them as far.

Avoiding Niceness, Loving Well, and Knowing Where People Are

Excellent. We have RJ in White Plains, New York. Who asks. Is there not a real danger. In spite of the vital need for apologetics. Something that I personally love with a passion. To make sure that our love for an activity in apologetics.

Does not become something that is merely academic. Stale and cold. Where we wind up merely judging other people. For not having the intelligence that we have. And our main goal winds up. Either just to expose those who are our opponents as fools.

Or to as you said before. People who only just want to win arguments. Isn't there a danger of taking this beautiful thing known as apologetics. And turning it into something harmful.

Absolutely. Quick answer to what you're saying. Those of Jesus and the sin. That's often involved with it. You know one of the things. My actually best book beyond this one. Is The Call. And you can see that the damn egotistic.

Winston Churchill had an immense sense of Presbyterian reform. Sense of calling all power to him. But it made the man incredibly. And Churchill couldn't stand him. And one day after he'd been. You know sort of pronouncing to the wall.

He left the cabinet. Roman Churchill. Grace of God. Goes God. Now that's an appalling distortion of the good side of calling. Calling can become conceit. And in the same way that. Is allowed to try and persuade someone.

Becomes idolatrous. In all sorts of directions. And we trust in the power of the mind. So we need to. If we love apologetics as I do. And you obviously do. Need to think of the good side. Maybe particular.

Might be drawn.

Thank you R .J. Make sure we have your full mailing address. Because you also have one. The free copy of Fool's Talk. And when you sit.

How many do you have Chris?

I have five to give away. And I think that most of them are gone now. You used the word appalling before. It just reminded me of another quote. That I always laugh when I think of it. And if I'm. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly.

It was President Harry S. Truman. Who said of Norman Vincent Peale. I find Paul appealing. And Peale appalling.

Yeah that's right. It was actually Adlai Stevenson.

Oh okay. See I got to stop saying it was. Harry S. Truman. Thanks for correcting me on that.

Adlai Stevenson.

And let's see. I want you to have. Definitely five minutes of uninterrupted time soon. To summarize this book for our listeners. Because I know that you could only be on. For an hour today. And we have to go to our midway break.

At 54 minutes after the hour. So I'm going to take one more listener. And then have you. Summarize what you most want. Etched in the hearts and minds of our. Of our listeners today. We have John and Banger Maine.

Who has a question. And John and Banger Maine says. Who are your heroes of apologetics?

I am a great admirer. And then you move down the centuries. The next one for me would be Blaise Pascal. And his book. The most extraordinary. All the medieval apologists were Aristotelian. And following Thomas Aquinas.

And giving massive arguments that would prove. Pascal didn't think any of those work. And his approach. And they're only. Ponce's thought. Kind of an incredible cathedral. And he died at 39. And never lived to complete.

I mentioned earlier. My favorites. I knew Malcolm Muggeridge. When I was at Oxford. And always apologetics.

And he was. He was an ardent atheist. For quite a long time. Wasn't he?

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.