December 6, 2016 Show with Stephen McCaskell & Barry Cooper on “Luther: The Life & Legacy of the German Reformer”

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. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, We are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with, 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 hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on the sixth day of December 2016.

I'm looking for what will prove to be, I'm sure, a fascinating interview today on a new documentary coming out, Luther, the Life and Legacy of the German Reformer, and I hope that you stay tuned for the full two hours for that interview.

But before I introduce my guest today, I have some exciting news. This January, next month, on the 12th and the 13th, I'm having two very exciting events. I am having another Iron Sharpens Iron pastor's luncheon on Thursday, the 12th of January, from 11 a .m. to 3 p .m. Eastern Time, and I am inviting all men in the ministry out there who want to travel to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to attend that free event, and it's absolutely free of charge.

You will be served a gourmet meal. You will have a time of fun and fellowship with fellow men in the ministry, and you will receive a very heavy sack of free books, probably valued at $500 or something like that, because nearly every single major Christian publisher in the United States and the U .K. are sending approximately 100 free books of titles that I specifically pick out myself for men in the ministry, and therefore, these are all free of charge, and the men...

You're not only going to get the books, but you do get a canvas sack, a free canvas sack, to carry all these books out to your car with. It's going to be held at the Carlisle Vault, which is a gorgeous catering hall, and they were willing to work with me at an extremely affordable price.

The catering is going to be done by a chef executive, and I'm looking forward to that. And then the next day, by the way, first of all, I forgot to mention that Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary, who's professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

He is the speaker at the pastor's luncheon. But the next day, Friday the 13th, kind of an interesting date, at the Carlisle Theater, which is a gorgeous theater that was built in the early 20th century and was restored.

It's a gorgeous, old-fashioned theater that really has been restored to beautiful, new-like condition. The only thing that makes you realize it's old is because of the architecture. It's definitely one of those old theaters from the early 20th century.

At the Carlisle Theater on West High Street in Carlisle, we are having another series of the great debates that I started many years ago on Long Island back in 1996. They began with Dr. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries, but this year, or should I say next year, because it's January, we are having Dr. Tony Costa from the Toronto Baptist Seminary, who's actually a mutual friend of Dr. James R. White.

He is going to be debating Roman Catholic apologist Robert St. Genes, and it's going to be the same theme that I started this debate series with back in 1996, Mary, Sinless Queen of Heaven or Sinner Saved by Grace.

So it should be a really fascinating debate. So mark your calendars. Please fly out or drive out or take a train out or run out or swim out, however you want to get here. Take a parachute here to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a hot air balloon, however you can get here, because this is going to be a really, I'm sure, phenomenal event.

And it's only $5 per ticket because we have to pay for the expenses of the theater and pay for travel expenses and so on. And the theater can seat 900 people, so I'm hoping to pack that 900-seat theater out to capacity.

So I hope that you can come to both of those events. Of course, the first event is only for men in ministry leadership. The second event is open to everyone, men, women, and children, and those who are outside of Christianity, no matter what religion or lack thereof you adhere to, we would look forward to seeing you at the debate.

And for further details, just email me at chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com, which is also the email address that you can send in questions for our guest today on this new documentary, Luther, the Life and Legacy of the German Reformer.

Testimonies and Christian Backgrounds

And I'm so delighted to have for the very first time our two guests. Stephen McCaskill is a Canadian filmmaker and director of the documentary, Through the Eyes of Spurgeon. Many of you may have seen that wonderful documentary on Charles Adams Spurgeon.

And we also have with us Barry Cooper, author, teacher, presenter, and director of product development at Christianity Explored Ministries. They are both going to be discussing the new documentary, Luther, the Life and Legacy of the German Reformer.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you both for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Stephen McCaskill and Barry Cooper. And by the way, Stephen, am I pronouncing your name correctly?

My name is Stephen McCaskill.

McCaskill, okay. Just wanted to make sure that I was pronouncing that correctly because even though it's kind of phonetic, I can see how there could be possible different pronunciations of that. Anyway, well, first of all, before we even go into the subject at hand, I want to get each of your personal testimonies of coming to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, what your religious backgrounds were growing up as a child, if any.

And let's start with you, Stephen McCaskill.

All right. As a pastor's kid, I grew up in a very loving home. My parents cared deeply about me, consistently reminding me of God's love for me found in the cross. Despite this, I can remember from pretty much when I became a teenager through most of my high school years, struggling with very just a dark depression and being in a state of rebellion against my parents despite their love.

To summarize it, it came to a climax one night when my mom's wife was almost taken from me in a highway accident that I caused. So it's a long story, but it was a very loud and traumatic moment in my life.

God used it to really rescue me from my rebellion against my parents and my rebellion from Him. I was confronted with the darkness of my sin and then the need for a Savior. And it really was in this moment, I think, that God saved me.

The verse that really had a profound impact during my life and still does to this day is from 2 Corinthians 5 .21.

It's just,.

For our sakes you made Him to be sin who knew no sin. And this is, of course, talking about Jesus, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. And we'll be talking about Luther later, of course.

But what Luther says on this verse is equally as good. That is the mystery which is rich in divine grace to sinners, wherein by a wonderful truth are no longer ours, but Christ's. And the righteousness of Christ, not He has emptied Himself of His righteousness, and taken our evils upon Himself, that He might deliver us from them.

In the same manner as He grieved and suffered in our sins and was confounded, in the same manner we rejoice in glory in His righteousness.

Praise God. And so you become a Christian. And, well, before I even go into your journey into filmmaking, I want to hear Barry's testimony of salvation and something about your background. Barry Cooper, if you could.

Yeah.

Even if we were on holiday, my dad was... While there was my dad entrusted in the office, since I did a lot of damage to other people, it went wonderfully. I was asked to read, which I thought was a bit straight together, and then in addition to that, I said bye.

Well, let's address the elephant in the room, or the elephant and castle in the room. Where exactly are you from?

And just where are you from now?

Well, I have plenty of friends in Florida who are members of really excellent churches out there, so let me know if you need one. Thank you very much. And where would you both be in the realm of Christian theology and your own personal convictions?

Like a denomination, I guess I would be a Reformed Baptist. I attend a Reformed Baptist church.

Yes.

And, yeah, my convictions would be similar to that of Spurgeon's.

And Barry?

Yeah, that would be similar for me. I mean, I helped to... I was one of the core group who helped to plant a church in West London about five years ago. Now, and in terms of... And Reformed.

Great.

Well, obviously, being a Reformed Baptist myself, I'm thrilled to hear that. Although I enjoy fellowshipping with my brothers from many different theological backgrounds, but there's something always special about being in harmony and the doctrines of grace.

From Web Development to Documentary Filmmaking

Now, Stephen, let's start with you about how you... What providential things in your life did the Lord use to bring you to consider becoming a filmmaker and actually becoming one?

Yeah, well, I can tell you as a kid, I never thought I would be making movies. I was quite nerdy growing up, and so I naturally gravitated to computers, and I learned how to read code and how to write code.

And then I was a web developer and a website designer. So it started about five years ago. I was working for a creative agency out of Atlanta, Georgia, and I was the lead web across the U .S. and across the U .K.

And the creative agency also did a lot of live-action videos for a lot of these things, and I saw some of the work we were doing, and I I thought it looked really interesting. And for fun as a kid, we would make little films, little short films.

My friends and I would grab the camcorder, and we would spend a weekend making a short film and then editing it, and we would just watch it with ourselves for fun. So I did that growing up, and I guess I was always interested in that.

I just never thought I would. But in this creative agency, we did live-action videos, and I pretty much thought, you know, if I could go on some of these live-action video production sets and help out in whatever way.

And so five years ago, I turned into the professional video world. If you remember, maybe a year from that point, I actually had shifted from doing web development to doing video production and actually became the director of video.

And it was really interesting video projects, and I got to...

Okay, yeah, great.

Yeah, and they've done a documentary on Martin Luther Jones called Logic on Fire.

Yes, I saw that entire documentary. I picked it up at the local Banner of Truth, which actually is their United States headquarters, about a five-minute walk from where I'm sitting right now.

Oh, man, if I was there, I would be spending way too much money at that story. Yeah, so Matt actually invited me to come on set for a portion of Logic on Fire. He had heard that, and I'm sure we'll talk about the idea to Matt.

I was thinking, you know, maybe I should make this version documentary. I think things that I know have only been really neat to work in.

Nope.

Yeah.

What were some of those projects that you worked on in those countries?

So in Iraq, the first project I worked on there was a project that's called Rescue for Refugees. And it was we were with Americans First and a couple other organizations, and we were really seeing what these Christian organizations were doing on the ground for these refugees that had fled ISIS, because ISIS came in and pushed them out of their villages.

We were interviewing them, and we were building out a little short documentary for that. Cuba, they started to allow Bibles back into the country, and there's a huge Bible shortage, and so there's all these organizations raising money to get Bibles back into Cuba, an organization that brought in, I think, 70 ,000 or 80 ,000 Bibles, and we did a little documentary on that.

It's really in Cuba. And Peru, I was just there a month or two ago and working in the Amazon. The Bible Institute will actually fly in indigenous people that are in the Amazon that there's no roads. I go through nine days, an hour or two, guide in from these villages into the city.

They train them and equip them to be pastors and then send them back to their villages to plant churches to preach God's word.

Great.

Well, if you could ever get me a lead for someone to interview from Cuba, that would be great, because I would love to do a program on the gospel in Cuba, especially doing an interview, obviously, after the recent death of the dictator Fidel Castro, who amazingly, although knowing how leftist many in the United States are, it's not that amazing, but it's disturbing to see how many people are lauding him as some kind of a fallen hero.

But I would love to do a program on that. So after our live program is over, perhaps you could give me some leads. But Barry, tell us about Christianity Explored Ministries.

Christianity Explored Ministries and Reformed Convictions

Yes.

In the whole of 1909, I think it was.

Yes, I had the privilege to meet him probably back in the early 1990s. I met John Stott when he came out to Long Island, New York, where I live, and preached at a gathering of evangelical Episcopalians.

Yes.

The thing about man, and that has been translated, Amen.

Amen.

And if Jonathan Edwards could hear you, he'd be smiling from ear to ear, because obviously that was his philosophy, and his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, I think was intentionally just read with a very calm and unemotional tone of voice, because he was relying specifically on the power of the Holy Spirit to convict sinners.

And obviously in New England, that sermon brought about a powerful revival in the 18th century. But we're going to our first break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for our guests on this documentary they are creating, which will be released very soon on Martin Luther, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

Chrisarnson at gmail dot com. And please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA. And please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter, but I doubt with a topic like this that that would be the case.

So we hope to hear from you soon with your questions for our guests after these messages. So don't go away. We'll be right back with Stephen McCaskill and Barry Cooper. I'm Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and here's one of my favorite guests, Todd Friel, to tell you about a conference he and I are going to.

Hello, this is Todd Friel, host of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV and occasional guest on Chris' show,.

Iron Criticizing Iron.

I think that's what it's called. Hoping that you can join Chris and me at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, my new hometown. It is going to be a bang-up conference called the G3 Conference, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation with Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Baucom, Conrad and Bayway, Phil Johnson, James White, and a bunch of other people.

We hope to see you there. Learn more at g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

Thanks, Todd, I think. See you at the Iron Sharpens Iron Exhibitor's booth.

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The Making of the Spurgeon Documentary

And today we have, for those of you who just tuned us in our guests today are Stephen McCaskill and Barry Cooper and they have cooperated together to create a new documentary called Luther, The Life and Legacy of the German Reformer and our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

If you have a question for Stephen and Barry that's chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com. And if you could, Barry, how did you and Stephen meet?

That's a good question, partly because I love him.

Yeah, that's a classic and just out of curiosity, I forgot to mention this earlier perhaps. Stephen, you would know more about this as far as the documentary on Martin Lloyd-Jones. I was looking forward to hearing someone that I thought was going to be a part of that documentary just because I knew that he used to pastor sand fields in Port Talbot, Wales after Martin Lloyd-Jones had left the pastorate there.

Peter Jeffrey, I don't know if you're familiar with him. Peter Jeffrey is a globally known evangelical preacher conference speaker and author. He's probably written close to 50 books, maybe more than that and he was one of the successors of Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones at Sandfields.

Do you have any idea why he was not a part of that documentary?

I wouldn't know the answer to that. The stint I was a part of was right before we went up to Wendell so I don't know if that would have been addressed there but that would be a question for Matt Robinson.

Have you had Matt on the show?

No, but I'd love to.

Yeah, he'd be good. I think right now they're filming the new Behold Your God series so he's got a lot going on, a lot of exciting stuff.

Okay, well before we even go into the documentary on Martin Luther. Why is it that for your first documentary you chose the life and legacy of Charles Haddon Spurgeon in your documentary Through the Eyes of Spurgeon?

Yeah, well from a very early point in my Christian life I remember stumbling upon this little book that I was going to decide, but I decided I'd read it and since then, I've probably read the book 50 times and the original copy I have has been marked up almost every page has markings on it but it was in that book that I was reminded of the gospel of Jesus in ways I had never seen or thought before.

Spurgeon has a real gift with words he can pack in so few amounts of words. And then I started to read other books of his and I just couldn't stop reading and there were sentences and snippets that I felt like could be shared online and actually would encourage someone maybe just for the moment they needed a bit of encouragement and so I actually started a Spurgeon quote Facebook page and website and that kind of was growing and so it kind of motivated me to keep reading more of Spurgeon.

I started reading his sermons and then I started reading his autography but then I read his autobiographies and it was in A Very Good Husband and Father and in His Adventures in Life I looked at it in a new documentary and then we, if you're not familiar, kicked our documentary with the intention of releasing it for free all along too and so you can actually view them.

And Barry, you must live fairly close to where the Prince of Preachers pastored. You must live somewhere near Elephant and Castle where the Metropolitan Tabernacle is.

Yeah, it's true, south London and yeah, I had the privilege of going to both of those during my time in London.

So yes.

Yes, I understand. Peter Masters is still the pastor there and has been carrying on the legacy of Spurgeon at that historic place. By the way, do you two have any plans, I'm hoping you do to develop the documentary Through the Voice of Chris Arnzen The Life and Legacy of the Golden Voice that Transformed Christian Radio.

How about that?

I just want you to do it early enough so no bad things happen since now. But, well, this new project, I'm very excited about this. It's interesting that Martin Luther is, you know, in your average person's mind their thinking immediately goes to Lutheranism and that may have a good reaction or a bad reaction from your average person that you mention the term or the name Martin Luther to.

Of course, many people in ignorance will think that you're talking about Martin Luther King Jr. and I have that happen a lot. But as far as the great reformer you have people who immediately just connect him with Lutheranism and, in fact, I even know of a Lutheran pastor who is now with the Lord.

He passed away a number of years ago but he actually admitted he didn't think that if Martin Luther were alive today that he would be Lutheran. He was lamenting about some of the sad things that were disturbing him within Lutheranism in general and, of course, you have all different kinds of Lutherans today ranging from biblically sound to ultra-liberal.

But why did you folks choose Martin Luther as the subject of this documentary? And on the other side of the coin of what I just mentioned for those who really cherish and love their Reformation heritage the doctrines of grace which stand in stark contrast to the works righteousness of Rome and all other religions that deny or are outside of the gospel of free and sovereign grace it's interesting how Martin Luther is upheld as a hero whether you're a Baptist, whether you're a Presbyterian whether you're a Congregationalist whether you are a Bible-believing Methodist or whatever background you're from very often Luther is upheld as a great hero of the faith even if you're not a Lutheran.

But if you could tell us why you chose this figure from history. Maybe we'll start with Stephen this time.

Yeah, from the very first moment we completed and released this virgin documentary there was people messaging us and sending emails to me asking who is going to be the subject of the next documentary.

We released the virgin documentary at the end of 2014 and I kind of just pushed aside thinking of making another documentary. I just wanted to give myself time to kind of recuperate because it took a toll on me and on my family.

There's a lot of work that goes into a documentary and when you're not getting paid anything for it it means you do your day job during the day and then at night you work on the documentary and so of course that takes a toll on the family.

But we had people asking who... It was in July of 2015, I guess July of last year we started potentially doing another documentary this time with proper funding where we don't have to sacrifice our families to do a documentary because that, of course, wouldn't be honorable.

The anniversary is right around the corner and that is, of course, next year. Some of the more controversial... Well, you can't leave me in suspense.

You've got to give me some of those things that you wouldn't likely hear or see in other documentaries about Luther some of the things that you added that are more controversial or perhaps unknown.

I really did this documentary on Martin Luther. My inbox was flooded, flooded with emails and Facebook messages saying if you don't ban the Jews and his writings against the Jews then it's not going to be worth it.

Yeah, there are a number of Christians.

Especially dispensationalists and specifically messianic Jews who are upset that we who cherish our Reformation heritage laud Luther as one of our heroes. They would say that he... They would very often caricature him as a fire-breathing anti-Semite and that we don't want to hear any explanation for it.

If the man hated the Jewish people we want nothing to do with him and neither should you. How do you respond to that kind of reaction that is actually fairly common in this day and age. There was even a movie that came out maybe a year or two ago and I can't remember the name of it but it was a movie that was supposed to be painting the Reformers in a light.

I think it was really characterizing them all as anti-Semites. But if you could address that.

It's an incredibly loaded topic and I can't answer it nearly as good as it is answered in the documentary but I'll mention a few things. The first thing is that anti-Jewish sentiment was deeply embedded into the culture and so we have to understand that Luther lived in a very different world.

Medieval Germany was very different than Western civilization as we know it now. Anti-Jewish sentiment was common. Jews were seen as second-class citizens and they didn't have the same rights as everyone else did.

In the early years, Luther had a say about the Jews.

That's what I heard, yeah.

Yeah, unlike everyone else. No one else was saying this. This was very counter to what everyone else was saying.

In that area.

For sure. And at the same time though it's important to understand the culture because when we think of when we are understanding of that note that Hitler was a true church in more detail than I can.

Yeah, and unfortunately Hitler and the Nazis made use of some of those negative and horrible things that Luther had said. But there is a difference between an ethnic hatred of a people and a misuse of righteous indignation toward a false theology that can turn into a hatred.

And one of the difference that is clearly seen is that Luther wanted the Jews to come to Christ. The Nazis were searching the genealogies of people who were Christian to see if they had Jewish blood and would send them off to the camps no matter what their faith was.

So this was all about ethnicity and race and blood with the Nazis and had nothing to do with faith. And the Nazis of course were not Christian by any stretch of the imagination even though many of them were nominal Lutherans and Catholics.

Hitler hated Christianity looked at it as just another branch of Judaism and looked at it as a weak religion unlike the pagan idolatry and mythology of the Norse religions that many of these Nazis embraced.

We cannot throw out the vital contributions that Luther made even though he was a sinner like we all are. And it would be a tragic miscarriage of justice if we just entirely buried beneath a ton of rubble the wonderful contributions this man of faith left for the church for these last 500 years.

So I think that although our Messianic brethren and others have a very truthful and rightly felt anger and even sadness toward this unfortunate chapter in Luther's life just like none of us should be characterized only for our sin and remembered only for our sin especially when we may have contributed great things to the Christian faith.

Martin Luther should be no different he should be remembered and valued when it is appropriate. But we have to go to a break right now if you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own.

And we do have a couple of questions here for people who are waiting to ask you about Martin Luther and this documentary our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Chrisarnson at gmail dot com and please give us your first name your city and state and your country of residence.

If you live outside of the good old USA don't go away, we'll be right back after these messages with Stephen McCaskill and Barry Cooper Chris Arnzen here and I can't wait to head down to Atlanta, Georgia and here's my friend Dr. James White to tell you why.

Hi, I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. I hope you join me at the G3 conference hosted by Pastor Josh Bice and Praise Mill Baptist Church at the Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta January 19th through the 21st in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

I'll be joined by Paul Washer Steve Lawson D .A. Carson Vody Balcom Conrad M. Bayway Phil Johnson Rosaria Butterfield.

Todd Friel.

And a host of other speakers who are dedicated to the pillars of what G3 stands for Gospel, Grace and Glory. For more details go to g3conference .com and that's g3conference .com.

Thanks James! Make sure you greet me at the Iron Sharpens Iron exhibit booth while you're there.

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