March 28, 2018 Show with Rich Jensen on “The Testimony of a Former Homicide Detective Now Pastoring in New York”

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

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

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

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

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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.

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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.

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Now here's our host Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming and ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 28th day of March 2018 and I'm so delighted to have back on the program an old friend of mine, one of my oldest

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Christian friends, at least one of the longest running Christian friends that still has anything to do with me and that happens to be

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Pastor Richard Jensen of Hope Reform Baptist Church of Medford, Long Island, New York.

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Many may recognize that name from at least one of the debates that I organized with my friend, our mutual friend,

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Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. He debated another mutual friend,

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Pastor Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Franklin Square, Long Island, New York.

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At that time anyway, Pastor Bill is retired from the pastoral ministry and is now running a parachurch organization titled

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Reformation Metro New York, but they debated on infant versus believer only baptism and Pastor Rich Jensen was the moderator of that debate and that you may recall he was ushering sanity into the event after my opening statements as the master of ceremonies of that debate and it was great to have him participate in that and many other events that I've been involved in and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back after a fairly long absence,

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Pastor Rich Jensen. Good afternoon Chris and it's good to be back in your show. Great.

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And when you said I'm one year old, you mean oldest chronologically? No, I wasn't referring to your age.

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I was referring to how long we have been in continued touch with each other in spite the distance we now have between us, you being in New York and me having moved to Pennsylvania, but I'm hoping to get to see you during my next trip to New York which

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I hope perhaps will even be this summer when Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary returns to Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Medford Long Island, but we'll get into that in a moment.

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Before we get into your personal testimony, because today the theme of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is the testimony of a former homicide detective now pastoring in New York, before we get to that tell our listeners about Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Medford Long Island.

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Well, Hope Reformed Baptist Church was founded in 1996 right here in Central Suffolk County in Long Island.

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We are a 1689 London Baptist confessional church and, you know, we're a growing congregation, very active in not only in evangelism and those type of things, but fulfilling the mission of our

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Lord to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, those type of things. We take those type of commands of the

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Lord very, very seriously. So it's a growing congregation and it's very exciting to be a part of this group of believers that God has brought together here in Suffolk County and to see the gospel played out in daily life.

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And from what I can remember, I don't know if anything's changed, but I believe Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Medford Long Island is the only confessionally reformed

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Baptist church in Suffolk County and only one of two confessionally reformed Baptist churches on Long Island.

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I believe that's true. I don't know of any other. There are other reformed churches, but as far as Reformed Baptist and holding, you know, to a full subscription due to 1689,

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I believe there's only two of us. Right. In fact, I would even go as far to my knowledge, as far as confessionally reformed,

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I think that that would include the five boroughs of New York City. Yeah, I believe so.

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I know that First Baptist Church of Manhattan is a Reformed Baptist church, or at least the pastor, I should say, is a

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Reformed Baptist, and that church is quite a historic Calvinistic church, although it has not been

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Calvinist until the recent pastor was called. It hadn't been Calvinist for probably 80, 90 years or more, but in its history had been a

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Reformed Baptist church. But I don't know if they are confessional, and I don't think they are. So it's quite an interesting thing that still there are only two that we know of in the

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Long Island and five boroughs of New York City, and hopefully in the not -so -distant future there'll be baby churches planted and sister churches and so on that are confessionally reformed because you and I both realize the importance of that.

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Of course, it's not something that's essential to salvation or anything like that, but it is certainly something we view as important, otherwise we wouldn't even bother being confessionally

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Reformed. That's true. I mean, we are in association and with fellowship, I should say, with many other churches on Long Island.

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We do have an organization called the Long Island Spurgeon Fellowship, which is made up of mostly

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Calvinistic Baptist churches, and we have great fellowship and even plan these different events with them and all, you know, so we're not exclusively in fellowship with only confessional churches, but we do hold that it is important, but we do have great fellowship with other

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Reformed and like -minded churches, you know, who may not, in fact, have a confession. Well, before we go into your specific testimony about having been a

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Suffolk County police officer and even a homicide detective, and I think even with the distinguishing description added to that, that you were,

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I believe, the youngest homicide detective appointed to that position in Suffolk County's history at that time, but before we even go into that, let's go all the way back to your childhood and hear about the religion of your youth, your own personal testimony of how the

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Lord providentially drew you to himself and saved you, and also how you came to embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace or, as they are commonly nicknamed,

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Calvinism and Reformed theology. Sure. Well, I'm a second generation

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American. All four of my grandparents came over from Norway and Denmark, so I am fully

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Scandinavian, as they would say. I would have loved to have seen the fights at the dinner table between the Norwegians and the

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Danish. You know, it was interesting, but as far as we know, as far back as my parents knew, both sides of the family were

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Christian. In fact, my grandfather on my mother's side of the family emigrated to the

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United States through Canada. He first came to Canada with his wife, and my mother was born in Saskatchewan, in a little town called

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Swift Current, Saskatchewan. And then they moved down into Montana and North Dakota, and he was actually like an itinerant evangelist.

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He used to go on horseback and minister to some of the Native American tribes, as well as the frontiersmen out there.

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That's back in the turn of the last century. And this is what area? Montana and North Dakota.

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Okay, because the building that houses or the building that is the home of Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio is a 19th century

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Presbyterian parsonage, and the pastor who lived here,

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George Norcross, was the brother -in -law of Sheldon Jackson, the

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Reverend Sheldon Jackson, who is in Time Magazine's top 10 Alaskans of history, because he was a church planter in Alaska, and I think predominantly on the western coast of the

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United States, and perhaps even as far east as Pennsylvania. But I know that he used to visit his brother -in -law here in this, this building, this parsonage.

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And he had planted over a hundred churches and did extensive work specifically with the

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Native Americans, and the reason why he's in Time Magazine's top 10 Alaskans of history is that he is the one that imported reindeer from Siberia to Alaska to rescue the

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Eskimos from a famine there. Oh, really? So just a little trivia that connected somehow with your own background.

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Yeah, yeah. So, but anyway, and my, on my other side of the family, my grandmother came through Ellis Island.

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She was a Norwegian nanny who was brought over to the United States to take care of children.

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And my grandfather, who was a very interesting young, young man, came over on a

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Danish boat. He was the, he was the Dane in the family, and jumped ship. So, so I actually come from a family of illegal, illegal immigrants, you might say.

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But anyway, he jumped ship over here, but later on did become a, a citizen of the

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United States. And interesting with, with him, he decided not to go back to Denmark on the ship that he came over with, and that ship sunk, and everybody was lost on board.

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Wow. And he then took a job on a banana boat coming from Cuba up to, up to New York.

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Did one run on that, didn't like it, that ship left, that ship sunk. Yeah, so he decided that he wasn't going to sea anymore.

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And that must have been hard for a Danish person to say he's never going back to sea. Yeah. But anyway, so, so he settled in New York, and my, my father grew up in the streets of New York City.

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I was actually born in Manhattan myself. And so I was the product of a

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Christian home on both sides of the family. And what particular denomination or theological affiliation?

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Well, I was, I was christened as a baby in the Lutheran Brethren, so which is not, not part of the state church, the

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Lutheran, but it's very popular amongst Norwegians to be Lutheran Brethren, especially out in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and out that way.

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And as the Missouri Synod, as the Missouri Synod Lutherans would say, the Lutheran Brethren are neither

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Lutheran nor Brethren. Yeah, I guess you could say that was true.

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So, so anyway, so my, my father met my mother in New York City, and then that's,

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I was born in the city, and then we moved out to Long Island in 1950. And I was raised out here.

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We went to a congregational church, and I made a profession of faith when I was very, very young, about six years old.

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And I had the blessing of growing up in a very Christian home. At that time, you would, it was actually fundamentalist and baptistic, even though it wasn't a

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Baptist church. And so I grew up that way, and I was raised that way. Church, you know, was just a part of what we did.

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And married my wife in that church. She was a converted Catholic. And everything, you know, by all stretches,

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I was actually a camp counselor at the Pinebrook Bible Conference. That was Percy Crawford.

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Some of your listeners might remember Percy Crawford from the Philadelphia in the founder of the

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King's College. And my father worked for him at the

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King's College. So I mean, I just grew up in that Christian environment and told everybody

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I was a Christian, and I would have told you that right, you know, any time. Then I wound up going on the police department.

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I come from a very big law enforcement family. My uncle was the first one who went on the

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New York City Police Department in the 1930s. He retired in the mid -1960s.

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Then my brother became a Suffolk County police officer. I followed him. My younger brother followed him.

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My son follows me. We have another, my other nephew is a Suffolk cop, and then another one's an

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FBI agent. So we've got pretty much all the departments covered, I think. So that became a big part of my life as well, and it was during that time that I just totally walked away.

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I was assigned to the narcotics squad after only three years. I was two and a half, and you were a little bit incorrect.

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I was not the youngest homicide detective ever in Suffolk County, but I was the youngest detective.

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I made detective when I was 24 years old, which was a little unusual.

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You can't even do that anymore in the Suffolk. You have to have more time on the net. That's when the lore of the world just drew me aside, and I completely walked away from the faith.

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Those were some dark times for me and my family, my personal life.

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Can you please, as much as you care to share, of course, let us know about some of the specific things that you believe were catalysts in you leaving the faith?

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And of course, you and I being reformed, we would say that you must not have been regenerate prior to that.

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Well, as I look back on it now, I think for sure I was not regenerate. My wife disagrees with me, but I don't think

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I was regenerate at that time. I thought that your wife said you still were not regenerate. She's a smart woman.

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But I think, and again, I agree with you totally, Chris. I never look back and blame anybody or anything or any group of people for what

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I did. As somebody in our church says, the T is true, total depravity.

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In fact, I have a little saying. When anybody starts messing, I say, don't mess around to doctrine of total depravity.

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That's the only one I can live up to. So I mean,

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I understand that I am absolutely responsible. Nobody else is for my sin. But there were some what

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I would consider to be contributing circumstances. The church that I was going into at the time, like I said, was very fundamentalist and somewhat legalistic in so many ways.

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As I grew older, I just started seeing so much hypocrisy and people saying, you can't do this, you can't do that, and yet they would be doing it kind of on the fly.

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And even they were fast and loose with the scripture. They obviously taught the inerrancy of the scripture. But then when you would ask them specific questions, well, how about this, you know, and they would like dance around it and basically negate what the scripture says.

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So it was always like, well, the scripture says that, but it doesn't really mean that, you know. And it was just such a poor hermeneutic.

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And again, you know, with my background in college being a math science major and whatnot, and then going into the police department and evaluating evidence and whatnot,

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I just realized that if that brand of Christianity was true, it was lacking something.

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And like I say, I just used that as an excuse to walk away. Basically, I mean,

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I know I was doing what I wanted to do in my own depraved heart. And like I said, it cost me my marriage.

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My wife and I divorced. And it was not a good time for me, you know.

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I mean, on the outside, the exterior, it was great because I was living the life of what you would see of a television detective, you know.

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I mean, I was working undercover. It was exciting. You know,

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I was going places and well -respected both in the department and in the community.

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But personally and spiritually, I mean, I was nowhere. And there was this emptiness, you know.

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And I knew it. And, you know, so like I say, it was not a period of time that I like to dwell on.

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Yes. In fact, there's another thing that you and I have in common, is that I was raised

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Roman Catholic. And although I believe the Church of Rome is a false church,

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I still had some rudimentary understanding of truth in regard to God, the

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Trinity. Of course, not understanding the Trinity and still don't completely understand it.

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But believing with certainty that Jesus Christ is God. And when I abandoned the faith, not in any kind of formal way, but just drifting away completely and living a very rebellious life,

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I had that annoying, haunting guilt because I was not like a lot of people who say,

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I don't believe in that stuff. And, you know, God doesn't exist. And when you're dead, you just rot in the dirt.

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Or they might even say, everybody's going to heaven. Or I can't wait to get to hell to be with my friends who have already died or whatever.

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So we can party all day in hell, all that kind of nonsense, all those lies. But I had that annoying guilt, just as you did.

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I never had a scot -free, leisurely life of sin that did not involve guilt and annoying and haunting guilt.

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Yeah. And, you know, it was funny because even in my unregenerate state, I had been going for an engineering degree, electronic engineering.

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That was my preference when I was sidetracked and became a cop. And obviously I see the providence of God and all of that.

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But it was my own teachers, my own science teachers in the university who were trying to teach evolution.

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And I just saw the bankruptcy of that system. So, I mean, I always knew that there would, that God was there.

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I, and I believe that Jesus Christ was his son. I believed what the Bible taught. I just didn't like what

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I saw in the church as, as hypocrisy is, you know, running fast and loose with the scripture, you know, trying to twist it, make it say what you wanted to say to fit a particular, a particular view.

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And, and then when you asked the pointed questions, you just got danced around. So, like I say, it's what

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I needed to give me the excuse to do what I really wanted to do in my, in my black heart anyway, you know?

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So, so in fact, it is funny. I could, I could be sitting in a bar stool after having, uh, one too many, uh, double imbibing after one too many, and somebody would, would take the name of the

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Lord in vain. I think he's knocked that off. Cause it just would bother me to hear somebody take the

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Lord's name in vain. I mean, I'd use any, I would use any other curse, you know, typical of the police, but I would never take the name of the

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Lord in vain because I just knew that that was wrong. You know? So it was, it was just an interesting thing.

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I can't say I know anything about sitting on a bar stool or having too much to drink. So, um, so anyway,

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I mean that I, I went along like that for, for quite a few years, five to seven years,

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I would say. And, uh, and then here's, and here's the interesting part.

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And, and this is why, and again, I can see in the providence of God, how he uses things.

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Um, when I was a child, uh, I had a pretty good memory. All right.

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And, uh, it's still good now. It's just very short. Um, so anyway,

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I would memorize Bible verses for prizes, like in VBS, going to camp and things like that.

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So I would memorize literally hundreds of Bible verses when I was in my early years, like what, 10, 12 years old, somewhere in around that area.

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Uh, I memorized the entire chapter of Ephesians six at a VBS and they dressed me up in tinfoil armor and I recited it in front of the whole church.

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So, I mean, I had this capacity to, to memorize scripture and it was the scripture that brought me back.

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That's what God used to me. Praise God. Um, I was, I woke up one morning, uh, and again, from, from a, an external point of view,

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I had a pretty good life. There was no tragedy, uh, nothing. I was, I had, I was living in a condominium on a golf course.

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Uh, like I say, I was, I had already made detective Sergeant at this time. And, uh,

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I, so, I mean, I was rising through the ranks. Everything was looking great for me. And I woke up one morning, sat on the edge of my bed and I looked around and it just hit me.

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What are you doing? You like, you know, better than this. And what happened was all those scriptures that I had memorized as a child were coming back and they just were coming back to me.

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And I was just absolutely convicted, but it was the word of God that convicted me. And, uh, that night, uh, in fact, that morning,

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I mean, when I, I just rolled off the edge of my bed, I kneeled at the side and I repented and I asked

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God to forgive me right then and there. And I know that was the time of my salvation. Praise God.

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But it was, but, and, and then again, you talk about how gracious and God can be.

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Um, you know, I mentioned that I had divorced my wife and, uh,

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I went to work that night. We had a pretty good relationship. We had, we had two children and we had a pretty good relationship.

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It was a civil relationship. It wasn't all, you know, really acrimonious. And, uh, I called her up, uh, while I was at work,

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I was working a five to one shift. And, uh, it's, it's funny.

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She had borrowed my hairdryer. I was a bit, you have to remember this was back in the seventies when everything was mod. And I, I used to go to a hair stylist.

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I, that is hard to imagine. Oh yeah. I mean, it's, I look at the picture, you know,

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I had a different leisure suit for every day of the week, uh, complete with a pair of patent leather shoes of the colors to match.

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You look at it nowadays, you say, what was I thinking? But anyway, so she had borrowed my hair dryer.

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So I called her up and I says, listen, can I stop over after work? You know, I'd like to, uh, get my hair dryer back.

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And it was just an excuse. So she's a gesture. So I showed up sometime after one o 'clock in the morning, cause that's what time

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I got off. And I walked into her bedroom and I sat on the edge of the bed and I said, can

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I ask you something? And she said, yeah, sure. And I said, will you marry me?

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Wow. She popped up. She said, are you kidding?

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Now you have to remember something. There was a woman who had been praying for me and, uh, and praying that the

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Lord would bring it back because she really believed that we were meant to be together. In fact, let me repeat your line. What were you thinking?

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What was she thinking? Yeah. And, uh, and, and here's, you know, here's how, how much

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I appreciate, you know, my wife. Um, she, she looked at me and she said, well, now you have to remember she had been praying for years that I would come back.

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And now here's the answer to her prayer right in front of her. And, uh, she said, well, she says, that depends like which kind of shocked me.

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And I said, depends on what? She said, Jesus Christ is number one in my life. You'd have to be number one in your life for me to marry you.

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Wow. Yep. And so I told her what had happened, how

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I had repented. And as they say, the rest is history. We were remarried and, uh, we've been remarried for over 40 years.

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Wow. That's not even including the time that you were married before the divorce. No. What we, what we do though is we, we keep our, the anniversary of our first marriage, which this year we'll be celebrating.

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That'll be the 53rd year of our first marriage. Wow. And, uh, but with the second one, we, we keep that.

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We always do something private, just her and I, we don't advertise that one. Right. So, well, for anybody who has not met

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Ginger Jensen, she is quite a remarkably beautiful woman, beautiful inside and outside and, uh, just a sweet Christ -like lady.

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It's always a joy to see her. And God has obviously blessed you enormously with a wife like that.

27:48

Oh, she certainly, he certainly has. She is, she's the love of my life. She is my best friend.

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And, uh, and we always say that, you know, that we would rather spend time with each other than with anyone else.

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Wow. That's amazing. Especially after the number of decades you've been married. I'm sure that's not,

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I'm sure that's not all that typical, even in Christian marriages, unfortunately. Yeah. I'll tell you one of the keys since, since we remarried, we have a date night.

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That's great. Every single week. Wow. In fact, you have told me that when I've called you to do something or other, either be on the show or whatever.

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Oh no, got the date night with my wife. That's right. And in fact, that's something that I do. And I do a lot of marriage counseling.

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And one of the reasons obviously is people find out that, you know, what Ginger and I had gone through.

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And so we can not only give them biblical admonition, but we can tell them some very practical things that we have done to, uh, to strengthen our marriage.

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And that is one of them. Just the idea of setting time aside once a week for each other can always get a sitter for the kids.

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I mean, we're very much into family. We have seven children, uh, and, and 10 grandchildren, one on the way.

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Um, but, but, you know, so, so we're very, very family oriented, but you have to spend time together.

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You have, and you have to cut out because the marriages is the basic of the, of the family unit.

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And if you don't have a good marriage, the family is going to suffer. So yeah, I would just encourage any of your listeners, you know, set, set time apart as couples.

29:31

So, uh, here you are, uh, having become a born again, believer, having had your marriage, uh, re restored your, your, your relationship with your wife after having been divorced, uh, being restored and reunited in marriage.

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And how does this call from the Lord to become a pastor begin to enter into your heart and mind?

29:57

Uh, that, I guess that's another interesting question because what, what happened was, uh, the, the pastor that remarried us, uh, and I'm going to tell you his name because he was just such a great man.

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He's, he's home with the Lord now. His name was Ken Fridgeson from Calvary Baptist church up in, in Port Jefferson.

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Yeah. Where you were once a member and an elder. Yeah. Now, uh, when, when we were remarried, we started, we were bouncing back and forth between my home church and, and that church.

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And the reason, uh, that we were gravitating towards Calvary and Ken Fridgeson was he had a ministry to, to pastors.

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He was somewhat of a police chaplain. Uh, so he, he loved cops. All right. And he actually performed a ceremony.

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He remarried Ginger and I. So, uh, so we were bouncing back and forth and, and we decided through circumstances and God's providence that that was the church we wanted to, to be in.

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So, and he and I just developed this, this great relationship. Uh, and he, he saw something in me that I didn't even know was there.

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And, uh, he, he approached me, uh, well, number one,

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I became a deacon. All right. Which in, if you remember the old conservative Baptist model, they had deacons and trustees.

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So the deacons were kind of like elders. The trustees were kind of like biblical deacons. Right. So I remember they, they came to me and they asked me to be a deacon.

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And, uh, I, I said, you gotta be kidding me. And I, I left, you know,

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I said, you want, I said, do you, do you know what? Cause by this time, uh, by this time I was actually in homicide,

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I'd gotten the promotion and I was a sergeant in the homicide squad. And, um,

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I said, do you know what I do for a living? I said, I'm out there. I wear a gun. I'm sticking my gun in people's face.

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I'm arresting people, you know, getting in fights and knocking people around. That's a perfect reformed Baptist elder.

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I said, and, and, and I looked around at some of the other deacons, you know, and they were, you know, they were, they were older men than I was.

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I was in my thirties at this time. And I said, Oh, come on.

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I can't, I can't be a, I can't be a deacon. This is not for me. And, um, so, um,

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I, I prayed about it and, and anything, a couple other things happened in that one upset sitting with the pastor and he convinced me that, you know, if, if so many people in the church saw that this, this in me that I should take it.

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So I did, I accepted it. And I became a deacon in the church. He also started something, and this is what is really near and dear to my heart.

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And quite frankly, I've tried to model this in my church. Um, he started a group, he called it the shepherd's group.

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Uh, it was a group of men who desired to, to dig into the deeper things of, of the word and possibly preach and teach.

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And he had, he, he saw this in me. I, I wasn't even pursuing it at that time.

33:17

So he asked me if I wanted to be a part of this group. And I said, yeah, I said that, that I would,

33:23

I would love to do that. So, so he started, uh, mentoring us. And, uh, that's how

33:30

I actually wound up coming into the ministry was through this mentoring process. I did take some courses, not, you know, today you call them online, but back in those days there was no online.

33:41

Uh, so we took correspondence courses with the seminary. So I was taking some correspondence courses along with what he was teaching us.

33:49

But basically I was mentored into the ministry. I don't, I don't have that seminary degree. Uh, I am ordained and we went through that whole process, but that's how

33:58

I came in through this mentoring group that he had. And it was during that, that, um,

34:04

I started to, to preach. In fact, it was interesting. We, we were supposed to have a, we had an evangelist come to the church and he was billed as the next

34:14

Billy Graham. This guy was supposed to really be the biggest, I'm not going to mention his name. And, uh, he preached this

34:20

Sunday morning and he did a fantastic job. All right. He was supposed to come back and preach again. And they asked me if I would give my testimony just like I'm doing here, but a much shorter version, of course.

34:33

And, uh, I said, yeah, sure. I said, I would be, I'd be happy to give my testimony. Well, come that night, turns out the evangelist gets sick and he can't make it.

34:43

So the pastor says, can you stretch out your testimony? So I stretched out my testimony for about half an hour and apparently it touched a lot of people.

34:53

And he came to me afterwards. He says, God has given you a gift. He says, you can speak. He says, you, you need to start, start preaching.

35:01

And so from that point on, he started teaching me how to preach, you know, homiletics, hermeneutics, you know, all of those other types of things.

35:11

And, uh, and, and I started, I started preaching, uh, and, and I was pulpit supply in many different churches.

35:18

That's how, that's how that came in. In fact, let's, let's, let's pick up right where you left off there when you're doing pulpit supply, cause we have to go to our first break.

35:26

Okay. If anybody would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

35:35

If you have a question for our guest, Rich Jensen, and please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence.

35:42

If you live outside the USA, please only remain anonymous. If your question involves a personal and private matter, that's

35:49

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And we'll be right back with Pastor Rich Jensen and more of his testimony of having been a homicide detective and now pastoring in New York, right after these messages.

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Now we are back to our guest today, Pastor Rich Jensen of Hope Reform Baptist Church of Medford, Long Island, and he is giving his testimony as a former homicide detective now pastoring in New York, and if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

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If you have a question, chrisarnzen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

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Please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence. If you live outside the USA and only remain anonymous if your question is involving a personal and private matter.

44:49

Before the break, Pastor Rich, as you may recall, you were talking about how there was a guest speaker at the church where you were a member, and you were asked to give a very brief testimony of your salvation, and then when the guest speaker called in sick, as it were, the pastor said, hey, can you really stretch this testimony out, which you did, and then your gifts for public speaking were recognized, and you were urged to begin to preach.

45:20

I think that's where we left off. Oh, and then you started to do pulpit supply. Yes, that's correct. I was doing pulpit supply for the conservative

45:27

Baptist denomination, which is what the church that I was in was a part of, and so that's what happened.

45:36

At the same time, we started attending every year the

45:41

Moody Bible Institute. I don't know if they still do, but they used to have a pastor's conference. It was always

45:47

Memorial Day weekend, and it was at the same time that the pastor started taking this group of men that he was mentoring, and we started going to the

45:56

Moody Bible Institute and listening to some of the best -named preachers of the time, and listening to them preach, and then doing workshops specifically geared for pastors and elders and deacons of churches.

46:15

It was going to that that I actually started to believe that somehow I was being called to ministry.

46:23

Although, to be very frank with you, I never dreamed that I would be a pastor.

46:34

Let me just back up a little bit. I had mentioned just briefly that during this time, it was in fact in 1979, that I was given the opportunity as a detective sergeant.

46:47

I was transferred into the Homicide Squad, which is kind of like the job that every detective sergeant would love to have because it's the ultimate crime.

46:58

You're working with the best detectives, etc. I loved it.

47:04

I was 110 % a cop. I loved every minute of it. Even my wife was so understanding, even though there were days that I'd be gone for days at a time.

47:18

If I got a call, and I had to go out on a homicide, she might not see me for two or three days, yet she understood.

47:25

She was very understanding. She understood the importance of the job. So, here

47:31

I was, right at the epitome of my career, and yet I started believing that I was not going to do this forever.

47:41

I had originally thought when I became a cop that I would be a 40 -year man. I became a cop when I was 21 years old.

47:47

I turned 21 in September, came on the job in October. Theoretically, I could have been 50 years a cop.

47:57

Yet, after starting to get involved with the Shepherds Group and then preaching, there was this nagging feeling

48:05

I had that I was called for something else. The more I started exercising the gift of preaching and teaching,

48:16

I believed that more and more. I was conflicted sometimes because I loved being a cop.

48:23

I loved doing the investigative work. But then, on the other hand, I really enjoyed teaching and preaching and bringing the

48:31

Word of Truth, especially knowing how God had saved me. By the way, at this point,

48:38

I still was not a Calvinist. I did not believe the doctrines of grace. I thought you said you were already saved at this point.

48:48

I was, I just did not know how. I was somewhat conflicted in there.

48:59

It was in this time when I was part of this group that a deacon in the church, one of my peers, was teaching an adult

49:08

Sinister class. He started teaching on the order of salvation. You know the classic

49:14

Arminian view that you exercise the gift of faith, then you repent, and then you are born again.

49:24

He was refuting that. He was a Calvinist. He said, no, the order according to Scripture is you are regenerated, you are born again, you receive the gift of faith, and then you repent.

49:36

I argued vehemently with him over that. I only stopped because it was not proper to have two deacons arguing in a

49:46

Sinister class. He was a man that I respected greatly.

49:55

After the class, I talked privately to him, and he suggested that I listen to a tape series on the book of Romans by a man

50:06

I had never heard of before. I know none of you listeners will know who this is. It's R .C. Sproul. Rich said that tongue -in -cheek, ladies and gentlemen.

50:15

Yes. We all mourn his passing. He had such an influence on my life.

50:22

Amen. He had 74 messages on the book of Romans.

50:36

I had started listening to those, and the next thing you know, I'm reformed.

50:44

The interesting thing was, and I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself here chronologically.

50:50

It's not exactly how it goes. You're not supposed to do that right after the ordo salutos. I guess not.

50:57

But I just lost my train of thought with that now,

51:04

Chris. Sorry. I told you I got a great memory. It's just very short. No, so anyway,

51:12

I became reformed in pretty much every sense. I understood covenant theology, but I was just never convinced of paedo -baptism.

51:24

It was always nagging that I remained in the conservative

51:29

Baptist church and whatnot, but I had become thoroughly reformed in my theology.

51:38

Anyway, so what happened was, as time went on, and now my time towards retirement is getting near.

51:44

I was reaching my 20 years, and my wife and I were really discussing it, and we just really believed that God was calling me out of the police department, as much as I loved that job, and that we could actually help people.

51:59

We were actually looking to go into mission field. Like I said, I wasn't looking to become a pastor. I was looking to go on the mission field, and so we wound up retiring from the police department.

52:11

I was looking for all kinds of different things going in mission field, this missions group, that missions group, and none of them fit.

52:19

It was like dead end. So I wound up working. I started a construction company building spec houses out here in Suffolk County.

52:27

Being Norwegian, we're all born with hammers in our hands. Everybody knows that. So that was kind of in my blood, and meanwhile, the pastor, my mentor, had retired and moved up to Vermont.

52:42

A new pastor had come in to the church, and what happened was, one, and he and I got along very well, but I had stepped out.

52:54

I was no longer a deacon in the church, because I was, again, I was very conflicted, because I knew some of the theology that was being taught.

53:00

I just didn't believe it anymore, you know, and so the time came when this new pastor had asked me, he said, listen, he said,

53:09

I understand that you've been doing a lot of pulpit supply before I got here, and I said, yeah, that's true.

53:15

He says, well, how come you've never preached since I've been here? I said, well, you never asked me. So he says, well,

53:22

I'm going away on vacation. He said, would you like to preach one of those Sundays? I said, sure, and God's providence is very interesting.

53:31

I love looking back and seeing how God has worked. The week before I was scheduled to preach in my home church, my daughter and I, my oldest daughter, who was only about five years old at the time, we wound up in a head -on collision, and she was taken to the hospital.

53:54

Both of us were taken to the hospital in an ambulance. By the way, Rich, I'm sorry we have to go to another break, so can you pick up right off of you after this head -on collision when we return?

54:03

Of course. If anybody would like to join us, this is a longer break than normal because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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FM in Lake City, Florida, requires a 12 -minute break between our two main segments, so please be patient.

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Take this time to write down the information that our advertisers provide during this lengthy break, and also write your questions to Pastor Rich Jensen.

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There are some of you already waiting to have your questions asked and answered. We'll get to you as soon as possible. That email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

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if you'd like to join those who are already online with a question. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. God willing, we'll be right back right after these messages from our sponsors, so please do not go away.

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Just a couple of more announcements before we return to our discussion with Rich Jensen, who is pastor of Hope Reform Baptist Church in Medford, Long Island, New York, and is also a former homicide detective who came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

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Before we get back to that, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals wants you to know about two events that are actually the same event in two locations.

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It's the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, which is no longer held in Philadelphia, but just named that out of reminiscence of the dear late brother

01:07:05

James Montgomery Boyce, now spending eternity with Christ, who had this conference annually at the 10th

01:07:12

Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Now the locations include the

01:07:18

First Christian Reform Church of Byron Center, Michigan, and the second location will be the

01:07:23

Proclamation Presbyterian Church of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, a lot closer to Philadelphia. That's the one

01:07:28

I intend to go to, to represent Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. The dates for the the

01:07:36

Byron Center, Michigan location are April 13th through the 15th. The dates for the

01:07:42

Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania are April 27th through the 29th.

01:07:49

The theme is the spirit of the age and the age of the spirit, and the speakers include

01:07:54

Daniel Aiken, Richard Gaffin, Daniel Hyde, and I'm sure that my guest today, Rich Jensen, will concur that one of the greatest living preachers on alive today on the planet

01:08:05

Earth is Conrad Mbewe, and he is pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa.

01:08:11

He is one of the speakers there. Richard Phillips, also a friend of mine from Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina.

01:08:18

Jonathan Master, David Murray, who have also both been on this program, and Scott Oliphant of Westminster Theological Seminary, who

01:08:25

I am trying to get on this program, and hopefully will soon. If you'd like to register, go to AllianceNet .org,

01:08:31

AllianceNet .org, click on events, and then click on Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, the spirit of the age, and the age of the spirit.

01:08:39

Right now, it's actually at the very top of their calendar when you click on events. Please tell the folks at the

01:08:45

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals that you heard about this event, or these two events, I should say, from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:08:54

And now is the most uncomfortable, or the least comfortable, time of the program.

01:09:00

That's the time of the show where I have to rattle my tin cup and beg you for money. We are going through some urgent times financially, and we are still $500 short of the rent of the facilities where Iron Sharpens Iron Radio broadcasts.

01:09:15

We are also late for the electric bill. If you could please go to IronSharpensIronRadio .com,

01:09:21

click support, then click on click to donate now if you're using a debit or credit card, and donate whatever you can.

01:09:30

And please donate as much as you can and as often as you can if you love this show and you don't want it to go off the air. That is said with a very serious caveat.

01:09:38

Never, ever, ever siphon money out of your regular giving to your local church where you are a member. And if you're not a member of a local

01:09:44

Bible -believing church, you have to rectify that situation, because if you're not prayerfully seeking a Bible -believing church, you are living in rebellion against God.

01:09:52

You must rectify that situation. And never siphon money out of your giving to that church to give to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:10:00

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etc. But if you are financially blessed above and beyond your ability to provide for your church and family, please consider donating to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio if you do love the show.

01:10:18

Of course, this snail mail option is always available. You can send a check to the address that will appear when you click on support in addition to the easy and fast way of donating by clicking click to donate now.

01:10:32

If you'd like to advertise with us, please send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

01:10:39

whether it's your church, your parachurch organization, your business, your professional practice, whether you're a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, a chiropractor, whether it's just a special event that you're promoting, as long as whatever it is you want to advertise is compatible with what

01:10:51

I believe, you will be more than free to advertise with us. You don't have to believe exactly as I do, but as long as whatever it is you're promoting is compatible with the theology of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, we would love to help you start advertising quickly, because we surely do need the advertising dollars.

01:11:10

That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and put advertising in the subject line, and use that same email address, chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

01:11:19

to send us an email with a question for our guest, Pastor Rich Jensen of Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island, New York.

01:11:25

He is giving his testimony as a former homicide detective who is now pastoring in New York, and we would love to hear from you with your questions at chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

01:11:36

and there are already some waiting to have their questions asked and answered, but we will get to you after the completion of Pastor Rich's testimony.

01:11:45

And before the break, Pastor Rich, you were talking about something pretty frightening, that you and your daughter were involved in a head -on collision.

01:11:54

That's correct. Just before I continue with that, Chris, you had mentioned about Cumberland Valley and giving away that book,

01:12:01

War Psalms and the Prince of Peace. Let me just add a word. That book is one of the most fantastic books

01:12:07

I've read on the psalms, and the proper use of the imprecatory psalms. I think people who will read that, it changed my prayer life, and so I really endorse that book, written by a good friend of mine,

01:12:20

Jim Adams, but it's one of the best things I've ever read on the imprecatory psalms.

01:12:26

Wow, that's a great thing that I will tell Todd and Patty Jennings, the owners of CBBBS, that you gave them such a nice commercial, and also

01:12:34

James Adams, who I want to get on this show specifically to discuss an excellent tract he wrote,

01:12:41

Decisional Regeneration, which he is obviously opposed to being a Reformed Baptist. But you can continue now with your...

01:12:51

Okay, so yeah, so what had happened was we ran away home from church on a Sunday before I was scheduled to preach.

01:12:57

We wound up in a head -on collision. A woman pulled over right in front of us, across a divider and right in front of us, and on the way to the hospital, we were both in the same ambulance.

01:13:07

My daughter, we were holding hands, and they started talking about the fact that they were losing her, but the whole time she kept squeezing my hand, so I knew that she was still with us, and as it turns out, she was fine.

01:13:21

She did suffer some injuries, nothing life -threatening, but it was really a scare for us, and she had to spend a few days in the hospital.

01:13:32

What happened was the pastor gave me the option of not preaching the following Sunday, but I said no,

01:13:39

I still wanted to do it, and I just worked it out that I used the accident as a part of my illustration.

01:13:48

What had happened was during that week, my daughter asked my wife, well,

01:13:57

I mean, if I had died, what would have happened to me? Would I go to heaven? And like I said, she was about five or six years old at the time, and my wife used the opportunity to just give her the gospel, and she left, and my little girl was sitting on the couch.

01:14:15

She literally crawled up the stairs. She couldn't walk yet because of the injuries, and told her mother that she wanted to repent of her sin, and she did, and from that moment on, and I'm absolutely convinced because she's a dedicated

01:14:32

Christian woman to this day, married to a very godly young man. They're getting ready to have our 11th grandchild, and so I'm convinced that that was what the

01:14:44

Lord used to bring her to salvation at that time. That was part of my message, and so I preached using that as part of my sermon illustration, and after the service,

01:14:58

I got a call from the chairman of the deacons at that time, and they wanted, they were telling me that we had been looking at, let me back up a little, we had been looking for a new assistant pastor.

01:15:10

I had taken a job as a senior pastor in another church, and they wanted to offer it to me, and now this was absolutely out of the blue.

01:15:22

I was not something that I was looking for, and my first response was no, you know, and again,

01:15:29

I'm still looking at myself. I mean, I'm a homicide detective. I mean, you know, I'd lived a pretty rough life, and I just didn't see myself as a pastor of a church, but the church kept insisting, and finally,

01:15:43

I'll cut, give you the short version. You know, we wound up accepting it, and in fact, it was very, very arrogant.

01:15:50

You know, you talk about, you know, how God's given men gifts of their wives, and my wife is certainly one of the greatest gifts

01:15:59

God has ever given me. While we were discussing this, she said, and I said, she said, so you're really not going to consider taking this position?

01:16:08

I said, no, no, I'm not meant to be a pastor, and so she said, do you remember when we were praying together last week?

01:16:18

I said, yeah. She said, do you remember what you prayed? I said, well, refresh my memory. She said, you prayed,

01:16:24

Lord, whatever you have for me, I will do it. She says, now you have a position offered to you, something that you've been looking forward to.

01:16:33

You want to be in Christian ministry. You want to, you know, do something, and you're saying no. I said, wow, that put a different perspective on it, so I went back.

01:16:42

We discussed it further, and again, putting in biblical principles of value, we decided that this was something that we would pursue, so I wound up becoming the assistant pastor of that church and spent four years, you know, in that church.

01:16:57

And you were already a Calvinist at that point, right? I was a Calvinist, and the pastor, the new pastor, was not.

01:17:03

In fact, he was pretty much an old -line dispensationalist, you know.

01:17:10

And Armenian, because obviously there are dispensationalists who are Calvinists. Yeah, he claimed to be a three -and -a -half -point

01:17:18

Calvinist. Which means he's an Arminian. And so, but we had a couple of other

01:17:26

Calvinists in the church, so I mean, it wasn't that big a deal. But I had, by this time,

01:17:32

I had declared myself, I was fully Reformed, not confessional as yet, because I had never even, at this point,

01:17:38

I had never even heard of the 1699. Remember, I mean, my whole, you know, my whole life had been in, basically, dispensational and Arminian churches.

01:17:50

That's all that I knew until starting to listen to R .C. Sproul. So it was, so I wound up taking a job, and things are going pretty well, and a mutual acquaintance refers me to a man who

01:18:04

I know you're very familiar with, because this is at the same, this is the time, Chris, that you and I first met.

01:18:11

Right, in fact, I was at your ordination service. Your ordination exam, I should say.

01:18:17

Yeah, yeah. I like the way that you said that, yeah. In fact, do you remember the irony of when

01:18:24

I was being ordained, the council? You probably don't remember. My wife pointed it out, because it was open to the congregation.

01:18:32

They could come in and see the examination, and there were 12 pastors, only two of whom were

01:18:38

Reformed, the rest were dispensational, and most of them Arminian. Right. And it was right after Easter, and the church, we were using a classroom in the church, and as I'm explaining my doctrinal position,

01:18:52

I was surrounded by tulips. I think I remember you mentioning that after, now that you said that,

01:19:00

I think I remember. Yeah, it's just one of those little ironies, you know. Here I am expounding the doctrines of grace to basically

01:19:07

Arminians, and I'm surrounded by tulips. But anyway, it was at this time that I was introduced to a man named

01:19:13

Michael Gaydosh. Oh yeah, my first pastor as a born -again believer, and the man who dumped me in the waters of baptism.

01:19:21

Yeah, well, I met him at a, because at that time he was part of a conservative Baptist church as well, and we met at a conservative

01:19:29

Baptist pastor's meeting. And again, we were looking for each other because we had a mutual friend, and when we found each other, you know, we shook hands, and I'll never forget,

01:19:42

Mike, after a few initial conversations we had, he says, by the way,

01:19:47

Rich, where do you stand theologically? And this is where it gets very funny, because again,

01:19:54

I was thoroughly Reformed. I'd definitely become covenantal in my theology, but I had rejected paedo -baptism.

01:19:59

I just could not see that biblically. So tongue -in -cheek, I said to him,

01:20:05

I guess you might call me a Reformed Baptist, okay? And he looked at me, and he says, well, that's what

01:20:12

I am. And my mouth dropped open. I said, you mean there really is such a thing? And he said, yeah, he says, that's what he says, and he took out of his folder a copy of the 1689, and he says, have you ever read the 1689?

01:20:31

And I said, I've never even heard of it. And again, because you understand that the churches

01:20:36

I was in, that was not something that would have been put forth. And so I accepted it, and I read through the 1689, and I'll never forget, my wife will never forget it either, because I was reading it.

01:20:48

We were sitting in bed. That was one of our big things, is sitting in bed and reading together at night.

01:20:55

And every time I'd read another chapter, I'd nudge her. I'd say, wait, wait, wait, listen to this, listen to this.

01:21:01

I said, this is what we believe. And I was totally stunned that there was this document written in 1689, and it's exactly what

01:21:12

I believe the Bible taught. And so that was, that got me on the journey of becoming a

01:21:18

Reformed Baptist. Yeah, and then I can recall, due to the friendship that you had forming between my first pastor,

01:21:28

Mike Gaydosh, and yourself, and also Mike Gaydosh, as most of our listeners will know, who listen regularly, he is the founder of Solid Grand Christian Books, one of the key sponsors of this program.

01:21:41

But as a result of this friendship, and as a result of the strain that was existing between the other pastor who disagreed with you vehemently on theology, the birth of a new congregation was in the works.

01:22:00

That's correct, yeah. The relationship between the other pastor and myself just started to deteriorate, and believe it or not, it wasn't so much the theology, per se, and my declared being

01:22:16

Reformed and whatnot. It was actually over the counseling issues.

01:22:22

Again, coming into Reformed theology, understanding the sufficiency of Scripture, and understanding that it has all the answers for life and God is the only infallible source that we have,

01:22:35

I had become thoroughly newthetic or biblical in my counseling practices, and that is where the rub really started.

01:22:45

It just got to the point that, after a while, we knew that we had to leave. In fact, again,

01:22:52

I have to credit my wife. My wife is such a godly woman, and when we were really going through difficulty, she always just has a way of boiling it down, and she knows me, too.

01:23:04

I was questioning whether or not I could stay at the church, you know, with the theological and practical differences in ministry, and she looked at me and she said, well, let me ask you a question.

01:23:13

If you weren't a pastor here, would you attend this church? And I had to answer, no.

01:23:23

She said, then how can you stay? So that was when we had realized that we had to resign, and interestingly enough, and again,

01:23:35

I love irony, and there's so much irony in the Bible, I tendered my resignation on the

01:23:41

Ides of March. You can read into that whatever you like.

01:23:50

But again, interestingly enough, and you talk about God's providence, and again, I don't want to give any of your listeners a wrong impression.

01:24:01

We don't make decisions based upon God's providence. Providence puts us in positions where we have to make decisions.

01:24:09

Providence makes an excellent diary, but it's a terrible roadmap, you know. Oh, that's a great saying.

01:24:15

I never heard that. Yeah, yeah. And so I did not make decisions based upon God's providence, but on what the teaching of Scripture was.

01:24:24

But again, providentially, right after I had tended my resignation, I took a group of kids from our church down to Grace Reformed Baptist in Merrick, and Conrad M.

01:24:36

Bayway was the guest speaker that night. Praise God. They had just come back from a

01:24:42

Reformed Baptist Mission Society meeting in Lafayette, New Jersey, and here's the interesting thing.

01:24:50

After the service, I went up and I talked to Mike Gaydosh, and he introduced me to Conrad M.

01:24:56

Bayway. It was the first time I met him, and Mike asked me how things were going along. I said, well, unfortunately,

01:25:02

I said, I just resigned from the church. He says, really? He says, what do you plan on doing?

01:25:10

I said, well, that's why I wanted to talk to you. I said, because I would really like to get involved in a church planting, you know, a confessional

01:25:17

Reformed Baptist church in Suffolk County. And his mouth dropped open.

01:25:24

Turns out that, and this, I had no knowledge of this, they had,

01:25:30

Grace had been trying to plant a confessional church in Suffolk County for the last two, three years. Right, I remember.

01:25:36

They had had Bible studies and nothing clicked. At the RBMS meeting, which was just the day before...

01:25:44

Reformed Baptist Mission Society. Right. Mike had asked the men to pray, so they had like about 15, 20 guys, and they prayed that Grace would be able to plant a

01:25:56

Reformed Baptist church in Suffolk County. The next day, I show up and say, hey, Mike, by the way, I'd like to be involved in planting a

01:26:02

Reformed Baptist church in Suffolk County. And so that was, that started the partnership, and Grace actually was the sending church.

01:26:14

They brought me in, and myself, and we had a co -pastor, one of the elders of Grace, Larry Silveriero, and we planted

01:26:22

Hope Reformed Baptist Church in 1996. And we've been here ever since.

01:26:29

We moved once, and we're still looking. We're in the process now, it looks like we're going to finally have our own church home.

01:26:37

We're looking to buy a building, but that's neither here nor there at this point. But, so we've, and we've been established as a confessional 1689 church for, it'll be 22 years this

01:26:49

June. And by the way, your former co -pastor at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Medford, Long Island, Larry Silveriero, I had a wonderful time of fellowshipping with him after many years, over a decade,

01:27:02

I think, of not seeing him. He was at the

01:27:07

G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, where I had an Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitors booth. And he, and Mike Gadosh, and I, and Susie Gadosh, all had a wonderful time of fellowship.

01:27:19

So it was great to see Pastor Larry. Yeah, yeah, he's a great guy.

01:27:25

Well, we're going to be going to our final break, and when we return we'll start taking some of our listener questions and posing them to Rich Jensen, a pastor of Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Medford, Long Island, New York, and a former homicide detective.

01:27:40

And if anybody would like to get in line, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

01:27:47

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

01:27:58

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01:30:21

Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to a visit to the pastor's study every

01:30:26

Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am

01:30:36

.com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions.

01:30:45

Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon

01:30:50

Eastern Time for a visit to the pastor's study because everyone needs a pastor. And thank you,

01:30:56

Bill Shishko, for reminding me of what a wonderful idea it would be to interview our mutual friend

01:31:02

Pastor Rich Jensen of Hope Reform Baptist Church, Medford, Long Island, on his own testimony, which after all these years of knowing

01:31:09

Pastor Rich and interviewing him on a number of occasions, I can't remember if we had ever spent a full program getting your testimony, perhaps on the old show we did in Long Island, or on Long Island, I should say.

01:31:23

But I don't recall whether that was the case or not, but I'm glad that we're doing it now anyway.

01:31:29

And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:31:35

if you have a question for Pastor Rich Jensen. And by the way, also remember, if you listen to A Visit to the

01:31:42

Pastor's Study, which airs every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 pm

01:31:47

Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, if you call into the show, because it is a live call -in show, please tell

01:31:55

Pastor Bill Shishko that you heard about his program from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And I also want to welcome once again

01:32:03

Pastor Bill and A Visit to the Pastor's Study to the all -new First Love Radio, which is now the new live -streaming home of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:32:15

And I am so delighted that Pastor Joe Jackowitz and all the folks out there in Dublin, California have enthusiastically invited me and welcomed me on to their radio lineup with First Love Radio.

01:32:29

We pray that the Lord has many years of partnership for the gospel awaiting us.

01:32:35

And now we are back to our discussion with Pastor Rich Jensen on his testimony of a former homicide detective now pastoring in New York.

01:32:45

We have Bebe in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who has a question for you.

01:32:50

Bebe says, I have spoken with the ex -wives of some police officers who complain that a big part of the struggles in their marriages and the violence that occurred in their marriages was because of the fact that the husbands who were police officers grew to distrust everyone as a result of dealing with criminals on a daily basis.

01:33:16

Is this something that you have found to be a prevalent phenomenon, and is it something that you had to overcome or battle as a

01:33:24

Christian and now a pastor? That's an excellent question, and I'm glad that that was brought up.

01:33:33

Yes, there is certainly an element to that when you, especially if you're, you know, in the detective division where you're involved with, you get more involved.

01:33:45

It's not just a cursory, you know, couple hour interaction with somebody, but you're actually involved with the cases and you're seeing it over and over again.

01:33:54

Cynicism is something that is rampant in the police department, and that's why you have, you wind up with a mentality, it's less than them.

01:34:02

You know, if you're not wearing a badge, you know, you're part of them, and that can certainly bleed over into the marriage.

01:34:10

One of the things, and again, my career, I was saved about just about halfway through my career.

01:34:20

Again, I would have told you I was a Christian in the beginning, but I wasn't, and then I was saved in around 1977.

01:34:27

I retired in 1987, so there was definitely a big difference in how

01:34:34

I responded early on as how I responded after I was saved.

01:34:40

I spent most, I spent all of my homicide days as a believer in Jesus Christ. That helped me immensely because I could, again, coming to the

01:34:50

Reformed Doctrines and understanding God's sovereignty and seeing it, you could make that, you could detach from that and focus on Christ, but guys who don't have

01:35:02

Christ, it's just that much more difficult. So it certainly is a problem, and I actually wound up counseling with many of the men that worked for me on how to, because they were winding up with problems in their marriage, and what you find out with cops too, it's not only even just dealing with bad guys and seeing how dishonest and the deceit and the deception and manipulation, you know, on a good part of society, how that works out, and not even just the real bad guys, but I mean, you know, you see it in the business world where we had to go in and investigate those types of crimes and see how many people were cheating on each other and whatnot, and you just see that, and it's very easy to get a cynical view of life in general.

01:35:51

When you're a Christian, you see that, you know, you understand total depravity and you understand that the answer is

01:35:56

Jesus Christ. So that's what really helped me in my later years, but it was that type of thing that certainly aided me in my decisions to do the things that I did, you know, and again,

01:36:10

I'm not going to go into what I did, but it was not pretty. Well, thank you,

01:36:15

B .B. We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who has a question.

01:36:22

In fact, you just touched on it a little bit. RJ asks, what did your

01:36:29

Christianity contribute for the better to your police work, and what did your police work contribute to the better to your pastoring?

01:36:39

Oh, I love that question. That is fantastic. There's no question that being a

01:36:46

Christian, I think, made me a better police officer. Number one, I would be driving red light and siren on my way to a homicide scene, and the whole time

01:36:55

I'm doing that, I'm praying. I'm praying for God's wisdom. We understand that, you know, as far as the second table of the law, that, you know, the most heinous crime that you commit against man is murder, and that's also an offense against God, you know, since man is made in his image.

01:37:14

So, in fact, even the guys who are not Christians in my homicide office, they'd walk around and say, you know, we're doing

01:37:21

God's work. They always had that viewpoint. In fact, in our homicide office, one of the men had his daughter needlepoint, thou shalt not kill.

01:37:33

So, I mean, we had that idea, but then being a Christian and being able to put biblical principles involved in it definitely made me a better police officer, and even in the interrogation process, which, you know,

01:37:49

I was involved in many, many interrogations of murderers, and being able to look,

01:37:54

I think, and given the insight and understanding the depravity of man, it made me a better cop, and then dealing with the men that I had to console.

01:38:05

I could, all of the men that worked for me, and they were by far the best. We had a tremendous record in the homicide squad that I worked in, and I always said, people would ask me, you know, what's the secret, you know, for your success in homicide, and I'd tell very simply,

01:38:20

I just surrounded myself with the best detectives in the squad, you know, in the department, but I could deal with them, and they knew, they trusted me, because they knew how honest and that I was a man of integrity, and that was based upon my faith.

01:38:35

So, that certainly helped me. In the other side, coming into the pastorate, there are numerous benefits to having gone through 20 years on the police department, and most of that as an investigator.

01:38:51

Number one, it's very difficult to pull the wool over my eyes. I mean,

01:39:00

I've seen and heard it all, you know. I've come against the best con men in the world, you know.

01:39:06

So, if you come into me for counseling, you know.

01:39:13

Plus, there are, you know, just understanding the depravity of man and seeing it firsthand there, now we have an opportunity to help.

01:39:26

So, I think, having been in homicide and always, like, being the one who's mopping up afterwards, here we have an opportunity to prevent things from happening, to help people before they get so bad, and I think just that perspective of looking at, here are people, when people come into the church, these are people who need help, and always looking at it from that perspective.

01:39:53

In fact, my very first pastor, when I was a little boy, gave him my first piece of advice when

01:39:59

I was becoming a pastor, and he says, you know, he says, the church is full of saints.

01:40:05

He says, and yes, that's true, he said, but always look at your people, they are sinners saved by grace. Amen. And he said, if you keep that perspective, he says, you'll do well for yourself, and I've always remembered that.

01:40:17

And so, I don't expect too much of people, you know, because every one of us is going through the process of sanctification, and we're all going through it at different rates, etc.

01:40:31

And so, you know, I look at people, when you see sinners fall, you don't judge them for that, you come alongside them and help them.

01:40:39

And so, I think I have, I really have compassion for people who are going through struggles.

01:40:46

And again, having seen it, you know, from the other side, there's certainly things that you picked up being a detective that you can use in the pastoral ministry.

01:40:57

Amen. And I can say that as one who was under church discipline for my abuse of alcohol, my return to alcohol abuse after 18 years of sobriety, having you as one of those involved in my discipline,

01:41:15

I know firsthand that when you approached me, you did not react as this was some kind of a big shock, because you have seen everything under the sun.

01:41:27

And you were firm, but you were also compassionate and Christlike, and had the demeanor of a brother in Christ, in spite of any firmness that you demonstrated.

01:41:41

Well, you know, again, I mean, I look back on my own life, and I see how gracious God was to me, you know, for the things that I did, and whatnot.

01:41:54

I mean, I think that just, how can you become judgmental? I just don't understand how people can do that.

01:42:02

Yeah, that's an unfortunate reality for people in and outside the church of the self -righteousness.

01:42:08

And of course, I'm assuming that you would believe and agree that that is, can be rampant amongst police officers.

01:42:17

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you know, cops, you know, like I say, you develop that mentality, you know, it starts with them.

01:42:28

And nobody understands what I'm going through, you know, which is obviously not true, you know.

01:42:35

So, you know, I have quite a few cops in my congregation, and we talk about things like this all the time.

01:42:44

And I would love to see more and more cops coming to know Christ, and we need

01:42:49

Christian police officers out there, so that they can deal with even the perps, you know, with compassion, which is what

01:43:00

Christ did. Amen. We have, let's see here, we have

01:43:08

Christian in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, did any of your fellow police officers, while you were still on the force, begin to distrust your capabilities as a police officer when you became a

01:43:23

Christian, thinking that you might be too soft? No, I don't think

01:43:28

I came across that. Interestingly enough, I think the thing I came across mostly was they didn't think that my

01:43:34

Christianity was going to last. I had one friend of mine, good friend of mine, and I mean, this is a guy that, you know, we actually did trust each other, our lives were in each other's hands on numerous occasions.

01:43:48

But he'd just look at me and he'd say, you know, Jensen, he says, one of these days you're going to fall, because I know you got it in you.

01:43:54

And he didn't do it to be mean, you know, because we really had a good relationship. And I just look at him and I'd say,

01:44:01

Mike, you know what, every one of us has a chance to fall, I says, by God's grace, you know, that we can continue, you know, and to do what is right.

01:44:11

And that's the way, so that's, I, in fact, quite frankly,

01:44:16

I think living out the faith actually enhanced my standing in front of, in front of the, some of the other guys.

01:44:28

I was able to give a clear gospel message to every man that worked for me at one point or another.

01:44:36

I didn't force it on them, but I just prayed for the opportunities. And at one time or another, every man that was assigned to me in homicide came to me and asked me to pray for something or to, you know, they needed advice or they needed counsel on something.

01:44:53

And they knew that they could see the difference in, you know, how my family was operating. And so they wouldn't have called it

01:45:01

God's grace, but they knew the situation with my wife and I. So that was the thing, being saved midway through my career, most of the guys, they knew what

01:45:12

I was capable, they knew the type of life I lived before. And then to see what happened and the change in me, that just gave me numerous examples of sharing

01:45:22

God's love and grace. Oh, praise God. Let's see here.

01:45:28

We have an anonymous listener who says, I know this may require much longer period of time than is now available to you for the remainder of this radio show.

01:45:41

But I was wondering if there are any signs when you are counseling married couples or involved in any other kind of a situation where you are conversing with people in the church who have problems, perhaps especially when they are under discipline, are there any telltale signs that you can pick up on where you can clearly see that the person is being dishonest, as you mentioned earlier?

01:46:09

Not that you will have 100 % accuracy or infallibility in this, but I was just curious what you have to say about that.

01:46:18

Yeah, that's something that is very difficult to teach to somebody else as well.

01:46:25

I mean, you can take courses like, for example, in interrogation and in interview techniques. And you even see, you know, you see this a lot on television today, where they have supposedly the experts that, you know, and they can just if you look down and to the left, they're lying.

01:46:41

And, you know, there's no one, there's no set thing that you can look at and just determine, oh, the person's lying because of that.

01:46:52

It's a whole general atmosphere that you see, you know, how do they answer the questions?

01:46:59

What do they do? What's their body language? And you got to put it all together, because and you have to, and this is why it takes time too.

01:47:09

I can think of, for example, one person that we had interviewed as a suspect in a homicide case.

01:47:19

And this guy gave all the telltale signs, nervous laugh, smiling inappropriately, smiling at times when he shouldn't have smiled, you know, nervousness, avoidance.

01:47:31

I mean, if this was a classic case of a guy who was lying, all right.

01:47:39

And then he tells us, he gives us two names,

01:47:45

Billy the Kid and Johnny Ringo. These are the guys who we really wanted to look at, you know, for committing the murder.

01:47:51

All right. And turns out, I mean, everybody thought this guy was guilty.

01:48:01

Turns out he had some inappropriate behavior. He had some mental issues.

01:48:07

Turns out the man was 100 % accurate. Wow. The two names that he gave us, which we thought were bogus, they were actually nicknames of people, you know, who were involved in the case.

01:48:18

Wow. And every one of us, and I'm talking about my whole team, we were like flabbergasted because this guy had us completely thrown off.

01:48:29

And so something like that can happen. That's why you have to really, it's not just what you see in the interrogation, but you have to match that with what the reality is, et cetera.

01:48:41

So for example, now let me relate that into the pastoral ministry. When you have people sitting in front of you, let's say whether they're under discipline or a marriage situation, you have to ask the questions and you go through things, but you can't just take that.

01:48:58

You have to relate that to what do you see? How do you know these people? You know, what do you know about them?

01:49:03

How do they respond when they're not sitting in the room? You know, I can remember a couple that I was counseling with and they came in, holding hands and telling me how much in love they were, you know?

01:49:18

And after about 10 minutes of interrogation, she was screaming, I can't stand him.

01:49:24

He got my skin crawls when he touches me. So it's a question of getting to know the questions to ask and whatnot.

01:49:36

There is certainly an expertise involved in it. You know, the Bible tells us that we need wisdom.

01:49:47

The whole book of Proverbs is related towards giving us wisdom about life. And you have to study the word of God, especially the portions of scripture that talk about wisdom.

01:49:59

And then you have to apply those to real life circumstances and use that as your mirror.

01:50:05

And you have to learn how to do these things. It's not something you can just teach somebody to follow these steps,

01:50:12

XYZ, or one, two, three, ABC, doesn't work that way. It takes time.

01:50:18

And then you have some people who can just fool you that are excellent liars. One thing that I wanted to ask you about,

01:50:26

I am fascinated when I hear about false confessions. And the one of them that really is vividly in my mind is the attempted murder, the rape and attempted murder of the

01:50:41

Central Park jogger. You remember that, obviously. I do. And you had all these young men who confessed.

01:50:47

And when you're watching the videotape of the confessions, they do not look like they're making something up.

01:50:54

They're telling the story with vivid detail and very relaxed.

01:51:00

They don't look like they've been coerced to say these things. They don't look like they've been beaten or anything like that.

01:51:05

They don't look like they're frightened. They're just casually spewing the story as if they're talking about a

01:51:14

TV show they saw that afternoon or whatever they're describing, and very calmly.

01:51:21

I mean, what do you make of that? Well, the human psyche is very, very complex.

01:51:28

And this is why you really need experienced, trained investigators who are involved in the interrogations and the interview process.

01:51:41

You can actually suggest by giving too much information, and people under duress can make false confessions.

01:51:53

I mean, obviously, we've seen that happen. And that's why, you know, for example, like I work in the

01:52:01

Suffolk County Police Department and in our homicide squad, and I can only speak for the time of period that I was there.

01:52:10

But I mean, we had professional interrogators. We'd go to school for that, and not only that, but for the forensics and everything else.

01:52:20

And we were schooled on how to interrogate people without suggesting things and putting things into their mouth, but just getting out what they have in there.

01:52:29

And so, unfortunately, what happens is, in some cases, you have really untrained people, and they make up their minds.

01:52:41

Instead of getting the facts out, they make up their mind, and they actually suggest things, and people start agreeing to it.

01:52:47

There's presuppositionalism coming into play there. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, that's why you really need, and especially in homicide, you need trained homicide investigators.

01:53:01

That's one of the problems in some of these small departments around the country where they, you know, maybe they'll get a homicide every two or three years, and then you're expecting these guys to do that.

01:53:10

You can't do that. You have to have trained homicide investigators. We have

01:53:15

Joe in Bangor, Maine. I'm sorry, John in Bangor, Maine, who asks, do you have any words for those who have been witnessing the police being vilified over and over and over again in the media because of either accidental or intentional shootings of perpetrators and so on that have caused riots and all kinds of protest demonstrations, and the hatred of the police seems to be spreading nationwide?

01:53:51

What do you have to say to the listeners today in regard to this phenomenon? Well, it's very distressing, and especially for someone, you know, like myself, who devoted 20 years of my life to working with people and protecting people and trying to do the right thing, and I think that the vast majority of the cops that you have out there are in exactly that same position.

01:54:15

They're good men, good women, and they're trying to do a good job. They're being handcuffed more and more by administrations.

01:54:26

You're having more and more impact now by county executives, governors, and whatnot who are putting into place practices that actually handcuff the police, and then everything that they do is absolutely scrutinized, and you have the media who will just put forth, you know, the first time there's a shooting.

01:54:52

It's automatically assumed now that it's an unjust shooting, and that's the reality that we live in.

01:55:00

What can we do about it? Let's start electing some people who are men and women of principle who are going to lead this nation in godliness.

01:55:10

We have, I mean, if you look at, I just look at our own governments here in Suffolk County.

01:55:17

We have more corruption trials underway now. The former Nassau County executive is being charged with corruption. We've got, you know, chiefs of police and,

01:55:26

I mean, all kinds of things like that are happening. It breeds public distrust, all right, but the bottom line is it's the governments that, the people in the government that are setting the standards and are allowing these things to take place.

01:55:45

Well, when I was a police officer, the general attitude in Suffolk County was we had a pretty good reputation.

01:55:52

It's not that way anymore, and it's not because the quality of the men has changed. And obviously, as much as we should look up to the policemen who are risking their lives, policemen and women who are risking their lives every day, that also has to be combined with not giving the idea that a policeman, because of his badge, has the freedom to do things that are really outside the bounds of what is legally expected of him.

01:56:29

And there are abuses, as I'm sure that you would agree, and perhaps not as much as there were in decades past, where there was unnecessary violence against perpetrators and so on.

01:56:44

But if you could just comment on that, that kind of double -edged sword there. Well, yeah,

01:56:50

I mean, you know, let me put it this way. What do we need in this nation that's going to turn this around?

01:57:01

It's not another council. It's not another layer. It's not the federal government. What's needed in this country is revival.

01:57:11

Amen. The only thing that is going to change the current status of our society is when hearts are converted to Jesus Christ.

01:57:19

That's the bottom line. Take this whole incident, the whole situation now with school violence, all right?

01:57:26

Everybody's concerned. More and more people are being shot in schools and everything. It's an absolute tragedy that this should take place.

01:57:37

What's going to change? It's not by banning guns. It's not by even training people for active shooters, although that's a good thing to do.

01:57:47

But it's only when hearts are converted to Jesus Christ is this society going to change. So I put the fault back into churches.

01:57:55

You have churches today who are watering down the gospel. They're becoming more like self -help clubs and instead of preaching the gospel and looking to convert people and then disciple them as to what they should do in society.

01:58:12

If the church is not impacting society, in fact, let me say this, if I have one more thing to say.

01:58:20

If a church was missing from, if your church today was missing from the location that it's in, would it impact the community?

01:58:28

Would anybody care? The churches should be the center of helping the community, the center of righteousness.

01:58:37

People should know that your church is there because you love them, you care for them, and you're having an impact in the community.

01:58:45

It's not just a social club. It's not just where we can go. Yes, we got to get and hear the gospel preached, and yes, we got to worship.

01:58:55

Those things are all important. But those things, if they're not impacting the community, then what good are they?

01:59:03

That's what Jesus said. You know, we're going to be judged by how we impacted the community. Going to separate the sheep and the goats,

01:59:09

Matthew 25. So that's what we should be looking at, changing. The church should be stepping up and changing the communities.

01:59:18

And I know that your website is hopereformedli .net, hopereformedli .net,

01:59:24

and Dr. Tony Costa, the Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary, is going to be speaking at Hope Reformed Baptist Church, I believe you said on July 1st?

01:59:34

July 1st. So if you'd like to attend that, go to hopereformedli .net, and do you have any other contact information?

01:59:42

No, that's probably the best way to reach us. Great. Well, I thank you so much for being on the show today. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who wrote in questions.

01:59:50

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.