March 1, 2017 Show with Todd Friel on “Reset for Parents: How to Keep Your Kids From Backsliding” PLUS William Edgar on “Does Christianity Really Work?”

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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.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a Wednesday on this first day of March 2017 and I'm so delighted that we have back for the first hour of the program, hopefully,

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God willing, Todd Friel, host of Wretched TV and Radio. It seems that we've been having problems with our phone for some reason and Todd Friel, many of our listeners, if not most, will readily recognize that name from Wretched TV and Radio and from the many books he has written.

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Today we are going to address his book, Reset for Parents, How to Keep Your Kids from Backsliding and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Todd Friel.

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Ah, this entire hour you're a taskmaster. Well if you remember that was a part of the bargain that we had at the

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G3 conference when you had to cut your interview with me short. Yeah, I must have been napping.

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You were exhausted if I recall at the G3 conference when we cut that deal.

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You were pooped, I remember. No, I was pooped, but you had a long drive home with your lovely bride and you didn't want

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World War III in the car, remember? Well, you know body language. Nobody's an expert at this, but every man who's been married for more than give or take 10 minutes recognizes when his wife kind of gives that look like, let's make it snappy,

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I want to go. By the way, I have to be very careful with my laugh.

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I got an email from a listener who is an elder in a

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PCA church. I can't remember the city and state right now, but he basically criticized me and he said,

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I love your program, I listen to it all the time, but your laughter hurts my ears. Please either put yourself on mute or turn the mic away.

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So I'm going to try my best to help our brother who is listening, our

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PCA elder who is disturbed by my deafening laughter. So I apologize. Well, let me just help this crabby president.

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His laugh is bad. I need to hang out with Steve Lawson for a day.

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That is a laugh. It kills me when he laughs. He has got the funniest laugh.

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It is infectious, but it is so loud. When he lets out a belly laugh, the entire restaurant glasses stop clinking, people drop their silverware.

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What was that? I have never heard Steve Lawson laugh.

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I've heard him preach many times, but I've never heard him laugh. He's one of the finest preachers, period.

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Yes, he is. And he's a button -down guy. He never gets out of his uniform, which is basically the gray pants, blue blazer, shirt and tie, pocket stuff, always dapper, always put together to comport himself in keeping with his office.

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And yet when he laughs, it is a shriek, like a falsetto.

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I can't do it. It's a falsetto kind of screaming sound, and it's like, that came out of you?

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By the way, Chris, if we want to do a little Entertainment Tonight -style gossip, Steve Lawson, I've got to tell you, you know, sometimes you meet these famous Christians, and you kind of wish you hadn't because that was much higher before you met him.

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He is a dear brother. He's just a godly, wonderful Christian man. He's just great company.

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Yes, and I look forward to the next time I have the opportunity to hear him preach. In fact, while I'm at it,

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I might as well read a commendation from Steve Lawson for the book we are addressing today.

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Today we are discussing Reset for Parents, How to Keep Your Kids from Backsliding, and among the many of the wonderful commendations written for this book by some people who are friends of mine, some people who have been guests of mine, and some people that I would love to get on this program.

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But Dr. Steve Lawson, founder and CEO of One Passion Ministries, says this new book,

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Reset for Parents, is a much -needed antidote for the plague that is crippling the church today, namely the tragedy of children raised in Christian homes but who abandon the faith when they go away to college.

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Every parent needs to take this message to heart and implement its truths in their child -rearing.

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I have been privileged to be in the Friel household and have seen firsthand the positive results of this biblical teaching at work.

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This is a man who practices what he preaches. Wow, that's a powerful endorsement from Stephen Lawson.

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And that was a powerful segue into the book, Chris, I gotta admit. Yes, and in fact, I forgot to—Todd,

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I forgot to introduce you to my co -host, Buzz Taylor. I was so panicked about the phone problem that we seem to be having.

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My co -host—Oh, I'm so glad you said it. I thought it was like the voices in your head. He's trying to get it out of there.

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Yes, we have a co -host today, the Reverend Buzz Taylor, who is a

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Presbyterian minister but currently retired from the ministry and working in a different secular career.

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But whenever he has the availability to co -host on the program, I always love having him in the studio. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your role in Christendom, Pastor?

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Well, let me just say this, if you don't mind, Pastor, that your role in Christendom it far exceeds

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Chris's. Local pastors are in the trenches. They are God's only ordained means of growing and strengthening the body.

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So salute to pastors. Yeah, you just inflated his ego.

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It's going to be more difficult to have him on the program. It was difficult enough already.

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Yeah, I know. Well, this book, Reset for Parents, actually, I'm looking at the cover of the book and I'm wondering if you're going to have a phone call or letter in the mail from Hillary Clinton's attorney.

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Because as you may remember, about a year ago, in fact almost a year to the very day today, in 2009, the

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United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a red button with the

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English word reset on it. Is this some kind of plagiarism you're involved in here? Yeah, I'm willing to take that chance because this reset actually works.

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Yes, and obviously from the subtitle, how to keep your kids from backsliding.

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Let me just jump in because I suspect if not everybody in your listening audience, the vast majority are going, whoa, whoa, wait a second.

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Are you implying that a parent can get a child saved and keep a child saved?

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And the answer to that is a resounding no. No parent can get their child saved, nor can you get them lost.

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There are too many Christian parents who have prodigals that have put themselves on a hook that God simply has not placed them on.

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You can't get them saved, you can't get them lost, which might raise the question, then what's the point of the book?

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The point of the book is not to offer a guarantee your child will get saved, but it will point us in the direction that we should be aiming, the same direction that God is pointing with the universe, which is toward the cross of Calvary.

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And if our parenting isn't in alignment with what God is doing in the world, then we need a reset.

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And so this book is not some sort of how to get your kids saved and keep them saved.

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It's a manifesto for parents so that they can hear the sweetest words that anybody could ever hear, which is, well done, good and faithful servant.

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Your job is not to get your kids saved. Your job is to faithfully represent God and lead them to Jesus persistently.

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Amen. And you start off with a very intriguing title,

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Stop Disciplining and Start Discipling. Yeah, yeah.

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Although, you know, the word is the same root. So we have a tendency,

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I think at least in 21st century America, to think, well, discipline, that means spanking or giving them a time out or washing out their mouth with soap.

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Well, all of those things may or may not be valid options for the Christian parent. But my contention is, if your discipline is not the same fatherly discipline that God renders on us, then we're doing it wrong.

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Discipline, by its very definition, must involve discipleship.

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And I would make this promise to anybody who is listening to this. If you start treating your child not as a behavioral modification program, but instead as an image bearer who needs

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Jesus, who needs forgiveness of sins, then you will stop disciplining, barking at them, telling them what to do, clean up your room, get with the program, quit chewing with your mouth open, and you'll start thinking in biblical categories to disciple your child.

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And I'm telling you, because I know this from experience, it will radically change you.

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Amen. Well, before we even go into the next chapter, there is something that divides

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Christians, even amongst those who profess to be theologically Reformed or Calvinistic or Sovereign Grace believers.

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There are some Christians, in fact, I'll even at some point ask my co -host, since he is a

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Presbyterian, what his views are on this. But there are some Presbyterians, not all,

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I have to make it very clear that not all Presbyterians behave this way, but some

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Presbyterians and Paedo -Baptists do not view their children as a mission field, because they view their children as being a part of the covenant.

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And there are others, like Dr. Joel Beakey, who believes that children are in the covenant, because he is also a

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Paedo -Baptist, but he disagrees with that, and agrees more along the same lines as most

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Baptists do, who would at least theologically view their children as a mission field, and not assume that they are already born again.

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What is your view on that, and how does it affect this whole topic? Are you talking to me or to the

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Presbyterian? First I wanted to get your comments, and then I'll have Buzz slip in a comment to clarify what he believes.

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In an effort to be uncharacteristically conciliatory, even if that particular understanding is correct,

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I still don't think that this book is suddenly not applicable. We have been given one command, one command in the

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Bible on the subject of parenting. Now, when you think about that, parenting, it is a lifetime -consuming endeavor.

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One verse, both Deuteronomy 6 and Ephesians 6, basically the same command.

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This is God's parenting manual. One verse, which is to train up your child in the fear and the admonition of the

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Lord, and don't exasperate them. That's it. And so even if you're a Presbyterian who believes that your child, through paedo -baptism, is in a protective covenant,

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I don't know if everyone would say they're in a self -ific covenant, but in some sort of protective covenant, that wouldn't change the desire of the parent to be acting in a

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Gospel -centered way, to be pointing them to Jesus. And Buzz, do you have any clarification on that?

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I remember when I became a Calvinist, one of the arguments

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I kept hearing was, well, then you don't believe you have to witness to people, because if they're elected, they're going to get saved anyway.

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And I went years as a Calvinist, and never heard anybody actually say that.

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I never read it in a book anywhere. You mean, you never heard a Calvinist say that? Right, right. So I was thinking, this is really a straw man.

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And then one day, I actually heard somebody say it. Okay. Well, how about to the point, though, about the children?

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That's the point I'm making. I would say, I don't know about believing that children are automatically born again simply because they're baptized.

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I don't believe in baptismal regeneration, and I don't know any Presbyterians who do, but I'm afraid now

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I'm going to hear of some. Well, actually, I don't want to belabor that issue, but there are many

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Presbyterians who view Baptists as being in error when we view our children as a mission field, when we view them as lost.

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No, I believe children have to come to the point of repentance and faith. Good. Well, we have more in common than I thought.

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And see, you're well on your way to being a Presbyterian already. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, that ain't going to happen.

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So, just for yucks, though, the Presbyterian understanding of paedo -baptism is that it does not bring you into a salvific, non -faith -losable covenant relationship, but it brings the child into a protective covenant.

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Would you say that that is the correct understanding of the Presbyterian position? I wish, but I don't want to go too far, because I'm not in agreement with my own church on that.

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But it is clear that many Presbyterians and other paedo -baptists blur the distinction between baptismal regeneration and presumptive regeneration and so on.

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But anyway, show them the gospel. I love that title. Explain further.

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You know what? Okay. I'm going to kind of go back to our first chapter that we talked about—stop disciplining and start discipling.

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Let me just give a practical example of what that looks like, because one of the things that I have actually grown a little weary of—I'm grateful for the gospel -centered movement.

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I'm grateful for the focus on grace. Wonderful. But I'm really weary from hearing preachers say, so we need to be gospel -centered parents.

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Now let's go to the cracker barrel. And they don't say how. What does that mean? What does that look like?

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Well, when you stop disciplining and start discipling and you start thinking, all right, my chief aim here—this encounter, naughtiness has taken place.

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My goal in this is not to simply get compliance. It's not out of view, but that is not my focus—compliance.

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I want my child to love Jesus more when we are done talking than when we began.

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Now, when you think about it in those terms, just imagine your dinner table. There's your son for the 900th time is chewing with his mouth open.

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And you have—you're just ready to snap because you've told him a thousand times, quit chewing with your mouth open.

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Now, if you stop and go, wait a second, I don't want him to simply stop chewing with his mouth open.

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I want him to be a follower of Jesus Christ. That means your conversation is now going to be different, and it'll look something like this.

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Hey, honey, do you remember what Jesus said is the greatest commandment? Love the

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Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

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Kind of a summary of the commandments. Let's just focus for a moment on loving our neighbor as ourself.

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Did you know that there is actually a clinically defined disease? I believe it's pronounced misophonia.

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People who hear somebody chew with their mouth open, it just—it sends them to 11. It makes them bonkers.

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And there's a lot of people like that that are just really annoyed when they hear somebody smack their food.

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So here's my question for you, son. When you're chewing with your mouth open—we've talked about this a lot—do you think you're loving your neighbor as yourself?

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Now, that's a different conversation. That's bringing it to the Word. It's discipling them.

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It's not merely correcting them. It's identifying what my child is doing is not simply being naughty.

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We need to use Christian terminology. When we use terms like, well, he's just a little scoundrel. Oh, I just gave birth to a

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Tasmanian devil. Well, that's probably accurate, but let's use biblical language.

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Our kids are not naughty. Our kids are little sinners, and that means they need a great big

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Savior, and that means my engagement with them should be recognizing I am not dealing with a frustration.

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This is not merely an annoyance. This is a rescue mission. So, mom, you're in the kitchen.

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You're trying to get dinner ready, and from the other room, off in the distance, you hear, shut up, and you go, ah,

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I just want to get dinner done, and so what do you do? I'm coming in.

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Now, that might get the pipe down, especially if you add this.

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And when your father gets home— Okay, so you will maybe get compliance from your child, but don't see it as just an annoyance.

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They're not trying to disrupt your day to keep you from making dinner. They're sinning. That means

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I can put down my ladle, and I can walk into the room and say, okay, let's talk about what's going on here, because you are now suddenly on a rescue mission.

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Your kids need to go to Jesus. They don't need to simply stop fighting. They need forgiveness. They need to talk to their

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God about it, and they need to understand that that sin can be forgiven so that they understand the gospel.

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That is gospel -centered parenting. That's what it looks like, and it requires time, energy, and biblical knowledge.

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Amen. And I noticed that you put the ladle down before you went into the children's room. That's optional, you see.

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Especially if it's a wooden spoon, you know. Even—okay, let's do another scenario.

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Dad, you come home, and you discover that your son hit your daughter.

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Okay, so you might be inclined to just whip your belt off and then storm up the stairs and, you know, give it a couple of cracks and then tell him to drop his drawers, and you give him a lesson.

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Okay, wait a second. What happened? My son sinned today. Here's another thought for you, and this gets us now into chapter 2 of Reset for Parents.

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I want to show my child the gospel. I want to show it to them.

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So what would that look like in this scenario? How's about this? You walk into the room, and maybe your plan is to use corporal punishment.

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You can do that, but it should involve discipling. So it could sound something like this, if you want to show your child the gospel and lead them to Jesus.

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Hey, son, can I tell you a story? When I was in third grade, kind of embarrassed to share this, but I hit a girl named

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Rhonda, and I had to go to the principal's office, and I just want you to think about that for a minute.

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Your dad hit a girl and made her cry, somebody's precious daughter.

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You know, I share that with you, son, because I understand you hit your sister today, and I just want you to understand

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I get you. I've done it, too. I've been there, and I've done that.

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Here's what's wrong with hitting a girl. First of all, we're told not to harm other people, so we violate a commandment.

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Second of all, it's clear in Scripture that there's gender distinctions, and a boy shouldn't be harming a girl.

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He should be protecting a girl. So it seems to me that you and your dad are sinners on at least two accounts here.

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Maybe we need to talk to our God about this and our sin problem. I'll pray first, and then you can pray if you want to, and then we're going to talk about the consequence for your decision to harm your sister, and then maybe you need to go tell your sister whatever you think is best to say.

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Okay, that's different than just storming up the stairs with a wooden spoon, a metal ladle, or a leather belt, and I'm not suggesting that spanking is off the table.

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What I'm suggesting, no, what I'm begging is start focusing, start aiming higher than compliance.

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Pagans are behavioral modifiers. Pavlov's dogs were taught how to react right and what to do.

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Our children aren't dogs. They're image bearers, and we need to be aiming at their soul, we need to be aiming at their heart, and not simply at their behavior.

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Amen. Well, this is an interesting chapter. Have your children submit to the right authority.

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Yeah, yeah. You know, we've all said, do as I say. Do as I say, or else.

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Okay, I understand that, and believe me, all of these sins that I've been describing,

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I've committed about 10 bazillion times. So I've been there, done that.

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This is not the musings of a perfect parent. Steve Lawson, if he could see how

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I act when he's not there, probably wouldn't write those same words. I'm a sinful dad too, but I don't simply want to be a bully.

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I don't want to use my deeper voice, my stronger muscles, my intimidating posture, my threatenings of this is the roof that I pay for, and if you want to keep eating food, you're going to act the way that I tell you to.

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That's the way of the bully. So how does a Christian parent go about the imperative to teach our child to submit?

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Think of it like this. You want your child to obey you as they submit to the

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Lord. This is different, because if you bypass this formula, they're going to submit to you.

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Now, here's the implication for that. If you, through strength, intimidation, or force, make your kid behave a certain way, ask yourself the question, when

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I'm not around, and my kid gets bigger and goes off to university, and I'm not there to threaten, how is he or she going to act?

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And we know the statistics. They act like pagans. We're losing 60 to 80 percent of our kids when they go to university, because you have been the authority in their life.

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You're out of play, and they're going to live. They're going to make themselves their own authority and do what they want, which typically means sex, drugs, or rock and roll, whatever that means.

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Instead, as you parent, start teaching them to submit to God's authority.

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So that's going to look different, too. So pick another issue in your house. Somebody took somebody's food from their bedroom, or they took it from the pantry, and it didn't belong to them whatever the issue is.

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Now, when you approach them, you could do the old -fashioned way, the pagan way, which is, hey, knock it off.

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I don't want to see that again. Or you can explain to them, when we sin, when we steal, we're sinning against God, and God has commanded us to not steal.

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Honey, when you disobeyed me, you just disobeyed

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God. You're not submitting to God, and I'm concerned about you. You need to be obeying

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God and submitting to Him, and a way to do that is by obeying me, because I'm His representative.

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So when I tell you to do something, you shouldn't do it because I'm telling you. You should do it because God is telling you.

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That is teaching your child to submit to the right authority. Amen. And I'm going to have you answer this question when we return from a brief break, but I'll ask it now before we go.

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There are obviously a lot of horrifying things going on in the world today that we hear about with regularity on the news in regard to children being kidnapped and children being molested and all these kinds of horrible things.

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But at the same time, do you not believe that children need to also view adults in some level of authority outside of their own parents, and what would be the guardrails in regard to how you instill that in your children without them making naïve and more of a target for evil people out there?

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And we're going to be going to a break right now. I'll have you reply to that when we return. If anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Todd Friel. I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

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Pastor's Study every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 pm eastern time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am

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.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.

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Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon eastern time for A Visit to the

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Pastor's Study because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back, this is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full first hour is

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Todd Friel, host of Wretched TV and Radio. We are discussing his book, Reset for Parents, How to Keep Your Kids from Backsliding.

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The second hour coming up at 5 pm eastern, we are going to be blessed with Mack Tomlinson as our guest for the remaining hour, pastor of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas.

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He's going to be discussing a biblical understanding of death, but if you'd like to join us on the air now with your questions for Todd Friel, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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chrisarnson at gmail .com, and we already do have several people waiting to have their questions asked and answered, but before I go to them,

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Todd, before the break, I said obviously the parents, next to Christ himself, the parents and the home are the utmost authority in the household over their children, and there is, however,

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I'm sure you would agree, some level of authority and respect that children should be giving to those elders of theirs, those adults out there that are not even their parents.

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Like for instance, if you have somebody else's child in my home for some reason, and he's got an ice cream cone and he's dripping it on the rug, and I say, excuse me, sonny, you're dripping your ice cream all over the brand new rug that we have here, would you mind taking that outside?

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And he tells me, shut your mouth, man, you're not my father. Obviously that would not be a respectful or appropriate reaction for a

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Christian child. So if you could help educate our listeners about that issue, at the same time not leaving your children more susceptible to the approaches of evil people out there who have the worst of motives in mind when they are approaching your children.

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You have a braided rug? I don't think I used the word braided.

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I said brand new. You used the word, no, you didn't say brand new, you said braided. That was an error on my part.

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You've been watching too much HGTV, pal. Can I share a lament that I have about HGTV?

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Yes. And I won't mention specific hosts like the Property Brothers or that lovely couple from Texas.

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The men need to stop acting like children. There's one fellow on there, he professes to be a believer, so we're going to keep his name out of it.

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And you know, I hope he's saved and he has an opportunity to model what it means to be a godly man.

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And he just acts like a goof all the time, juvenile, and it's like, no, that's not the picture of a

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Christian man that you should be giving to the world. That's my grief with HGTV lately.

33:20

Well, very good. And I've even seen some men acting too much like women on that station. No, I understand.

33:26

There's that too, sure. But if you could give our listeners some helpful advice in regard to the role of authority, they should be allowing adults, other than their parents outside the home, have over them.

33:39

Yeah, well, I think, you know, I would consider a couple of things. I'd consider the big picture in specifics.

33:45

The big picture is teaching our children about authority and submission is crucial.

33:51

In fact, Ted Tripp, Shepherding a Child's Heart, the first thing every parent should do is get their child to submit to authority.

33:59

Because if they don't learn to submit to us, they're not going to learn to submit to God. They're not going to learn to submit to police or authorities or teachers.

34:06

So it is a crucial function. But I think as they get older, we need to explain to them, do you know that in the

34:13

Trinitarian Godhead that there are rules? The Son submits to the

34:18

Father, the Holy Spirit submits to the Son and the Father, and we know as good Trinitarians that they are co -equal, co -eternal, co -in -everything.

34:26

So certainly Jesus isn't less, and yet He submits. Why? Because that's how the universe operates.

34:33

That's how He operates. And God has put authority structures into our society, and they're everywhere.

34:42

There's teacher and student, there's husband and wife, there's parent and child, there's boss, there's employment, there's government, there's citizen.

34:49

And so we need to learn that when we obey the correct authority, that we are acting the way

34:55

God acts. We're going with His program as to how the universe works. So I would teach them big concepts like that, and then

35:03

I would leave it up to the individual mom and dad to teach them about stranger danger. And I would also teach them about submitting to anybody who's older than them.

35:14

They should submit to that person because they're submitting to God. They are operating the way that God operates the universe because that's the way the

35:23

Trinity operates. And as far as the issue of bad people with your children,

35:30

I gotta tell you, Chris, I fear that's a bigger problem than what we think it is.

35:36

In fact, don't panic and don't suddenly stop going to church, but I think those things happen too often in churches.

35:43

You know, we hear about these pastors and youth pastors and some of the scandalous things that they've done.

35:49

I don't think a mom and dad can be too protective of their child. I don't think you need to put some sort of chip in the middle of their back so you can track their every movement.

35:58

Although I have to confess, I kind of like that idea. But just be really careful, and I personally think,

36:07

Chris, that teaching our kids theology that people are evil, they do bad things.

36:15

So my role is to help you discern what is good and what is bad and to just work through that and navigate those choppy waters with them.

36:23

We have a listener in Slovenia, and I'm starting to wonder if he is a plant for New Leaf Press, because his question is, thanks so much for having

36:33

Todd Friel on this most needed topic. Please ask him if he has a workbook for Reset for Parents that we could use proactively as a teaching tool.

36:43

If not, would he consider putting all these wonderful examples and illustrations that he's sharing with us today into such a workbook for homeschoolers and young marrieds classes at church?

36:53

Thank you so much for sharpening us today. One more reason I like Slovenia.

37:04

I'm trying to think, where is Slovenia? I just know that our new First Lady is from there, but I'm not really sure.

37:10

I know it's a Baltic country or Slavic. Yeah, Eastern European somewhere. Thank you for asking.

37:19

The answer to the question precisely is, no, we don't have a workbook, but here's what I did in the book.

37:25

Throughout the book, please note, I don't think you're going to read about a parental pontificator who just tells you what to do and when this happens, do this.

37:36

This book isn't about that at all, but it does ask you a lot of questions of self -examination, how you're currently interacting with your kids.

37:45

So each chapter has anywhere from five to, say, 20 questions. I compiled all of those in the back of the book so that you can use that as a study guide if you want to, to work your way through the chapters.

38:00

Well, thank you very much, Joe, and thank you also for providing us with an American address where your daughter lives because we are sending her a

38:09

Reset for Parents, a copy of Reset for Parents, how to keep your kids from backsliding, compliments of our friends at New Leaf Press.

38:16

So thank you very much for contributing to the show today. We have a listener in Sharpsburg, Georgia, Lou, and Lou asks, can you give an example of how you would speak to a saved child and an unsaved child about dating or courting?

38:36

Mm -hmm. Yeah, the first words that come to mind are over my dead body.

38:46

Yeah, you know, just to let you know, Reset for Parents does not cover that topic, but it's certainly one that I'm familiar with.

38:56

I have three kids myself, and they're all of that age. And by the way, let me just do a shout -out. If you happen to have some godly young men who aren't married, get in touch with me because I've got two daughters who are godly, and I'm telling you,

39:11

Chris, there is a famine in the land for godly young men. It is really tough out there.

39:18

Well, you might want to include an age bracket there when you're making such an announcement. How old are your daughters?

39:24

Yeah, at this point, I'm really not concerned about that. I don't care.

39:31

If you're in a wheelchair and you're godly. My son's 32.

39:39

I don't care how old you are. Just be godly. That's my point. So what about dating and courting?

39:48

This is kind of the policy that we've had in our house. What's the point?

39:55

What's the point? If you are not planning on marrying that person, there's no point in putting yourself in precarious situations, in uniting your heart to somebody else in any emotional way.

40:07

All you can do is get scarred. So when you are ready to be married, then we start formulating those structures with some safety practices in mind for everybody's good criteria, what it is you should be looking for.

40:24

Because personally, all that dating does is leads to heartache and sometimes a lot of regrets.

40:32

So when your child is ready for marriage, that's when I think that the process, you can call it dating or courting.

40:39

I think that we shouldn't make laws where there are no laws. But wait until they're really ready to do what dating should be pointing to, and that is marriage.

40:49

Mm -hmm. And the problem is that if you have a child who you do not recognize is a born -again child, you're not going to want that child to be developing romantic attachments with Christians, because that would be unbiblical.

41:05

But at the same time, you hate to see them developing romantic attachments to unbelievers. It's kind of a quandary there, isn't it?

41:12

Yes. It was the great theologian Tevye who said in Fiddler on the Roof, a bird can fall in love with a fish, but where would they live?

41:23

You know, teaching your child, I think that there are two profoundly difficult configurations in a home when it comes to marriage, that you are either a single mom or that you're unequally yoked.

41:39

I'm not sure which one is more difficult, more painful, more challenging.

41:45

So teach your kids, to obey what God says about yoking yourself with an unbeliever.

41:53

It will be devastation and heartache for life for you. Amen. And Lou in Sharpsburg, Georgia, you are also getting a free copy of Reset for Parents, How to Keep Your Kids from Backsliding by Todd Friel, thanks to our friends at New Leaf Press.

42:08

And by the way, that will be shipped to you, compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, C -V as in Cumberland Valley, B -B -S, or BibleBookservice .com,

42:17

C -V -B -B -S .com. And we thank Todd and Patty Jennings for sponsoring Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

42:23

We have Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, who asks, would the principles of biblical discipleship be the same in the family as those in the church?

42:37

Wow, that's a great question. Yeah, actually, but I think that, you know, the only difference that I can really think of is just the sheer amount of time you have in the home as opposed to a church.

42:51

I also think most likely the relationship is going to be familial versus, well, it's a brother or sister in the

42:58

Lord, as opposed to being father and son, mother, daughter, etc. But other than that, I would say when we remember what discipling is all about, growing up somebody in the

43:09

Lord, teaching them what the Word says about life, you can also share how it's applied to you when you failed, what the consequences are.

43:17

I think the same rules apply for church and home. Now here's something that rubs against the grain of our politically correct and mushy -gushy world.

43:30

Even within the body of Christ, the evangelifish, as someone once called, modern evangelicals, instill the fear of the

43:40

Lord in your children. Explain that one, because obviously that is something lacking not only in the homes, but in the pulpit.

43:47

Yeah. Could you just give me a minute? I'm still trying to recover from mushy -gushy.

43:54

Yeah, I've never heard a phrase like that, frankly. Yeah, I think that's chapter four in the book, that one of the best things you can do for your kid is teach them the fear of the

44:11

Lord. And this is a little bit more of a complex subject than what I think meets the eye.

44:16

First of all, there are some parents who are going to say, no, no, no, I don't want my child to fear the Lord, I want my parent to love the

44:23

Lord. And to that I would say, these two ideas, they can cohabitate. We are both to fear and love the

44:30

Lord, both of them 147 times in the Bible, the believer is commanded to fear

44:36

God. So fearing God and loving God are not compatible. Furthermore, I would say that the child who doesn't fear the

44:43

Lord will never rightly understand the gospel, will never receive wisdom, will never receive the proverbial blessings of safety and peace.

44:53

And so teaching our kids to correctly fear God is the beginning of wisdom. Now, let's define fear, because there's an unbiblical fear.

45:04

God doesn't want us to have a servile fear, like, he's going to get me, he's so mean, and he's going to strike at any second.

45:12

That's not what God is looking for. It's a reverential awe, because he's otherly, he's different, he's three times holy, he's a consuming fighter.

45:21

And that should cause us to have some respect, to be in awe, because our

45:27

God is different than we are. He is higher and holier. So we want to make sure that we're focused on the right kind of fear.

45:35

Now the question is, how do you instill that fear into them? Well, here's a couple of ways you shouldn't do it.

45:44

Do not hide in the closet of your child, wait for them to go to bed, and then pop out in the middle of the night and go, the devil's going to get you.

45:56

Don't light a candle, blow out the match and say, hope you like the smell of sulfur, because you're going to be smelling it a lot when you go to the lake of fire.

46:06

That's not how we do it. How do we instill the fear of the Lord in our child? I think it's very simple.

46:12

We teach them the Bible. We don't gloss over the scary bits. We don't stay there.

46:18

We don't just read the last three chapters in Revelation. Find your balance of teaching your child about fear and love for the

46:25

Lord by simply methodically making your way through the Bible. Let the Bible do the balancing act for you, and it will teach your child the blessings of fearing

46:35

God. And there's one more benefit and potential motivator for every parent.

46:41

The child who fears the Lord will be more obedient to you.

46:46

So there's good reason right there. Amen. And something that obviously goes hand in hand with what you just said is make sure they hear the correct gospel.

46:57

Obviously, you believe that much of what children hear within households is a false gospel.

47:04

Tell us about what you mean exactly. Yeah, well, there's so many of them, and Chris, look, it's easy for us to goof this up.

47:11

We've got to be careful that we understand what the gospel is, and it's quite simple. We're sinners.

47:18

Jesus is an amazing Savior. Now, we've got to be careful that we don't fall into one of the ditches.

47:24

There are so many of them out there these days. I call it the Blaise Pascal gospel.

47:30

You've got a God -shaped hole in your heart, only Jesus can fill it. Well, we may or may not have a hole in our hearts, but I know we have a sin -stained heart, and we need a

47:38

Savior. So we don't want to turn the gospel into, are you feeling sad, lonely, depressed? Jesus will make you feel better.

47:44

Those promises, by the way, happen to be true, but those promises are not the gospel. They are the fruit of the gospel.

47:51

And if you only teach your child about the fruit of the gospel, they will come seeking the gifts, but not the giver, and they will end up with neither.

48:01

Obviously, we don't want to teach our kids some of the obvious bad ones, like the prosperity gospel, health and wealth gospel, but I think the life enhancement gospel, or a gospel that is just about grace without any law, is no gospel at all.

48:19

So as you preach the gospel to your child, and one of the things that I don't think you should assume is that they know the gospel.

48:26

Chris, this book is really based not on my parenting expertise, but in talking to hundreds, potentially thousands of kids on university campuses who are

48:35

Bible Belt Backsliders, who have told me what the issue is.

48:40

And when I ask the majority of these kids, what is the gospel, do you know what their answer is?

48:46

What? The what? Some of them will say,

48:52

Matthew, Mark, Paul, and John. Well, that's half the Beatles, but it's not the gospel.

48:59

They don't know it. So don't assume your child knows the gospel. Don't assume that they're hearing it from the youth,

49:05

Pastor. Make sure you are regularly teaching your child the gospel is about the salvation of sinners.

49:13

Yes, and your following chapter is something that might make some scratch their heads, because there are, unfortunately,

49:23

Christians out there who believe by applying the law, you are polluting the gospel.

49:30

They have a false understanding about the right use of the law, but if you could explain that. You know, the right use of the law is crucial, because every parent uses the law, whether you realize it or not.

49:43

You maybe don't shout out the seventh commandment, but you will say things like, hey, pick that up. That's a commandment.

49:49

Hey, be nice to your sister. That's a commandment. But we must use the law lawfully. So what is its correct use?

49:56

Use the law, not simply to teach them how to behave morally, but to frighten them, to help them understand,

50:04

I can't keep that law. I can't do that. You're exactly right, honey. But Jesus did, and Jesus will credit all of that goodness to you when you repent and put your trust in Him.

50:15

We've got an amazing Savior, don't we? That's using the law lawfully, and if you don't do that, if you downplay the significance of the law,

50:24

I think you're going to generate, likely, a false convert, or you're going to generate a grace abuser, somebody who just goes on sinning because why not?

50:35

Or you're going to have a bruised reed child who feels terrible every single time that they sin, because they think that they maintain their perfect state.

50:46

No, you don't, honey. I know you're a tender soul, but you're far worse than you think. Let's take a look at the laws, and it will drive them to the place where they realize,

50:55

I can't, but Jesus can, and He did, and He does. Use the law lawfully.

51:02

Amen. We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who says, I'm sorry if you already addressed this, but I heard you talking about instilling the fear of the

51:12

Lord in your children. Should we not also be sure to instill the fear of us, who are parents, into our children, not in a way that keeps them cowered in the closet, but something that is only second to the fear they have for God?

51:31

Yeah, well, let's define fear again. Do I want them to fear me? Yes, as they fear the

51:36

Lord. They should—the fear, though, shouldn't be driven because that's bigger, stronger, and richer.

51:43

That's not the type of fear they should have. That's not the fear that we should have about God. It's a reverential fear, an awesome fear.

51:51

So when it comes to them fearing us, we want to make sure we understand the correct kind of fear. Furthermore, the reason that they should have any fear is by not obeying my pop,

52:02

I'm not submitting to God, and that is a fearful thing. So let it be grounded in their understanding of your role, that you are not—you're a submitter too,

52:13

Mom and Dad. We all submit. But as they submit to God, they will submit to you.

52:19

As they fear God, they will rightly fear you. As they honor God, they will honor you. As they obey

52:24

God, they will obey you. Amen. And RJ, you are also getting a free copy of Reset for Parents, How to Keep Your Kids from Backsliding.

52:33

Thanks to our friends at New Leaf Press and also Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com.

52:40

We'll be shipping that out to you. And don't lose your balance.

52:45

Obviously, that must be involved some of the things that you were just talking about that have in the minds of many opposite meanings.

52:53

Yeah, it's been paraphrased a gazillion times. Martin Luther said that Christian life is like a drunk man who gets on a horse, he climbs up on one side, falls off the other, gets back up, falls off the other side.

53:06

We can lose our balance, and we can be imbalanced in our parenting. That can go with the law, that can be with the

53:12

Gospel. Make sure—it could even be with the issue of fear again. Don't just camp on fear.

53:19

Yes, let them be afraid of God, but then take them to the cross, the place of safety. So watch your balance with all of these issues.

53:27

Don't major in the minors, and make sure that you aren't driving your child in the opposite direction to being balanced in your theological approach.

53:37

But Chris, this kind of brings us back to the beginning. This book does not tell you exactly what to do in every situation.

53:47

I have to confess, I've heard those parenting lectures, and they make me bonkers, because my scenario was never the same as the glib story that I just heard.

53:56

Instead, these chapters are designed to get you thinking theologically and biblically, and then engaging with your kid.

54:04

Don't tell you what to do, I don't tell you what to say or what to act or when to spank or not. No, here's the theology.

54:11

This is our goal. This interaction is designed for one purpose, to help my child love

54:16

Jesus more. Now go and parent. You don't need a loser like me to tell you what to do.

54:22

You just need to be encouraged to think biblically, think about salvation as the preeminent issue in your child's life, and then parent on mom and dad.

54:32

Amen. Well, we must have you back as long as you are willing, and God is willing. We must have you back to continue a discussion on this book, because we only made it about halfway through, and there's a lot of very important chapters ahead that we haven't addressed.

54:46

So if you could, I'd love to have Josh Gravitt, your assistant over there, reschedule another interview with you so we can complete some of the other chapters in the book.

54:58

Wow, that could be important. I've got an assistant, is that what he's trying to work with?

55:03

And he manages everything in the office. He's not like, run and get me another cup of coffee, lighter on the cream this time.

55:14

Well, I also know that your website is wretchedradio .com, wretchedradio .com,

55:21

and for those interested in this book and other New Leaf Press publications, you can go to NLPG, New Leaf Publishing Group, nlpg .com,

55:33

and you can also go to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Services website, cvbbs .com, cvbbs .com,

55:39

because they carry a whole host of New Leaf Publishing titles. So, Todd Friel, we thank you so much for being on the program.

55:47

It's always a joy. I look forward to your return very soon and very often to Iron Sharpens Iron. You know, just one request if I come back.

55:56

Chris, you got to do something about your co -host. Well, he controls the volume of my mic.

56:08

And believe me, there's a reason I keep it on mute, believe me.

56:18

Thanks, guys. Well, God bless you. It was a joy seeing you at G3 Conference, and I hope I also get a chance to fellowship with you face -to -face again as well.

56:26

Yeah, I hope so too. All right. Well, God bless you, brother. Thanks for joining us. All right, bro. Thank you. All right.

56:31

Bye -bye. And coming up next, we are going to be joined, God willing, by my friend

56:37

Mack Tomlinson, who is on for the second hour. He is pastor of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas.

56:43

We are going to be discussing a biblical understanding of death. And he's also going to be letting us know about an upcoming fellowship conference in New England in Portland, Maine, the old stomping grounds of my co -host,

56:59

Reverend Buzz Taylor. We'll be hearing more about that as well. So if you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Pastor Mack Tomlinson on death, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

57:12

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We will be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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01:03:14

Welcome back. This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guest for the second hour of the program is my friend

01:03:21

Pastor Mack Tomlinson of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas. We are discussing the biblical understanding of death, and we are also going to be promoting a fellowship conference

01:03:33

New England in Portland, Maine, where my co -host Buzz Taylor used to live in that area anyway.

01:03:40

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron. Pastor Mack Tomlinson.

01:03:49

Hello, Pastor Tomlinson. So, this is William Edgar. I think they might be...

01:03:55

Ah, we actually made a mistake here and have double booked a guest.

01:04:02

But that is quite all right. I am going to continue with our interview,

01:04:10

William. For some reason, I thought that I had informed the publisher that we had to move the guest today, but I'm sorry.

01:04:18

But anyway, Pastor William Edgar, what is the actual title of the book that we are discussing today?

01:04:28

It's called Does Christianity Really Work? Yes, and well, first of all, before we even get into that very subject, tell our listeners something about yourself and what providential circumstances the

01:04:43

Lord used to draw you to himself and save you. What kind of a home did you live in?

01:04:49

I was a college student at Harvard University and kind of an agnostic at best.

01:04:56

And one of my professors was a Christian believer, and I got to know him quite well.

01:05:02

And he suggested that I go see his friend Francis Schaeffer in Switzerland. I grew up in Europe, so I was going to be in Europe that summer.

01:05:13

And so one weekend in the middle of the summer of my sophomore year,

01:05:19

I decided to go down and visit this place called La Brie. And it was over a weekend that everything for me turned upside down or maybe right side up.

01:05:30

I was in a conversation with Francis Schaeffer that everything started to click. It's a much longer story than what

01:05:37

I've just given you, but that's the climax of it. And then I went back to college as a believer and started going to church and all those good things.

01:05:47

And so I've been walking with the Lord ever since. Well, praise God for that.

01:05:52

And when in your life did you realize that the Lord had blessed you with a gift to write and to share with others the wisdom that he has blessed you with?

01:06:03

Well, I struggle with writing, to tell you the truth. I do it because I believe it's a calling, and it's an important one.

01:06:11

But I have great admiration for people whose pens flow more easily than mine.

01:06:18

But anyway, you know, I've been teaching the subject of apologetics for some 45 years.

01:06:25

I've done it in three different settings. One was a high school, not a

01:06:30

Christian high school, but a secular high school, where they thought it'd be good to have me teach a course in philosophy, which is what

01:06:39

I did. And then the second part of my career was in France at the

01:06:45

Reformed Seminary in Aix -en -Provence, where I taught apologetics for 11 years.

01:06:51

And then the third began in the late 80s here at Westminster, where I still am.

01:06:56

This is my 28th year at Westminster Theological Seminary. So, you know, all along I've been writing articles and books and speaking and doing all the things that academics do, but all of it has had the emphasis of getting the message out to people, particularly people the way

01:07:18

I was before I was a believer, you know, people who don't know the Lord. So I've been doing this now for quite a long time.

01:07:26

Well, let me give you a proper introduction since I made the horrific blunder of double booking the second hour.

01:07:34

And by the way, William, this is the first time I think this has ever happened when I was caught off guard on the air live with another person calling in for the second interview.

01:07:45

But I am so sorry about that. But William Edgar is professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, just about two hours from where I'm sitting, and an accomplished jazz pianist.

01:07:58

And you might be interested to know, William, that my co -host, the

01:08:04

Reverend Buzz Taylor, not only is he a retired minister of the gospel,

01:08:11

Presbyterian minister, but he is also an accomplished jazz trumpet player. Oh, we must get together.

01:08:17

We must sometime, yes. Well, does Christianity really work?

01:08:25

Some might be taken aback by that very title, as you know, especially those who are from our theological backgrounds.

01:08:33

They might think that that is a crass way of even describing Christianity as if it's something that people are supposed to try and see if it works for them.

01:08:44

But that's not what you intended at all by that title, is it? No, they gave me this title, and at first I didn't like it very much.

01:08:52

I decided instead of, you know, pleading with them for change, I would tackle it as it is, and what

01:08:59

I decided to do is to give various examples of where the gospel has been effective, either personally, or socially, or even politically, as an agent of change.

01:09:16

But I believe with all my heart that Christianity is not true because it works.

01:09:22

It works because it's true. So that was my challenge, and in the midst of the challenge,

01:09:30

I tried to admit, as one should, that the Church has not only done good in the world, there's been, you know, very dark spots and great holes and blindnesses, but the ledger is very good on the whole, and I particularly compare it to, you know, other philosophies and other points of view.

01:09:52

So it was fun to write because I looked at all these examples of where the gospel has been an effective agent of change.

01:10:00

Yeah, I want to let our listeners hear a wonderful endorsement for this book by somebody that I think that the majority of evangelical

01:10:09

Christians today would readily recognize, Johnny Erickson Tada.

01:10:16

Where in the world has Christianity done any good? We have a powerful and convincing reply.

01:10:22

Bill debunks myths and blows the dust off of little -known historical facts about the impact of the gospel in a hurting world.

01:10:29

A remarkable book, and that's Johnny Erickson Tada, activist for the disabled and author of Johnny, the award -winning

01:10:37

Tell Me the Promises and Other Classics. And she is also, if our listeners, if any of our listeners are unaware, she is a quadriplegic and has been so ever since she was a young woman after a diving accident and overcame those obstacles in very breathtaking and powerful and mighty ways as a proclaimer of the gospel, both from her lips but also from her pen and from her radio program and from her artwork and from the many other ways that God has opened up doors for her to share the gospel.

01:11:18

Well, why don't you come let us know about some of the myths that you've debunked in regard to the

01:11:24

Christian faith? Okay, I'll try. Well, one of the myths is that Christianity is a pie in the sky, it's a great escape, it is otherworldly, and so, you know,

01:11:38

I've tried to show how Christianity, while centered in the worship of God and in fellowship with him, is profoundly concerned for our world.

01:11:48

And because of a Christian attitude, Christian compassion, things have changed that were seemingly intractable.

01:11:59

One example out of several that I gave was the passage from an apartheid government to a coalition government in South Africa.

01:12:13

And it's a remarkable story because they tried so hard through negotiations to have the major parties come together, and it just wasn't working.

01:12:26

But finally, a couple of really respected Christians did some quiet diplomacy and was able to obtain a willingness based on the gospel from parties that otherwise hated each other to work together.

01:12:44

And it's not perfect today, but it could have been one of the most bloody revolutions in history, and instead a beautiful thing happened.

01:12:55

And so there are many other examples of that, where Christianity is anything but pie in the sky.

01:13:02

It's very much concerned to change things in this world because of our

01:13:09

Lord's own willingness to change this world through his sacrifice. And we have

01:13:17

CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who wants to know, isn't it true that it was

01:13:23

Christians who believed in compassion and love and looking out for the underdog, as has our

01:13:32

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who started the first hospitals and orphanages and sanatoriums for the mentally ill?

01:13:41

That is very true. It's a very interesting history of health care, and the attitude of Christians towards health care stands in great contrast, for example, to the attitude of Romans in the

01:13:56

Roman Empire or of pagans around Europe. So the first real hospitals were way stations, stopping places for travelers, and the monks who started these stations developed all kinds of important remedies for the ailments that attacked travelers, and out of that came some of the seeds of modern medicine.

01:14:23

And the stories of compassion are just legend. There's a bit of a section in this book on Florence Nightingale, who for Christian reasons went behind the battle lines to take care of the dying soldiers, and she dignified the profession of nursing in a way that it had never had before.

01:14:48

And even today, you know, a lot of secular or humanistic people have gotten into health care.

01:14:57

Nevertheless, still, because of the gospel, this pioneering work was done, and some of the very best care centers are run by Christians.

01:15:09

So yeah, this is absolutely correct. You go to India, and you will not find any significant reform movement spawned by Hinduism.

01:15:26

The only ones who have come close are people like Gandhi, who used borrowed capital from the

01:15:33

Christian gospel, and that's because at the heart of Hindu philosophy is detachment rather than engagement.

01:15:41

So yeah, that remark, I think, is absolutely appropriate. Well, guess what, CJ? You have won a free copy of the book that we are discussing today,

01:15:52

Does Christianity Really Work?, by our guest William Edgar. So please make sure you give us your full mailing address.

01:15:59

And this book is being given to you compliments of our friends at Christian Focus Publications, and also our friends who sponsored this program at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will actually be shipping that book out to you.

01:16:13

And the Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service's website is cvbbs .com, cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for biblebookservice .com,

01:16:20

and we thank Todd and Patty Jennings for being faithful supporters of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. So keep your eye open in the mail for that book.

01:16:31

When was this book written? Excuse me, Buzz? I didn't catch when the book was written.

01:16:38

Oh, just a couple years ago. The official publication date is 2016, so it came out at the beginning of last year sometime.

01:16:49

Well, it's reminiscent of a book I read probably much better than a decade ago. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but D.

01:16:56

James Kennedy wrote the book What If Jesus Had Never Been Born, showing that. Yeah, I know that book. Yeah, that's right. It's a good question to ask, you know, what if there were no

01:17:07

Christians, or there had been no gospel influence, what difference would it make? And it's huge.

01:17:13

Now, obviously, there are unfortunately a great number of people who profess to be

01:17:21

Christians, not only in the 21st century, but throughout the centuries, who have given, basically, our faith a black eye in the eyes and minds of the populace in many ways.

01:17:35

Isn't it important that we distinguish ourselves from others who claim to be

01:17:42

Christian, but are behaving and living in ways that gives us a bad reputation?

01:17:50

Right. I mean, there's two ways to do that. One is just to be immoral, or decadent, or fall into the world's way of doing things, and not have a distinctive witness, and therefore not be the salt and the light that Jesus wants us to be.

01:18:07

The other is really maybe more subtle, and it's to that we can change the world through direct legislation, or political action, or painting

01:18:21

Christian themes. Nothing wrong with political involvement, of course, but the world is not going to change just because a few

01:18:30

Christians get into the legislation and start, you know, doing some legislation on Christian principles.

01:18:38

It's got to be a much deeper way than that. And I think one of the things that happened in the 80s is that perhaps some

01:18:45

Christians got the idea, if we can only get a place at the table, you know, then we have a chance to have a

01:18:53

Christian influence. But they forgot to ask, you know, who sets up the table, and what's the shape of the table, and what are the fundamentals that we are going to agree on?

01:19:03

Otherwise, you know, as we see, the world is very good at shutting us out, and deprogramming us, and getting us to the place where we have not been effective.

01:19:13

And sadly, on the failure of that strategy, some Christians have just given up, and are opting out, you know, which is not the

01:19:24

Christian response. But yeah, you want to be consistent as a Christian, but also very wise as to how you bring the gospel to bear in particular cultural areas.

01:19:39

Wise and courageous. You have two chapters that are involved in peacemaking, and one is a time to resist, and the other is a time to bind up, if you could explain.

01:19:53

Sure. There's a time for Christians to go against the stream.

01:20:03

A couple of examples that are the easiest to cite, but they're still very relevant, would be during the

01:20:12

Nazi occupation in the 40s. And sadly, there were a number of Christians who pretty much looked the other way, or just were not maybe complicit altogether, but just didn't resist.

01:20:34

And there are glorious examples of some who did resist. Of course, the most famous one that we talk about a lot would be

01:20:41

Bonhoeffer, but one of my favorite examples is the little town of Le Chambon in France, where just a handful of evangelical

01:20:52

Christians participated in a massive rescue of thousands and thousands of Jews, including many children, and making sure they found a place of safety.

01:21:08

And they did it as Christians. They did it because they believed that the

01:21:15

Lord has commanded us to protect the vulnerable. So there's a time to resist, and we're often called to do that when faced with certain temptations.

01:21:27

But then there's also a time to affect peacemaking, a time to bind up, a time to participate in the process of reconciling nations and peoples and so forth.

01:21:45

So I cited the case of Nicaragua, where Christians really had a hand in bringing about the resolution of the problem with the

01:21:58

Amerindians and the Sandinistas and so forth. And I already mentioned South Africa.

01:22:05

And there's other more personal examples. You know, we each have relationships where things can go wrong, and we need to know how to reconcile when there's conflict.

01:22:20

And sadly, it happens in marriages. Now, there are wonderful remedies and tools for this, but the binding up shouldn't just be on a global scale.

01:22:30

It should also be on a local scale in our families, and then especially in the Church, where there tends to be some division.

01:22:38

If we can't be reconciled in the Church, then it's hard to know how we're going to go out and help the world to find reconciliation.

01:22:44

So these are two very related moves, resisting and binding up.

01:22:51

And we're going to be going to our final break of the program today. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for William Edgar, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:23:01

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

01:23:08

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01:23:14

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01:23:26

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01:23:34

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01:23:41

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01:23:47

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01:28:23

Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the final hour of the program is William Edgar.

01:28:29

He is a professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and an accomplished jazz pianist, and we are discussing his book today,

01:28:39

Does Christianity Really Work? If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for William Edgar, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:28:49

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and by the way, a guest that I had on yesterday, William, Craig Beal extends his greetings to you.

01:28:57

He's a good friend. Yeah, he was also an excellent interviewer. It was the first time I ever had him on the program yesterday to discuss his book,

01:29:04

The Box. Very good book. That you actually endorsed. Healthcare is something, social reform and healthcare are things that set

01:29:15

Christianity apart from many, if not most, of the world religions, and some even today, even some professing

01:29:26

Christians wrongly are placing too much of the role of providing these things in the hands of the government, where Christ's church was really supposed to be known for these kinds of things, but if you could explain about those two chapters and in addition to a response to what

01:29:49

I said. Sure. Well, healthcare should primarily emanate from the

01:29:57

Christian church. That's not to say that government has no role in it. I think good government should help the best kinds of faith based initiatives, including what the church can do, but it's for sure not the role of the government to take the place of these social organizations, and when it does, what happens is there are strings attached and the government begins to impose rules and laws and even views of humanity that aren't going to be strictly faithful to scripture.

01:30:37

So while we appreciate government support, we want the primary impetus to come from the church, as I said.

01:30:48

There are wonderful examples of how Christians, because of their faith and concern about the human body, advanced the state of health care.

01:31:04

One of my favorites is the, I guess, relatively less known

01:31:09

Thomas Sydenham. He was in the 17th century. They call him the

01:31:16

English Hippocrates. He studied at Oxford, and he was in the parliamentary army, and he had quite a career, but he was known as being a

01:31:30

Christian whose strong personality made him an innovator. He published a book called

01:31:37

The Method of Curing Fevers in 1666, and he had insights on the plague, on how to do diagnoses, even venereal disease, and so forth.

01:31:53

Now it's a classic, and nothing today could have been possible in that area without his work.

01:32:02

He was the first, I think, to diagnose scarlet fever by distinguishing it from measles, and he popularized the use of quinine for malaria, and on and on.

01:32:17

And he did all of this because he cared so deeply about human beings.

01:32:26

About the alcohol tincture of opium, he said, of all the remedies it has pleased

01:32:34

Almighty God to give man to relieve his suffering, none is so universal and so efficacious as this.

01:32:41

He cared about pain relief as well as just diagnosing disease.

01:32:47

That's one of just hundreds of examples of people who've given their life to some aspect of medical science.

01:32:56

You can think of Pasteur and his ability to bring a cleansing of milk and keeping it free from the awful bugs that get in there and attack people.

01:33:12

He was a Catholic believer who did his work for Christ's sake. And anyway,

01:33:18

Christians aren't the only ones who've done this, but I would say that it's only through borrowed capital from the

01:33:27

Christian theology that the humanists have been able to make some of their accomplishments, and now maybe that's going to change, but so far the record is quite extraordinary for Christians contributing to health care and human flourishing through the medical art.

01:33:45

We have Ronald in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says,

01:33:50

How do you respond to those outside of Christendom, and perhaps even those who claim to be

01:33:57

Christian but from a liberal bent, who will blame Christianity from some of the horrors of history, like the

01:34:05

Inquisition, the Crusades, and even they will throw in the Nazis? How do we set apart genuine historic

01:34:13

Christianity from these atrocities that have taken place throughout the centuries? Right, well that is a very good question, and the answer is in the way he put it, at least part of the answer.

01:34:23

First of all, it's important to distinguish between the true gospel and the perversions of Christianity that are represented by those examples he gave.

01:34:37

Second, it's very important to say that some of those are highly misunderstood.

01:34:44

Now, I'm not going to go justifying the Inquisition or anything, but you know, the Inquisition started as a way just to have some oversight over theology in the

01:34:56

Church, and it went to excesses, and it was awful in the end. Really horrific, grotesque excesses.

01:35:04

Absolutely, and you know, you think of Ségur and those people who crushed the

01:35:11

Alpagandians, yeah, that couldn't have been worse. The Crusades are a very complex story, and again,

01:35:18

I'm not going to defend the Crusades as being entirely Christian, but it had some just war aspects to it, because Jerusalem had been under siege, and the

01:35:29

Christians locally were asking for help. Now, I'm the first to say that the culture of the

01:35:35

Crusades was not gospel -centered in the way we would hope it would be. And then,

01:35:42

Nazis, it had nothing to do with Christianity. It was a pagan, barbaric appeal to sort of animal instincts, going back to ancient

01:35:52

Germanic tribal energies, and a very phony racial view based on the perversion of Arianism, which is supposed to be something we emulate.

01:36:07

So, the first thing I'd say is, let's get the true gospel differentiated from those perversions that led to such false,

01:36:16

I think, identification of any part of Christianity with those evils. Second, I would say, we have to admit that the

01:36:23

Church has at times been guilty of accommodation or non -vigilance or lack of clarity.

01:36:34

I mean, you think of the Presbyterian Church in the South in the 1850s, who justified slavery.

01:36:46

Though most Presbyterians didn't agree with the brutality of slavery, they felt that the institution itself could be justified, and it led to a bloody civil war.

01:36:59

And I think there's been anti -Semitism in parts of the Church, and for those, there's one thing to do, apologize and repent and try to make amends.

01:37:09

So that's the second thing, is just to admit that there have been serious mistakes. But the third thing is to try to show the critics what

01:37:20

I've been talking about, that on the whole, the gospel has weighed in the other way.

01:37:27

It's been an agent of change for good, sometimes against so many forces of evil you wouldn't think it would be possible.

01:37:35

One of my favorite examples is, in the early Church, quite close to the

01:37:41

Apostolic Age, a little later, you know, there were plagues in the Roman Empire. One of the most devastating was the

01:37:48

Galen Plague, the Galen Epidemic. It was probably a bubonic type of plague, and the

01:37:54

Romans had some kind of health care that was very elitist. Nobles could have access to it, military, but on the whole, victims of the plague were just dumped on ash heaps and left to die, and hoping they wouldn't corrupt the rest of the

01:38:12

Empire or the city of Rome. And, you know, the Christians were just a tiny group, but they had something that the

01:38:19

Romans, with all their power, did not have. They first understood the plague as part of the

01:38:26

Fall, so they had a structure of meaning, and they second, had a network of friends and loyalties that the

01:38:36

Romans could never, never claim. And third, most important, they had compassion. So they went out and would pick up these dying bodies and bring them home to let them die with dignity, and often catching the disease themselves.

01:38:51

But that gradually was a kind of power that the

01:38:56

Romans knew nothing about, and changed the entire face of the Roman Empire into something far more compassionate and far more

01:39:05

Christian. So, you know, I like to give examples of that to counter those, you know, the ones that were just mentioned that are counterfeits, or even the true ones from which the

01:39:19

Church needs to repent. We just, we have to be fair and count the good parts that have been affected, and not just bring in the caricatures.

01:39:31

Yes, and I'd like to give a bit of a tribute here to a group of Presbyterians in the

01:39:41

Southern United States that were the first denomination, from what I understand, in the

01:39:47

South to oppose slavery and have integrated services. That were the Covenanters, the

01:39:53

Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. I have heard that they were, in the South, the very first denomination to oppose slavery.

01:40:03

At least, I'm assuming that statistic may be within the confines of Biblically Orthodox Christianity, because I'm not sure if the

01:40:13

Quakers were any significant presence in the South. But have you heard the same thing about the

01:40:18

Covenanters? Absolutely, yeah. They were way ahead of everyone on that. And because they believed that a nation was called to live out

01:40:27

Christian principles, they had strong opposition to slavery, and they not only brought black people into church, but made them elders, which was the radical thing to do.

01:40:41

Robert Louis Dabney, who was a marvelous theologian, white man, he was okay with some integration, but he didn't think black people could be elders, because he thought providentially they'd been kept down.

01:40:53

And the RPs, these are the people you're talking about, saw it way before everybody else did.

01:41:01

Yeah, and the Quakers were certainly a powerful force. You're right, there were all kinds of different Quakers.

01:41:08

Some you'd have to consider evangelical, but others probably not. And their tactics weren't always just biblically

01:41:17

Christian, they were sort of strong abolitionists based on feelings and humanitarianism, and, you know, good stuff, but not theologically based, whereas the

01:41:28

RPs were very, very solidly Orthodox and radically opposed to this kind of slavery and later to segregation.

01:41:39

Yes, it's interesting how today, in the 21st century, there are liberals and leftists who oppose

01:41:48

Christianity, who are far more willing to recognize the fact that we have to avoid painting

01:41:56

Muslims with a broad brush and accusing them of all being terrorists, or at least terrorists in disguise, terrorists in their hearts, and that kind of a thing, and yet unwilling to make the differentiation amongst

01:42:12

Christians throughout history who have been in the name of Christ committing atrocities.

01:42:20

And don't you think this is where we need to distinguish between Christendom and that which is genuinely

01:42:28

Christian? Because even today, we always have had, since the coming of Christ in the manger, of course in his incarnation he always existed, but ever since the church, the

01:42:44

New Testament church, has arrived on the scene, there have been false professors.

01:42:52

Yeah, absolutely, that's a really good point. And early on, when Constantine made

01:42:58

Christianity legal, and then his successor made it the state religion, there were so many good things and advantages that came, but there was the inevitable bad thing, which is that it became institutionalized and it became a cultural phenomenon rather than a living thing, which is eventually why the

01:43:18

Reformation had to occur. So yeah, that's a tremendous point. We want to be believing

01:43:25

Christians, followers of Christ, and not culture

01:43:30

Christians. You know, the Germans have this great expression, kultur christianismus, meaning that you've got all the values, but you don't have the dynamic.

01:43:43

And I'd like to tell people a little provocatively that if I was ever going to go back to being an atheist,

01:43:49

I wouldn't be Richard Dawkins, because he's trying to have his middle -class values coming from Christianity without the

01:44:02

God that made those possible, and it can't be done. If I was going to be an atheist, I'd be Nietzsche, who said, look, if you're going to kill

01:44:09

God, do a good job of it, and don't imagine you can also have

01:44:16

Christian morality. You can't do it. You're going to be reduced to power.

01:44:23

I'm not planning to become an atheist, but I think he helps us to differentiate, as you're talking about, between Christendom and the true

01:44:32

Christian faith of the followers of Christ, and that's a critical distinction today.

01:44:38

And I like your point about liberal people pleading with us not to call all Muslims terrorists.

01:44:44

Well, we would like to plead with people not to call everybody who goes to church a Christian. Right, and that has always been the case.

01:44:52

Let's not forget that Judas was one of the twelve apostles chosen by Christ himself.

01:45:00

Yeah, he was a professing believer, but he didn't quite have the life, did he? That's right.

01:45:05

Jesus said it would have been for him never to have been born. That's scary. You bring up the quandary of unanswered prayer, and I have heard very tragic and sad stories of people abandoning

01:45:20

Christianity because they have gone through horrific trials in this life. Perhaps, I don't want to speak glibly, but perhaps trials that would make anything that I have suffered through pale into insignificance.

01:45:34

But they have prayed to the Lord fervently, cried rivers of tears, fallen prostrate on the floor on their knees, crying out to the

01:45:45

Lord, begging him to answer prayer. And the prayers are unanswered, at least in the ways that they are hoping they would be.

01:45:54

If you could explain how this does not nullify Christianity. Yeah, that's a wonderful and a very difficult and profoundly personal question because, as you say, people have pleaded with the

01:46:08

Lord, and he hasn't been fit to answer in the direction of their plea.

01:46:14

And it's very hard to answer that without sounding like you're on a soapbox or something.

01:46:21

What I tend to try to do is to say that our prayers matter immensely to God, and he listens and he cares.

01:46:35

But he sometimes answers not with what we wish for, but with what we need, what's really good for us.

01:46:44

Obviously, the great example of that in all of history is Jesus in Gethsemane.

01:46:50

He did not want to drink that cup because he knew more than anyone what it was going to mean.

01:46:57

But he ended up submitting to God and said, but if this is the way it has to be, I will be done.

01:47:04

And he did have to drink the cup. And God knew that he was not wanting to make his son suffer.

01:47:14

But if he did not, then there would be no redemption. There would be no love for human beings.

01:47:21

There would be no church. So sometimes, even though we can't see it, it's best for us not to have what we ask for.

01:47:32

And I know this sounds easy to say when, you know, you're comfortable when you see a child dying of leukemia, or you see, you know, some of the horrors that are happening in Aleppo.

01:47:46

You say, Lord, please, you know, why are you allowing this?

01:47:51

You're of purer eyes than to see evil. You know, that was Habakkuk's question.

01:47:57

And then after we've pleaded and we know he hears us, we just have to say, okay, I will be done.

01:48:04

And then he may or may not show us later on why it was best to act in a certain way.

01:48:12

You know, Job, I never found out, as far as I know, the reason for his suffering.

01:48:18

The reader knows it because we saw the first chapters there. But he eventually had to come to the place of saying,

01:48:25

Lord, I need an umpire in the kingdom. Can't you, you know, settle this for me?

01:48:34

And God gently but firmly told him, you know, you don't, you're not running the universe. And I am, and I've got reasons.

01:48:42

And then he justified him in the end, so it has a happy ending. So this is a pastoral issue as much as a philosophical issue.

01:48:53

And there's lots and lots in the Scripture about this. It's really, if you have a problem of unanswered prayer, you're in very good company, because so many prophets and so many of God's people were caught wondering how long and why.

01:49:14

And God doesn't gag them. He doesn't forbid the question. But he does ask that we, once we ask the question, that we wait, and that we wait on our tower to see what

01:49:29

God's going to do. And it's always going to be good. It might not be gratifying in our terms in this life, but it'll be good.

01:49:37

And when we get to heaven, we're going to learn, I think, why God was doing this or that when it didn't seem reasonable.

01:49:47

He may not tell us everything, but we're going to say, oh no, I wish I'd believed, because now

01:49:53

I see you were doing something far greater than I could have realized, and I was just narrowly asking for relief.

01:50:01

So yeah, that's sort of the best I can do on this. You have a chapter in your book,

01:50:09

Staying the Course, if you could explain further. Yeah, it's about perseverance.

01:50:15

And one of the questions that I think people have about Christianity is, can we hold on to the end?

01:50:26

Will the grace of God be sufficient to keep us from falling?

01:50:33

You know, we sing that, we pray it, we believe it intellectually, but we sometimes, when we're up against it, we wonder if we'll ever have the strength to face whatever it is.

01:50:52

And we have to say that God doesn't give me today all the strength

01:50:58

I need for tomorrow, but He does give it to me in the doses that I need.

01:51:04

And the Christian life is one of growing in the ability to take difficulties.

01:51:13

Even Jesus, in His humanity, learned obedience through the things that He suffered.

01:51:18

And so we've got to trust that if God began this good work in us,

01:51:24

He's going to see to it that He finishes the job, even though there will be times when we'll wonder, how can

01:51:32

I go through this? How can I endure? You know, the Bible promises that He will keep us in His grip and never let us go.

01:51:42

And, you know, whatever comes our way, we are more than conquerors.

01:51:49

Death itself can't possibly separate us from God. It's the hope of the gospel.

01:51:57

Amen. And this is something that is near and dear to my heart, besetting sins, addiction.

01:52:04

I have revealed to my listeners on many occasions that I am someone who has been rescued out of the enslavement of alcoholism and went to a

01:52:16

Christian rehab ministry in North Carolina that I boast about all the time.

01:52:24

I cannot say enough about Hebron Colony Ministries in Boone, North Carolina, which was actually started by a

01:52:30

Presbyterian pastor in the early 1900s, actually during World War II or after World War II.

01:52:37

But tell us something about this chapter in your book, because it does mean a lot to me, this issue.

01:52:44

And I just cannot stop thanking God enough, nor can

01:52:50

I stop thanking those Christians around me who helped to pull me out of this horrible, horrible state.

01:53:01

Oh, bless you, brother. Well, I don't claim to be an expert on it, but I know that there are kinds of sins which cling particularly hard and are particularly difficult to get rid of.

01:53:17

Some of them are just by clinking into bad habits that become impossible to kick.

01:53:25

Others are things that, you know, that actually attack us physically.

01:53:31

Never to blame for that, but still, we're prone to these things.

01:53:38

And the Bible recognizes addiction as, and sins that won't let go so easily.

01:53:48

But it's a very realistic book about that, and it gives you incredibly honest answers for facing these things.

01:53:59

And we, you know, if we have an addiction, most often we can't kick it ourselves.

01:54:05

We need help. We need to go to other people. We need to confess. We need to be open.

01:54:12

And also realize that, you know, we may fall again, and we're not going to be lost.

01:54:20

It's bad, but we're not going to, you know, go back into the fire. I have a dear, dear, dear friend who has an addiction with painkiller drugs, and he came by it pretty innocently because he had incredible back pain.

01:54:36

But then he found that he couldn't live without these things. And like you, some of his friends guided him into a rehab place, and, you know, he dried up, and he was great.

01:54:52

He had one more fall, and since then he's just been terrific. And, you know, it's something that a lot of Christians in a previous generation would have been much too embarrassed to talk about.

01:55:07

And, you know, and I remember my mother, somebody suggested that she go see a psychologist about something.

01:55:16

She absolutely wouldn't do it because our kind of people don't go see psychologists.

01:55:22

That's for people who have, you know, problems they can't handle. Well, she didn't realize that she had a problem she couldn't handle, and it was okay to say so.

01:55:30

But in that generation, it was a loss of faith, you know. So in our generation, I think we're a little bit more willing to be frank about these things.

01:55:40

And that's why the Church is there, to help us all face the things that are tempting us and to encourage us that these things are common to man.

01:55:52

They're not just my special problem. Nobody else has it. So yeah, those are some thoughts.

01:55:58

I mean, you would say, I'm sure, far deeper things than I would on this. But, you know, admit it, get help, be realistic, and then lean on God's grace, because Jesus died for every kind of sin, even addiction.

01:56:14

And if you could summarize, is it beyond me, your final chapter? Yeah, that is sort of the same thing.

01:56:23

Can I get through this? Is it hopeless?

01:56:29

Can I possibly, in this world, survive all the issues?

01:56:37

And I try to encourage the readers to look for answers to the

01:56:45

Lord, to the Scripture, to realize that even the darkest, darkest problem, be they disease or addiction or anything else,

01:56:57

God isn't surprised by them. I quote in this chapter a dear friend of mine who has been seriously afflicted with cancer, and he leans, he's a poet, and he leans a great deal on George Herbert, who knew quite a thing or two about suffering.

01:57:26

But this friend of mine, he says, Think not thou canst sigh a sigh, and thy maker is not by.

01:57:35

Think not thou canst weep a tear, and thy maker is not near. In other words,

01:57:41

God cares deeply, and he has suffered along with us. He is not a distant

01:57:47

God. As one of my friends says, Christianity's God is the only one who has wounds.

01:57:55

And it's a remarkable thing to say. So where was God in 9 -11?

01:58:02

Where is he in the cancer ward? And the answer is right there. Amen, and we're out of time, and anybody who would like to get a hold of this book that we have been discussing by our guest

01:58:14

William Edgar, Does Christianity Really Work?, you can go to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

01:58:22

cvbbs .com. And if you live in the UK, you can go to the publisher's website,

01:58:29

Christian Focus Publications. Their website is christianfocus .com, christianfocus .com.

01:58:36

Brother Edgar, do you have any contact information that you care to share with our listeners before we go off the air?

01:58:43

Sure, if you go to the Westminster Seminary website. Wts .edu.

01:58:48

Yeah, and then you go to faculty, and I have a page on there, and it's got all the information you might need.

01:58:56

Great, go to wts .edu, go to faculty, and look for William Edgar. If you could hold on the phone for when we go off the air, because I want to schedule you for another interview.

01:59:07

Okay. And I want to thank everybody who listened today. All of you who wrote questions that were read on the air are getting a free copy of the book that we have been discussing,

01:59:16

Does Christianity Really Work?, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater