June 17, 2015 ISI Radio Show with Mike Gaydosh of Solid Ground Christian Books on “The Providence of God”

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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, and the rest of humanity on the planet Earth listening via live streaming.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 17th day of June, 2015.

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And I'm very excited to have as a guest for my very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron, my very first pastor, over 30 years ago when

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I came to Christ by his mercy and grace, Pastor Mike Gaydosh, who is now the executive director and founder of Solid Ground Christian Books.

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And I thank God that he has remained a faithful friend through all these years, even though he relocated a number of years ago down south.

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And it is a joy to see what the Lord is doing with Solid Ground Christian Books. And today we're going to be discussing the providence of God.

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And it's great to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron for the first time, Michael Gaydosh. Well, thank you,

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Brother Chris. I'm very excited about the opportunity of being able to be with you today, and I'm especially excited to know that you are back once again being able to interview people and to speak about things that really matter.

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God has gifted you, and I believe that Iron Sharpens Iron is indeed unique.

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There's nothing quite like it on the radio, and I'm very thankful and very excited about the opportunity to be with you today.

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Yes, and I want to thank Mike Gaydosh for the invaluable tool that he has been in my life.

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God used him to nurture me in the faith, to wean me on the doctrines of grace, and to disciple me in the ways of God.

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So anything that you may hear from my lips in this program that's stupid or heretical, you can blame Mike Gaydosh for that.

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Well, thank you, Chris. I appreciate it. And I own that. I will own that.

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And I just want to give quickly before I forget, and I hope to do this a number of times today, but I want to give the website for Solid Ground Christian Books, who is also one of the newest sponsors of this broadcast,

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Solid -Ground -Books .com

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That's Solid -Ground -Books .com And before we even go into our subject at hand on God's providence, and I know we'll be gleaning some wisdom from the book

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The Divine Purpose by John Matthews, but if you could tell us something about Solid Ground Christian Books.

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I know that the ministry originally was born out of Calvary Press many years ago when you started publishing, and originally you were just reprinting things that were out of print, correct?

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That's correct, Chris. I began publishing by, indeed, the providence of God. It was not something

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I had ever intended to do. But in 1990, I had been pastor at Calvary Baptist in Long Island and Amityville for about nine years at that time.

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And we began Calvary Press as a ministry of Calvary Baptist Church when

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I had the idea of bringing back as a separate booklet, a separate item, the material called

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Thoughts for Young Men by J .C. Ryle. And what ended up happening is we ended up having a man in the church donate money to allow us to do 10 ,000 copies of Thoughts for Young Men, and we ended up selling at a very, very low price.

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We sold all 10 ,000 within about the first six months. And we were off and running.

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We began to realize that God could use these old works that had been buried for a long time and that we're given a new face and a new opportunity to speak to a new generation.

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And in the providence of God, what happened many years later was I was talking to the man who was actually the new book buyer at Westminster Books, at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia area, and he asked me the question, how did you get involved in publishing?

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And I told him about the Thoughts for Young Men project back in 1990. And he stopped me before I could even finish, and he said to me, you published that?

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I said, yeah. I said, we published that back in 1990. And he said, did you publish the one that had the blue cover? I said, yeah.

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He said, well, he said, God used that to bring me to Christ. He said, I was saved through reading that book in Australia.

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This was a Korean man in Australia that somehow got a hold of our little book,

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Thoughts for Young Men by Ryle, and God brought him to salvation. So it was a real blessing to hear that.

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And we've had numerous stories of people converted and strengthened in their faith just through that first little project we did about 30 years ago.

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And just to give a little shout out to Calvary Press, they still do exist, and that's calvarypress .com,

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just to let you know that they are still in existence, but just under a different headship.

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And so tell us about how these books have been used of God, how they know that they've traveled globally, and they've wound up in the hands of some people who have become, by God's grace, saved through reading them, and lives have been transformed.

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Tell us some things about that. Yeah, well, we've had literally hundreds and hundreds of stories that have been told us.

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I remember, again, early on, that the Thoughts for Young Men booklet was actually, we were told that God was using it in Africa, and there were people that were traveling 50 to 75 miles to get a copy of the book.

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And we ended up getting to know some of the people who had been converted through the reading of that particular material.

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And really, since we began publishing at Calvary Press, and then now more recently, in the last 14 years at Solid Ground, it's really a steady stream of encouraging testimonies of people who have either come to faith through reading the materials we've published, or who have just been increased in their faith and have come to a fuller understanding and appreciation of the sovereignty of God.

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Obviously, what we publish is consistently material that exalts the glory of God, material that will cause others to trust in Christ and in Christ alone for their salvation.

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And so we've just had numerous people that have written to us, some from prison have written and have said how they got their hands on some of the books that we've published and how

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God has greatly blessed them. And so, I mean, there's almost a book that could be written just about the testimonies that we have received from people who have come to faith in Christ through the reading of the material.

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And so, of course, that just gives us the enthusiasm we need to keep going. I want to quick announce my email address here for anybody who may have a question for Mike Gadosh about either our theme,

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The Divine Purpose, or The Providence of God. And we're going to be gleaning from the book,

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The Divine Purpose, displayed in the works of Providence and Grace by John Matthews.

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But you can also ask questions specifically about Solid Ground Christian Books. And the email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

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And, of course, we would ask that you at least give your first name and the city and state from where you're writing, and country if you're not in the

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United States. But, of course, if for some reason the question involves a personal, private, and intimate matter, you can remain anonymous if you so choose.

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It's chrisarnson at gmail .com C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com

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What would be the best -selling books that you have brought into print that have been most widely distributed, etc.?

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Well, I would say probably the two that immediately come to mind would be

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Thoughts for Young Men by J .C. Ryle, which has gone through many, many different printings and has even gone through several editions and now has actually been picked up by a few other publishers and has been published.

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I've literally lost track of how many tens of thousands of copies of that book have gone out.

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The second one probably is Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss.

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We first published that in 1992 at Calvary Press. Joe Bianchi of Calvary Press was gracious enough to allow me to take that publication over when

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I began Solid Ground. So we started doing editions of Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss.

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That's another book that has gone through many, many different printings and editions.

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We even have seen other publishers, again, pick up that book and start to publish it.

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It's one of the special tributes and honors that I receive when

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I publish a book is when I see other people, other publishers, pick up the book and begin to publish it as well.

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Rather than me being upset about that, I'm just encouraged that people have seen the value of a book and have felt it was something that was worth doing.

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A third title that has also had a tremendous impact since we first published it, and I know you're familiar with this,

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Chris, is the book Pastors' Sketches by Ichabod Spencer.

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A Pastors' Sketches by Ichabod Spencer is a book that would be difficult to describe how incredible a book it is.

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It is a book that has 77 different sketches.

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What Spencer would do is he was a pastor in Brooklyn, New York, for about 25 years.

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He died in 1854, and I think he pastored there in Brooklyn from about 1830 until his death in 1854.

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What he would do is he would spend the first part of his day in his study preparing his sermons. He would then spend the next part of his day out amongst the people in Brooklyn, and then he would spend his evenings recording every conversation that he had had that day.

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He did this for 20 -some years. Eventually, people begged him to put some of these into print.

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He did. Pastors' Sketches, what became Volume 1, became an instant bestseller.

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It rivaled Uncle Tom's Cabin and several other very popular books at that time.

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He ended up having to go back into his journals a second time right before he died, and he did a second volume.

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Our volume right now, Pastors' Sketches, is a double volume and has both volumes in one. It has become required reading in Southern Seminary in Louisville.

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Hundreds and hundreds of pastors over the last dozen years or more have had to read the sketches in preparation for the pastoral ministry.

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Again, we've had testimonies galore of pastors, but not just pastors.

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We've even had pastors' wives that have written and told us how that book has changed their lives and their ministry.

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I would say those three immediately jump out as the books that... Those are three of the earliest ones that we did, and God has just been very gracious to us.

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Once again, Joe Bianchi from Calvary Press was gracious enough to allow me to take over the publishing of Thoughts for Young Men more recently, and we did a new edition.

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We were actually asked to... There was a chaplain who was serving in Afghanistan who said that he had someone donate money and wanted to order 200 copies of Thoughts for Young Men, so we decided to do a new edition and took a picture from my son and two of his friends as they were serving in Afghanistan as Marines, and we put that on the cover and made it a much more attractive cover for military, and God has used that in the lives of many since we were able to do this new edition, and that's now available as well.

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In fact, a cover like that might make an average teenager or young man especially more prone to read it rather than be embarrassed by a booklet that may appear to be childish, because he doesn't see the contents of it, he just sees the cover of it.

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Well, you're right, and I think that covers are... We don't want to say too much about covers as to how important they are, but at the same time we do put effort into our covers.

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We try to make our covers attractive and appropriate to the subject, and the book, for instance, you've asked me to speak about today,

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The Divine Purpose, I found a beautiful picture of a rainbow that, of course, reminds us of the promise of God from Genesis, and that's on the cover, and it's there because the divine purpose is displayed in the works of providence and grace, as John Matthews declares, and I was wondering, did you want me to start to discuss the doctrine of providence first, further, or did you want to ask a few more questions about solid ground?

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Before we go on to the discussion of our main subject for today,

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I did want to ask you about your friendship with Elizabeth Elliott, since she just very recently went home to be with Christ, and I know that she wrote the foreword to Elizabeth Prentice's book,

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Stepping Heavenward for You, and wrote endorsements for a number of other books. Yes, yes.

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I was very privileged. In fact, as a result of being a publisher,

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I've gotten to know many, many very godly and gifted, and in some cases almost celebrated people, and Elizabeth Elliott certainly would be towards the top of that list.

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She was such a gracious woman, was always willing to help me. Her husband, Lars, I got to know him quite well, and he was always willing to work with me as well, and we had a project we were doing, and yeah, you're right.

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She did write a foreword to Stepping Heavenward, and she did more than that, actually. She not only wrote a foreword to it, but when she read it, and I'm not sure

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I never did get the clear answer on this, whether or not we introduced her to Stepping Heavenward, or if we just reintroduced her,

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I think it might have been the latter, but she was so moved by that book that she ended up doing a full week's radio broadcast on both the book, that was one week, and then the second week was on the life of Elizabeth Prentice, and those are probably still available from the broadcast place where they've kept the archives of her radio broadcasts.

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But yeah, she was a true blessing. She was a hero, a heroine of the

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Christian faith for the last 50 to 60 years, and the story of her husband's martyrdom back in the 50s by the

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Achaean Indians and her willingness to stay and seek to bring the gospel to the very people who had murdered her husband is a story of heroism unlike any other.

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It's quite a remarkable story of God's grace and the power to bring the gospel to a people.

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Yes, you don't have many grown, well -built men that would have the courage to do what she did, this frail woman.

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And she had a little girl at the time, too. It wasn't just her. She had her daughter who was raised there on the mission field as well.

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So yeah, you're absolutely right about that. And I want to repeat the e -mail address, chrisarnson at gmail .com

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if you have a question for Mike Yadosh regarding either Solid Ground Christian Books or our topic today, which is the providence of God.

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And if you could define for us what providence is. A lot of people recognize that as a city in Rhode Island, but they don't know really much else of what it means.

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Well, you're right. And interestingly enough, if they go back and look at the history of the city and Roger Williams, they would find that that name was chosen because of his view and understanding of the providence of God.

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And what are God's works of providence? The question is asked in the catechism, both the

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Baptist catechism, which we have published recently, and also the Westminster catechism.

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And the answer is the same in both. God's works of providence are his most holy, wise, and powerful, preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions.

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This is based upon the position that is stated earlier regarding God's decree, where we are told the decrees of God are his eternal purpose according to the counsel of his will, whereby for his own glory he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.

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The question is then asked, how does God execute his decrees? And the answer is given, God executes his decrees in the works of creation and providence.

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And so the works of creation and providence summarize the great work of God in creating and governing his world.

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And then, of course, the work of redemption is the special work of God's providence, where he has entered history in his son and has accomplished salvation through the death and the resurrection and the ascension and the enthronement of the

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Lord Jesus Christ in glory. And since providence involves extra -biblical events, things that are not inerrantly written down and God -breathed in the pages of the

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Bible, we have to be careful on how we interpret providence, don't we? Some people very often...

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It's interesting that there are a lot of people that are not even believers in God's sovereignty over all history, especially in salvation.

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And yet they will immediately know that God is telling them something through some kind of an act that occurs or something that they happen to stumble upon.

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I was praying for a wife and this beautiful girl walked through the door at a restaurant and she was wearing my favorite color, blue, so I knew

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God was telling me that that was the woman that I'm to marry. And, of course, the person wouldn't be thinking that if it was an ugly woman.

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Yeah, right. But if you could expand on that. Well, I think that, yeah, that's a good point.

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I think that providence must not be our Bible. We must not allow the circumstances of life to determine whether or not something is actually from God and God is calling us to do it.

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In fact, you may recall that in the book of Deuteronomy, the Lord actually tells people at one point that he will send a test to them.

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It's in chapter 13 of Deuteronomy. It says, If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder comes true concerning which he spoke to you, saying, and then he tells what he was telling them to do, let us go after other gods whom we have not known and let us serve them.

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The Lord says, You shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your

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God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

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You shall follow the Lord your God and fear him. You shall keep his commandments, listen to his voice, serve him, and cling to him.

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And so there you have a case where it appeared as if the circumstances were demonstrating that this person was truly a prophet and was somebody to be trusted and believed, but the problem was he was calling them to go after another god.

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And so I think that that's one case where you have a person, and there are many instances in the scriptures where you have people who are acting according to, quote, providence, which actually was not from the

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Lord. It was actually a test as to whether or not they would listen to the Lord. And so you're right.

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It's important for us to not read too much into circumstances and have them even at times compete with and even override the clear didactic teaching of God's Word.

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Very briefly before I mention some things, out of John Matthew's book, who we are going to be gleaning some of the wisdom from that today,

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The Divine Purpose Displayed in the Works and Providence of Grace, tell us something about John Matthews.

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Well, John Matthews, it's interesting that he was a man that was not very well known when this book was first published.

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And as a matter of fact, Archibald Alexander, who many of your listeners will know the name,

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Archibald Alexander was the founder, the first president of Princeton Seminary.

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And Archibald Alexander's sons, J .W. Alexander, J .A. Alexander, both ended up becoming very famous professors there.

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Archibald Alexander discovered John Matthews' book, The Divine Purpose, and he wrote a lengthy review about it.

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And I remember him saying he was shocked to read this book and to see how valuable it was because he had never heard of this man.

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And John Matthews himself, he was born in 1772 in North Carolina, and he ended up being a man who went into the ministry, was used of God in many, many ways.

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And we are told that he was called, he says, I'm called by God, he said, to an unpleasant mission like Jonah, and if I do not go,

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I shall expect Jonah's punishment. He left an affectionate people whose affection he fully reciprocated for a position in which he was called to endure privations until the close of his days.

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In the spirit of a true disciple, he went forth counting nothing dear to him so that he might finish the work that was given him to do, happy for the church if all her ministers were of like spirit.

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And we're told the same perspicuity which marked his preaching, the intellectual vigor which characterized his work on the divine purpose, which so often has been studied with profit by the inquiring soul, were manifested in his duties as professor, though advanced to the age of 77, he continued with great vigor of mind, though in great feebleness of body, to attend on all the exercises of the lecture room.

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He ended up teaching in didactic theology in South Hanover, Indiana, that is now in New Albany.

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And it was his ministry that really sparked the heart of Archibald Alexander when he first read this book.

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He did some research and tried to find out who is this man. He just said he had an uncommon intellect, and the way that he put this book together, it was actually put together as a series of letters, actual letters sent to an actual friend who was asking him questions about the sovereignty of God, about the divine decrees, and addressing all of those kinds of issues.

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And the man himself, when the letters were first written to him, was really uncertain about where he stood.

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And one of the things that is most marked about this book, and Archibald Alexander picked up on it and spoke about it in his preface, because what happened actually is,

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I think it was in the late 1920s, or 1820s when the book was first published,

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Alexander got a hold of it, and he ended up writing this lengthy review, about like a 30 -page review of the book, in which he just spoke about the value of it.

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Well, it apparently remained unprinted for many years, and then Archibald Alexander himself was instrumental in getting the book back into print again, and then he asked to write the preface for the 1843 edition that was published by the

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Presbyterian Board of Publication. And in that edition he says this about the book, One thing the reader may be assured of, that whether he should coincide in opinion with the author or not, he will find nothing in the volume calculated to wound the most delicate feelings.

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A spirit of meekness and kindness, eminently characteristic of the writer, pervades the whole.

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And I think that's so important about this book, is that he's dealing with a difficult subject, but he does so with such a sensitivity of heart, that Alexander says that he would not have offended the person with the most delicate sensitivities in this matter.

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That's how careful he was about everything he wrote. And yet he did so without compromise.

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He spoke the truth, but he did so in love. And that's a beautiful combination. When we return from the break,

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I want to ask you about the influence of prejudice. Answer to the question, what are the decrees of God, which is one of the chapters in John Matthew's book.

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And if you could answer that when we return, if you could explain that. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, from Mike Gaydos of Solid Ground Christian Books, on the subject of divine providence, or on the subject of his publishing ministry, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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That's chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Don't go away, we'll be right back after these messages.

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LindbrookBaptist .org, that's LindbrookBaptist .org. Welcome back, this is Chris Arns, and if you've just joined us, our guest today on Iron Sharpens Iron is

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Michael Gaydosh, who is the founder and executive director of Solid Ground Christian Books, and we are delighted to have him as our guest for the first time.

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He is my very first pastor, after my rebirth, by God's mercy, nearly 30 years ago, and I am enjoying this conversation with him very much.

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And we do have a listener with an emailed question before I go to the question on the influence of prejudice answers to the questions, what are the decrees of God?

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This listener writes, and it's an anonymous listener, that he has written a manuscript, and it has been rejected by the major publishers he submitted it to, but he is constantly being encouraged by Christians and men in the ministry whom he trusts that this is a book worthy of print.

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Since your subject is on providence, it's difficult to discern which providence

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I should accept as my fate, the one involving the rejection of the publishers or the affirmation and encouragement of friends in ministry.

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Well, yeah, that's a good point, and I think that, in my personal opinion, I would say that I would lean more towards the men in the ministry than I would publishers.

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Of course, I'm a publisher, but I know many publishers, they have to look at what you call the bottom line, and they have to say, well, is this going to sell enough copies to be able to warrant our spending the amount of money that's necessary to produce it?

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Thankfully, we live in a day in which that question really doesn't even have to be addressed anymore.

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I would recommend this person to get a hold of me. I may be able to help them either to publish it on their own or help them to get it published through solid ground.

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Obviously, we have many things that we have to go over before we can proceed to publish a book, but I would not take the word of publishers as the final word.

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I have published some books that are tremendous books that were rejected by the mainline

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Christian publishers, and there are many reasons why books are not picked up by publishers, and I would want to know the answer to those questions as to why they said no.

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If they gave an answer, not all publishers will. Sometimes they'll just say thanks, but no thanks. But I would not take that as the final word for sure.

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In fact, a mutual friend of ours, the late Dr. Robert J. Cameron, he wrote a book,

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The Last Pew, on the left, and a major Christian publisher that everybody would recognize the name of this publisher, said that they believed it was the finest unsolicited manuscript that they had ever received, but because being a black pastor, he criticized both the white church at large and the black church at large for the sin of racism, and because he included blacks as being guilty along with whites of the sin of racism, they didn't feel comfortable publishing it.

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Yeah, well, again, those are some of the things that you have to understand. There are many, many, especially when the larger publishers you're dealing with, you might have investors that are involved, many that aren't even owned by Christians anymore.

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Now, absolutely, that's exactly the case, and now you have many of the largest quote,

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Christian publishing houses who are not being run by Christians anymore, so they have one line, and that line is the bottom line, and that's all they care about.

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And going back to the question from John Matthew's book, The Divine Purpose, the influence of prejudice, the answer to the question...

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You know, the way that he begins that chapter is so well stated that I'm just going to read that opening section.

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No person can have been so long conversant with the world as you have been without often observing the effects of prejudice.

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It implies the belief of a statement or opinion without examination.

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Of course, without a knowledge of the evidence on which the truth of that opinion is founded, a judgment is formed for which no good reason can be given.

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In this way, either truth or error may be and often is received. It is peculiarly unfortunate when its influence operates in favor of error, for it renders the mind almost, if not quite, inaccessible to truth.

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It is a hopeless undertaking to reason with men under its influence.

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You state a case to them, differently from their own opinion, and invite them to a fair and candid inquiry, but they have prejudged the case.

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They have no doubts on the subject. They form their opinion without deliberation, of course, without difficulty, and why should they doubt?

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Perfectly satisfied with their present views, troubled with no doubts respecting their correctness, they can see no reason for investigation.

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Well, he goes on and speaks more about that, but we've all had to deal with this in our lives, no matter what the positions we hold.

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I remember having a conversation one time with a young woman who was struggling with the doctrine of God's sovereignty, and election in particular.

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And she made a statement to me that she believes that God has to be fair and that he has to give everyone an equal opportunity to receive the gospel.

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And I said to her, that's ridiculous. How can you possibly believe that God has to give everyone an equal opportunity?

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And she says, well, I believe he does, and I believe that that's exactly what God does, because he has to do that in order to be fair.

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And so I presented this case to her. I said, okay, you have a young child who's born into a

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Christian home. They have Christian grandparents on both sides who prayed for them every day.

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They're brought up in a home where the gospel is presented and lived faithfully and consistently every day of their lives.

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They're sent to a Christian school or they're homeschooled. They go to a faithful church where the gospel is preached on a regular basis.

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They're given ample opportunities to hear the gospel, to understand the gospel.

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And then you have another child born in another side of the world, born into a

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Hindu home. They never hear the gospel. They live and die without ever hearing of the

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Lord Jesus Christ and his salvation. Those two people have exactly the same chance to receive the gospel.

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Her answer was yes. Well, that was the end of the conversation, because there is exactly what

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John Matthews is talking about. Here's a person who is completely unreasonable. It makes absolutely no sense.

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So how do you reason? When I would come to a person and realize that two and two no longer equals four, then the conversation ends.

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Because you're not talking to somebody. And that's what that is. That's exactly what he calls prejudice there.

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You've prejudged a matter before you've been given an opportunity to actually test the matter to see whether these things are so.

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And that's exactly what I love about the way Matthews addresses the issue of the decrees of God and then on into the providence of God, is he walks people through these preliminary steps, causes a person to have to really evaluate not just what do you believe, but why do you believe what you believe?

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And I remember years and years ago when I was first a Christian reading books by Paul Little. One was called

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Knowing What You Believe and then Knowing Why You Believe What You Believe. And those were very helpful early on in my

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Christian walk. And I think that what I love about Matthews' book here is the way that he just uses such simple terminology to describe these things.

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Let me give you an example. In chapter, letter three, he just says, God never acts without design.

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That's the bottom line. That's how he begins the letter. In your evening walk, you tread on a worm and you crush it to death.

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Presently, you observe a venomous serpent near your path, which you also kill. In the first case, the effect as it respected yourself was accidental.

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That is, it happened without your intention. You had no design to injure that worm. But in the latter, the effect or the event was according to your intention.

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Your killing that serpent was in consequence of a design previously and deliberately formed in your mind.

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And yet, in both cases, you were the cause of death. In the thousand instances, the exertions of men produce effects not only without design, but at times contrary to their deliberate intentions.

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But nothing like this can possibly happen with God. It would be the height of absurdity and manifest the greatest ignorance of his character to suppose that his power was exerted in blind efforts and was producing effects which he had not previously designed.

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Every effect which his power produces is according to the predetermination of his own wisdom.

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Now, the way that I've described that to people, I said, God does not step accidentally on earthworms.

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He doesn't, because he does nothing by accident. Everything God does is for a purpose. That's why the very book, the title is

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The Divine Purpose. One of the passages, Chris, that helped me early on in my

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Christian life is found in the book of Ephesians. And it's Ephesians chapter 1.

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And what Paul is describing here in Ephesians 1, in this, what's called the longest sentence in the

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Bible, chapter 1, verses 3 to 14, is over 200 words in the original.

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And right in the heart of those verses, those 12 verses from 3 to 14, he says this,

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Also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose, who works all things after the counsel of His will.

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I've never gotten over the first time I read that and understood it, and I still to this day can't get over the amazing truth that's contained in those words.

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Having obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose, the divine purpose, of He who works all things after the counsel of His will.

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What I often do with people is I will tell them as I'm speaking to them in private about a situation, perhaps a difficult situation in their lives,

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I will have them turn to Romans 8, 28, and I'll ask them this, Can you go back and make sure that that verse is still in the

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Bible? Go back and check. Make sure it's still there. Well, of course, they kind of look at me funny, and I say,

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No, just, I want you to go back and look at it. And let's go back and read it. And what does that passage tell us?

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That God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love

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God and are called according to His purpose. And what is His purpose according to Romans 8?

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That we would be conformed to the image of His Son. So everything that happens in our lives, the good things and the bad things, the ugly things, and Augustine says, by faith we must believe that that even includes our sin.

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In no way does it minimize our sin, and no way does it justify our sin. But what it does tell us is that God will take even the worst things and He will turn them for good.

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One of my favorite books by Thomas Watson is called All Things for Good, and it's his brief exposition of Romans 8, 28, and following, and it is just precious.

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You can't possibly read that and not be lifted up and encouraged in your soul. The issue of providence, of God's control over all occurrences in history, there's a lot of division amongst even those that profess to be

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Christians and even those who are in Christian leadership, so -called, where you have, for instance, a natural disaster, a hurricane, that kills many thousands of people and destroys millions of dollars worth of property, etc.

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You will have Christian leaders who some will say, God did not do that.

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He set up, in His design of nature, things such as hurricanes and tornadoes, and that just was a natural occurrence because of certain atmospheric phenomena that occurred.

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You will have some who fall into the error of the opposite extreme, who will be certain that God wiped out a certain area with a hurricane, tornado, or flood because of homosexuality, or they will name a specific sin or a specific group of people as being the cause of this disaster, as if they have been told by God Himself why

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He specifically acted that way. And then, of course, you have all different opinions in between on the spectrum, but if you could comment on that.

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Yeah, that's very good. Let me look at Isaiah 40 to address the issue of God having nothing to do, which is, unfortunately,

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I remember hearing, and I'm pretty sure that he corrected himself, but I remember hearing myself one time,

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Franklin Graham, answering a question regarding Katrina, Hurricane Katrina, and when

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Larry King asked him what God had to do with it, he said God had nothing to do with that. And King was even shocked at his response, and asked him, and kind of pressed him on it.

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Well, it was interesting, it was like a week later that Franklin Graham's sister was on, and the same question was asked her, and she gave the exact opposite response.

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She said that, oh, God had everything to do with that. And the question here is, Isaiah 40, just as a passage to turn to, do you not know, have you not heard, has it not been declared to you from the beginning, have you not understood from the foundations of the earth, it is he who sits above the vault of the earth.

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It's his inhabitants are like grasshoppers who stretches out to heaven like a curtain, spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

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He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, who makes the judges of the earth meaningless. Scarcely have they been planted, scarcely have they been sown, scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth.

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He merely blows on them and they wither, and the storm carries them away like stubble.

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To whom then will you liken me that I should be his equal, says the Lord, the Holy One.

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Lift up your eyes on high, see who has created these stars, the one who leads forth their hosts by number, calls them all by name, because of the greatness of his might, the strength of his power, not one of them is missing.

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Another passage that immediately comes to mind, and I'm sure you've heard me say this a hundred times through the years, do not fear those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul, said

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Jesus, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a cent, and yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your

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Father, and the very hairs of your head are all numbered? Therefore do not fear, you are of more value than many sparrows.

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Now I've often spoken about and taught about the fact that our God is the God of sparrows and hair.

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He is a God who is in charge of the big things, the rulers of the earth, but he's also in charge of the sparrows and the hair, the small, minute things.

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And he is in charge of everything in between. There's nothing, he has never made a mistake, he will never make a mistake, everything that has been accomplished has been accomplished for a purpose.

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And I would agree with you that there is danger in trying to interpret why

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God does what he does, whether it's a hurricane, a tornado, why does a tornado come down a road, hit one group of houses, stop and then go around and then hit another group of houses, and perhaps that house that it didn't hit was a prominent atheist, or perhaps it was a prominent preacher who was a faithful preacher of the

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God's word. We simply don't have an answer to that question. We just know that God does what he does for a purpose.

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In fact, remember when in Luke 13 you have, on the occasion, there were some present who reported to Jesus about the

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Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered and said to them, do you suppose these

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Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? I tell you no.

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But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. And then he asked, then he presents this to them.

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Or do you suppose that those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem?

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I tell you no. But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Well, there's our

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Lord himself telling us that we can't interpret providence, we can't say, oh, because those 18 men were killed in that particular incident and accident, that they were worse than other people and that's why it happened to them.

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Or the people who were worshiping and Pilate mingled their blood with their sacrifices, those men deserved what they got because of what they had done.

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That's very much like Job's friends, remember, who said because Job was suffering the way he was, he must have been a man who had committed great sin because of the fact that he had suffered so much.

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It's obvious that, but yet we're told in chapters 1 and 2, God himself tells us that Job was a righteous man and what happened to him had nothing to do with his sin.

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It was God seeking to demonstrate to Satan and to the watching world that God would be able to sustain this man despite everything being taken away from him, even his health.

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And we're going to be going to our final break. Let me just quickly quote someone in reference to you,

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Mike Gaydosh. I believe it was Charles Spurgeon who was referring to John Bunyan when he said, prick him anywhere, his blood is

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Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. I'm saying that about you today, brother.

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And we're going to our final break here, so if you'd like to email us with a question, we're running out of time rapidly, so do it now at chrisarnson at gmail .com

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chrisarnson at gmail .com We'll be right back. I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

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That's wrbc .us Welcome back.

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This is Chris Arns. And if you've just joined us, we have Mike Gaydos of Solid Grand Christian Books as our guest today.

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We're talking about Divine Providence. We do have a listener, Louie from Vista, California, writing,

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I had a question on how we should engage those who differ from us in regards to Providence.

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You went over it briefly, but I was wondering how we could talk to friends and family to help them better understand where we are coming from.

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And if you could do that as briefly as you can, because we've only got about seven minutes. Yeah, that's a good question.

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I think that it is always a good idea to ask people questions. And I think we have times where we're too prone to try to give answers rather than ask people questions.

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And I think by probing and asking them a series of questions, put together a series of questions, one that will lead to another, and try to help people to understand.

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So if God is not in control, for instance, when a person would say, God's not in control of hurricanes and tornadoes, well, we can actually take them to passages in the

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Bible where the Lord says He sends these things. So if a person's going to trust in the Bible, then you just have to show them the evidence.

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I mean, that's one way of dealing with it. And another way is, I think, just by seeking to reason with people and ask them questions.

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Say, okay, now, if God's not in control of this, then what else is He not in control of? Then He mustn't be in control of the evil actions of evil men, right?

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Then He has nothing to do with them. Well, how about we turn to what Joseph said in Genesis 45 about his brothers.

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When he says, when he revealed himself to them, he says, Now don't be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.

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For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting.

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God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth, and to keep you alive by a great deliverance.

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Now, therefore, it was not you who sent me here, but God. And He has made me a father to Pharaoh and Lord over all his household and a ruler over the land of Egypt.

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Three times in those verses, Joseph says, God is the one who sent him to Egypt.

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And yet, how did He do it? He did it by means of the evil actions of his brothers.

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And yet, it was God who had sent him there. And you may recall that by the end of his life, the brothers were fearful that when they came back from the funeral of their father,

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Jacob, that they were afraid that Joseph was going to now take revenge.

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In fact, in Genesis 50, we're told, when Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, What if Joseph should bear a grudge against us and pay us back in full for all the wrong which we did to him?

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So they sent a message to Joseph saying, Your father charged before he died saying, Thus you shall say to Joseph, Please forgive,

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I beg you, the transgression of your brothers and their sin, for they did you wrong. And now please forgive the transgression of the servants of God of your father.

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And Joseph wept when they spoke to him. And his brothers came and fell down before him. And they said,

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Behold, we are your servants. And Joseph said to them, Do not be afraid, for I am in God's place.

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And as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result to preserve many people alive.

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So therefore, do not be afraid. I will provide for you and your little ones. So he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.

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I think if we just bring Scripture to people and show them the examples of the sparrow and the hare and also let them know that they are literally robbing themselves of the greatest comfort we can ever have when we know that nothing, nothing can ever happen in our lives that is outside of God's purpose and God's plan for us.

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Romans 8 .28 is true. And when we ask people, Do you believe

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Romans 8 .28 is true? Well, if you do, well, then we need to take that seriously.

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We know that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love God, for those who are called according to His purpose.

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So we don't have to argue with people. We just need to reason with them and ask them questions and get them to think through the things that they're saying and say,

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What kind of comfort is there in the idea that God had nothing to do with and then fill in the blank?

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In fact, we have some startling words in 2 Samuel 12 where Nathan the prophet speaking,

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God is speaking to David through Nathan the prophet and telling

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David about his sins with Bathsheba and Uriah and what the chastisement will be.

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And we have God saying, this is what the Lord says, Out of your own household

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I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to the one who is close to you.

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And he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. You did it in secret, but I will do this.

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I will do this thing in broad daylight before all of Israel. So there you have God himself saying he is going to bring about these great evil things that are happening in the life of David.

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Exactly, and that's where you see this also in 1 Corinthians 11 with the

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Lord's Supper where the people who had been partaking of the Lord's Supper in an unrighteous way without examining themselves, what does he say?

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He says, Because of this many of you are weak and sick and some have even fallen asleep.

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But what the Lord is saying is he has been chastising them. He has been disciplining them because of their failure to discern the

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Lord's body. And God is saying he is involved in all of these things. And so,

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I always just come back to the issue of comfort and say, what comfort is there in a God who is not in control?

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As soon as you remove the control of the world from God's hands and you leave it, where are you going to leave it now? Whose hands does it end up in?

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Is it in the hands of chance? Is it in the hands of Satan? Whose hands is it in?

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Well, if the Bible is clear, and I believe it is, and if Jesus is speaking truth when he says that not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of your

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Father, well, I believe what Christ is doing when he says that is he is arguing from the least to the greatest.

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What he is saying there is, if such an insignificant event in the world's history as a sparrow, who is not anybody's pet, but a sparrow falls to the ground even without anybody knowing it, that doesn't happen apart from the will of your

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Father in Heaven. And what's the result of that, according to the Lord Jesus? Do not fear, he says.

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Do not fear. In other words, it's a matter of comfort. This is one of the most precious doctrines for the comfort of the people of God.

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As I close, I would just encourage the brethren to go to the Internet and find the article by Benjamin Warfield entitled

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God's Providence Over All. That's where we got to end there, Mike. Okay. And we thank you so much for being on the program.

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We thank Ted in Tuscaloosa, Alabama for sending in a question, and I will bring it to Mike's attention the next time he is on because Mike, I'd like you to come back to continue this very same subject if you don't mind.

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I'd love to do that, Chris. Thank you, brother. Love you. So thank you, Ted, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Thank you all for listening.

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Remember that Solid Ground Christian Books' website is solid -ground -books .com.

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Remember, and never forget for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.