June 28, 2018 Show with Dr. Stephen J. Nichols on “J. Gresham Machen: A Guided Tour of His Life & Thought” PLUS Nathan Pickowicz on “Early American Puritans”

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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, 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. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

01:14

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 28th day of June 2018.

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I've got two excellent guests coming up today. Later on in the program at approximately 4 30,

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Nate Pickowitz is going to be joining us. He is pastor of Harvest Bible Church in Gilmanton Ironworks, New Hampshire, and he is going to be addressing the

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American Puritans, and he's also going to be discussing the Fellowship Conference New England coming up in August.

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And first, before that, we have right now the privilege of having a returning guest, one of my favorites.

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He is Dr. Stephen J. Nichols, and he is chief academic officer of Ligonier Ministries, president of Reformation Bible College, a

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Ligonier teaching fellow, adjunct professor for Reform Theological Seminary, visiting lecturer at Westminster Theological Seminary's program on the

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John Owen Center in London, author of many books, including Welcome to the Story, Peace, Classic Readings for Christmas, A Time for Confidence, and volumes in the

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Guided Tour series on Jonathan Edwards, Martin Luther, and others, and he's the host of the weekly podcast,

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Five Minutes in Church History. Today we are going to be addressing J. Gresham Machen, a guided tour of his life and thought, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Dr.

02:42

Stephen J. Nichols. Hey, good to hear from you, glad to be back, and look forward to talking about our mutual friend here in Machen.

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Amen. And I want to give our listeners our email address right away, because Dr.

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Nichols will be leaving us after less than a half hour, so if you'd like to send in an email with a question about J.

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Gresham Machen, please do so very quickly. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Well, it is interesting, it's fascinating that when

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I asked you to be on the program, and I knew that you had written on J. Gresham Machen, and by the way, just this is just aside,

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I have to have you back sometime to talk about your book on the blues. We definitely got to do that. Sure, I'd be glad to, don't have me sing and be all right.

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But when I knew that you'd written on J. Gresham Machen, I said to myself,

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I don't think that I've ever done a full program on J. Gresham Machen, or full interview, and I said that's kind of crazy,

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I've got to have an interview on J. Gresham Machen. And then I found out that this month there are landmark events in J.

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Gresham Machen's life. On the 23rd of June in 1914, J. Gresham Machen was ordained in Plainsboro, New Jersey.

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On June 28th, which is today, 1928, J. Gresham Machen removed his name from consideration for professor of apologetics at Princeton, knowing he would not have gotten the votes in the

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General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the USA, since he also knew he had stirred up the hornet's nest in his denomination with his popular writings.

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And I got more clarification on that from my friend Jeffrey Waddington, a historian and pastor of the

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Knox Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. June 27th, 1933, the

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Independent Board of Missions was organized and J. Gresham Machen was elected president. The primary reason the

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Presbyterian Church in the USA found Machen guilty of insubordination to church authorities, and on March 29th, 1935, they stripped him of his ordination.

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And on June 11th, 1936, J. Gresham Machen was elected the first moderator of the sixth month old

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Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination. So all those things happened in the month of June in Machen's life.

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It's pretty remarkable, isn't it? It is remarkable. You know, Chris, and until you connected all those dots, I never did.

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I knew of all those events, obviously, but it didn't dawn on me. They all occurred in this month.

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That's amazing. Yeah, it is. Well, let's start off with, well, there's a lot of people,

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I'm sure, especially those who are outside of the Reformed orbit. There may even be some in the

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Reformed orbit that are not Presbyterian or perhaps not Orthodox Presbyterian, that specific domination, who are totally unaware of Dr.

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J. Gresham Machen. And I know that he is a hero of yours. You wrote on him, obviously, even though you're not in the

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OPC, he was still a hero of yours and is. If you could tell us a summary of this man's life and why we should hold him with such high regard and importance.

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Sure. You know, you ran through some of the events here. Obviously, he was involved in a lot of controversy in his lifetime.

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So you gotta ask, why was he involved in this controversy? If we go back to the 1910s, 20s, 30s, this is the high watermark of what we call the fundamentalist modernist controversy or the liberalism controversy.

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Of course, America as a country changed drastically in those opening years of the 20th century.

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And modernity came in like a freight train. And you found secularism and modernism on the rise in those early years.

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And much of the mainline church, the established church, people were just leaving it in droves.

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And so the church did not want to be left behind, right? So they just started compromising.

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They compromised the view of scripture, compromised the gospel, compromised the view of Christ, a view of man, view of sin, view of God, you name it, in order to keep culture interested in them and to keep them from leaving the church.

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So that's what the liberals were doing. They were trying to accommodate this ancient faith of ours to 20th century sensibilities.

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And along come the fundamentalists. And there were a variety of these folks. And they were very colorful folks, but really the heavy lifter intellectual of them.

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And one of the keen minds of all of them was Machen. And this came to a head with a book he wrote called

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Christianity and Liberalism. And basically his argument, very succinct, was this.

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You're free to believe whatever you want. He was a libertarian politically, right? And this is

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America after all. But you can't totally redefine God, totally redefine the gospel, totally redefine

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Christ, and call it Christianity. It's something else. Liberalism is not

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Christianity in the final analysis. And that was the book. And it was a line in the sand.

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And it was a call both to liberals to recognize what they had done to the church and how they had gutted the gospel.

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And it was a call to those to just remain faithful to the gospel in light of these cultural pressures.

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So that was Machen. He lived a very colorful life. He was independently wealthy, liked to travel to Europe and would often do mountain climbing in the

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Alps. He served in the YMCA during World War I. He was a professor at Princeton.

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Then he founded Westminster Seminary, founded a mission board, and near the end of his life founded a new denomination.

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And then on January 1, 1937, he dies. And of all places,

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North Dakota. And then is returned to the East Coast, where he spent most of his life.

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So that's Machen. Now, one of the key things that occurred here that we already addressed is that Machen, on June 27, the date which was yesterday, but of course in 1933, he organized the mission board that started to really get the ire of the

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Presbyterian Church in the United States. The Independent Board of Missions, he organized and he was elected president of that mission board.

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Why was that such a startling and infuriating thing for Machen to do that caused, that was really the key issue, it seems, that caused his stripping of his ordination?

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Sure. He'd already left Princeton, which was the established denominational seminary, one of them.

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He had founded Westminster Seminary. So that of course bothered the establishment, but it did not lead to his defrocking, as you indicate.

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But the founding of the mission board was seen by his denomination as a betrayal of his ordination vows to set up a competing organization outside of it.

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But what we have to understand is why he did it. So just before Machen did this, the denomination sanctioned and released a report entitled

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Rethinking Missions. Now, I just say this as an aside, whenever I see the word rethink, my spidey sense goes up.

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I think we can reaffirm, we can restate, but when we start rethinking things, you know what we're doing here.

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And the denomination was saying, missions, catch this, missions is no longer about taking the gospel to people who need it, because that is a betrayal of their culture, it is a betrayal of their religion, which is part and parcel of their culture.

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Instead, missions should really be about social betterment.

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That would be like Pearl Buck's mission. Pearl Buck was the key. She was a Presbyterian missionary here.

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Her parents were missionaries, she was a missionary, and she was a denier of the gospel.

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And in fact it's funny you bring her up, because when Machen dies, Pearl Buck says, she wrote an obituary for Machen, and in the obituary she says, the

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Presbyterian church kicked me out the front door, and it kicked, I'm sorry, kicked Machen out the front door, and it kicked me out the back door.

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But Pearl Buck was one of the people that was a supported Presbyterian ministry who was totally denying the gospel.

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And so Machen said, look, you know, in a denominational setting, these monies that churches are gathering and collecting are going into the denominational coffers, and then they're supporting missionaries.

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These missionaries are not only not teaching the gospel, they're blatantly denying the gospel.

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And so Machen in good conscience could not send students into this mission agency because of its denial of the gospel, nor did he want to continue to support it financially.

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And so he sets up the independent board for Presbyterian foreign mission, but make no mistake about it, this is the gospel that we're talking about, and it's the gospel that's at stake in Machen's move.

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Now, whether he was out of bounds with the book of church order, whether he was out of bounds with the denominational machinery,

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I'll let the gurus of Presbyterian government make those judgments. As I look at it,

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Machen was being faithful to the gospel. Praise God. And we do have a listener in Bangor, Maine.

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John in Bangor, Maine says, I know that the PCUSA today is a horrible denomination, although there are some remnants of faithful men and women still involved in that denomination, but they are by and large apostate.

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Is the Presbyterian Church USA today a lot worse than it was back in Machen's day, because after all,

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John Gerstner remained there for many years and then could no longer take it. I believe it wasn't until the 1970s, if I'm not mistaken, that John Gerstner left the

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PCUSA. So how bad was it when Machen was involved? Yeah, it was bad.

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So first of all, can I just make a quick comment? Sure. Machen's family, I said they were independently wealthy, they were from Baltimore, but they vacationed every summer on Bar Harbor Island, specifically on Seal Harbor.

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So it's only about an hour west of Bangor, Maine there, where Machen would go. So your listener can go over to Seal Harbor and see if you can find the cottage where Machen's family would vacate.

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But I'd like to say this. I think in many ways, Christian liberalism is as important now as it was then, maybe even more so, and maybe it's even more relevant today and needs to be read more today than then.

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Now, there was certainly a betrayal of the gospel, and it was driven largely by the so -called hard sciences, by the discoveries and biological evolution and science, and basically this is what the intellectual elites were saying, and Genesis 1 is out of step with that.

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So we need to rethink everything to say that we are sinners, wretched to the core, and are in need of Christ.

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How does Rock of Ages put it? Wash me, Savior, lest I die. Boy, that's really mean to say about us as human beings.

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We're good -natured, aren't we? We just created the Empire State Building, so in the 1920s,

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Scripture, Doctrine of Sin, these things were just culturally out of step because of what culture was saying. So you fast -forward to today, it's the same thing, but it's gender issues, it's sexuality, and so we have all these sort of cultural elites and gurus saying one thing, and then we read something else in the

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Bible, and we have these denominations just wholesale wanting to deny the Bible in order to make cultural accommodations.

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So, you know, sort of same song, second verse. Now, I think what

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Gershner might be, though, a unique example, I mean, you know, why he stayed in so long.

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So that might be a show in itself, Chris. Yeah, because he was a staunch conservative.

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I mean, there was nothing liberal about him at all. Not a liberal ever drop ever, yeah, entered his body.

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So, but no, I think you could say, and there was a crisis in the 1920s that was acute, and there was a crisis today, and it has everything to do with, are we going to submit to Scripture?

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Are we going to submit Scripture to us and to our cultural sensibilities? Yeah, and I assume that you would agree that today has gotten so terrifying, so bizarre, that even

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Machen, who knew how far the

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Presbyterian church in the USA had strayed, he probably wouldn't even recognize the

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PCUSA and much of modern Christendom, especially when you're talking about mainline denominations.

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He wouldn't even recognize them as being a part of the same religion in any way, even remotely.

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Well, you know, in some ways, what we're seeing today is what Machen sort of prophesied. Right. And you think you can sort of give up some of these commitments and still maintain your identity.

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You can't. It's a fool's errand. And after a few generations of this, you're going to be so far afield, it's hard to even recognize any semblance of truth within that.

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Amen. By the way, John in Bangor, Maine, you have received a free copy of J. Gresham Machen, A Guided Tour of His Life and Thought, which will be mailed out to you by cvbbs .com,

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Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, compliments of our friends at PNR Publishing, and we thank Bryce Craig and all the folks there for giving us these free copies, and also compliments of cvbbs .com,

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who will be shipping that to you at no charge to you or to us. Thank you. Thanks a lot, John. Let's see here.

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We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, why is it that even the conservatives at Machen's time and after, within Presbyterianism, could not find enough unity to remain as one body, and even they split?

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You know, this is the story, isn't it? You see it in the Reformation. Luther and Zwingli break ranks at the

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Marburg Colloquy, and they can't come together, so you have the Swiss Reformed Churches and the German Lutheran Churches.

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And you see it in the Fundamentalist Modernist Controversy. They were clearly united in what they were against.

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They were against the liberals. But you really begin to see a lot of the spinoffs of the big structures that dominate 20th century evangelicalism.

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You know, you see Pentecostalism rising up at this time, you see Schofield and the

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Dispensationalists and the Bible Colleges, Bible Institutes, Moody, they're all getting started up in this era and sort of ignited in this era.

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Among the Presbyterians, you have some disagreements, and so you have the

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Bible Presbyterians, and eventually someone like Francis Schaeffer is going to be sort of associated with them, and they all not disagree over issues of eschatology and some of the finer points of eschatology.

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Then you have Machen, who really wasn't—he didn't want to be a Fundamentalist.

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He wanted to just be a Presbyterian. He's like, that's the word I want. My denomination has changed.

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I still like being a Presbyterian. So you have a variety of these folks responding to liberalism, and they sort of spin off.

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I think what we have to see is the same thing at the Reformation, and it's probably just part of Protestantism.

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We see that we're united on the Gospel and the solas of the Reformation, the basic tenets of the

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Apostles' Creed. Like, we are united on these core doctrines, but when we start thinking about eschatology or church government, or maybe even how we engage certain social issues, we begin to see differences between our brothers and sisters in Christ, and I think we need to recognize that part of that is just we don't interpret

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Scripture perfectly, and we won't until we get to heaven, right? And so if we take

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Scripture seriously and we get in there and dig through it, we're likely going to disagree with each other.

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We're going to have different convictions with each other. So it's one of those things. You see it in the Reformation, you see it in Fundamentalist controversy, and I think we even see it today, and we just need to be reminded that we can have unity on those essentials of doctrine, the solas and what constitutes a core commitment to inerrancy of Scripture, doctrines of Christ, doctrines of salvation, but we're going to have disagreements.

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You know, I have many Baptist friends. I was Baptist, now Presbyterian. We're going to have those disagreements on some of those issues, and we just need to,

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I think, have some humility and maturity in how we handle those issues, but also recognize that when it comes to the

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Gospel, that is a lot for us to come together around and to work together around.

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From what I can remember, and I might be a little off -base, but perhaps you could correct me,

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I think that the primary reasons why the conservative Presbyterians, if you're confining it to Presbyterianism, why they eventually split company to an extent,

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I mean, there is still fellowship between many of these bodies, but it is over how one interprets the regulative principle.

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Like, for instance, there are Presbyterians that do not use musical instruments, and they are exclusive psalm singers, and you have some that are more towards the fundamentalist bent in regard to social issues.

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They don't smoke, and they don't chew, and they don't go with girls that do. Those kinds of things, they don't have any allowance for any moderation of alcohol or any of those kinds of things that are typically known as fundamentalist issues.

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Exactly. So if you're just talking about 1920s, 1930s Presbyterianism, it comes down to, as one church historian said, booze in the

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Schofield Bible. So if you were for the Schofield Bible and against booze in a certain camp, if you were against the

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Schofield Bible and did not mind a wee scotch every once in a while, you were on the other camp.

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And of course, Machen had no time at all for dispensationalism, no time at all for it, and he was known to have a bit more of a liberal attitude towards those beverages.

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But of course, he would never have allowed or permitted or winked at drunkenness.

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Absolutely, sure. All right, we have Joey from Clifton, New Jersey. It seems that Machen received a lot of bad press for being a rather hard personality.

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We clearly admire his stand for truth and his exposure of liberalism as another religion, but is there any truth in these claims about his mannerisms and personality?

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What is part of what he made him able to take such stands? So, you know, one of the things

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I really enjoyed about writing this book was Machen kept everything. I mean, he was a total pack rat, and they're all in the archives at Westminster Seminary.

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They're wonderfully cataloged by a dear, dear lady who is now home with the Lord, Grace Mullen, and she pulled together all these

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Machen archives, and I just love going there reading through the letters. He'd keep receipts from Brooks Brothers in New York, you know, when he'd buy a new suit.

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I mean, literally, he kept everything, Chris. But there's some wonderful letters in there where some of the children of—and this came from two different children, from two different other professors at Princeton Seminary.

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And Machen was a bachelor, so he would often spend Sunday afternoons in the homes of other faculty members for Sunday dinner after church.

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And there's two different—one is from the Armstrong family, and the other is the

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Voss family. And the kids— Your heart is Voss, relative? Your heart is Voss, yeah, sure.

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And they would write in—they sent in letters, and they wanted to sort of set the record straight, because they said, you know, we're sort of tired of hearing that Machen was this rascal character.

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We remember him as this gentle, gracious, charming, humorous, full -of -life, loved -life kind of a person.

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And they would just recall little anecdotes from these Sunday dinners of just an enjoyable

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Machen. And so I think what we see there is

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Machen could tear down the argument like nobody else and just sort of leave a puddle where the person stood.

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But when it came to just being a human being and engaging with other human beings—you know, he lived in the third floor of Alexander Hall at Princeton, and he was—I mentioned a couple times—he had memes.

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So he would, over the weekend, he'd go out and buy fresh fruit and all sorts of sort of goodies for the students, and he would just throw open his doors, and he would call out to any students who were there to just come on in and, you know, just enjoy and eat and hang out with him.

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And, you know, there is that side to him, and that often doesn't get told in these stories of controversies where one side has something to gain by painting the person as a rascal.

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I think there was more to Machen than sometimes the press releases make out. And let's see here.

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We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. How much did

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Machen himself change and grow after the Fundamentalist -Modernist controversy?

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I know that he died relatively young, but was there any radical change in his own thinking?

26:17

Yeah, so this came earlier. And I think what it was, Machen was very gifted.

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He was a classics major at Hopkins, top in his class. He went and spent a semester studying international banking at the

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University of Chicago. His father was a well -established lawyer. His mother was from a

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Deep South family with lots of wealth, lots of connections. Machen could have done anything. His brother was a very successful attorney.

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Early on, Machen didn't know what to do with his life, and it was his minister who suggested he go to Princeton.

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And Machen went to Princeton only on the condition that he could go to the seminary without having to get ordained.

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And so he went to both the seminary and the university, got a seminary degree and an MA in philosophy from the university, and was appointed a faculty member.

27:07

But he did not want to get ordained, and he wasn't sure he even wanted to do that. But then something happened with Machen, and it was almost like a light went off, and Machen recognized that this is his life's calling.

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And he just threw himself into it. And then what I think really brought that to bear was his time in World War I and his service overseas with the

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YMCA. And when he came back, and Warfield dies, you see

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Machen sort of step right in as a very young man, step right in as the leader of the

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Fundamentalist movement. And so I see Machen going from sort of a shiftless 20 -something who has a lot of options but doesn't know what he wants to do with his life, to someone who has a laser focus on God's calling for his life and just takes it up with a zeal and an earnestness that is just admirable.

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But I don't see any theological shifts in Machen. Well, we are out of time. I knew this would go by really quickly, especially since we had to get you off before 430.

28:09

And I want you to come back to continue the discussion on Machen. And if anybody wants to find out more about Reformation Bible College, go to ReformationBibleCollege .org,

28:20

and you can also go to Ligonier .org,

28:26

L -I -G -O -N -I -E -R .org. Thank you so much, Dr. Stephen J. Nichols. We look forward to your return.

28:32

Oh, my pleasure. I just really enjoy getting to get back into Machen, so thanks, Chris. I appreciated this.

28:39

Yeah, my pleasure. And let's expand the discussion in the near future. You bet. All right. God bless.

28:44

Well, we are going to our first break right now. And don't go away. Obviously, the show has just begun.

28:59

So hold on, because we have Nathan Pickowitz for the remaining 90 minutes of the broadcast. And Nathan is going to discuss the

29:08

American Puritans, and he's also going to discuss the Fellowship Conference New England. And we've also got to announce the

29:16

G3 Conference coming up in January, where Stephen J. Nichols, who you just heard, is one of the speakers on the roster.

29:24

So we will be continuing our discussion, or should I say beginning our discussion, with Nate Pickowitz, Nathan Pickowitz, at the beginning of the program after the station break.

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I'm a little bit frazzled here. Sorry, folks, because I am not used to interviewing people so quickly. And unfortunately,

29:45

Dr. Nichols could only be on with us for less than a half hour. So my mind is still going 100 miles an hour here.

29:52

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

30:00

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

30:09

By the way, I forgot to mention everybody who wrote in questions during the first half hour is winning a free book,

30:17

Jay Gresham Machen, a guided tour of his life and thought by our first guest Stephen J.

30:23

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34:03

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

34:09

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

34:19

.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.

34:27

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

34:33

Eastern Time for a visit to the pastor's study, because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back.

34:39

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. If you tuned in late, our second guest, we just had

34:46

Stephen J. Nichols, Dr. Stephen J. Nichols, the president of Reformation Bible College, the college founded by the late

34:53

Dr. R .C. Sproul in Ligonier Ministries. He was on the program to discuss

34:59

J. Gresham Machen, a guided tour of his life and thought. And now we are being joined by Nate Pickowitz, pastor of Harvest Bible Church in Gilmanton Iron Works, New Hampshire.

35:10

He is writer for the Entreating Favor and Servants of Grace. And he is going to be addressing today the

35:19

American Puritans, and he's also going to be talking about Fellowship Conference New England. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Nate Pickowitz.

35:29

Hey, Chris, how are you? Oh, I'm better than I deserve, as always, brother. Amen, amen.

35:35

It's great to have you back on the program. And first of all, for our listeners who have not heard you yet on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, or if they have never read any of your books, or they've never gone to a conference yet where you have spoken, why don't you tell our listeners about Harvest Bible Church in Gilmanton Iron Works, New Hampshire?

35:54

Sure. So we've been here in Gilmanton for coming up on six years now.

35:59

It's a church plant that we undertook. And the town that I'm ministering in is actually the town

36:05

I grew up in. My folks still live about a mile down the street, and so it's just a tremendous blessing to be here.

36:12

But I'm married. I have a wife named Jessica and two little kids, and really just trying to do the work of ministry.

36:18

And certainly myself, our church, our elders, and lots of other pastors and churches in the area have a real heart for New England.

36:26

I've written about New England. It's just a passion of mine to see the gospel, and especially expository teaching, come back to a region that used to have this fervently everywhere.

36:38

So that's certainly a burden of my heart and a burden of our church as well. So just a tremendous blessing to be here, so thrilled to be able to pastor a church

36:47

I love so much. Amen. Now, how would you categorize Harvest Bible Church? I know that you believe in the doctrines of sovereign grace, but are you

36:54

Baptist? Are you Paedo -Baptist? Where would you fall in to either one of those categories?

37:02

Sure. So the general baseball card back stats, if you will. Whenever you talk to somebody, that's what they want.

37:12

You meet someone for the first time, it's almost like you could just sit there and list off, like, 10 different designations, so they kind of know who they're dealing with, you know?

37:20

But we were planted as... we're a member of the EFCA, so if you're out

37:26

West, that's EV Free, so Evangelical Free Church of America, that's our affiliation. But we're

37:31

Baptistic, in our understanding of that. I am personally Reformed in my theology.

37:39

But the main thing that we're really focused on is the exposition of the scriptures and maintaining just a gospel witness, make sure the gospel's explicitly clear.

37:48

So we're Evangelistic and Evangelical in that regard. And so we really have just been trying to be a safe haven for lots of folks that are coming.

37:58

Because up here, where I am in New Hampshire, you know, church attendance is extremely low, like in the single digits.

38:05

And for most people, they haven't heard the gospel either in a long time or ever. And so, you know, when we get into secondary tiers of doctrine, they're certainly important, but you're dealing largely with a population that's unchurched, and so most people don't really know what you're talking about in terms of all the denominations and affiliations and things like that.

38:26

So we want to first be biblical and gospel -centered, if I could use that phrase.

38:31

It's been beaten up a hundred times in the last 10 years, but really that is a key focus of our church, is making sure that that is central.

38:39

But yeah, that's essentially the baseball card back, if you will, of who we are. Well, you know something,

38:45

Nate? You'd be surprised, perhaps. Maybe you wouldn't be surprised, but I've been in the

38:50

Christian media going back to the 1980s, and I have met people who were born and raised in the

38:58

Bible Belt and were raised in Baptist homes and Pentecostal homes and other kinds of evangelical homes.

39:08

And in the long years involved in the Christian media, there is a lot of shallowness there, and you might not have much more understanding than the folks in New Hampshire have.

39:20

Sure. You know, it's funny because I've heard a similar thing. I mean, it's like we're looking at two different sides of the same problem, you know?

39:29

I mean, where perhaps in parts of the South, you know, gospel or Bible culture is assumed, even though it might not be very deep, it's assumed.

39:38

Up in the Northeast, it's not assumed. I mean, it's very, very pagan, and no one pretends to be.

39:44

It's not an expectation. It's not like your grandmother took you to church when you were a kid and it's expected of you. But the problem is still the same.

39:50

I mean, a lack of conversion, a lack of biblical literacy is a huge problem right now.

39:57

So yeah, I mean, churches all over the country need Jesus, and that's just a plain fact, no matter where you are.

40:04

Yes, indeed. In fact, let me get a little—I mean, this is a little off topic. I just want to ask you briefly about the

40:11

Evangelical Free Church, commonly known as the EV Free Church. I know that there was a time, and it wasn't that long ago, because I knew pastors in the

40:23

EV Free Church in the 90s who were both—not the same people, but there were pastors who were both

40:32

Paedo -Baptist and Credo -Baptist, or believer -only Baptists, or Baptistic in the denomination.

40:40

Is that still true, where you may have a pastor that believes and practices infant baptism, or has that almost vanished, or has it completely vanished from the

40:49

EV Free Church? It's funny that you mention that, because I was actually just at a regional meeting yesterday, and we were talking about points of doctrine with the

40:56

EV Free, and from what I—I didn't know this, but what you're saying is true, that there was a time when it wasn't that it was part of our core identity, or it wasn't something that was widely practiced, but there was something at some point where we had an agreement where if a church wanted to practice

41:17

Paedo -Baptism, that we would have to affirm that. But as far as I know, that is not a common thing.

41:24

Every EV Free Church I'm aware of is Credo -Baptist, and I believe that's correct.

41:30

I mean, it's not something that's prominent, but the EFCA is funny, because, you know, there's so much unity in the essentials, which is good—we want to make sure we have the gospel right, we have inerrancy right, we want to get these main points right—but by and large, there is a lot of diversity inside of the denominator.

41:52

It's not really a denomination, it's affiliation. And I'll tell you, there are certain parts of the you could drive a truck through.

42:00

A lot of folks, when they read the statement on our website, say, well, that's great that you're

42:06

Orthodox, but I still don't really know what you believe. We have to be intentional about what our convictions are and what our distinctives are, and so I tend to be more specific, just as a pastor, to try to tell people what it is

42:23

I'm actually teaching. And so we're certainly, as a church, a lot more narrow than the doctrinal statement, but we want to stay within the realm of Orthodoxy, for sure.

42:32

Yes, I know evangelical free pastors who are thoroughgoing Calvinists, people like D .A.

42:39

Carson, who teaches at the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and I know pastors that are thoroughly

42:48

Reformed. They would be barely distinguishable from Reformed Baptists. And then I've met others that are vehement anti -Calvinists.

42:56

Yeah, absolutely. And some who are more dispensational, some who view one's eschatology in a higher rung of importance than almost anything else.

43:10

So it is an interesting denomination, but it basically came out of an attempt at Reformation from the

43:18

Reformation, right? It was really people who had left Lutheranism and were trying to get some kind of commonality, according to the

43:26

Scriptures, after leaving the Lutheran Church, am I right? Yeah, that's right. So they were coming out of state churches, and they were at that point used to being told what to believe, and so you had a whole bunch of,

43:38

I believe, I think they were either Dutch immigrants or Norwegian, but Northern European, and a lot of these folks were just common workers, you know, regular folks like you and me, and essentially what they did is they formed these churches around the idea of, you know, what does the

43:55

Bible say? What does the Bible say? And so that became like a credo for the EFCA, for the

44:00

Free Church at the time, was, you know, where is it written? You know, if the Bible doesn't say it, I don't want to believe it.

44:06

So they really started off with almost a, you know, a very Berean focus, you know, to really understand what the

44:14

Scriptures were teaching, and so they formulated their doctrinal statements around that idea. It was a very strong group, and then in the 1950s or 1960s, it merged with another group, which kind of became the modern version of the

44:27

EFCA, as we know it, but a very strong roots, and certainly

44:32

Reformed roots, which is kind of funny, because not everybody in the camp is Reformed to this day, but yeah, it's been, you know, overall, it's been a great group of people to work with.

44:42

The people that we know locally have just been fantastic. I mean, earthly speaking, our

44:47

Harvest Bible Church would not exist without the EFCA. I mean, they help plant us, they help train people, just really been a good group to be with.

44:55

And one more thing, from what I remember, in the denomination anyway, I don't know how much freedom they give to the congregations, but baptism was not required for church membership.

45:07

That was something that, from what I have had, at least with the pastors that I know personally, they told me that a person could become a member of a congregation before they made the decision whether or not to be baptized.

45:20

Yeah, that's an interesting point. I'm not actually sure, to be honest with you, if that's still something that's required.

45:27

I know our church does require that. I mean, that's a New Testament biblical. I mean, that's what Jesus said to do, so, you know,

45:33

I mean, I would think that, you know, as a church, you would simply just default to that, because that's what the Lord commands.

45:38

So that is part of our membership process. You have to be baptized by immersion, you know, in order to become a member of the church.

45:45

Oh, so there is that much liberty where you can enforce something like that. That's why it's an affiliation, not a denomination, because, you know, nothing really truly comes to us from the top down.

45:56

There's a lot of freedom and flexibility, so you really have all the connections and the resources and the kinship and the unity of a denomination, but a lot of freedom, individually, church speaking, as long as you don't do something that's outside the bounds of what they would adhere to.

46:12

That's important. So, yeah, it's kind of the best of both worlds, in my view. Great.

46:17

Well, one of our main themes today is the American Puritans, and we will get to that in a moment, and obviously that's something near and dear to your heart, since not only do you live in New England, the heart of where the

46:32

Puritans began in America, of course they had forefathers in England and so on, but we want to talk about the

46:43

G3, I mean, I'm sorry, we are going to be talking about the G3 conference, but you're actually speaking at the Fellowship Conference New England.

46:50

That's right. And if you could tell us about the Fellowship Conference New England, and I know that year after year, there has been a freedom for each speaker to basically choose his own topic.

47:01

There was not one main theme at these conferences, which makes it a little more unusual than your average

47:07

Bible conference, but tell us about Fellowship Conference New England, and perhaps, if you know yet, what you will be speaking about in August.

47:16

Sure. So, Fellowship Conference, I bumped into them. I was contacted by Mac Tomlinson.

47:21

I know you're good friends with Mac, and I know he's had a relationship with the show, and he contacted me about,

47:27

I guess at this point, probably two years ago, and I don't know how he got my name. I mean,

47:32

I think, I mean, internet, everything travels around, but he was connected with a smaller church or church plant up in Maine, and just called me, and we started talking about philosophy of ministry, and I think he had read my book,

47:47

Reviving New England, and we just started talking about having a heart to want to make a difference, not just say we want revival, but actually try to participate in that, and strengthen churches, and, you know, preach the gospel to anybody who would listen, and really try to have a unity and a fellowship of believers up here, and so they had been doing the

48:09

Fellowship Conference for a few years. I think it's been at least four or five years, and so they invited me to come on last year, and I didn't say anything too heretical last year, so they invited me back this year, which was nice.

48:22

So in August, we'll have that Fellowship Conference. It'll be in Portland, Maine. So it was a great venue, just really very sweet people, dear people.

48:31

One thing that I really noticed, too, is that the group of people that I was spending time with and preaching to were very serious -minded

48:39

Christians, just people who really cared about doctrine, they cared about the Lord, they wanted to make sure that what they were doing was right, and for a lot of areas, that's a breath of fresh air.

48:50

You don't find that all the time, and I don't mean to say that they were any kind of, you know, snobby or anything like that, you know, kind of the common purveyance where you think a person would be theological.

49:02

Very just sweet, dear people, and so I'm looking forward to going back. The emphasis is on fellowship, so they don't just have preaching and teaching, they have meals, and they have gathering, and they pray together, and it's just a lot of fun, so that's going to be happening in August.

49:17

In terms of my sermon, I'm thinking about exegeting all the genealogies of First Chronicles, but I'm not sure if I'm going to go that route yet, but I don't know.

49:26

I don't think I have my text yet, to be honest with you. That was a joke, Chris, by the way. I mean, you know,

49:36

I don't know if anybody wants genealogical record exposited, but I mean, I could do it,

49:42

I suppose. Well, I hear there are Mormons up there that might be very interested. I mean, frankly, you know, it is refreshing that, you know, when

49:51

Matt called me, you know, I said, what do you want me to preach on? He says, well, you know, whatever is near and dear to your heart, and I'm like, that could be really dangerous, but for me, honestly, and this is probably going to sound a little bit cliche, but I really enjoy just preaching

50:07

Christ. Last year, I preached on John 10. I just preached the Good Shepherd, and you know, probably nothing new in terms of information, but really just got to go back into that text and learn about Christ as our shepherd, and really try to apply that to the fact that, you know,

50:23

New Englanders, you know, we're not some, you know, other group of believers, you know.

50:29

We are the body of Christ just as much as any other church in any other place, and the Lord is still our shepherd, and so I went there last year, and I might go kind of in that realm again this year.

50:39

I really do just want to preach Christ to people, and just to elevate Him and place Him in their minds in a high position, so I might be doing something in that regard, but just an opportunity to preach and to fellowship together.

50:53

Looking forward to it. We'll be repeating this later, but the Fellowship Conference New England that Nate Pickowitz is talking about will be held

50:59

August 2nd through the 4th at the Deering Center Community Church in Portland, Maine, and the speakers, along with Pastor Nate Pickowitz, include

51:09

Pastor Tim Conway, who is the pastor of Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas, Pastor Mac Tomlinson, who

51:17

Pastor Nate just mentioned, a dear friend of mine, pastor of the Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, who have also been extremely generous financially in supporting

51:28

Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and we thank God for them. They bailed us out of a very scary time recently when our finances had run dry, and we can never thank

51:38

Pastor Mac and the folks there in Denton, Texas, enough. Pastor Jesse Barrington, who was my guest the day before yesterday, he was our guest here on Tuesday, he is the pastor of Grace Life Church in Dallas, Texas, which is a sister church of Grace Life Church in Lake City, Florida, who run

51:57

Grace Life Radio, which airs Iron Trip and Zion Radio every day, Monday through Friday, in a rerun format.

52:04

They air us in morning drive time and evening drive time, so we're thrilled about that. And of course, as I said,

52:10

Pastor Nate Pickowitz is on that roster. Go to fellowshipconferencenewengland .com, fellowshipconferencenewengland .com

52:16

for more details. We're going to our midway break right now. This is a longer break than we normally have because Grace Life Radio, that I just mentioned, they require a 12 -minute break in between our two major segments, so I hope that you are patient with us as we go on this elongated break, and I hope that you take this time to not only write down the information that our advertisers provide so that you can patronize them properly, that's very important if you want

52:50

Iron Trip and Zion Radio to remain on the air. Patronizing our advertisers is a very powerful way to do that because obviously if they're getting a wonderful response from you folks, they will more likely continue keeping us on the air with their advertising dollars.

53:07

But in addition to that, write questions for our guest Nate Pickowitz at chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

53:14

chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

53:20

If you live outside the USA, only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

53:25

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages with Pastor Nate Pickowitz and the American Puritans.

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01:06:54

That's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service at CVBBS .com. That's CVBBS .com.

01:07:02

Let Todd and Patty know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And if you mention

01:07:09

Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, you're going to be getting a free book when purchasing $50 or more.

01:07:17

The Holy Spirit by A .W. Pink. And anything by A .W. Pink is highly recommended.

01:07:24

You'll get that for free if you mention Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and you purchase at least $50 worth of merchandise.

01:07:32

Not only can you do that online, but you can also call CVBBS .com toll -free

01:07:38

Monday through Friday between 10 a .m. and 4 30 p .m. Eastern Time at 800 -656 -0231.

01:07:48

And we have to just announce a few special events right now that we're having before we return to Nate Pikowitz.

01:07:57

First of all, I am so delighted that tomorrow, here live on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, after a long absence,

01:08:06

Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries is returning to our program as a guest, and we are back together again.

01:08:33

Yes, Dr. White will be discussing during the first hour Mormonism, and is the

01:08:39

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints the only true church in existence?

01:08:46

And in the second hour, we are going to be discussing critical race theory, racial reconciliation, and racist hysteria going on in the church today.

01:08:55

So I hope that you tune in tomorrow, 4 to 6 p .m., when Dr. James R. White and I are back together again.

01:09:03

And I just had to do that. And then coming up on July 1st,

01:09:09

Sunday, July 1st, you don't want to miss Dr. Tony Costa, who is on the faculty of Toronto Baptist Seminary.

01:09:17

He is professor of apologetics and Islam, and he's going to be preaching at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island, located in Medford, New York, the

01:09:26

Sunday morning service, and also the Sunday school. That's Sunday, July 1st, at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Medford, New York.

01:09:33

If you want more details, go to hopereformedli .net, hopereformedli .net,

01:09:39

and LI stands for Long Island. And then that following Friday, Friday, July 6th, at 6 .30

01:09:47

p .m. in New York City, I am going to be hosting an

01:09:53

Iron Sharpens Iron radio event, along with my friends at New Covenant Church, NYC, in Manhattan.

01:10:01

This is the first Iron Sharpens Iron radio sponsored event that will be taking place in the heart of Manhattan.

01:10:09

It will be held at First Baptist Church of New York City, a very historic church going back to the 1700s, at least, on the corner of 265

01:10:19

West 79th Street and Broadway in Manhattan's Upper West Side. And Dr.

01:10:25

Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary will be speaking on defending the faith in a postmodern society.

01:10:31

He's also going to be speaking on the dangers of cultural Marxism's impact on society and the church.

01:10:37

And then there will be a question and answer session with the audience following that. This is absolutely free of charge.

01:10:44

For more details on this event, which is going to be held Friday, July 6th, 6 .30 p .m. to 10 p .m.

01:10:50

at First Baptist Church of New York City on 79th and Broadway. You can call the

01:10:56

New Covenant Church, New York City at 646 -770 -2282. 646 -770 -2282.

01:11:05

Or you can email me at chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:11:10

And put NYCEvent in the subject line. I hope to see you there. For all you pastors listening, we are having a informal, intimate gathering of pastors for lunch with Dr.

01:11:23

Costa. We have not yet determined a location, but it will be in Manhattan. We know that. And if you want more information on attending that, you can send me an email as well as to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:11:35

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Then coming up in August, which is right around the corner,

01:11:41

Nate Pickowitz and I have been discussing this before the station break. The Fellowship Conference New England is coming back to Portland, Maine at the

01:11:52

Deering Center Community Church, August 2nd through the 4th. And the speakers include

01:11:58

Pastor Tim Conway, Pastor Mac Tomlinson, Pastor Jesse Barrington, and Pastor Nate Pickowitz, who is our guest today.

01:12:05

I really hope that you take advantage of this conference, especially if you live in Maine. And we know that we do have listeners in Maine.

01:12:11

So please go to fellowshipconferencenewengland .com, fellowshipconferencenewengland .com, and find out more about the

01:12:18

Fellowship Conference New England. And then coming up in November, one of my favorite conferences to have an exhibitor's booth has become the

01:12:29

Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology, and that's going to be held this year in November the 9th and the 10th at the

01:12:37

Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Quakertown, Pennsylvania. The theme is the glory of the cross, and the speakers include

01:12:43

David Garner, Ray Ortlund, Richard Phillips, Timothy Gibson, and Carlton Winn. If you'd like to attend the

01:12:50

Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology, November 9th and 10th, go to alliancenet .org,

01:12:56

alliancenet .org, click on events, and then click on the Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology.

01:13:03

Then coming up in January, I am so excited about this.

01:13:09

It's my third year in a row that I am going to be manning an exhibitor's booth at the

01:13:14

G3 Conference at the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia, which is a suburb of Atlanta.

01:13:24

They are expecting over 4 ,000 people this year, and I am so excited about this.

01:13:30

The event is going to be held from Thursday, January 17th, to Saturday, January 19th.

01:13:38

There also will be an exclusively Spanish -speaking edition of the conference on Wednesday, January 16th, if you'd like to go to that, if you are a

01:13:48

Spanish -speaking or bilingual person, if you know others who are who might want to attend that. But as far as the

01:13:54

English -speaking conference is concerned, the 17th through the 19th of January, speakers include Paul Washer, John Piper, Stephen Lawson, Vodie Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad Mbewe, the most powerful preacher on the planet

01:14:06

Earth, in my opinion, from Cowata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and Chancellor of the

01:14:12

African Christian University. Tim Challies, Phil Johnson, the Executive Director of John MacArthur's Grace to You ministry.

01:14:21

Josh Bice, who is the Director of the G3 Conference, which stands for Grace, Gospel, and Glory, if you didn't know.

01:14:27

Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio. Stephen Nichols, who was our guest for the first half hour of today's program,

01:14:34

President of Reformation Bible College in Sanford, Florida, the College of R .C.

01:14:40

Sproul and Ligonier Ministries. And more. If you would like to join me at the

01:14:46

G3 Conference, go to g3conference .com to register. g3conference .com, you have plenty of time to register.

01:14:53

So please do that. Please, no matter where you live in the world, make plans to attend the

01:14:59

G3 Conference. I would love to meet you. And I have met people from all over the world, literally, who listen to Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, who have approached me at my exhibitors booth.

01:15:08

Please join me again. And I want to meet new friends as well. That's the G3 Conference, Thursday, January 17th through Saturday, January 19th in College Park, Georgia, at the

01:15:20

Georgia International Convention Center, g3conference .com. And you can also not only register at g3conference .com,

01:15:27

but you can register for your own exhibitors booth, just like I will have.

01:15:32

So if you have a business, a ministry, a parachurch organization, a church, a book publisher, whatever it is that you own and operate, or where you are in leadership, if you want to man an exhibitors booth, just like I am going to be doing, and take advantage of the fact that will be over 4 ,000 people there,

01:15:53

God willing, they are expecting over 4 ,000 people. And go to g3conference .com and register for an exhibitors booth in addition to your attendance.

01:16:02

So we look forward to seeing you there. Please tell all these folks, if you register for these events, that you heard about them from Chris Arnson and Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio.

01:16:11

Last but not least, if you love this show, you don't want it to go away, please donate to Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio. Go to ironsherpandzionradio .com,

01:16:17

click support, and click, click to donate now. It's ironsherpandzionradio .com, click support, then click, click to donate.

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Now you can donate instantly with a debit or credit card. And as I always try to remember to say, don't siphon away money out of what you regularly give to your local church where you are a member.

01:16:35

If you're not a member of a local Bible -believing church, you're living in rebellion against God, if you can't find one,

01:16:42

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01:16:50

So please email me at chrisarnson at gmail .com and put in the subject line, I need to find a church or something like that.

01:16:57

But don't siphon money away from them to give to me, and don't put your family in financial jeopardy to give to me.

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But if you love the show, and you are financially blessed above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands of providing for church and home, then please give to Iron Trip and Zion Radio if you don't want us to disappear.

01:17:17

Go to irontripandzionradio .com, click support, then click click to donate now. You can also send in a check, the old -fashioned way made out to Iron Trip and Zion Radio to the address you will find on the screen when you click support at irontripandzionradio .com.

01:17:31

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01:17:38

Send in the email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and you could put advertising in the subject line.

01:17:50

Well, use that same address to send in a question to our guest today, Nate Pikowitz. We are discussing the

01:17:57

American Puritans, and we are also beating the drum for the Fellowship Conference New England coming up in August where he will be on the roster.

01:18:06

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Nate, if you could tell us something about this first generation of American Puritans that existed on our continent.

01:18:21

There are some Puritan scholars who would insist that you should only rightly call the

01:18:29

Christians of the past from the Puritan movement Puritan if they were from Great Britain, but there are others like yourself who would include their descendants that came here to the

01:18:41

United States. If you could tell us why you consider these folks

01:18:46

Puritans and when did they settle here, why did they settle here, and perhaps some of the more prominent names amongst them.

01:18:55

Sure, so I first got into studying the Puritans, at least the

01:19:00

American Puritans, when I was researching for my book Reviving New England. I wanted to find sort of the spiritual, historical heritage of the churches up here, and essentially

01:19:13

I'm bumping into not only just Pilgrim Landing, you know, people like William Bradford was a leader over there.

01:19:20

Then you have kind of the second wave that comes over with John Winthrop, and then you have these

01:19:25

Puritan scholars, these Puritan leaders that are coming over, and they're fleeing from Great Britain to come to America, and I think that's challenging because I get some pushback a lot.

01:19:35

I think you're absolutely right that a lot of folks say, well, you know, Puritanism was from 1560 to 1660 in Great Britain, and that's it.

01:19:43

But when you read some of the scholarly literature, you know, you find over and over again references to these, and they call them

01:19:51

American Puritans. They had Reformed theology, they were Orthodox in every way, they had a devout sense of holiness, they had the same, not just the morals, but even the ethic of the

01:20:05

Puritans, even in Great Britain. The focus on the preaching, on the word, on fellowship and ministry.

01:20:14

So they, in every possible way, they were Puritans as we know them. And in fact, we both know that in addition to that, the term is used a lot more broadly, like for instance, people very commonly refer to John Bunyan as a

01:20:28

Puritan. Sure. And Charles Spurgeon, even in the 19th century, people will call him a Puritan, but they're mainly talking about the fact that they have revived or carried on the teachings that were most dear to the

01:20:42

Puritans, and they were a hallmark in the lives of these people, even if they weren't technically Puritans.

01:20:48

That's right. I mean, it's really more of kind of a pedigree of Christian, if you will. They're no different than you or I in terms of the faith, but the

01:20:57

Puritans, the thing about the Puritans is they really were striving to finish the Reformation.

01:21:03

You know, they really wanted to reform and to purify the Church of England, and some of them were trying to do it from inside, and were having a difficult time, and then some decided to separate completely.

01:21:15

You know, they weren't going to tolerate a lot of the changes and the compromises that were being made to try to accommodate them.

01:21:22

They said, look, this is apostate. We're going to leave. And that's what you see with the pilgrims. They were separating

01:21:28

Puritans. They wanted to just flee and try to do Church in a pure way as much as possible.

01:21:34

But you have a lot of the ones that are following up. John Cotton is one of them. You know, Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepherd.

01:21:41

These were not separatists. These were reformers. They were the ones who were trying to reform the

01:21:46

Church of England. And I mean, John Cotton, for example, was driven out of his pulpit. He was one of the last ones that was driven out, really, just prior to the

01:21:56

Great Ejection. So these people were persecuted. You know, a lot of them were driven out of their churches, out of their ministries, because they would not conform to some of the standards that were being set by Parliament, essentially.

01:22:11

And we would think there'd be silly things like wearing vestments, for example, kneeling before, you know, doing the sign of the cross before you would, you know, have your worship service.

01:22:21

And certainly we don't do that, but that was something that was being imposed on them, and they said, absolutely not.

01:22:28

But one thing, I don't want to go on too, too long here, because, you know, I love talking about this, and I feel bad because we had

01:22:36

Pastor Don Curran at the Fellowship Conference, and he started talking about the Puritans, and I gave an earful. I was so excited, and I could tell.

01:22:43

I know he wanted to talk more, but it was during dinner time, and just one of those things, you know. Yeah, I had

01:22:49

Don and Cindy on the show just recently. Oh, yeah, they're great. We had a great time getting to know them last summer.

01:22:55

But one of the things I think that stands out in my mind is that three of the New England Puritans— so John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, and John Davenport— were invited to the

01:23:06

Westminster Assembly. They were invited to come and make the trip several thousand miles to come back and join the

01:23:12

Assembly. So they were orthodox. They were highly regarded. John Cotton was a revered scholar, one of the greatest preachers of his day.

01:23:20

So they were invited to Westminster, but they chose not to go because they had differences of opinions, theologically, on issues like, you know, church polity, congregationalism.

01:23:29

And Thomas Hooker famously said, I'm not going to go and travel 3 ,000 miles to agree with three people.

01:23:35

So they stayed back. That's what he said. So they chose not to make the trip because they didn't want to feel like they were wasting their time.

01:23:44

And so it's not that the New England Puritans were less regarded or less important.

01:23:51

It's just they were doing something very different, and they were surviving over here, you know. But, you know, once you start to branch out into the next generations—

01:23:58

Cotton, Mather, Increase Mather, a lot of those guys— you start to kind of sort of get into a different stage of it.

01:24:05

But a lot of these pastors, a lot of these writers were very godly people, and they loved the

01:24:10

Lord. They loved theology. They wrote voraciously. They published frequently. And, I mean, they really formed the backbone of not just the church movement in this country, but the country itself in terms of legislatively.

01:24:24

So they're just widely disregarded. And so I've been doing some work trying to revive, at least reprinting some of the work, and just try to bring them back into the foreground a little bit.

01:24:35

You know, I'm not looking to replace people's love for John Owen, for example, but just to remind people, look, these are people who deserve to be read, and they can be helpful and instructive for us.

01:24:45

So that's one of the reasons I want to do that. Now, it's interesting that today, you'll even not only have people in the secular society, but even amongst brothers and sisters in the body of Christ, most typically use the term

01:25:05

Puritan or Puritanical or anything in connection to the Puritans as a negative thing, as an archaic thing, as a dangerous thing, as a hateful thing, as a bigoted thing, something to avoid at all costs.

01:25:20

Why do you think that the common perception of people, perhaps even your average Christian in your local evangelical church or neo -evangelical church, when you say, have you read the

01:25:31

Puritans? What are you, crazy? Why would I ever want to read them for? Didn't they burn witches? And then it'll go on and on and on.

01:25:37

Right. So if you could, why is it? Sure. I think what we see historically is you see 19th century religious liberals doing a really good job to smear the name of the

01:25:55

Puritans for the common person. During the 1820s, you had sort of what was known as the

01:26:01

Unitarian takeover, especially up in the Northeast. I mean, Unitarianism is huge up here.

01:26:06

Universalism is huge. It was bigger at one point, but all the mainline denominations just kind of went, by the way.

01:26:13

But during the 1820s especially, you know, they were making sort of a power play because up to that point, you know, this is kind of, you know, on the wake of, you know,

01:26:22

Jonathan Edwards in the first great awakening, you had the second great awakening, but then at the same time, you have this resurgence of liberal liberalism sweeping through the

01:26:29

Northeast. And so if they want to take over, you know, the churches and take over sort of the power, if you will, religiously, they have to smear as best they can the theology and the polity and the leadership of whatever is the predominant group is going to be.

01:26:48

And so in the 1820s, you see this attack mostly on Cotton Mather and Increase Mather attacking their theology, attacking their views, and then even pinning, for example, the

01:27:00

Salem Witch Trial on Cotton Mather. And while there were certainly players, people talking about it in the time, they weren't the architects of it.

01:27:10

They were really minor players. And if you look at history, Increase Mather is the one who wrote the letter to the governor at the time to call for the end of the trial.

01:27:18

He was trying to stop these things. So there's just conflict. And in the last 50 years, there has been more scholarly research, even by secular scholars, on sort of validating this in terms of factual information.

01:27:33

But the problem is it just hasn't gotten to the lay person, the pew. It hasn't gotten to the school systems. By and large, we're still operating on early 20th century understanding, common understanding of the

01:27:46

Puritans. And we just, we don't understand them. We don't read them. We don't study them. We don't study the history. We've bought into a propaganda, 200 -year -old propaganda that smears them completely.

01:27:56

If you really look at their life, not that they were flawless. I mean, they had flaws and sins just like the rest of us.

01:28:02

But the - So did the 12 apostles. Yeah, that's absolutely right. Absolutely right. But the vitriol that you hear about people talking about the

01:28:10

Puritans is just, it's heartbreaking. Just a real super quick story. I was talking to a lady just down the street.

01:28:18

She was working at the post office. And we're talking about, I was excited because one of my reprints came in the mail, a Cotton Mather book.

01:28:24

And she kind of looked at me stone -faced. And she says, well, you know, I'm from Salem, don't you? And I said, oh, tell me about that.

01:28:29

And she went on and on and on about how they just hate Cotton Mather. Well, in the post office,

01:28:35

I'm talking to her about the actual history of this person and her face is lightening up.

01:28:40

And she says, I've never heard any of that before. I never heard that his church loved him and he was a good pastor and cared about people and all that stuff.

01:28:49

And it was almost like unburdening her from this fear that she had of this person who she was supposed to hate so much.

01:28:55

So I think we have to do some work to at least be honest, intellectually honest, when it comes to dealing with these people.

01:29:04

And I think we need to face them warts and all. If there are historical problems, if they have their sins and their issues,

01:29:11

I mean, to address those, but to demythologize a lot of the stuff, the stories that have been told about them,

01:29:17

I think that's something we should do. And that's something I want to do because that's our spiritual heritage, even in the

01:29:23

Northeast. And we've largely walked away from all of it. So that's whatever hand

01:29:28

I can play in bringing that around, I want to do that. We have some people waiting, hopefully patiently, to have their questions asked and answered.

01:29:37

And we will get to as many of you as we can before the show is over, over the next half hour.

01:29:44

But if you'd like to get in line and ask your own question, do so immediately or forever hold your peace because this next half hour will surely go by like a bullet.

01:29:53

Send in an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. And don't go away,

01:29:58

God willing, we will be right back with Nate Pikowitz and more on the American Puritans. One sure way all

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01:35:25

We are now back with Nate Pikowitz and we are discussing the American Puritans and our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:35:34

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And we do have, let's see here, we have

01:35:41

Christian in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, and Christian says, what would be the core beliefs that would set a group of Christians apart from others that would identify them as a

01:35:56

Puritan? Sure, there's a couple of things, I think, largely that are characterized.

01:36:04

There's actually a book by Leland Ryken on the Puritans. It's called

01:36:09

Worldly Saints and he identifies their theological heritage.

01:36:15

They were reformed in their theology. They believe the doctrines of grace. They were children of the

01:36:20

Reformation, so it's primarily doctrinally. But also, too, their focus on the

01:36:27

Bible and daily worship and reverence for the Bible itself, just as a people.

01:36:35

Also, just in their piety, their devotion. What they're normally known for, sort of in a negative sense, is to be kind of this, you know, starchy, you know, never smiling kind of a group or something like that.

01:36:49

But really what they're known for is their piety and just their desire to live a holy life. And then I think also, too, just their desire to reform the society they're living in.

01:36:58

So I think it's hard to import Puritanism into modern day culture.

01:37:04

You can really just sort of only do it in spirit, the way that Jonathan Edwards did it, the way that Charles Spurgeon did it.

01:37:11

Even, I think, in a lot of ways, Martin Lloyd -Jones is considered sort of a Puritan at heart. So it's really just a seriousness of devotion, a focus on theology, a focus on the

01:37:20

Scriptures, and that's really the heart of Puritanism, to see, to live a pure and holy life before the

01:37:27

Lord. By the way, Christian, we have a leftover book from the first hour on J.

01:37:32

Gresham Machen that we would love to share with you. So if you could give us your full mailing address, we would love to have that shipped out to you as soon as possible by cvbbs .com.

01:37:44

And we thank PNR Publishing for providing us with those three books. And I'm sure you would agree that the majority, although surprisingly not all, but the majority of Puritans were thoroughgoing

01:37:57

Calvinists. You have Richard Baxter, who would be an exception in that area, but I don't know personally of another

01:38:07

Puritan that wasn't a Calvinist, but obviously Richard Baxter must have had a following, so he must have had some

01:38:16

Puritans within his congregation that were not reformed theologically, perhaps all of them were not.

01:38:22

But if you could comment on that. Yeah, I think I agree. I mean, Baxter certainly has some issues in terms of sociologically, just sort of a blending of sort of works in faith.

01:38:34

I think, you know, if we were to read him charitably, his desire was for action.

01:38:40

I mean, he was so concerned about people apostatizing and not living out their faith, but I think theologically it gets kind of muddied in the waters.

01:38:49

But I can't think of another, maybe I'm just naive, but another Puritan who did not hold to the doctrines of grace.

01:38:57

I mean, by and large, they were Calvinistic in their theology. Yes, and let's see here.

01:39:04

We do have, this time, we don't have Christian, but we have Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York.

01:39:10

And Christopher says, I had heard quite a while ago from Don Kistler, who knows a lot about the

01:39:18

Puritans, that many of the Puritans had such a high regard for a regenerate church, even though they were paedo -baptists, that they, in typical practice, did not permit young children to sing worship in the congregation.

01:39:36

Do you know this to be true? And do you know anything else that would go under the same category of their high view of a regenerate church?

01:39:44

Well, I can tell you that Don Kistler is a lot more intelligent with this matter than I probably am. I've never heard that about them not being able to sing, but it does go kind of hand in hand because that is something that they took very seriously.

01:39:58

They did not... The point of purifying the church was to make sure that you did have regenerate church worship, or membership, which is, again, you know, fast forward 100 years, that's why

01:40:09

Jonathan Edwards had the fight on his hands that he had, is because he was trying to insist on regenerate membership for taking communion.

01:40:17

Now, some people think that's a red herring, that it was actually other issues. I think that's probably correct, but the thing that he was concerned about, the thing that all the

01:40:24

Puritans are concerned about, is, you know, if you're going to be a member of the body of Christ visibly, you need to be a member of the body of Christ spiritually, you know, in your heart.

01:40:33

So, that was something they held in very high regard. They didn't want to lay hands on anybody and deem them to be a

01:40:39

Christian if they weren't sure they really were. Now, is my memory serving me right, that that dispute that Jonathan Edwards had, he actually had it with his own father -in -law, is that true?

01:40:50

So his, let's see, his father... Well, a lot of it had to do with... He took over for his grandfather,

01:40:56

Solomon Stoddard, and Stoddard had been in that ministry for like 50 years, and really was very charitable with who could share in the

01:41:06

Lord's table. He saw the Lord's table as sort of an evangelistic tool, that a person would actually sit down and take the

01:41:13

Lord's table, that they might feel this push for repentance and faith, but Edwards thought the other way around.

01:41:19

He was disagreeing with someone who was a giant in the Connecticut River Valley, so the disagreement was primarily with his grandfather.

01:41:26

But even though I'm sure he had other people in his life who disagreed with him as well, but he was going against the grain.

01:41:32

That was not something that he... I mean, he ended up losing the battle, you know, because they kicked him out of his own church in like 1750 or 1754,

01:41:40

I think it was, but yeah. Wow. And today that church is open and affirming to homosexual activity and totally apostate, which is such a tragedy.

01:41:51

Yeah, I've been to Northampton. It is very depressing, very, very sad, because they wave the banner.

01:41:59

They advertise, this is Edwards Church, right next to the placard that has his face and name on it.

01:42:05

They have this massive rainbow banner, and I mean, they stand for everything, not even just with that, but even theologically, they stand for everything that Edwards was opposed to, and every

01:42:16

Bible -believing Christian should be opposed to as well, so very sad. And we have

01:42:22

B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says, why did the

01:42:28

Puritans die out in America? It's mostly a theological situation.

01:42:34

I mean, they got to a certain point when you get to about the 1700s, early 1700s, that the face of the church is changing.

01:42:42

You know, they were trying to reform not only the church and purify the church, but also society as well, and you just had so many,

01:42:50

I mean, at that point, that's the beginning of sort of what we know to be the America that we know today really began in those periods of time.

01:42:58

I mean, Benjamin Franklin was friends with, or at least acquainted with, Cotton Mather at the time was a very old man, and so you had just a shift, you know, and they were basically driven out theologically.

01:43:10

You had liberalism coming through, you had lots of winds of doctrine come through, and basically, they just became sort of invalid in the eyes of people, and so when you have liberalism come through and drive out sound doctrine, where it's no longer popular to be a

01:43:30

Puritan, where you're derided for being a Puritan, it's hard to have a predominant foothold on that, and so they really became, went underground and sort of morphed into what we would consider to be evangelicals.

01:43:45

But yeah, it did not last very long in America, for sure. Uh, let's see here, we have, uh, we have, let's see here, where was it?

01:43:58

I was just looking at it. We have Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who says, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think

01:44:05

Chris was probably thinking of Jonathan Edwards' dispute with his own father, not his father -in -law, that had something to do with preparationist conversion.

01:44:15

Do you know what he's talking about, what Harrison's talking about? Yeah, I'm not familiar specifically. I'm not an

01:44:21

Edwards guy enough to know all the details of that, but I know that preparationism was a huge thing, especially when it comes to early

01:44:28

Puritans like Thomas Shepard, Thomas Hooker, they were really big into that.

01:44:35

Probably the only dissenter against preparationism was John Cotton, and the main idea behind that is that you had to evidence certain kinds of behaviors, and there had to be repentance, there had to be mourning, and so they really, the preacher would really try to prepare the person to receive

01:44:54

Christ, and we know theologically that a person can't repent and believe unless the Spirit has regenerated them, that that is a work of God, but their attitude was, look, we want to make every possible inroad we can to prepare the way for that, but the problem is that that can get very much into legalism and almost into like a works -based thing.

01:45:16

It really skirts that line, whereas John Cotton's side was, he was really pushing for grace, and by many regards, he was called an antinomian, which he certainly wasn't, but yeah, preparationism had its day.

01:45:31

I don't know if people today would be as eager to pursue that kind of sort of work in a person.

01:45:38

I mean, really, you preach to them, you call for repentance and faith, but in the end, it's only a work of God that can do that in them, so.

01:45:45

Amen. By the way, I want to make sure that we have not only time for you to give a summary uninterrupted about what we are discussing today, the

01:46:00

American Puritans, but I also want you to have a brief period where you can thoroughly describe your other books, even though we have addressed them in full interviews and we could refer people to the archived recordings of those interviews on our website, but why don't you start with at least a five -minute uninterrupted summary of what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners about American Puritans, then we can move on to an introduction to your other books, and we can also discuss and give our listeners a reminder of the

01:46:34

Fellowship Conference New England. Sure, so the series that I've been working on, and you can find them on Amazon, the series is called the

01:46:43

American Puritan Series, and essentially what I'm doing is simply reprinting, modernizing slightly, and reprinting old

01:46:51

American Puritan works. People like John Cotton, Cotton Mather, I have a series of other editors who are working on books by Solomon Stoddard and Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, just trying to bring some of these old gems sort of back into readership, and the main idea behind that is to reintroduce people to what we have read and believed.

01:47:13

What did Jonathan Edwards read when he was in ministry? We read Edwards, but what was he reading?

01:47:19

What was his heritage and his background? Because by and large, Americans, especially

01:47:25

Christians in America, we're not proud of our heritage in a lot of cases. We sort of start at the

01:47:31

Great Awakening, we don't go anything before that, but there's a lot there to learn and to learn from that should be explored, and so I'm really hoping to redeem some of that.

01:47:41

And really, if you look at the Bible, whenever God wants to motivate people to obedience and to action, he always reminds them of his faithfulness in other times, and so God has been faithful to a whole generation of believers on American soil, and there's a lot of lessons we can learn from them.

01:48:00

And so, again, my desire is to redeem them in the eyes of people, and to really just try to point people, not as much to their foibles and their problems, but point them back to their theology, to what did they believe?

01:48:11

What did they hold to? What was dear to them? I think it's a fruitful study that's neglected that would be worthwhile, so that's why

01:48:18

I'm publishing the American Puritan series. – Well, praise God for that. And now, let us, our listeners, know about Reviving New England, which

01:48:27

I'm sure has some content dedicated to the American Puritans, and also, why we're

01:48:33

Protestant. Tell us about these books. – Sure, yeah. I came on, I guess, almost coming up on two years ago,

01:48:39

I think, when I talked about Reviving New England. Really, that was the first thing I wrote. It was sort of a manifesto.

01:48:46

I've been in New England my whole life. I was born and raised here, and I've seen the churches here since I was a kid, and really just with the desire to see

01:48:54

New England churches really respond and go back to an element of biblical faithfulness.

01:49:00

Now, certainly, there have been pastors and churches here that have been, you know, just working their way through the last few decades and being faithful to the

01:49:08

Lord, but it's not a vast majority. It doesn't seem, at least, and so it's really just a call for faithfulness, and so it's kind of what

01:49:17

I've been working on for the last few years, and every time I have an opportunity to beat the drum about New England, I try to, because it's a mission field up here.

01:49:25

We need church planters and pastors and missionaries. We need people who can pray for us, who can support us, so that's something that's really important to me.

01:49:33

And then coming off the heels of that, I wrote a book called Why We're Protestant. I've actually since translated that into Spanish a couple months ago, because there's a large

01:49:44

Roman Catholic contingency in Spanish speaking. Yeah, that one's called Why Are We Not Protestant.

01:49:51

I'm only kidding. No, that's right. I mean, it's huge. I mean, they've yet to have a Reformation in South America, so I translated

01:49:59

Why We're Protestant, so there's a book right now on Amazon called Por que Somos Protestantes. It's this book, and my desire is to get the five solas, to get the marrow of the

01:50:10

Gospel and the Reformation to people who don't know. So Why We're Protestant's a book on the five solas, and really

01:50:15

I tried to just distill Reformation theology into a very easy, manageable book, and that's been, that seems to be well -received, and it's been a lot of fun to talk about that in a lot of different places, and so that's what

01:50:29

I've been working on the last couple years, and just continuing to write and pray the Lord will use whatever

01:50:35

I'm doing in a way that glorifies Him. Yes, and in spite of what you said, there is such encouraging and exciting news coming from Latin America about the doctrines of sovereign grace spreading, and about conferences occurring there.

01:50:51

I know of great works going on in Colombia and other places in Central and South America.

01:50:58

It's just a joy to see what the Lord is doing, and I even know from my friend,

01:51:04

Pastor Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian denomination that there's some great stuff happening for the glory of God in Puerto Rico in the name of the doctrines of sovereign grace and so on.

01:51:16

So the Lord has not forgotten His elect in those other parts of the world and other cultures where the

01:51:25

Protestant faith has only had a tiny remnant for a long time, but that remnant is growing numerically and stronger in their faith.

01:51:36

That's wonderful to hear. That's encouraging. Praise God. Well, let's see. We have a couple of more questions here that we have not yet addressed.

01:51:45

Let's see here. We have a listener who's anonymous who says,

01:51:54

I am very disturbed by the church where I am a member, even though it claims to be evangelical, it is compromising with all kinds of liberal ideas and ecumenism with Roman Catholics and other faiths that do not uphold the gospel.

01:52:14

And I need some recommendations in New England of where I can attend a church.

01:52:20

I am too far away to attend yours. Do you know of other churches in New England that you could recommend?

01:52:27

Now, obviously this person is not even giving us a city, but perhaps can you name just a handful of churches in New England, and this person may find out, even from the churches that you've mentioned, where they might find a good church.

01:52:42

I know that there's even a church connected with the Fellowship Conference in New England. That's right. That's right.

01:52:47

So there's a church plant in Portland, Maine. That's where we're going to be hosting our conference.

01:52:53

I'm aware of, you know, solid churches in Concord, New Hampshire, Chester, New Hampshire. I mean, there are churches all over the place.

01:53:00

My friend Brandon Dyer, he's in Windsor. I want to say Windsor Springs, Maine. There's a mighty work going on in Boston right now.

01:53:09

Jamie Owens over at Tremont Temple is bringing the gospel back to that specific church in that area.

01:53:16

There's churches in Vermont right now. I would encourage the listener, you know, it's hard to sort of take a shotgun and quote, a blast areas here.

01:53:24

But, you know, if you could either, you know, send another email to Chris and forward it to me or even contact me through social media.

01:53:30

I'd love to help. I mean, there's certainly a growing number of faithful churches up here.

01:53:37

You know, sometimes you have to drive. I have people who drive an hour and a half to come to church. Two families specifically because they're just looking for preaching.

01:53:46

So, yeah, I would encourage you. Reach out, and we'll do what we can to get you plugged in with a good church. We have another anonymous listener who says,

01:53:55

Since learning that my PCA pastor seems to think some books of the

01:54:00

Bible may be lost and is not strong on creation, etc.

01:54:06

Also, since he seems to be sympathetic to liberal ideas, I have not joined yet.

01:54:12

I've started attending a Presbyterian reform church here instead of driving to Owensboro, which is 40 miles away.

01:54:21

I think that's Kentucky. Anyway, I have some literature from them by John Murray on restricted communion, head coverings, etc.

01:54:32

Seems like legalism. I am definitely blessed there, and that pastor has a backbone.

01:54:38

What is the consensus on John Murray? I understand the head coverings, but am at a loss.

01:54:44

Am waiting for God to work in me so I will know where to land, but wanted to reach out and find out what people in the reformed camp think.

01:54:55

Well, most people that I know that are reformed love John Murray. I don't know of John Murray's connection to head coverings, but he may have believed in that.

01:55:03

I just don't remember that as being in a hallmark of his thought. But perhaps you could pick up the ball here.

01:55:10

Yeah, unfortunately, I probably can't be much help either. I mean, I've read maybe one of his books, but I'm not really familiar with him overall.

01:55:18

But yeah, I'm not much help here. I apologize. Yes, John Murray wrote an excellent, very brief book on atonement.

01:55:30

I believe I'm going left my memory. Redemption Accomplished and Applied. Yes, by John Murray.

01:55:36

That's an excellent book, and there's a lot of other things by John Murray that you can find. I wouldn't be paranoid about anything by him.

01:55:44

I'm not saying that I agreed with everything he believed, but I would say be patient with this church that seems to be more faithful.

01:55:53

And I'm not sure what you mean by Presbyterian Reformed Church. It might be a Covenanter church or brethren that only sing acapella and stick to exclusive psalmody.

01:56:02

I don't know, because there are a lot of Presbyterians that have reformed in the name of the church. But just also to let our listeners know, even though our listener is critical of the

01:56:14

PCA pastor that is leading the church where she has been visiting, the

01:56:20

PCA is a very broad denomination, and there are some wonderful and biblically solid men, a lot of biblically solid men in the

01:56:28

PCA that would be equally disturbed by some of the things that this listener has been mentioning.

01:56:33

So I think that you would concur with me, would you not? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like most large denominations, it's a pretty broad tent in a lot of cases.

01:56:43

But I know even in New England, some really faithful, faithful guys who are PCA, and I praise God for them.

01:56:49

Yes, and as far as the head coverings go, there are some churches, I don't know if this church that you're talking about is enforcing or has a very strict rule that women must have their heads covered.

01:57:02

But I know churches where the pastor believes in it but does not enforce it. So there you have the mixture of women sometimes wearing them and sometimes not.

01:57:11

But do you think that that would be an issue for a woman if she agrees with 99 .99

01:57:19

% of everything going on, but they're insisting she wears a head covering? Do you think that that's reason enough to leave a church?

01:57:26

I don't know. I don't, it's hard to say just on that one data point alone. But I think you have to look at the totality of it.

01:57:33

You know, what are gospel issues? What are, you know, major doctrinal issues? Is there an issue of practice?

01:57:40

You know, is this indicative of something else? Or is it just kind of a quirky thing that they do, you know, that's sort of more custom and more formality?

01:57:48

You know, I don't know. I get a little bit nervous about, you know, folks' desire to leave a church really quickly.

01:57:55

But at the same time, if there are major gospel or major issues of compromise, I think that should send up red flags.

01:58:02

But on this issue alone, if this is all it is, I think you have to weigh it out. You know,

01:58:07

I think you have to weigh out if it's a valuable church, if it's a good fellowship, if they're teaching sound doctrine, that's what you're aligned to because, you know, we're bought and paid for in Christ.

01:58:18

I mean, the outside stuff that we deal with, there's a lot of things I give up on in terms of liberty personally that aren't really gospel issues, but I give them up because it's good for the body.

01:58:28

And I frankly don't care about those. I care about more the doctrine, make sure that I have that right.

01:58:34

So I would say be patient, but examine things from all angles and really look at the whole picture. We have

01:58:39

Kathy from Mastic, New York. In 2016, I began reading from the Valley of Vision, a

01:58:44

Puritan prayer book. Through their example of confession, devotion, and worship, my prayer life had taken a radical change.

01:58:51

I wanted to learn more about these devout Christians. Within a year, I had embraced the doctrines of grace, reformed theology.

01:58:57

That was the beginning of my being born again. God be praised. This is just a comment, I guess.

01:59:03

There's no question there. So thank you, Kathy, for sharing that. And I want to make sure that our listeners have all of the pertinent information they need about you, brother, and also about the

01:59:16

Fellowship Conference New England. The Harvest Bible Church at Gilmanton Ironworks, New Hampshire.

01:59:27

That can be found at harvestbiblegilmanton .org and that's spelled

01:59:32

G -I -L -M -A -N -T -O -N. harvestbiblegilmanton .org

01:59:37

And the Fellowship Conference New England can be found at fellowshipconferencenewengland .com fellowshipconferencenewengland .com

01:59:44

I want to thank you so much, Nate Pickowitz, for being on our show again today. And I want to thank everybody who listened and especially those who sent in questions.

01:59:52

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