June 21, 2022 Show with Dr. Scott Aniol on “Worship: Aberrant Movements in History that Removed the Bible as its God-Breathed Blueprint”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It's iron sharpens iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors Christian scholars and theologians Address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us. Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage We are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation To make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours. And we hope to hear from you the listener with your own questions. And now here's your host Chris Arnzen.

Good.

Afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live-streaming at iron sharpens iron Radio .com. This is Chris Arnzen your host of iron sharpens iron radio wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 21st day of June 2022.

I'm thrilled to have a first-time guest today at the very enthusiastic Recommendations of Josh Bice who is founder of g3 ministries and also a Virgil Walker.

Who is.

Involved very much in the orchestration of the g3 ministry conferences and his name is dr Scott Annie all and he is an author. He is the executive vice president and editor an editor-in-chief of g3 ministries and a professor of pastoral theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas.

Today we are going to be addressing worship aberrant movements in history that removed the Bible as its God-breathed blueprint and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron sharpens iron radio.

Dr. Scott Annie all.

G3 Ministries and the Washington, DC Regional Conference

Yeah, thanks so much Chris so glad to to be with you. Am I pronouncing your last name correctly. Yeah, close. It's annual. I tell people it's like Daniel without a D. Okay.

Or like the annual g3 conferences.

Whatever whatever whatever it takes to remember the pronunciation I've. I've heard all sorts of pronunciations and nothing surprises me.

Well.

Tell our listeners for those of them that are unfamiliar with g3 ministries and if that's the case, they must be new listeners to this program because They are regularly featured on this program through interviews and through advertisements.

But in case we do have some new listeners tell our listeners about g3 ministries.

G3 ministry started as g3 conference about 10 years ago. Here at Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia. You mentioned Josh Josh Bice a moment ago. He's the pastor here and started the conference just out of a desire to have a solid Theology conference that focused on the Word of God intended for it just to be really for the local community, but Very quickly realized that there was a need and a thirst for a conference like this.

So the first year sold out filled the church the next several years filled the church and the conference continued to grow moved to a large convention center in Atlanta and just this past October and September beginning of October the conference had 6 ,500 people and so it's really grown focused on the sufficiency of scripture and sound theology and Then about a year ago about a year and a half ago Josh decided to expand the conference to be a full-blown ministry to go continue doing conferences but also to start being a content producing ministry as well and so Formed a formed, you know d3 ministries as a nonprofit brought on Virgil Walker to be executive director of operations basically to run all of the events the conferences the Workshops and those sorts of things and then brought me on just this past fall to sort of help with the Administrative aspects of the ministry going forward and then also to really spearhead a lot of the content production.

So now at g3 min org, there's regular blog content that goes up every day podcast audio videos. We're publishing free curricula for churches to download that can be a help and then we also launch g3 press.

We're publishing books on various theological and practical Christian top topics. We launched a theological journal just last month. And so we're really starting to ramp up a lot of resources that we hope will be helpful for local churches and Christian families.

Certainly in this country and around the world.

Great, and if anybody wants more information about g3 ministries, you could go to g3 min org g3 min org. Now tell us about the upcoming G3 regional conference in Washington DC. It's the first regional conference I will be attending and I have been to at least six g3 conferences.

I believe this is my seventh if I'm not mistaken but this is the first regional conference. Every conference I've ever been to has been in Atlanta and.

The.

This is interesting because not only is this my first Regional conference. It is the first g3 conference ever outside of Washington DC. I mean outside of Georgia.

I understand right, right. That's right. Yeah a nine years of the conference. It was an annual conference here in In Georgia, and then when when Josh and the team decided to expand the ministry. They moved to making the national conference just a an every other year event.

So our last one was this past October and the next National conference will be a year from this fall here in Atlanta and on the off years. We're doing two Regional conferences. So just this past February we had our first regional conference.

Although it was here in Douglasville at Praise Mill Baptist Church. It was the 10-year anniversary. So it was fitting to sort of bring it back home to where it all began. And so this second regional conference now in the fall will be the first as you mentioned outside of Atlanta.

And it will be in Washington DC that area on September 15 through 17. It's being called just thinking about the Bible g3 ministries and the just thinking Podcasts with Daryl Harrison and of course Virgil Walker.

We have a very close relationship our two ministries together. And so they're sort of Operating with us on this conference just thinking about the Bible at the conference on the subject of biblical sufficiency so Daryl and Virgil will both be speaking.

Josh Bice and I will both be speaking and then also we have Steve Lawson and James White coming to speak as well on topics related to the authority and sufficiency of Scripture. So it's it's September 15 through 17.

The first two days of the conference are at Emanuel Bible Church in Springfield, Virginia. Just outside of DC and then the final day Saturday will be at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC. Ticket for the museum is included in the conference registration.

We'll have one Presentation by a speaker at the Museum of the Bible and then opportunities to see the museum, which is really a wealth of Exhibits about the scriptures and so this will be a wonderful Conference we're really looking forward to it and I would love for as many as possible to attend.

To really focus our attention on this important doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture and once again go to g3 min.

Org g3 min org for more details on the conference as well and You're going to have to excuse the radio commercials for the g3 regional conference because it Does not include my guest Scott annual in the ad because the ad was recorded before Scott was added to the speaking roster so Just so you know when you're hearing the ads you're going to hear all the other speakers mentioned except for Scott has nothing to do with Us thinking less of Scott It just happened to be according to the timing.

I did not know that Scott was going to be edited and I don't think anybody else knew for certain either until more recently. And what are you specifically speaking on there?

So I'm going to speak on the issue on the role of the Holy Spirit. And we're going to talk about worship today. That's really kind of my primary area of focus. I taught for 10 years at Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth courses on history and theology of worship and The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is one in which I think especially in our day and age among broad evangelicalism and we have a little bit of Burn theology that has crept into our doctrine of the Holy Spirit we might claim to be cessationist to believe that for instance the Miraculous sign gifts have ceased and the word is sufficient.

And yet we've been influenced in subtle ways by by my various outside Theologies that have in some ways I think Shifted our thinking and so I want to address the issue of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and really Demonstrate from Scripture that the Spirit works through the word that he inspired.

We want the Holy Spirit to work. We believe in the Holy Spirit. We believe that he is active in the lives of Believers and in converting unbelievers. But I think Scripture is clear that in this age The way that the Holy Spirit works is through the word that he inspired and so I'm going to make that case Lord willing in my in my presentation great.

Oh, I'm looking forward to it. And.

As you know on this program we have a tradition Where every time we have a first-time guest that guest gives a summary of his or her salvation story that would include the kind of religious atmosphere you were raised in if any and The providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you.

So let's hear your story.

Yeah, absolutely, so I grew up in Michigan grew up in a strong Christian home. Went to a Christian day school was in church, you know. Literally a week after I was born, you know every Sunday every Wednesday that sort of thing and then you know Being in a Christian school was literally at the church every day of the week almost.

So I had a lot of strong Christian influence on me for which I am very thankful. Protected me from a lot of negative influences that certainly could have impacted me. But as is often the case with with children who grew up in Christian homes, I had a very early profession of faith.

At a very young age, but looking back it was clear. I knew what was expected of me. I knew what would please my parents, you know, I didn't want to go to hell. I wanted to escape that. And so I prayed a prayer and and made that profession and was very very quickly baptized.

But it was not a true conversion. There was no true repentance of sin it was simply sort of a cultural thing to do and again being in a good Christian home and being in a Christian environment in school and and regularly in church, you know, I didn't get a lot of get into a lot of trouble.

I conformed Externally from the outside anyone looking at my life would have thought this is a good young Christian man but into my teenage years My true spiritual condition began to evidence itself. Which really was a great, you know, we talked about those teenage years as being years of rebellion and Push back against authority and that's certainly true and it's sort of natural as young people grow.

And for me that was a blessing because it began to reveal Some things about the true condition of my heart and my parents began to challenge me about the about where I was with the Lord and when I was about 13 years old after a big confrontation with my parents in which they really pressed me about my About my walk with the Lord and my conversion.

I recognized that I hadn't truly repented of my sins and so I came under conviction of the Holy Spirit and Believed that that's when he really did that work within my heart to awaken me to my need of salvation.

And so, you know from that point on Externally, not a lot really changed because I was already sort of living in kind of a Christian environment and conforming to a standard but Certainly, I recognized internally that my motivation for things changed my desire to Battle sin and I didn't become perfect by any stretch, but I began to hate my sin and and Want to please the Lord and those sorts of things and so in those, you know remaining years at home and growing up in in the environment there began to really sense the sanctifying work of the of the Spirit through the word as well as giving me a desire to be involved in Study of the scripture and communicating scripture to to others in the context of local church ministry.

And so those were some ways that the Lord showed me the the fruit of of a change that had absolutely occurred internally. Because of that that time conversion, so I'm very really thankful for that the way the Lord worked in my life during those years.

Praise God and when did you come to discover and embrace The doctrines of Sovereign Grace also called Performed Theology and Nicknamed Calvinism.

Yeah, so we the church that we were in in sort of my middle school and high school years our Pastor him. He was attending Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary which is a Calvinistic seminary and he himself was becoming more Calvinistic and so really during my most formative years I watched him grow theologically and began to communicate these things and even I mentioned I was in a Christian school and The Bible teacher that I had in my high school years was also at the same seminary.

So he you know taught the doctrines of grace and so I might distinctly remember You know be first encountering the doctrine of election in a class. There may be a ninth tenth grade and at first bristling, but very quickly within a day or two.

Just recognizing the truth of it. And so to be really convinced of these things in my high school years, which again I'm also thankful for that that I was, you know formed in that way theologically at an early age and it wasn't like, you know many stories that you hear of of People come to the doctrines of grace later in life.

I came to embrace these truths very early and so praise God.

Well, we have a theme ahead of us that I've already announced, but I'll repeat it. I think it's a very important theme. Worship aberrant movements in history that remove the Bible as its God-breathed.

Blueprint.

There has never been a period of History where the church was pristine. The church has always been comprised of sinners and We see even in the scriptures themselves the earliest disciples sinning and making errors and doing things the wrong way and having to be corrected, but as far as a Worship that has been dominated by Using the Bible as a God-breathed blueprint where you see from the hymnody and even the orders of worship that have been revealed in the writings of various Christians throughout the centuries.

Where do you see a decline beginning from What some have called the regulative principle where we as Christians only Are involved in things that are commanded in the New Testament or are provided by way of example.

And of course some of those things that involve worship in the New Testament.

Include.

Old covenant things like the singing of Psalms.

But.

Obviously some of those things have been completely fulfilled in Christ, and it would actually be wrong as the Judaizers attempted to insist upon circumcision and so on but which made their gospel null and void according to the Apostle Paul, but as far as the Regulative principle as far as the the obvious Meticulous and Strict adherence to the scriptures as a blueprint for worship.

When do you see this begin to decline?

Medieval Roman Catholic Worship and the Loss of Biblical Sufficiency

Yeah, I mean, I think as the authority, you know, I often think of Calvin's, you know Famous statement that our hearts are we tend to not want to trust in this efficiency of the word. So this kind of thing does occur over and over and over again Through the course of biblical history and then church history if we're talking about post New Testament church history.

I think there are two in which there is being regulated by the word to the degree that there needs to be a needs to be a reformation of that biblical emphasis and The first would be during the Middle Ages.

We think of the of the Middle Ages as a time in which theology became aberrant You know what we now would call Roman Roman Catholic theology began to begin to be developed obviously leading up to the need for reformation in the 15th and 16th centuries and certainly the gospel was you know that the doctrine of justification was lost and so many other things but we often forget that it really all stem a distrust in the sufficient word.

There's a reason that all of these heresies and aberrant theological positions Crept into the church and that is because of a lack of trust in the into the the authority And sufficiency of the word and this includes in worship.

What you find happening in in this period is the introduction of lots of creative Inventive Practices in the context of worship that either don't have any biblical warrant whatsoever. Or as you mentioned a moment ago might there might have been an attempt to look to the Old Testament as Support for various practices that were introduced into the church without Recognizing the ways that those things had been fulfilled in Christ and therefore had passed away.

And so it doesn't happen overnight very gradually during the Middle Ages a lot of things began to enter into corporate worship that I would you know suggest and the reformers when they When they reacted against them argued were not Commanded in the scriptures.

So everything from you know, some things that might look less Offensive like the lighting of incense or the lighting of candles or you know The crossing of oneself or some of these rituals and ceremonies the processions the priestly Vestments, you know, those might not seem so theologically aberrant, but they again were not to be found prescribed for sure for the New Testament Church.

And then of course the extreme things that were clearly theologically aberrant. Like the adding on of additional sacraments and not only that but ascribing Gracious effects to them to the degree that it became meritorious.

Your your activities in these worship elements would actually Merit you grace from the Lord and those sorts of things. Prayers to the Saints prayer to Mary prayer, you know veneration of icons all of those are errors that crept in that the reformers Responded to but they again they all stand not trusting in the sufficiency of the word to regulate how we worship and.

So the reformers came along and they they responded with the battle cry of sola scriptura. And at least in the Reformed wing of the Reformation, maybe we can talk about this a little bit more in a moment.

But this emphasis on what we now call the regulative principle, although it is interesting even with someone like Luther. Especially in the early years he articulated things very similarly to how we would describe the regulative principle as well.

Maybe we can talk about that in a moment. But then the second big shift after the Reformation scripture and the authority of scripture. In Protestant, you know what? We would call Protestant circles now today the second big shift away from the sufficiency of scripture I would suggest occurred During 19th century revivalism.

And then on into the Holiness movement and then eventually Pentecostal ism. Really beginning a little bit a little bit in the in the rural camp meeting revivals in America but becoming even more significantly problematic in the teaching and practice of Charles Finney there was a distinct and perfect from the Trust in the sufficiency of the word as to what we do in corporate worship rather Finney and then those after him because of their theological belief that each person has within him or her dormant moral powers Finney called them Belief that that we have within ourselves the spark of divinity that just needs to be waken up.

Finney argued that in order to wake up those dormant more moral powers. We can't just do the same old things. We've always done. We can't just practice these things that the church has always done because scripture tells us to do these things.

No, we need to include we need to introduce into our worship what Finney called new measures. Because by introducing new things we can shake people up we can Awaken those dormant moral powers and we can move them to conversion and the spiritual revival.

And so that began another significant shift in the history of the church in which churches began to purposely introduce creative Inventive measures in their corporate worship practices that go beyond What scripture has prescribed so I would say those are the two church history both of which? required a reformation.

One of those reformations happened and The second one, you know in some circles is in the process of happening. And that's I think something that definitely needs to continue. Especially among reformed Christians that we need to recover This doctrine not just the doctrines of grace as important as they are but also this doctrine of the sufficiency of the word.

Regulating everything about what we do in our churches including our worship practices.

Well, we have to go to our first Commercial break right now, and if you would like to send in a question to Scott annual Senator Chris Arnzen at gmail .com see HR is a are n Zen and gmail .com. As always give us your first name at least your city and state of residence in your country of residence.

If you live outside the USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you are in a church. Where you are uncomfortable because you are witnessing things happening that you believe violate the Word of God that are that are coming into the worship of Christ during those services and.

And You don't want to identify yourself because you don't want everybody in your church to begin to attack you in some way or perhaps you're even a pastor and You're rethinking the way that worship is conducted in your own congregation or you're having Disagreements with your own fellow elders or whatever the case is that would compel you to remain anonymous.

Please only remain anonymous if it is something that is indeed personal and private. You you don't want to identify yourself as if it's a general question, please provide your first name City and state and country of residence and don't go away.

We're going to be right back with Scott annual and our discussion on worship right after these messages from our sponsors.

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This is Chris Sorensen. If you just tuned us in our guest today for the entire program is Scott annual. Who is an author executive vice president and editor-in-chief of? G3 ministries and professor of pastoral theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas.

In fact, I should I should mention before I forget to that the founder and president of that Fine institution is going to be on my program this week. In fact, he's going to be on tomorrow Jeff Johnson.

So that will be Wednesday, June 22nd. Make sure that you listen in to Jeff Johnson on the program and in fact, we have to settle on a topic because I don't think Jeff and I picked one yet.

But.

We are addressing as I said earlier worship aberrant movements in history that remove the Bible as its God-breathed Blueprint and our email address is Chris Arnson at gmail .com. Chris Arnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least your city and state and country of residence. And before I go to any listener questions, I want to go back to something that you said before the break. You said that you wanted to address some of Luther's comments on?

Worship because it is interesting out of the Reformers. He seemed to be according to my knowledge the least Committed and faithful to the regulative principle if at all he Seemed to want to carry on some things that the Church of Rome Is famous for such as The icons and the statues not that he would believe in venerating them.

But he didn't seem to. He was very opposed to the iconoclast movement The group that was seeking to Destroy all those things and remove them from houses of worship. But if you could continue with your greater level of expertise on Luther than I have.

Luther, Adiaphora, and the Normative Principle

Yeah, no things, you know, I mean Calvin sort of came right? I mean a very young age. He knew what he believed he wrote it down and he revises the Institute's, you know over time but very very little Luther you really see a progression of thought and.

What I think is fascinating is from about 15 17 to 15 24 or so. Those early years of the Reformation. He writes a number of treatises about worship. One of them is called the Babylonian captivity of the church and another one is called the misuse of the mass and He he really sounds like Calvin.

He's saying things like we ought to only do in worship what has been prescribed for us in the Holy Scriptures. And and language like that, which which sounds like Zing Lee. It sounds like Booth dirt sounds like Calvin.

It sounds like those who would later be much more well known for what we call the regulative principle. But over time Luther does begin to shift he does begin to Effective on that. What's interesting is, you know, he you mentioned correctly that he certainly is not in favor of the veneration of icons or You know or those sorts of things that the Roman Catholic Church had introduced that were clearly in contradiction.

But what were things that had come into practice? For which there was neither a Luther begins. He calls those things Adiaphora, which is simply a Greek word that means Indifferent things he says they are not these practices are not like the Roman Catholic Church argues Meritorious they don't give us any special grace.

They're indifferent.

And.