December 22, 2017 Show with Michael Gaydosh on “The Most Important Things to Know About Jesus This Christmas & Always” AND John Samson on “How a Former Heretic Was Transformed Theologically with the Help of Dr. R. C. Sproul”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown

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

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

Proverbs 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 whom we converse with 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 hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. 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 ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this last live program before Christmas, Friday, December 22nd, 2017.

And it is my honor and privilege to have two dear friends back on the program today to address two very important topics.

During the first hour of the program, we have my dear friend who is not only my dear friend, but he's also my very first pastor after my rebirth.

And he has been a friend, a brother, an encourager, and mentor ever since that would have been in the mid -1980s.

And he is also founder of Solid Ground Christian Books. He, during the first hour, is going to discuss the most important things to know about Jesus this

Christmas and always. And then the second hour, a mutual friend of both Mike Gadosh and myself,

John Sampson, who is an author with some works published by Solid Ground Christian Books.

And he's also a pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. He's going to be discussing how a former heretic was transformed theologically with the help of Dr.

R .C. Sproul. But first of all, let me welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for the first hour,

Mike Gadosh. Thank you, Chris. I appreciate the opportunity to be able to come on, especially be able to speak about the glorious one who came into the world to save sinners so many years ago during this season of incarnation celebration, as I call it.

Amen. And before we do that, why don't you just, for those of my listeners who may be joining

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for the first time, because it seems like we're getting new listeners joining us nearly every single day, judging from the emails

I'm getting, tell our listeners about Solid Ground Christian Books. Well, Solid Ground began 17 years ago, going on 18 years ago, actually, in Birmingham, Alabama.

My wife and I, Susie, had just moved from New York after being in New York about 20 years of ministry in Long Island.

And as we were getting settled in Birmingham, the Lord opened up a door for us to begin a new publishing ministry.

And we called it Solid Ground Christian Books. Our desire is that people who purchase books from us and have books published by us will be confident that they are on solid ground.

And we've been doing this for almost 18 years, have customers in all 50 states and many countries all over the world.

We're shipping to New Zealand and Australia and Singapore and Philippines and Germany and Canada and South America and Africa pretty much every week.

And it's a real delight to be able to get solid books into the hands of God's people.

And in some cases, we are sending books as gifts to people who don't know the Lord as well. So it's a great opportunity for us to serve.

And we have many, many people who work with us and help us to be able to get the books that we get.

And we're just grateful to God for the team of people that he has raised up to help us to be able to do what we do.

We have about 350 titles that are in print right now. And we're working on things all the time, new things.

As you mentioned, John Sampson has published a couple of books through us, the 12 Whatabouts, addressing the issue of the doctrine of election and seeking to answer the questions that people ask by saying, what about John 316?

What about this? And what about that? And he does an excellent job in that book of doing that.

And then he did a second, smaller book or booklet for us. And it's the five solas of the

Reformation that he published. And we did it as a Reformation 500 title.

And it's done well. We're very grateful to the Lord for the opportunity to be able to get both of those books out and get

John Sampson's name out there. And I know Iron Sharpens Iron has also been involved in helping get

John's name out there, as you've interviewed John many times on Iron Sharpens Iron. Yes, and I'm looking forward to my next interview with him in just about 45 minutes or so.

Yeah. And I know that you weren't expecting this. So this may be too off the cuff for you.

But I'm planning on having guests for at least a little while that I know were in some way blessed by R .C.

Sproul. Just to say a couple of words about Dr. Sproul, who is now in glory since he just departed this earth and entered into eternity with Christ just last week.

And I was wondering what you could tell our listeners about what R .C. Sproul meant to you.

I know that I am forever grateful to you and your pastoring over at Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville and then later

Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island and Merrick because you were a very key factor that introduced me to many of the great men of the

Christian faith and more specifically the Reformed faith, both those contemporary and those from history.

And it was through you and Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville that I first discovered as a very young Christian the

Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, which I began attending annually.

And one of my very first experiences there was hearing and seeing Dr. Sproul preach in person.

But if you could tell us anything that you could say. Well, one of the rather comical things about R .C.

Sproul is I always felt, especially when he was younger, that he was the Reformed Peter Falk.

I can't believe you said that! Or Columbo. He always reminded me of Columbo.

I can't believe you said that because I've told people that same thing as well. Yeah. When Columbo's like walking away with a trench coat and then he turns around, wait a minute, let me ask you just one more thing.

Exactly. That was one of the things that I appreciated about him. He just, he had a way. Of course, he was a disciple of John Gerstner.

And when you hear Gerstner, you hear Sproul. And you can see the impact that Gerstner had on Dr.

Sproul's life and ministry. And I think the ministry that the

Lord raised up through Dr. Sproul was quite remarkable.

In fact, one of the earlier books that I published, Solid Ground, was Our Sovereign God, which is addresses that were for the

Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology. And messages are in that book by R .C.

Sproul and J .I. Packer and James Montgomery Boyce and Ralph Kuyper.

And it's an excellent, excellent book on the sovereignty of God. And I just appreciated very much

Sproul's commitment to the doctrines of grace. And he had a very gracious sense of humor.

When he was asked, I'm sure you heard this, when he was asked, he was at Master's College, I believe it was, when he was asked to bring some messages there.

And Pastor MacArthur had him come out there. And one of the students boldly asked him one of the last questions that was asked after his last session.

He asked Sproul, we have so much in common, why are you not a distensationalist?

And Sproul, without missing a beat, just said, because it's too wacky. And apparently everybody kind of held their breath for a moment and then kind of burst out laughing.

Just like his famous line, what's wrong with you people? Right. In fact,

Dr. MacArthur, as you may have seen, did a very humorous, or said some very humorous things about his friendship with Dr.

Sproul at the memorial. So it was quite a... Oh, yeah. I didn't get a chance to hear the whole thing.

I heard part of it, but I've got to go back and listen to it now. But yeah, it was, was

Sinclair Ferguson, he was that, correct? Yes, yes. He's the one that brought the main message? I don't know if you would say it's the main message, but he was one of those who brought a message.

Oh, okay. Okay. Anyway, yeah, that was a very encouraging, just to see the men that were there,

Steve Lawson's opening prayer, and just to hear the testimonies of the impact that Dr.

Sproul had on people's lives. And he was a man. He wasn't perfect. He had his faults, but he was a man that God greatly used, and we're thankful to God for him and for the work that he did at Ligonier, the vision that he had, and just the number of men who were raised up to come alongside him and will continue the work there at Ligonier.

So, yeah. And of course, you are tied in with my most hilarious incident with Dr.

Sproul, which took place at Calvary Baptist Church in Manhattan, after you brought back into print

Heaven, a World of Love by Jonathan Edwards. Oh, yes. And Dr.

Sproul was speaking at a conference at Calvary Baptist in Manhattan, and when he finished a message that he was delivering,

I knew that this man would probably be going to the bathroom. So I ducked out into the hallway, and Dr.

Sproul's walking down the hallway, and I said, Dr. Sproul, Dr. Sproul, I have a question to ask for you. And he goes, well, if you want to ask me a question, you got to ask me in here.

And he goes into Ben's room, and as he's standing at the urinal, I told him all about your booklet,

Heaven, a World of Love by Jonathan Edwards. And then when he was finished, of course, I gave him the booklet and saying, we would love to have, this is when

I was working part -time for you, obviously. And I asked him, we would, or I said to him, we would love if you would write a brief commendation for this.

And then sure enough, in about three or four weeks in the mail came that commendation from Dr. Sproul.

That's right. And then also, as his mind was beginning to slip at the end was when he mentioned you, rapier -like intellect.

And that's, of course, you have that prominently displayed everywhere in your website.

I would be a fool not to, wouldn't I? Of course. And it's just good for, most people don't know the condition he was in mentally when he said that.

No, I'm just kidding. It was a very gracious thing for him to say about your, and God obviously has given you a very special gift and you're doing what you're doing, certainly not a great deal because of me, but I know that I always tried to be an encouragement to you to use the gifts

God has given you. And clearly the ability to be able to ask the right questions and bring out of people.

Sometimes, and you've had some cases where you've had interviewers, you've been interviewing people that aren't very comfortable and you'd ask questions and they give one word answers and it would be very awkward.

And most of the time you've been able to turn that around and end up with a very positive experience with people, especially people who are very uncomfortable in the setting.

I know Dr. Walter Chantry is not somebody who is really comfortable with the setting, and yet I know afterwards he was very complimentary of you and how you were able to bring him out by asking the right questions, leading questions that are not going to bring forth just yes or no answers.

And I found out by accident, or by, I guess the Calvinist doesn't believe in that, I found out providentially without knowing beforehand is a better way of phrasing it.

When I was searching the Banner of Truth website, my interview with Walt Chantry is on their website, the audio link.

Oh, wow. It's right underneath his book, Today's Gospel, Authentic or Synthetic.

That's good. Well, there's somebody over at Banner that knows what they're doing. That's not meant pejoratively, but it is nice to know that they picked up on that and took advantage of that in a good way for them and for you, because those are the kinds of things that we should be doing, encouraging one another.

We're not in competition. We are cooperatively working together, and I've always viewed other publishers,

Reformed publishers that way, and I know Reformation and Heritage, as an example, is one that Dr.

Beeky, in particular, that has been incredibly helpful to me in untold ways, in endorsements he's written, sometimes introductions or prefaces or forwards.

And even at times, Dr. Beeky has helped me in saying not to publish certain things that I was considering doing, and he felt was below the quality of work that he knows that I want to do.

And so at some point, though, you are going to publish the life and legacy of Chris Arnzen eventually, right? Yeah, yeah, we're working on that.

I'm going to wait until you're long gone before we publish that. We can't publish the life and letters of Chris Arnzen.

You have to start writing letters, though, Chris, before we can do the life and letters of Chris Arnzen. I can't help but remember a funny thing that was not intended to be funny.

A very well -known pastor and preacher and writer wrote a little booklet, and the way that the publisher printed the cover was quite comical to me anyway.

It had his name at the top, and then right underneath that, it said a bad record and a bad heart.

I know who that was. Yeah, yeah, that's right. That is pretty funny.

Well, let's get to the topic that you gave me. I did have a chance this past Sunday in the providence of God to do a

Sunday school class in the church that we're now becoming members of here in Florida, and the

Sunday school class was on the incarnation of our Lord, John 1, 1 to 18, and you basically asked the question, or you laid out the subject, what we should know about Christ during Christmas, and I think as I started pondering that thought, the lesson that I brought this past Sunday is very helpful, not exclusively, because I didn't focus as much on one of the aspects, but the first thing that we need to understand when we focus upon who this was,

Jesus, is to be able to say that he was a man.

Jesus Christ was a man. That's not any great thing that's said when we say that, but it's important for us to understand that, in that we believe in the full humanity of Jesus Christ.

He didn't come in the form of man, meaning that he looked like a man, but he wasn't really a man.

The scriptures are very clear that he had a human body. He had human emotions.

He got hungry. He got tired. He felt pain and disappointment, and so we are told in many, many different ways that Jesus Christ was a man.

He was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, did not have a human father.

He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, but he was born a man, and it's important because it was man who sinned, and the only way that man's sin could be paid for, it had to be paid for by a man, and so the emphasis in the

New Testament in many, many places is on the humanity of Jesus Christ, that he was fully man.

Paul speaks of him as the one mediator between God and man, the man

Christ Jesus. Now, we understand that there are those who will take that and run with it and say, well, you see,

Paul was saying he was just a man, and the answer to that, or the statement that you would respond to that is, no,

Paul doesn't say he was just a man, but he was a man, and that is absolutely essential for us, because as Paul says in Romans 5, by man, sin came into the world.

And a song, a heretical, a very heretical song just popped into my head from Jesus Christ, superstar, if you might recall, the actress playing

Mary Magdalene sang a song, I Don't Know How to Love Him, and one of the refrains was, he's a man, he's just a man.

Yes, yes. And that's where the problem comes, is when, it's like, it's the same thing, really, in focusing upon the inspiration of Scripture.

When people say, well, the Bible was written by just men. Well, that's partially true.

It was written by men. Every word of it was written by men. Peter says that in 2

Peter 1, that every word was written by men, but they were not just men.

They were not just any men. They were men who were chosen by God, men who were prepared by God, men who were equipped by God, men who were carried along by the

Holy Spirit, and these men spoke from God. And so we have the dual nature, as it were, of Scripture, that Scripture is

God -breathed and therefore profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, but it is also breathed through human instruments, through men.

Jesus Christ himself did not write one word that we have in the

Scriptures, except, I suppose, if you were to say the Ten Commandments written by the finger of God, we know that would have been

Christ, the mediator, but in terms of the actual written

Scriptures, they were written by men, and they were men who were, as I said, carried along by the

Holy Spirit. And so you have this dual nature of Scripture, and that is the

Word of God written, and then we have the dual nature of Christ, who is the

Son of God. He is the Word of God incarnate. So that first point that we need to emphasize is the fact that Jesus Christ is man.

I think Paul's words in Romans chapter 8, as he begins chapter 8 and lays out the solution to man's problem, he begins, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do, by sending his own

Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin he condemns sin in the flesh.

Now it doesn't say he was sent in the likeness of flesh, which is what the

Gnostics and some of the heretics in the early centuries of the church were saying.

No, Paul says he was sent in the likeness of sinful flesh. He was without sin, holy, harmless, undefiled, spotless

Lamb of God. And so we have the perfect Lamb who had to be spotless if he was to be sacrificed, and he had to be a man in order for him to pay the sins of man, and that's the reason why we emphasize that first and foremost, that Jesus Christ, the

Son of God, was man, but he was also God.

And the beautiful thing about the humanity of Christ and the deity of Christ is emphasized in the

Shorter Catechism and the question, who is the Redeemer of God's elect?

Right? That's one of the most important questions in the Shorter Catechism, and the answer is the only

Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who being the eternal

Son of God, became man, and so was and continueth to be

God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever.

And those words are brilliantly written, became man, being the eternal

Son of God became man. And that, of course, is the very language that John uses in his

Gospel, John chapter 1, and as I was looking at that this past Sunday in our

Sunday school class, I opened by reading a section from B .B.

Warfield. He did a sermon on the prologue of John's Gospel, mainly on John 1 .1,

and this is what he said as he opened his sermon, John's Gospel alone opens with a prologue which takes us back at once into the depths of eternal reality and tells us who and what that being actually was whose life history in the world is about to be depicted.

There is probably no more pregnant piece of writing in the world than this prologue of John's Gospel, and there is no part of this pregnant prologue more pregnant than its first verse.

There are just 17 words in it. We can count only eight different words in it, but these few words are simply bursting with significance.

In the first place, our Lord is designated here by a unique name, and that a name big with meaning.

Of course, the name is the word Lagos, and then under this unique name, there are three declarations are calmly made of him, so calmly as almost to betray us into taking them as mere matters of course, each of which separately considered is of tremendous import, and the three together in combination of more tremendous import still.

When we have read these three limpid sentences, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was

God, we have read things which even the angels desiring to look into them might well despair of plumbing.

Wow, amen. The words, those opening words, those three clauses or three sentences, tell us three things about our

Lord. In fact, if you could pick up on those three things, because I don't want to stop you mid -sentence,

I'd rather you start with the three things. Sure, sure. When we come back from our first break, if anybody would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

If you have a question, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Don't go away, we'll be right back with Mike Gaydosch of Solid Grand Christian Books and more of our discussion on the most important things you need to know about Jesus this

Christmas and always. I am

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Welcome back, this is Chris Zarnes and if you just tuned us in on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, our first guest today is

Mike Gaydosh, founder of Solid Ground Christian Books. We are in the middle of our discussion right now on the theme,

The Most Important Things to Know about Jesus This Christmas and Always, and then coming up at the top of the hour, the second hour,

John Sampson will be joining us, a mutual friend of both Mike Gaydosh and myself, and John Sampson is pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona.

He's also an author whom Mike Gaydosh has published through Solid Ground Christian Books, and John Sampson is going to be speaking on the theme,

How a Former Heretic was Transformed Theologically with the Help of Dr. R .C. Sproul, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

and before the break, Pastor Mike, you were mentioning the three things that were very important for us to remember about Christ.

You were about to bring them up right on the heels of quoting B .B. Warfield.

Yes, Warfield, he concluded his opening comments on John 1 .1

by saying, when we have read these three limpid sentences, and the word limpid means clear, precise, lucid, explicit, and Jehovah's Witnesses amazingly miss it here and try to say that John is telling us that the

Word was a God, and not God himself, not fully

God, but a God, a creature created by God, and the amazing thing is that John could not have been more clear in what he was saying.

He gives us three declarations about the Word found in that opening verse of John 1, and the first is his eternal subsistence.

He begins the gospel with exactly the same phrase that's used in the beginning of Genesis.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Here we read, in the beginning, the

Word was. That is, God the Son, the second person of the

Trinity who is here described as the Word, when you go all the way back to the beginning of time, He was already there.

He didn't begin then. He was already there. He already was, and the Greek imperfect tense gives us that picture going all the way back to the beginning.

He was already in existence, and then the second thing that's said about him is even more remarkable than the first.

So he's eternal, but secondly, it says the Word was with God, and Warfield says this is looking at his eternal intercommunion with God, and I remember when

I took Greek in seminary many years ago, that this expression, prostanteon, it's a prepositional phrase which literally means face -to -face with an equal, and here we have the

Word is in a face -to -face relationship as an equal with God.

That's interesting that in verse 2, the apostle takes phrase 1 and phrase 2, or clause 1 and clause 2 of this verse, and he combines them.

He says he was in the beginning with God. So those first two realities, that he was in the beginning, and that he was in the beginning with God, tell us something about the eternality of this person, this mysterious person who is not named yet, he's called the

Word in this mysterious term that's used. But then the third clause is the dramatic climax of this opening verse, and one of the things

I like to do is I'll ask people to read John 1 1 for me, and I'm going to ask you, the host, to do that right now,

Chris. Just read John 1 1, maybe if you have a Bible in front of you, or if you have it memorized,

I'd just like you to read it for me. John 1 1. Can you do that?

Yes, I can. Hold on one second. Yeah. In the beginning was the

Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Well, Chris, you fell into the trap.

I'm very thankful that I had you do that. I was going to have all of my students in Sunday school do that on Sunday as well, until I finally got somebody to read it correctly.

Well, I'm reading it right from my sponsor's version, the New American Standard Bible. Yeah, well, it's not the reading that's necessarily wrong, but it's where you put the emphasis is the key here.

Oh, was? And yeah, most people put the word, the emphasis on the last clause, on the wrong word.

They put it on the word was. And it should be God. It should be the word God, because, and I'll tell you two reasons.

First of all, the word was is repeated in all three clauses.

And the focus really is not on the word was, not that it's not important, because it is important, but the real focus of the first clause is in the beginning.

The real focus of the second clause is with God. And the real focus of the third clause is

God. And we know that because of the actual word order.

Word order is important in scripture. There is, they didn't have, and they didn't use, like we have ways to emphasize things.

We underline, we highlight, we put them in bold and caps, right?

We do all of these. All these are different ways that we can emphasize a particular word.

I know I just recently got, I'll just do a little side plug here. I just recently purchased and have been selling copies of the brand new book entitled,

O Death, Where is Thy Sting? It's sermons of John Murray, one of my favorite authors. And in that, the book, one of the things that they did, because these sermons were all taken from tapes that they meticulously went over, and they wanted to do them from live sermons that he had actually preached, rather than just taking the notes and reproducing the notes.

And one of the things that they did is they used italics to emphasize words that Murray emphasized in his preaching.

So you will know where he put the emphasis, where he put, where they put italics, right?

Now that's how we do it. But in the Greek, in the first century, when the

Bible was written, they didn't use italics. They didn't use bold. They didn't use, that's not how they emphasized things.

The way they would emphasize it was word order. That's not the only way, but often that was the way that they did it.

And the literal reading of the words in these three clauses, the focus is in the first clause on the fact that the word was in the beginning.

The last clause, the word is not, the actual literal rendering of the verse is not, and the word was

God, it's, and God the word was. In fact,

I was transported back in time as you're speaking, because I can clearly remember now, either during a sermon or a

Bible study, you bringing this up. I can clearly remember it. Yeah, that is so important, to see that in this clause, that the focus is on the fact that this one who was in the beginning and who was with God in the beginning was

God. He was God. And that's where I always try to put the emphasis. And word order, we see another place that I love to use as an example of how word order is important is one of my favorite passages, and I know yours as well, is 1

Timothy 1 .15. It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus, in fact, this is a perfect verse for the

Incarnation celebration that we're having now at Christmastime, Christ Jesus came into the world, and how does it go on?

To save sinners of whom I am chief, right? That's supposed to be sinners to save, correct?

Exactly. The emphasis here, in the original language, is Christ Jesus came into the world, sinners to save.

The emphasis is upon the sinner. And as I said on Sunday, if you're a sinner, you have hope, because that's why

Christ came. He didn't come for the righteous. He said that Himself. In fact, He said that not just in so many words,

He said it exactly that way. The Son of Man did not come for the righteous, but He came to save sinners.

And I think that it's so important for us to understand that as we focus upon this

One who came, He came as a man. And the beautiful thing about the

Shorter Catechism, which I quoted earlier, is that He became man, and so was and continues to be both

God and man in two distinct natures in one person forever. There is a man at the right hand of God right now.

There's a man at the right hand of God, and He will always be man, but He is also

God, fully God. And so as we read, go on and read this incredible account of this

Word who was made flesh, which we read on in verse 14, of course. The Word was made flesh.

The Word became flesh. The Word was God, but the

Word became flesh. And that's the language of the Catechism again. Being the

Son of God became man, and so was and continues to be both

God and man in two distinct natures in one person forever. It is so important for us to realize that Jesus Christ is fully

God, and all the fullness, Paul said, of the Godhead dwells.

That's a beautiful statement in Colossians. Dwells, present tense, in what? Bodily form.

And so the fullness of the Godhead is in a body, the body of Christ.

And I tell you, the amazing thing about the prologue, about John's prologue, is the 18 verses that make up the prologue really give us the summary of everything that he's going to speak about in the rest of the gospel.

It's a summary of the rest of the gospel. And in the prologue, of course, is 18 verses.

It introduces the themes that John's going to cover. And do you remember how the gospel of John closes?

Because John's gospel is unique in that it has both a prologue and an epilogue, which is after the actual word, or the afterward.

Chapter 21 is actually almost like an appendix. It's the epilogue that's added afterwards.

The grand conclusion, really the glorious conclusion, of the gospel of John is found in chapter 20.

And you remember that as John begins his gospel by focusing on the deity of Christ, by referring to him as God in verse 1, what are the last words that are spoken by the

Apostle Thomas in John 20? Do you remember? My Lord and my

God. That's it. My Lord and my God. My God.

Which the Jehovah's Witnesses relegate to taking the Lord's name in vain, basically.

Well, yeah. Well, no, I think what they will probably say is that my

Lord is referring to Jesus, and my God is referring to God. But clearly that's not what

Thomas is saying, and that's certainly not the way John has put together his gospel.

So the opening words of John's gospel focus on the deity of Christ. The very closing words of John's gospel focus on the deity of Christ.

That is, my Lord and my God, Thomas says. In fact, I want to insert here, just for a moment, the fact that Thomas, when we think about Thomas, what is the term that is usually added to his name?

Doubting. Doubting Thomas. And I've been in the, I've tried to recover, and I'm not the only one that's done this, but I've sort of had a mission of myself to recover the name of Thomas, because we should not think of him as Doubting Thomas.

The Bible never calls him Doubting Thomas. In fact, the very last word that we have from Thomas is the first time that any of the disciples referred to Jesus as God.

It's Thomas. And Thomas is the one who is the confessor, the

Confessing Thomas, not the Doubting Thomas. He doubted for a week. He had doubts for one week.

And the question is, do we want to be defined, is it appropriate to define a brother in Christ by the worst week of his life?

By the worst thing that he ever did? What would your nickname be? I'm being very serious.

I mean, you think about your own life, and you think about your history, and think about the things that you're most ashamed of in your past.

Would you want to be defined by the worst moment of your life? The lowest moment of your life?

And nobody would. And is it even fair to do that, if a person has lived their whole life? Thomas ended up giving his life.

He was a missionary to India, and he was speared through. He was killed as a martyr for Christ.

He was preaching the gospel. And to take a man's name, and to have it almost jokingly be referred to as Doubting Thomas, is so wrong to do.

It's the same thing that when we paint a person and throw a label on them because of a failure in their past.

We've all done that. We've all been guilty of labeling people.

And it's incredibly wrong and painful to do that, to take the very worst thing that a person did and make that the defining moment of their life.

And so I think that, you know, looking at the way that John structured his gospel, ending with...and

when I say he ended, I mean, I know those were not the last words of John chapter 20. We have Jesus' response to Thomas, and then we have the concluding words.

Many other signs Jesus did that are not recorded, but these that are recorded are recorded so that you might believe that Jesus is the

Christ and believing him out of life in his name. And that's really how the gospel ends. And then there's the appendix that's added in chapter 21, which is inspired, of course.

It's not that it's not important. It's just that John clearly concludes that the body, the main body of his work is concluded in chapter 20.

But you know what's beautiful as well about the way John structures his gospel is, you know how

John ends his prologue. How does he end it? He ends it with these words, no one has seen

God at any time. No one has seen God at any time. Then comes this very controversial clause, and it's translated differently in different Bibles.

The next clause is translated this way, I believe, in the New American Standard. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the

Father, he has explained him. Now, many translations translate that no one has seen

God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him.

Well, technically they're both true. He is the only begotten Son, and he is the only begotten

God. And the question is, in the manuscripts which disagree, the question comes, which is the proper term to use?

Is he the only begotten Son, or is he the only begotten God according to what John is saying here?

And I believe that I would side with those who, the translators who translate the only begotten

God, because that means that John begins and ends with the focus upon the complete and full deity of Jesus Christ.

And what I'd like to do is to then turn from those words, no one has seen

God at any time, the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him.

You know, John also uses that same exact expression one other time in his writings.

Do you know where that is, Chris? Can't think of it off the top of my head. No one has seen God at any time.

He uses that exact phrase one more time, and it's in 1 John chapter 4.

And he begins, of course, in John 1 18, no one has seen God at any time.

Then he goes on and says the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained, or he has exegeted him.

That is, how do we know and how have we seen the unseen God, the God who's not been seen?

Well, how do we know God? We know him through Christ. You remember Philip asked the question,

Lord, show us the Father and it's sufficient for us. And what did Jesus say to him? Philip, have

I been so long with you and you've not known me? If you have seen me, you have what?

You've seen the Father, right? Amen. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And so that's what

John is saying here, no one has seen God at any time, the only begotten God who's in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him.

In 1 John 4, John does something quite remarkable, quite beautiful, and it's often missed.

He begins with exactly the same words, no one has seen God at any time. But instead of then saying something about Jesus, he says this, if we love one another,

God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

And I believe what John is saying here and what John wants us to get is that Jesus Christ, when he was in the flesh, he revealed the very nature of the unseen

God. Jesus is no longer on this earth, he is no longer visible, he is not walking around performing miracles and teaching, but his people are.

His people are on this earth, and if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

That is, the unseen God is today, right now, seen in the visible love which

God's people show for one another. This is one of the tragedies that goes on with the divisions that happen within the church.

We see it on Facebook all the time. We see attacks made upon good men, faithful men, attacks that are sometimes vicious, and I believe at times are wicked.

And how is that in any way displaying the unseen

God? If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

You remember what Jesus said in John 13, what was the new commandment that he gives?

That you love one another just as I have loved you. And he says this, by this all people will know that you are my disciples, the ones who love one another, right?

Amen. That's the beauty of this, is you see the deity of Christ, the glorious deity of Christ, who is also fully man, fully man and fully

God, who had to be both in order to be our Savior. And so as we celebrate

Christmas, this season of the year, it's an opportunity for us to be the tangible representatives, the seen representatives of the unseen

God. As we love one another, his love is perfected in us, and God abides in us.

Amen. Well, I'd like you to conclude in an abbreviated sense, because I know you have to leave early, but if you could conclude with a summary of why it was necessary for God to be both, or for Jesus, I should say, to be both

God and man, fully God and fully man. Why could he not just declare his elect righteous from the right hand of the

Father in heaven without any need of humiliating himself by becoming incarnate and suffering on the cross and so on?

Why did he need to be a man? Well, the fact is, because I said earlier that because of man's sin, it was man who sinned, therefore man had to come and do two things.

He had to take upon himself the curse of man's sin.

He who was the blessed of the Father had to become cursed for us. He who knew no sin was made to be sin on our behalf.

That's the first half. That's why he had to come as a man, because man had sinned, and therefore man must pay the penalty of his sin.

The second reason is because we need righteousness. We not only need to have our sins forgiven, but we need to have the righteousness of Christ put to us.

And so a man had to obey the law and had to fulfill the law.

And that's why Christ being holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners was absolutely essential.

He had to be a man to pay for our sin. He had to be a man to live the righteous life that we could not live.

And so he is able to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

He is able to give us his righteousness, forgiveness, and righteousness.

One of the bumper stickers that I absolutely despise is, Christians are not perfect, they're just forgiven.

I hate that because it's not true in any way. First of all, to say that we're just forgiven, if you put the emphasis on just forgiven, it almost minimizes the significance of it.

We're just forgiven. But the reality is, we're not just forgiven. We are also given the righteousness of Christ.

So he's taken out the heart of stone, he's given us a heart of flesh. He has also given us his

Spirit to dwell within us, and he has predestined us to adoption as sons.

And God's intention is that we will be conformed to the image of his

Son, so that he would be the firstborn of many brethren. Amen. So that's the reason why he had to become a man.

The great exchange, as they call it. Exactly. Well, you know that your website is solid -ground -books .com.

Solid -ground -books .com, did you also want to offer? Yeah, let me just say one thing about that.

Right now, I'm in the midst of trying to get my website back up. There's been an issue all day today, and my web guy has said that it's been fixed, but I'm still having problems with it.

I don't know if it's been fixed yet or not. He's claiming it has been. I'm not seeing proof of that yet.

So if you've been trying to order something today, and you have been frustrated, I share your frustration.

I'm sorry that that's happened. It only happens once a year, maybe twice a year at the most, for a very brief period of time.

We're able to get it fixed pretty quickly. But I've encouraged people that if they need an order, if they need to place an order right now, that they can call me at my cell phone, 205 -587 -4480.

205 -587 -4480. And I can take the order over the phone, and then we will be able to process it and ship the books as soon as I'm able to get this thing, the glitch, fixed on the computer.

I appreciate your prayers until that gets fixed. Well, I truly thank God that providentially the first Bible -believing

Protestant church that I became a member of was the one where you were serving as an undershepherd, that the

Lord used you to nurture me in the faith, and to not only that, but to introduce to me so many great giants of Christian history, and also contemporary giants like Dr.

Sproul, who entered into eternity last week. And I thank you. I can never thank you enough for all of that and for your friendship, most of all, brother.

Well, thank you, Chris. I'll look forward to seeing you at G3 in just about a month. That's right. And make sure you're letting your people know about that.

And I'll be there with my books only on Wednesday night at the debate.

James White will be debating again this year on Wednesday evening, and I will be there with the book table of James's books.

I should have all of his books there. And I'll only be there, sadly, I'll only be there Wednesday night.

I'm going to be leaving Thursday morning to head over to a conference where Dr. Beeky will be the featured speaker in Mississippi, in Laurel, Mississippi, that Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Great. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing you on the 17th, brother, and I look forward to many more opportunities to interview you.

God bless. Thank you, Chris. I love you, brother. Love you too. Talk to you later. You too. And don't go away, folks.

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We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

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That way you help both of our sponsors at the same time and by the way I just want to quickly mention before I return to our live program with John Sampson, remember that the

G3 conference is coming up that stands for Grace, Gospel, and Glory from January 17th through the 20th in Atlanta, Georgia.

The theme is Knowing God a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship and the 17th launches the conference in a

Spanish edition in the daytime, it'll be a Spanish -speaking edition of the G3 conference and then they begin in the

English language on the 17th of January at 7 p .m. when Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries will debate a

Muslim apologist and then on Thursday morning the 18th of January is when the

English -speaking edition of the conference begins and that conference will speakers such renowned speakers as Stephen Lawson, Cody Baucom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .P.

Charles Jr., Tim Challies, Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Mathenia, Michael Krueger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, Martha Peace, Justin Peters, and Stephen Nichols.

If you'd like to register for the G3 conference, go to g3conference .com. g3conference .com,

please, please, please tell them that you heard about them from Chris Aronson at Iron Trepans Iron Radio and also you can still register for an exhibitor's booth just like I am going to be manning there,

God willing, so if you have a business or a ministry that you want to promote at the

G3 conference, there's going to be thousands of people there, why not register for an exhibitor's booth so you could put your banner and have things on display, you can sell merchandise, you can pretty much do anything that a

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G3 conference. Now last but not least, please remember to donate to Iron Trepans Iron Radio if you want us to remain on the air.

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Iron Trepans Iron Radio. And if you want to advertise with us, send us an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put advertising in the subject line. That's also the email address where you could send a question to my guest,

John Sampson, who is pastor of King's Church Peoria, Arizona. He's an author having titles published with Solid Ground Christian Books, and he is going to be discussing now for the remainder of our program a tribute to R .C.

Sproul, how a former heretic was transformed theologically with the help of Dr. R .C. Sproul. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back, my dear friend,

John Sampson, to Iron Trepans Iron Radio. Oh, it's great to be with you, Chris. Thanks for having me on.

And if anybody would like to join us, our email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Well, very briefly for those of our listeners who are new listeners who haven't heard you yet and not sure who you are, why don't you tell our listeners about King's Church in Peoria, Arizona?

Yeah, we would describe ourselves as a Reformed Baptist Church here in town and greater

Phoenix area, and really just starting from scratch in our home, moved into a facility, and it's actually a senior living facility, although there's a real great spectrum of people that come.

So don't think it's only elderly people that are in the meeting itself. We just meet there and have a

Sunday school and the main worship service on a Sunday and Wednesday night as well.

So excited about what has happened and what we're going into in the new year.

So everyone's welcome. Amen. And for those of you who want to find out more about the

King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, just go to kingschurchaz .com, kingschurchaz .com,

and of course there's no apostrophe in a URL, so it's just kingschurchaz .com without the apostrophe.

Well, the only thing I can say to you, brother, about the title, there's only one word

I disagree with in the title about how a former heretic was transformed theologically with the help of Dr.

R .C. Sproul, is the word former. That's right.

I'm only kidding, because obviously without the word former, the rest of it doesn't make sense, because Dr. Sproul's ministry and preaching and teaching and writing did help transform your theology.

And for our listeners who don't know this, because you haven't said it yet, later on when this live show is over, if you want to look up John Samson's previous interviews, especially his testimony, go to irontrepanzyronradio .com

and go to the past programs podcast archive in the top right corner and just type in the search engine

S -A -M -S -O -N for John's last name, Samson, and you will find out that he is a former

Word of Faith teacher, preacher, pastor, and talk show host.

TV talk show host, and the Lord providentially brought theologically sound people into his life through their preaching, teaching, and writing, and one of them was

Dr. R .C. Sproul. Tell us about how you first learned about our dear brother who just went home to be with the

Lord last Thursday. Well I had been introduced to his ministry through a teaching series that really was,

I found out later, was one of the big ones of his entire ministry, The Holiness of God. I was greatly impacted by that, and I look back and think,

I saw it, I watched it, I was impacted, but I didn't really see it, because it, although I believe what

I was hearing, I didn't trace out all of the implications of what I saw and heard and was still in that movement, and I look back and wonder if I was a genuine

Christian at all, because I did believe in the Trinity, did believe in the cross of Christ as I understand it now, taught repentance as well as faith, and that was kind of unusual in that setting.

I saw there was the ability to hold on to some soundness of doctrine, even though I look back and just am aghast at what

I did believe as well. It was huge errors, a huge overemphasis on many different things.

I didn't believe some of the craziness that is associated with some parts of it, but I was certainly not someone who

I would now invite into my own church to preach, and what happened was Dr.

Sproul, through Ligonier Ministries, was having a conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, which is not too far from me, and I was really wanting to hear him, because I had been impacted by the

Holiness of God teaching, but my heart sank when I saw what he's going to be coming from Florida to talk about, and that was chosen by God, predestination, and it was the year 2000, and I was thinking, why would a man of that caliber, because I certainly did respect him, why would he be flying from Florida to Arizona to talk about something that hadn't we got over as the church?

This was something that was emphasized centuries before he's coming to speak on this.

I thought, there's so many more important things to talk about than predestination and all of this, and I was in two minds as to whether or not

I would go because of that. And you did go, thanks be to God, providentially?

Yes, I did, and I was more than prepared for it to be a short stay in the meeting, because the moment he would get into just quoting the theologians of the past, the

Luthers, the Calvins, and the Jonathan Edwards, I thought, you know what, unless you can show me this in the

Bible, I'm really not interested, and so I sat on the back expecting to be leaving after about 25 minutes, if that was the direction the discussion went in.

It never did, he just opened up his Bible and started teaching, and if you could put a camera on me at that time, you'd have seen me kind of white, because I was not enjoying this experience, because he was quoting the scriptures, the scriptures

I knew, but he was showing me through his teaching that he was taking them in context, and I wasn't.

I was a pastor, I had been trained in ministry, many of my teachers at the

Bible seminary I went to in England were Reformed. I look back and see the hand of God in that, so I did have a certain respect for these people.

I just thought they were greatly deceived and believed archaic doctrine rather than what the

Bible actually taught, and I was really not enjoying the experience, because I was seeing that he was doing something that I didn't expect him to do, taking the scripture in that context and showing me that I wasn't, and then what really intrigued me, this was a

Friday night and then a Saturday teaching he was doing, he was inviting people to come back if they had any questions, and I thought, well, that's good of him, his house of cards is going to be shown to be exactly that in the morning when we have this question and answer session, and I thought

I'm going to go and see him fall apart when the big questions are asked, and that's not what happened of course.

He fielded these questions in his jovial way, but was militant in just going to the text of the scripture and saying what the text said in its context, and he was quoting verses like John 3, 16, and I thought, what can he tell me?

I'm a pastor, there's about 300 people in our church, and I thought I had a sound understanding of the scripture, and what was happening was he was showing me that I didn't even understand the verse

I could quote in my sleep. Because I could quote it, I thought I didn't need to study it, and he was just exposing, as time went on, more and more and more of my error, and what happened,

Chris, was it just sparked this determination in me. I want to know the truth, and I didn't leave that two -day conference convinced that he was right, but it sure shook me up to the point where I said to myself, self, you need to study this, and so I ordered everything

I could that Ligonier had available, and I didn't talk to anyone about it, just shut myself up with the

Lord in that sense of, I need to study this out, and for six or eight, nine months,

I was doing exactly that. I was teaching other things at the time, but in my spare time, going over this material from Dr.

Sproul, and over that period of time, I came to realize he was right,

I was wrong, and that's hard when you're a pastor, and you've not only believed other things, but you've taught other things, and over that period,

I came to see the Reformed teaching that he was exposing was, in fact, true, and I became a convinced

Reformed man through Dr. Sproul. Later, other people became involved in my understanding, but certainly it was

Dr. Sproul who was the initiator in really changing my entire life and ministry to the point where I felt really the loss of Dr.

Sproul, even though I met him only a few times personally, I felt his loss to us very deeply, as if he was my own family.

Amen, and in fact, what you're telling me reminded me of a friend of mine who is not only a

Christian attorney, but an elder in an Assemblies of God congregation. He was never, to my knowledge, quite in an extreme group that was as severely heretical as the

Word of Faith movement, but an Arminian Pentecostal, and he remains a

Pentecostal, but back in, I think it was 2007, it might have been before that, but for Christmas, I handed him a book, and he said to me, oh, are you kidding me?

More propaganda? You and your Calvinist propaganda? You're always pushing it on me. I gave him a copy of what was then called

Grace Unknown by R .C. Sproul. It's now renamed What Is Reform Theology, and it slipped my mind after I gave it to him.

I wasn't really thinking about it much, and then I get a call in the early afternoon of New Year's Day, and it was him, my friend, and he said,

Chris, I haven't been asleep in practically two days now. I couldn't put this book down that you gave me.

I believe every word now. I'm reformed. So quite a remarkably gifted man

Dr. Sproul was, and he is obviously sorely missed and will be for quite a long time, and just I thank

God that I had the opportunity not only to interview him, but also to receive a glowing commendation from him after the interview that is now posted on, and has been posted on my

Facebook masthead for some years now ever since I had a Facebook page, and also on my Iron Trip and Zion Radio website, but you also received a commendation from him that I want you to read when we return from our break.

I want you to read it to our audience. One of the reasons why this is pretty remarkable, not that our guest

John Sampson's book does not deserve accolades from someone as notable as Dr.

Sproul, but R .C. Sproul did not hand out commendations and endorsements very easily.

He was very reserved in particular in the way that he did that, and the number of times he did that, which is one of the reasons

I am still dancing a jig every time I look at his endorsement that he gave to me, that he wrote for me, because I was not expecting one from him knowing that he did not very frequently endorse things unless close friends of his had written something.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people, even some who are reformed, whose names pop up endorsing things and you're scratching your head, what on earth did this person endorse that for?

I mean, pretty soon you're going to see some of these people's endorsements on a new edition of Mein Kampf, but it's just like bizarre sometimes, but R .C.

was not like that at all. He was very particular, and when we come back from the break,

I want you to read that endorsement that he wrote, but we're going to our final break right now.

If anybody wants to join us, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

Don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back with John Sampson and how this former heretic had his theology transformed by Dr.

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Call Lynbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402, that's 516 -599 -9402, or visit lynbrookbaptist .org,

that's lynbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnsen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the last hour of the program with about 25 minutes to go is

Pastor John Sampson of King's Church Peoria, Arizona. We are discussing how a former heretic was transformed theologically with the help of Dr.

R .C. Sproul, and Dr., or should I say Pastor John Sampson, was a

Word of Faith Pentecostal pastor and TV talk show host, and then

God providentially brought men into his life, like Dr. Sproul, whose preaching and teaching and writing helped to transform his thinking.

And one of the last things that our guest has written, Pastor John Sampson, is a book on the

Solas of the Reformation, and remarkably, providentially, before our dear, beloved mentor in the faith,

R .C. Sproul, departed this earth and entered into glory with Christ, the

Lord providentially put this booklet in the hands of Dr. Sproul, and the result is quite a blessing for our guest.

And first of all, tell us a little bit about this booklet that you wrote for the anniversary, the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation. What it was that, although there are many terrific books out there on the subject,

I found that when I handed some of them out to people, people were intimidated with the size of them.

Some of them are, to me, just wonderful tomes on this vital issue, but some people will not read a book of 200 or more pages, and I thought, isn't there something out there that is just small enough that someone could read in about an hour that would cover the main issues of the

Reformation, the Solas, and really put it in a way that people can grasp? And I was looking, and I didn't really see anything, so I started writing and put it together, and that's what it is.

It's about 30, 31 pages, and it's like a long tract, but I was able to,

I think, to succinctly say what I wanted to say in that book, and so it's a short book, and it's deliberately short.

You can read it in less than an hour. So you sent this booklet to Dr.

Sproul not long ago, and how long ago approximately was this?

The book came out in June, and a couple of weeks after it came out, I sent it to him, and I just put a note with it saying, you may never get time to read this, but you've had such an impact in my life, and there's testimony to that in the book here, but thank

God for your ministry. Then, two weeks later, I've actually made the short walk from my office to my wall near the kitchen, and there my wife has made this into a framed thing on my wall of Dr.

Sproul's reply he wrote personally to me, and do you want me to just read what he said? Oh, yeah, definitely.

Okay. Dear John, what the heck is this? That's something else.

Oh, it's good to have a sense of humor. And then you got a restraining order after that, right? Please stop sending these things.

Do you not have a spell check? No, it all fits.

One of the things I loved about Dr. Sproul was he was engaging and had a wonderful sense of humor, and that came out so often, and he wrote this.

Dear John, it was a delight to receive your book, The Five Solas, Standing Together Alone, and your note tracing your journey of faith, finally landing at the biblical truth as expressed in the

Reformed Faith. It is an honor to be included in the dedication of your book, along with James White.

You have succinctly and clearly distilled the essence of the solas. May God mightily use your book to his glory.

Thank you for the encouragement in the gospel you've brought to me in Christ, R .C.

Sproul. Wow, that is just so powerful, and I hope, and I'm sure, I'm confident that Solid Ground Christian Books, now in the newer editions of that booklet, have that printed on the booklet.

I'm not sure of that, but that's certainly a definite possibility. Oh, I'm sure that Mike Gadosh at Solid Ground Christian Books will do that when the new printing run comes about.

That would be insanity if he didn't put that on there. Dr. Sproul is so gracious.

I remember back in 2003, this was two and a half years after I was first encountered

Dr. Sproul, and he was teaching in Colorado, and I flew out. It's not that far, and I thought, what can

I do to say thank you? I'm sure he gets a lot of negative writing, you know, people writing to him, but maybe some people writing to him and saying something positive, but what can

I do to bless him? I thought, I know what I can do. I'll write a little note in a card, and I'll save up.

I was able to do this, put a hundred dollar bill in the card and just say, please, just take

Vesta out one night and just understand you've impacted a ministry many times over, but I'm one of them, and please just enjoy a night out with Vesta.

And I just said, John Sampson and the name of the church. I didn't put any address. You know what happened? What? Two weeks later,

I got another letter from him, and it said, obviously what had happened was he told someone to track me down and was able to track me down and the church and the address.

I'd never put an address on there, and send me a letter saying, thank you so much.

It was great to hear the testimony of how God had used Ligonier Ministries in your life. He didn't even say his own name,

Ligonier Ministries, and then he said I was able to take Vesta out to a wonderful French restaurant.

We had a beautiful meal, and we were delighted to do that in lieu of how

God had impacted your life through Ligonier. He's just a gracious man. Wow, I didn't even know that story.

That's something new to me. I don't know if you saw the debate that I arranged for Dr.

James R. White years ago, and I can't remember which one it was, but during the introductions, as I usually do,

I had a little stand -up comedy routine. Among James White's many books is the book that he wrote,

Is That Mormon, My Brother? I said that Dr.

White had actually written a biography about me called Is That Moron, My Brother?

When I was reading the accolades for the book on the back cover, one of them was, and a prison inmate writes, thank you so much for Is That Moron, My Brother?

The pages are so soft and absorbent. But anyway,

I digress. That has nothing to do with our topic. But you, and I have to repeat to our listeners, you have to look up on Iron Sherpa Design Radio Pastor John Sampson's testimony because people might not realize the magnitude of the transformation that took place in your life as a result of the teaching of folks like R .C.

Sproul. And it seems, from what you said, R .C. Sproul's teaching seemed to be, as far as Reform Theology goes, the very first hammer blow onto your very deeply heretical beliefs.

Yeah, what happened was he impacted me more than anyone, and other people became involved.

James White was one of them. I read some of James Montgomery Boyce at the time.

I remember some of his material really impacted me. But really, when I began to see that God was sovereign, that's almost the anathema statement in the

Word of Faith movement. And when you see that He's sovereign, first of all, I thought, well, yeah,

He's sovereign in salvation, okay? I concede that. And if I can look back now,

I would say it's like this huge rock of God's sovereignty was thrown in my theological lake, if you like.

And I thought, well, okay, I see that. There's this stone. And I didn't realize the ripple effects.

Oh, my goodness, He's sovereign here as well, and He's sovereign there. And He's sovereign in the

Church, and He's sovereign over all things. And it became this dramatic effect over time that cleared out so much of my really error -filled thinking.

And it was that stone of God's sovereignty. And I realized this God is one who plays for keeps, who gets

His will done every time. And that, again, is an anathema in what I was involved in.

It was the idea is God's trying all He can, and there's certain laws in the universe, and one of them is the power of your words.

And if you can align yourself with what God says, then things can happen, miracles can happen.

And all of that fell by the wayside when I understood this God is sovereign.

And He heals people who didn't even know who Jesus was. And remember the blind man, he didn't even know that Jesus was the

Son of God. He just received healing from God. And again, you look at your Bible, and I realized

I thought I was a word, talking of the Word of God, a word person. But in that environment,

I have to concede I was a favorite word person. There were scriptures that we either ignored completely or just tried to explain away.

But now I can sit with my Bible and read all of it, and believe all of it, and in context see that this

God of both the Old and New Testament is the one who rules and reigns, who says something, and every will

He has comes to pass. Every decreed statement from eternity that He will say, this one shall be mine, that one shall be mine, this shall happen, that shall happen.

Isaiah 46 is just one of the passages that says this is the God of the Bible. And I realized, this is a shocking statement,

I was not understanding who God was to any degree at all. And heresy is probably the right word to put on that.

And I look back and just, with my now reformed thinking, this is amazing.

God can save and rescue people, not only from a life of drugs, and sex, and pornography, and some of the great testaments we hear, but deep, dark deception to the point where you're a pastor in the movement.

You're having meals with people that I now think, gosh, he was in my home, he's got this mega

TV ministry now, and he stayed in my house many times. And I think, God, you are so gracious, because so many of the people

I talk to, and former pastors, will not even allow me to say, can we go to the scriptures and talk about this?

They think they have the truth, and they're not open. The fact that I was open is evidence of God's mercy and his power to reveal himself.

Not my wits, not my intellectual ability. My intellectual ability had led me into deception, but God brought me out, and that is what reformed theology is all about.

Now, one of the core teachings of Christianity, as even

Mike Gadosh pointed out in the first hour, and as you are fully aware, is the humanity of Jesus Christ, that God became man in the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, and he was fully man in addition to being fully

God. But, as you are also aware, the Word of Faith movement takes this to an extremely disturbing and heretical and, dare

I say, blasphemous level, where the God, the Father, is even portrayed in their teaching as much more like us than the

Bible teaches, and that we are much more like him than the Bible teaches. This is really at the root of some of the deepest and darkest and most frightening and horrifying teachings of the

Word of Faith movement, is it not? You're absolutely right. I could talk for a lot of time about that, and you talk of some of the people in the movement saying what they said, and back then

I shuddered at some of the things that were said. The only reason I was able to stay in was there was not some headquarters that said, you have to believe what

Brother Big Shot says or Sister Satellite says. You know, Kenneth Hague and Kenneth Copeland have made some very, very horrendously heretical statements about God, describing

God as someone who's about five foot ten, and having a hand span just like his, and so it goes on.

Very much akin to Mormonism, the idea of this very, very small

God who's a lot like us. Or even Greek and Roman idolatry and pagan worship.

Yeah, very, very true, and when you get the bigness of God right, if you get

God wrong, it doesn't matter what else you get right. And I often portray the idea of buttoning a shirt.

If you get the wrong button in the wrong hole at the top, it's going to be wrong all the way down.

You've got to understand who this God is, and I think, as I look back on Dr.

Sproul's ministry, he really got God right, and he emphasized the fact that though in many different Christian realms and the whole spectrum of Christianity, there's nothing distinct about the

Reformed view of God, and yet if he was to be pressed, what is the distinction about Reformed theology?

He would say it's the view of God, and he went on to say that sounds like a contradiction, but it's simply this.

When we write out our theology and we say on page one that God is holy and majestic and sovereign over all things, we don't forget that when we come to page 18 and talk about other issues like eschatology and the end times and his rule in creation and salvation and all of these things.

And I think Dr. Sproul, more than anyone in my life, really taught me rightly about God, and now he sees him face to face.

He sees the Lord Jesus and his journey on earth is over, and he's gone to his reward, but he's left an amazing legacy, and I'm just one of many thousands who've been impacted, and I'm so glad that I was...

One of the blessings of what I read to you about Dr. Sproul's endorsement was the line that he says, thank you.

He's talking to me. Thank you for the encouragement you brought to me, and I'm thinking that is so amazing that I could encourage this mighty man of God somehow.

That something I've said, something I've written, has blessed this man, has impacted my life so dramatically.

Yeah, I felt the same way when I was interviewing him, and that's the way he basically signed off.

Instead of saying, and then there would be nothing wrong with just saying you're welcome when

I thanked him for being on. He said thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris, for having me on the program, and with a sincerity that was palpable.

One thing that maybe I don't think I've shared as well was, I think around 2003, if I remember right,

I got a letter from Ligonier saying, if you're a pastor, come out for our first ever pastor's conference in Sanford, Florida, where their ministry is based, and they said, just get yourself here, and I thought, you know what, he's got five days.

He's making himself available. I'd love to just go and sit under his ministry for that time.

Well, I did. I ended up flying out there for this conference. We weren't told too much about how things would work, and we were told we might have to share a room with another man, another pastor, keep the cost down.

When I got there, here's the announcement. Every one of these pastors, there was around 200 of them, had their own rooms, and he said,

I put this to the board of directors at Ligonier some years ago, and they gracefully have made funds available so that you each have your own room for five days, all your board, all your meals are paid for for the five days.

Just sit back. You might have thought you have to come up with money for food. We're paying for that, and each of you are now receiving a $200 gift certificate for anything you need at Ligonier.

We're here for you. You guys are on the front lines. I've had this in my heart to do for years. We're finally doing it.

We want to bless you. You're on the front line. So many are leaving the ministry, and we just want to pour our hearts into you, and I've got two other guys who are going to be here teaching what we feel are the most important things you need to know as pastors to encourage you so that you can order your church right according to biblical parameters.

That's just the guy he is, and that sort of thing is going to come out more and more as we hear of the legacy of R .C.

Sproul. He loved people. He loved pastors, and he was...

I left there just shaking my head thinking, I never saw any of that in my former association with the

Word of Faith. It was all about what can we get, and his was a giving ministry. Yeah, the entire

Word of Faith movement appears to be very largely based upon greed and egomaniacal narcissism, and it's really disturbing when you hear so many of the sermons that come from the pulpits of these men and women where you never hear the gospel.

I'm not saying that you never, ever, ever hear the gospel in their pulpits, but what

I'm saying is if you listen to them even very frequently, you will likely not hear the gospel.

Or you hear something perverted. Yeah, a perverted gospel. And Rodney Howard Brown, I saw him twice.

The only reason I saw him is because two people that I know wanted to see and hear with their own ears so that it could warn others without relying on hearsay, and the man never brought up a call to repentance from sin.

He never brought up the great exchange of our sins being imputed to Christ and Christ's righteousness being imputed to us on Calvary.

He never brought up the vital aspects of the faith. It was all about their bizarre and unbiblical and weird experience that they were trying to lull, or he was trying to lull his listeners into accepting, opening themselves up to a demonic experience.

Of course, he would never have identified it that way, but that's what I believe it is.

That actually brings me to something. How much of this do you think is just charlatanry and hoaxterism, if that's even a word, or hucksterism or whatever you want to call it?

And how much is actual demonic activity, I mean, I know you're not omniscient, but in your opinion, from being around it so often?

It's hard to judge people's hearts. I think there are some people who, if you can think through the phrase, genuinely deceive.

In other words, they actually believe the silly things they're espousing. I think there are people like that.

I think there are definite charlatans who know they are just fleecing the sheep.

One of the things I see clearly in Second Timothy now is that it says in the last days, there will be people who are going from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

And so they deceive themselves. And that's why they can look in the camera and think, I can take the last 10 bucks of the grandma because I believe these laws will work.

And there are people like that. But the other side of it is Second Timothy 4, the next chapter, which says that people will, in the last days, heap up for themselves, teachers.

And so it's not just the man behind the microphone that's at fault. The people want that man to say what he's saying, because they want what he's selling in that sense.

And so rather than thinking that all these people in the crowd are victims, they're just as much guilty in God's sight because they're wanting the blessings of God without the

God of blessing. They want to be able to give their $100 and get $100 ,000 in return.

And you hear the one testimony where something like that happened. You don't hear it for the people that are moving out of their house because they gave their last money to the charlatan.

And that's not something that gets, you know, what really bugs me is when you see someone talking about a little boy, little girl, it plays on the emotions, who had just maybe a year to live and they were healed by the

Lord. I don't doubt that God is so merciful that those things happen. I've seen them happen in my own life and ministry.

But you don't see the supposed man of God showing up for a photo opportunity when there's the funeral.

And I look back and I see the hand of God in raising people who were, you think it's all over, they're going to die, and God was absolutely merciful.

But there's also the 28 other little girls and boys who, well, you have to have the funeral.

And there, the word of faith can only bring people into bondage. You didn't do enough. You didn't work the laws enough.

You didn't confess God's word enough. And it's the most horrendous, hellish, demonic bondage imaginable.

And they've got to live the rest of their life saying, I let Satan win over my boy, over my daughter.

And it's horrendous. Now I look back and I think I prepared people only for healing, but not for the sovereignty of God, where he actually takes someone home to be with him.

And so to answer your question, I think there's always a mixture of both. And Satan works through the desires of people, and the person can have hell -centered motivations, and the demonic can work through that.

But there's also people who are just thinking that this is what the Bible says, because they've heard nothing else.

They've been exposed to nothing else. And in that environment, listening to something else is an anathema, because it sounds like unbelief to them to say that God is sovereign.

Amen. So my answer is there's a real mixture, and Satan will work through people who believe lies, as well as through people who know they are just fooling people.

And we're out of time, brother, and I know that your website for King's Church in Peoria, Arizona is kingschurchaz .com,

K -I -N -G -S -C -H -U -R -C -H -A -Z, for arizona .com.

And also, let's not forget, the website for Ligonier Ministries, the ministry founded by the late Dr. R .C.

Sproul, is ligonier .org, L -I -G -O -N -I -E -R .org. Thank you so much,

John Sampson, for being on the program today. I want to thank everybody who listened today. I hope you all have a blessed

Christmas, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater