January 31, 2017 Show with Interviews from the 2017 G3 Conference! Part 2: Phil Johnson, Brandon & Justin Elixson, Mike Gaydosh, and Kofi Adu-Boahen

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, quote, We are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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 Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 31st day of January 2017, the very last day of January.

And as I did yesterday, I am going to resume playing interviews

I conducted at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. This is a conference that is held annually, and the most recent one, the first one that I ever attended, was held between January 19th and the 21st of this year.

And Pastor Josh Bice of Praise Mill Baptist Church is the founder and director of this conference series.

There were, I believe, 19 different speakers at this conference. I wish that I had the opportunity to interview all of them, but I did not.

But I interviewed a number of them, and I also interviewed a number of you who attended the conference, you the listeners of Iron Sharpens Iron, some of whom

I had never even heard from before, and some of whom I did hear from due to your submitting questions for our guests on occasion.

But it was a true joy and a blessing for me to be at this conference, rooted in the doctrines of sovereign grace, and this year's conference was in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation. But we are going to hear now, today, the first interview

I'm going to play, is the interview I conducted with Phil Johnson.

And Phil Johnson, as many of you know, is the executive director of Grace to You Ministries.

This is the ministry, the teaching, preaching, and literary and media ministry of John MacArthur, world -renowned

TV and radio evangelist and author and pastor. And I hope that you enjoy this interview that I conducted with Phil Johnson.

So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the blessing. Well, I am honored to finally, for the first time, meet face -to -face here at the

G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, my friend Phil Johnson, who has been a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron many times, going all the way back to the old program of broadcasting of New York on WNYG and WGBB.

And now we're finally meeting face -to -face, and I have the opportunity to interview him for the first time while looking at him.

And it's great to have you back on Iron Sharpens Iron. Phil Johnson, the executive director of Grace to You Ministries.

Thank you. I'm glad to be here, and glad to meet you. I mean, we've been friends for, it seems like, more than a decade, probably 15 years or longer.

And it is the first time we've actually met face -to -face. Yes, it is pretty amazing. And Dr.

John MacArthur is a very well -known, not only author and conference speaker, and now, over the years, more recently, has graduated from radio, even into television now, and heard worldwide and seen worldwide.

Give us, our listeners, some of the unique aspects of Grace to You that may set it apart from some of the other things that they may hear on radio or witness on television.

Well, it's in -depth Bible teaching, and literally, verse by verse. John has preached literally through the entire

New Testament, covering every single verse. And our broadcast reflects that.

We take the audio recordings of sermons he delivered as pastor of Grace Church over more than 40 years' time, and make the radio broadcast.

The heart of the radio broadcast is from those sermons, where he's doing biblical exposition. It's verse by verse.

Of course, he preaches about an hour, a sermon. And our radio broadcast is daily, and it's only a half hour.

So, you get about a half a sermon every day, but I don't think most listeners even realize that, because John's preaching is so well -ordered.

There's always a break, a place where he changes subjects or goes to the next point, where we can break the broadcast and, you know, pick it up tomorrow where we left off.

And we do series that typically last two to three weeks. So, it'll be a bite -sized series and passage of Scripture, that if you stay with us daily over two or three weeks' time, you'll get a really thorough exposition of the passage.

Yeah, for some reason, I don't know, the sound changed a bit on my end, in my headphones. I don't know if that is reflective of anything else.

But, I don't know if you stepped on a wire or anything, Eric. I think it's okay. Okay. But, John MacArthur has been such a blessing to me personally.

I can remember, as a very new Christian in the 1980s, discovering him and his writing, even before I ever heard him on the radio.

I had been given, as a gift, the book, The Gospel According to Jesus.

Yes. And it really radically transformed my understanding of a lot of things. That's my favorite, of course, of all his books.

It's the book that brought John and me together, actually. When I was working as a youth pastor in the late 70s and up through 1981, and teaching a group of kids who, for the most part, had grown up in the church, and believed they were

Christians because they'd prayed a prayer and asked Jesus into their hearts. Or, they sat on their mother's lap, when they were too young to even remember it, and prayed some sort of prayer, and it was on that experience that they didn't even remember that they hung the hopes of their salvation.

And I began to notice that most of my students weren't really any different from secular high school students, and I really began to wonder about their salvation.

Started preaching through 1 John, and began to get a lot of pushback from parents, when these kids began to be converted.

And they would go home and tell their mom, you know, I became a Christian really for the first time. And their parents would call me up to argue, and say,

I don't know what you're teaching, but I remember when my child was 2 years old, and I led him in a prayer to invite

Jesus into his heart. And you're trying to get him to believe he's not really saved. And I try to handle those as tenderly as possible, without getting into a fight with the parents.

But an amazing thing happened, because their lives would change once they were truly converted.

And you could see the difference, and even the parents came around and said, wow, yeah, I mean, he really is a

Christian now in a way that he never was. I can see the fruit of faith in his life. And so I was troubled by this notion that salvation is as simple as, you know, just praying a prayer and asking

Jesus into your heart. And trying to teach in an environment where I was getting some pushback on that.

And I began to listen to John MacArthur during those years on a regular basis. And he was teaching pretty much as I had through 1

John, only much better. And I was learning so much from him, and I thought, if I ever meet him,

I'm going to suggest that he do a book on this subject. And my background was editing.

I was a book editor at Moody Press. And when Moody started the MacArthur New Testament commentary series, they sponsored a meeting that brought me and John together face -to -face for the first time.

And I sat through this meeting and didn't say a lot and all that. But afterwards, and everybody was sort of walking around, you know, greeting each other and having warm fellowship,

I sort of snuck over to John and said, you know, I listen to you all the time, and you need to do a book on the lordship salvation controversy.

And he knew exactly what I was talking about, and he said, you know, I intend to do a book like that. He said, I even have a title in mind,

The Gospel According to Jesus. And it was that same day, actually, that Moody Press offered me a position as acquisitions editor, if I would come back to work for them.

I had worked for them before, then I went to be a youth pastor. They said, we'd like you to be our acquisitions editor.

And John knew that they were courting me for that job, and so he said to me, if you accept that job as Moody's acquisitions editor, you give me a call, because I would love to do that book, and you're the only editor

I've ever met who's expressed an interest in it, you know. And so I said yes to Moody, and my first day on the job, the very first thing

I did was write a contract for The Gospel According to Jesus. Oh, praise God. You know, this has relevance to what we are doing here at G3, because this is the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation, and that is why G3 is specifically having this gathering to celebrate and honor that.

And it seems that that whole controversy comes from a total misunderstanding of Sola Fide.

Yeah, that's exactly right. It's a very watered -down and misunderstood application of what it means to be justified by faith alone.

When we say we're justified by faith alone, what we mean is that the ground on which God declares us righteous is not our own righteousness, it's not our works, it's the works of Christ on our behalf.

But what it doesn't mean, that doesn't mean then that works then forever become optional, you shouldn't necessarily expect to see any good works in your life.

What we teach is that when you are justified, the process of sanctification begins, and the natural fruit of that will be good works.

We're saved unto good works. So the difference between Catholics and Protestants wasn't about whether Christians should do good works, it's about whether our justification hinges on that.

And the real question boils down to this, are works, good works, the reason or the fruit of our justification?

And of course the Protestants said, no, the good works we do are the fruit of God's work in us.

They come after justification. It's properly called sanctification. And the only good works that are involved in justification are the works of Christ, which become the ground on which we are declared righteous.

And the people who teach a sort of watered down, you know, no lordship view of salvation, they speak of justification, but they treat it as something so utterly and radically disconnected from sanctification that you could possibly have justification without our being sanctified.

And they treat sanctification as a kind of second level Christian experience. You're saved by faith, but it takes either a different step of faith or more faith or a different kind of faith to launch you into that next level where you begin to be sanctified.

Yeah, it's absolutely mystifying to me that so many biblically literate Christians, even conservative

Christians, those who are passionate about biblical inerrancy, those who are even from some strains and wings of fundamentalism, would actually vilify

Dr. MacArthur and fellow Christians who believe simply that a good tree bears good fruit.

Yeah, yeah, because Jesus did say that, didn't he? But, you know, it was like that at first. When that book was first released, it unleashed a controversy that lasted two or three years.

Dr. Charles Ryrie wrote a response called So Great Salvation in which he disagreed with John MacArthur's position.

Zane Hodges wrote a book in which he more radically disagreed with John MacArthur's position. Those two books were supposedly answers to the gospel according to Jesus.

Was Charles Stanley's book Eternal Security in some way? Yeah, but it wasn't a major factor in the lordship controversy, but it's true.

He took the same position as, you know, Zane Hodges, really, which is a more radical position even than Charles Ryrie took.

Right, right. John MacArthur answered those two books with a sequel to The Gospel According to Jesus.

It was originally titled Faith Works and then later retitled The Gospel According to the

Apostles and subtitled Faith Works. So it was The Gospel According to Jesus and The Gospel According to the

Apostles. After The Gospel According to the Apostles, it was such a thorough—he went through in detail

Charles Ryrie's book and Zane Hodges' book, and there must be 500 or 600 footnotes in that book where he answers their arguments in detail.

And after that, nobody bothered to argue the point again. There are still people who believe that the lordship of Christ is extraneous to the gospel, that you don't have to even acknowledge the lordship of Christ in order to be a

Christian, which seems to me a bizarre idea because the most fundamental Christian confession is

Jesus is Lord. But they see the lordship of Christ as a post -conversion option that you can buy into if you choose, but maybe you won't and some people never do.

That's become such a minority position that really there's only, as far as I know, one organization that is devoted to the dissemination of that false teaching and then scattered people here and there who are sort of people who never read much about the controversy and haven't followed it closely who still buy into the old teaching.

But that view, which was, I think for a time in the 60s and 70s, probably the majority view among evangelicals, it's nearly dead, and I think that's largely thanks to John MacArthur's two books and the fact that he brought that debate out into the forefront of the evangelical discussion and most people were able to see exactly what you said, that it's really patently unbiblical to argue that a good tree doesn't necessarily bear good fruit.

Utterly astonishing, especially from the lips of men who should clearly know better.

Right. Well, as you were speaking earlier, and I know that you're going to be speaking again in a

Q &A session and I can't keep you much longer, but this reminder of the

Protestant Reformation that we are having perhaps more significantly this year is because it's reached a 500 mark, 500th anniversary, is just as much, wouldn't you agree, a reminder to the

Church of Rome that they need to repent and those within it. But really, evangelicalism is just as much in the need for repentance and reformation today as the

Church of Rome, isn't it? Yeah, there's no question about that. In fact, I said this very thing in my message earlier today, that if you really look honestly at contemporary

American evangelicalism, the movement as a big movement that's represented by Christianity Today magazine and the broad thinking evangelicalism, it's really, as a movement, more in need of reformation than the medieval

Catholic Church was when Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the castle door at Wittenberg.

It's uncanny to me. I mean, look, Luther was, what motivated him, his understanding of justification by faith actually came later.

What motivated him to write the 95 Theses was Tetzel, who was selling indulgences for money, and he saw him as bilking the

German people with false promises of forgiveness of sins in order to gather money to build the

St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome. And so there's one guy,

Tetzel, who stirred up Luther to spark the Reformation. You can turn on TBN or any of the big charismatic television networks, and you will see a parade nonstop of Protestant charismatic

Tetzels who, instead of selling the forgiveness of sins, they're selling the promise that, you know, if you plant a seed faith offering,

God will grant you riches and new cars and all that sort of stuff. It's far more crass, really, than what

Tetzel was doing. And the Protestant Church just sort of yawns and takes it in stride.

And it's, honestly, conservative evangelicalism, and I specifically say conservative evangelicalism, today, for the most part, is in a worse state spiritually than Rome was when

Luther came on the scene. Yeah, they tragically think sola fide means that we now have a license to licentiousness.

Yeah, yeah. Don't understand at all. They don't understand sola scriptura, either. I mean, you listen to the average preacher today, and he's preaching on movie themes, you know, whatever the latest blockbuster was, or he's exegeting his own dreams, or, you know, his own vision casting, and all of that.

And to find men who actually open the Word of God and declare the truth that's in it is pretty hard, really.

In fact, grace to you, we have listeners, of course, all over the world, and the most common request we get is from people who say, help us find a church where they teach the

Bible. It's just hard to find. Now, you listen to these young churchmen, the guys who are planting churches and building megachurches, and they'll all tell you that, oh, we don't do church like everybody else.

We're not your grandma's church, you know. Here we have entertaining music and coffee and everything slick and cool, and they're basically putting on a show of entertainment for people and claiming that this is unique.

But I'll tell you what's really unique and hard to find is a church where a man mounts the pulpit, opens the

Word of God, and declares the truth with clarity and conviction. It's hard to find. Well, you know something? You might be encouraged by this.

In fact, I know you'll be encouraged by this. The oldest daughter of the woman who led me to Christ actually admits that she does not believe she's born again, but she has a two -year -old son.

She wants to go back to church because she remembered being raised in a Reformed Baptist church, and there's something about that that she instinctively knows is a right thing to do, especially since she has a child now.

And her husband, who I believe is no kind of a believer, he may even be agnostic, is willing to go to church with them, with his wife and son.

And I was doing some searching for a theologically sound church in her area because they do not want to travel very far to go to a church, and I found one.

Keep in mind, this is a woman who even acknowledges that she is not born again.

She was very disappointed in the church because she didn't think that it was giving the reverence and respect due to God because of the casual atmosphere and nature of everyone there and the preacher wearing jeans and sneakers.

I mean, obviously, you could get caught up in superficial things as well, but there was something that blessed me about her great concern that this seemed to be like an informal, casual gathering.

I think that's far more widespread than you would imagine, that even unbelievers have some sense of what reverence for the

Lord looks like, and they see these narcissistic pastors with these very worldly churches, and they think that's a fake kind of Christianity.

And so it may be gathering crowds who love the entertainment, but I don't think churches like that are going to reach the world.

Now, I should say, because I don't want to sound totally negative, this is not a new problem.

When I first became a Christian, I spent a long time looking for a church where the Bible was believed and preached.

I came out of a liberal church where our Sunday school teachers were telling us— they were actually sowing skepticism, telling us we shouldn't take the

Bible too seriously. And so I started looking for a church in my hometown, which is

Tulsa, Oklahoma. It's kind of the charismatic capital of the world. Oral Roberts was there, and Copeland, and Hagen, and all these guys.

But if you ask me today, I could recommend probably six or seven really good churches in the

Tulsa area where the Bible is believed and preached. And so I think it's getting better, but I still long to see a widespread movement like the

Reformation where large numbers of Christians get serious about learning and obeying the

Word of God and honoring Christ in the way the church ought to. Now, before you go, I believe

I mentioned to you that Ligonier Ministries contacted me, and I was very honored and humbled and blown away by their specifically telling me that I was one of only a small handful of talk show hosts that they have contacted to interview

John MacArthur on a series of four books that Ligonier is publishing by Dr.

MacArthur. Tell us about this series of books. Ligonier took an inventory of all the sermons that John MacArthur has preached at the

Ligonier conferences over the years. So these are sermons that they recorded, and they own the master recordings to them.

And they grouped them together and found they fit pretty neatly into four categories.

There's one about the nature of God. That's the first book, and I think there's another one on probably the church and what it ought to be.

And I don't remember what all four subjects are, but they're doing them one at a time. The first one is done, actually, and my son was the editor on it.

I edit most of John's books, but I couldn't do that one, and so my son took over the project. Wow. John loved his work, and he may end up taking the mantle from me to edit

John's. John said to me, you know, he says, you're pretty good with language, but he said your son understands the vernacular.

Wow. And I said, yeah, well, he learned his literary skills reading the sports page. And John said, yeah, exactly, that's how it reads.

It's crystal clear. So it's a really good book, it is, and I say that with prejudice, obviously.

But I'm looking forward to the rest of the series. They'll be out, I think, over the next year or year and a half, four books.

The first one we're giving away through Grace to You, and if you're on our mailing list you will have already received an offer for a free copy of that book.

And then the other three will follow either later this year or over the next year and a half or two years.

So looking forward to that. Those were all messages that were delivered at Ligonier. So they're special messages that really are maybe a little bit more poignant than a typical sermon that you might hear from John MacArthur that's part of a series that he's doing.

But these were one -off messages that were given for a conference setting.

And so they're pretty powerful books. Looking forward to seeing all of those.

I'm looking forward to God willing interviewing Dr. MacArthur on the first and hopefully all four of those books.

And I know that your website is gty, for Grace to You, gty .org.

Any other contact information, URLs, or anything else that I should know about? No, actually from gty .org

you can get pretty much everywhere. There will be links from there to the

Master's Seminary, the Master's University, Grace Community Church. And at our website, thegracetogty .org,

there are all the sermons John's ever preached that are recorded. You can download for free.

There are multiple other resources, questions that listeners have sent in, common questions.

We keep all the answers to that on the web so you can search for questions. And you could peruse our website probably for three years, eight hours a day, and never run out of material to research with.

So it's a great website. How about the audio links to your sermons? They're there somewhere, and I can never remember the

URL. I don't put my own sermons online, but somebody else does. And if you do a Google search for my name,

Phil Johnson, and sermons, it comes up. Because you're actually leading worship services.

Yes, I teach one of the large fellowship groups, which is what we call our—basically it's an adult

Sunday school class. We meet in the gymnasium. We've got 400 people every Sunday, so it's like pastoring a small church.

And I teach in that group, and so my sermons are recorded. Somebody puts them online, and they're there.

Great. Well, I hope to be out, God willing, at some point in the future at the Shepherd's Conference or one of the other gatherings there at Grace Community Church.

And once again, it's an honor and privilege to have you this time face -to -face on Iron, Sharp, and Zion.

And you don't know—I can't even express in words how thankful and grateful to you and to God for you

I am that you've made yourself so accessible to Iron, Sharp, and Zion over the years. Anytime.

God bless you, brother. Thank you. All right. I could not help but chuckle when

I heard Phil Johnson describe the 400 -member

Sunday school class that he teaches as almost like a small church.

There are churches that could only dream of reaching the 400 -number mark in their congregation, especially those that tend to be more theologically sound.

But we're going to a break right now. We're going to come back after messages from our sponsors with some more of the interviews that I conducted at the

G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia. And keep in mind, I just want to remind you that the background noise that you're hearing, there's nothing wrong with my equipment or yours.

This is because we were conducting these interviews at a conference, typically during breaks, where there were thousands of people milling around and speaking to each other and so on, moving tables and chairs.

So you're going to have that on -site interview background noise that is just a part of the territory.

But we are going to be coming back, God willing, right after these messages. So please don't go away.

We have another interview in store for you here on Iron Sharpens Iron. And I look forward to being blessed myself by hearing the interview.

And in fact, I can't... This is great. I can't X out of something that is blocking my commercials.

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But we'll be right back after these messages, God willing, so don't go away. I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

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We are going to hear another interview that I hope you enjoy. This is an interview with the folks running

Grace Life Radio 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, which is a station that,

God willing, Iron Sharpens Iron will be also heard on, as I am being,

God willing, added to the lineup in just a week or so. You're going to be able to hear the pre -recorded broadcast of Iron Sharpens Iron every single day, twice a day, on this radio station.

And the thing that's blowing me away is the first slot that I have each day is prime real estate in the radio industry, 8 to 10 a .m.

morning drive time, and then they're repeating my program 8 to 10 p .m. But I hope that you enjoy this interview with Justin and Brandon Ellickson, and they are two wonderful brothers in Christ who love the doctrines of sovereign grace.

Here you go. I hope you enjoy it. This is Cyrus Arnson again, live from the G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, and I have with me at the

Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitor's booth a couple of guys that I am so delighted that I providentially, in God's good grace, met a couple of days ago.

And they are brothers, Brandon and Justin Ellickson, and they are running a radio station called

Grace Life Radio, that's 90 .1 FM, and it's in Florida, and we're going to hear more about this theologically reformed radio station.

And first of all, it's my honor and privilege to welcome you both to the Iron Sharpens Iron program.

Thank you. It's a privilege to be on with you. Good. Thank you. Before we even get into the Grace Life Radio, tell us exactly where you're from in Florida, and tell us something about your life growing up, what kind of religious background you're from, if any, and how the

Lord providentially drew you to himself, and how you basically got saved by his sovereign grace and embraced his son

Jesus Christ and his atoning death on Calvary. Well, we are from the north central

Florida area. We grew up in the smallest county in the state, rather backwoods part of Florida.

It looks a lot different where we are from than the postcards that you buy from the gas station in Florida, but it was a wonderful place to grow up.

We grew up in a Christian family. We were, you know, like many people in the area, in the

Bible Belt, we were in the church house every single time the doors were open. I was blessed and we were both blessed to grow up in a reformed

Baptist church, and so the great doctrines of grace were ingrained into us from a very early age.

Wow, great. Now, we were not without our issues inside of the local church.

We were a bunch of fallen individuals gathered together, so we had struggles like everyone else, and there was a big disconnect between the doctrine that was preached and the practice outside of the pulpit.

However, those foundational teachings of God's sovereignty and the goodness of salvation and hope in Christ alone were instilled in us early on in our family as well as in the church family.

To speak with myself personally, I was a classic false convert that grows up in a

Christian church and in a Christian family. I was very good at playing the part of the Christian, which stemmed from the pride in my fallen heart.

When you grow up in circles such as I did, you kind of find that I'm spending the most time around church people.

I certainly went to public school, but even the kids I hang around with at school, they were part of churches as well.

And so what the pride does inside of my heart and the hearts of many at that point is you recognize that in the circle that you're running in, if you really want to impress someone and have them to think well of you, you've just got to play the

Christian part. And so that's the way my flesh manifested itself. It wasn't until later on in life that God began to break me over my sin issues and I began to see my need of salvation.

I was baptized when I was six years old, and then I was baptized again when I was 11 years old in a rededication.

And then those two didn't stick, so I tried it again when I was 17 years old, and that was another emotional experience.

However, what happened is through God's providence, I met my wife, or who would be my wife, and met her father.

And through wanting to get to know them more, we wound up attending a conference in North Carolina. And on the way back home, a gentleman slipped me a

CD by a pastor I'd never heard of. His name was Paul Washer. And at the time,

I believed myself to be a Christian and did a really good job of playing the part. I knew how to answer the questions, and in fact,

I was teaching a youth group inside of the church I grew up in. And so I got back home, and my wife and I were dating at the time, and we were on our way to the

Christian bookstore in Gainesville, Florida. And I made it to about halfway there on the interstate, and we had plugged in that CD, and God broke me, my sin at that moment.

And with no preacher present, with no one leading me in a prayer, God saved me and did what was humanly impossible for me.

And I've never been the same since. And since that point, God has continued to give me a desire to know

Him, to know His Word. And now He's granted me the opportunity and the privilege to be able to preach His Word to a local church, which is the pinnacle of my life, to be able to serve

Him in that way. But also, He's granted me with a wife that is godly and children that I feel an incredible responsibility for.

And my current prayer for myself and my family is that one day my son will be my brother and my daughters will be my sisters.

Amen. Do you have a chance, while we are here at the G3 Conference, and Paul Washer is one of the speakers, do you have an opportunity to convey this to him?

Yes, sir. I've actually got to spend quite a bit of time with Paul Washer over the years. Shortly after God, I've obviously skipped over a lot of things in the summary of my life and testimony there, but we have a tendency to gravitate towards the men and the ministries that God uses in our life.

Paul Washer, I heard him preach the Gospel, but I also heard his heart for missions. And so, shortly after conversion,

God gave me a deep desire to be on mission. I didn't know where else to go. We had no pathway for that in my local church, so I reached out to HeartCry Mission Society.

At the time, they were based out of First Baptist Church in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and so I also reached out to them.

That was the first year that they had the true church conference in Muscle Shoals, and my wife and I attended that.

Later on, Muscle Shoals, Alabama, First Baptist Church would change names to Grace Life Church of the

Shoals, and that would ultimately be the church that is our parent church that planted the church that I now pastor.

In the meantime, working with the church in Muscle Shoals and really preparing myself before pastoring a church here in the

U .S., I was preparing to move to South America to do church planting work. I got to interact with Brother Paul and HeartCry, but it's always a wonderful thing to sit under him.

It's always an experience where you walk away feeling terrible about yourself and loving

Jesus more than you did when you showed up. I was just about to ask, is it possible to hear a sermon by Paul Washer and be satisfied with your life?

It's a unique thing about us Reform guys. That's one of the pinnacles of a church service for us is we walk away from conviction.

I've had this conversation with young men I'm discipling, and even one of the young men here.

After hearing a sermon like that, you kind of walk away. It's like, I don't really know what I feel so bad about, but I feel terrible, and it's great.

Paul Washer is an excellent x -ray machine for the sins and the inappropriate activities and ways of thinking that you still have attached to your mind and heart.

You don't have to walk out of hearing him speak. You have, obviously led by the

Holy Spirit, an urge to repent of those things, and he is definitely a gift from God.

But you are one of two brothers sitting in front of me. Were you the first or second?

By the way, for our listeners who did not know, this was Brandon Ellickson, and he's sitting next to his brother

Justin Ellickson, who came to realize that you were not truly a

Christian, even though you were raised that way, and really sought the Lord's forgiveness and repentance.

Was that you, Justin, first? Oh, absolutely. Oh, it was you first? Well, yes. I'm older. Much older.

And tell us about your story. Well, mine won't be near as elaborate, because as you can definitely tell, who has the gift of speech?

But yeah, I was actually saved when I was 22. I had just recently got married, and just like Brandon said, you just realize that you just played church for so long, and you just see that your sins, and you're trying to work, trying to atone for your own sins, and there's just no way.

You're in desperate need of a Savior. And again, being taught the doctrines of grace really since I was 10 years old, and all the sermons, they start rushing back to you, and you see those, and feel that conviction and need for a

Savior. Now, you were raised, as you both have said, in a church that is faithful to the doctrines we call the doctrines of sovereign grace, also nicknamed

Reformed theology, Calvinism, and I know that in the broad, or fairly large, even though we're a minority, the brethren that would hold to our theology are somewhat diverse, and there are folks that don't like those labels that still agree with us theologically.

But in the area from Florida where you were raised, was your church a rarity?

Because from what I have been hearing over the years from theologically

Reformed churches in the South, that the

Arminian churches within Evangelicalism far outnumber those that believe in the doctrines of grace.

So what was your experience as far as growing up as a Christian and having Christian friends from other churches?

Were you the oddball in the neighborhood? Yeah, it was definitely a minority then.

We've been blessed in the past recent years in the area to have a wonderful group of pastors that I meet with on a weekly basis that are like -minded and Reformed.

Certainly we don't agree on every single point, but I'm thankful to have them as allies for the gospel, the true gospel in our area.

Growing up, no, that was certainly not the case. It was a rarity. You know, the thing is, and I love the pastor that was my pastor from the time

I can remember, however, the preaching was Reformed, but it was not overtly

Reformed. He preached a Reformed gospel, but the terminology would have been foreign to me.

I don't remember hearing the term Calvinism until I was probably 18 years old. And so I think if the buzzwords would have been thrown around more, and I see a lot of wisdom in that ultimately,

I think if the buzzwords had been thrown around a lot more, we probably would have seen more opposition towards that.

I don't, growing up, remember a whole lot of controversy over the issue of God's salvation by grace alone.

However, I do recognize that whenever you are more vocal and more outgoing about those doctrines, the controversy comes.

So that may say something about the state of the church during that time as well. It was what most Christians would say, even most

Catholics might say we are saved by grace alone. Sure. But when you really start to define terms.

Absolutely. That's one of the frustrations of doing ministry and doing evangelism in the day, as you well know, is someone can say the same thing you say and mean something completely different.

Same vocabulary, different dictionary. Right. In postmodern America, we've forgotten that words mean things.

And so it's just our words have become chameleons. They adapt to whatever situation they feel comfortable in.

So you have come to the point where you are Christians and realizing that the faith that you're raised in was not truly a part of your heart until then, until that miracle of rebirth.

And when did the call to the ministry come about in your life? I was blessed very early on after I was saved to be taken in a disciple by older men that cared about me, loved me, desired to teach me the

Bible. And also, I mean, outside of that, I was blessed with a gentleman that took time to teach me the

Greek language. From the time I was saved, I had a deep desire to study the word of God.

Now, part of that was just a passion of wanting to know the God that saved me more.

And ultimately, I pray that is always my desire in studying the Bible. But what happened is as I began to study and began to know more about this

God that saved me, God gave me an incredible desire to share that with others. Now, at the time, I thought that was solely for the purpose of going to the mission field.

I thought that he was feeling me with zeal to share the gospel, you know, do frontline mission work. However, during that time, men kind of took me under their wing.

And through a series of events, the pastor that I grew up under wound up leaving the church shortly after me and my wife did as well.

And we found another church in Lake City, Florida, where it was a reformed group, a small group.

They were not everything that we would hope they would be, but they were on the pathway. And so we determined to dig in and to serve with them.

I just began serving in that church. And the pastor recognized some zeal that God had given to me and a desire to study the word of God.

He took me under his wing. And so what happened at that point was he allowed me to preach when he was gone.

During the time when he was teaching me to preach, he gave me an opportunity to teach a group of college students two times a week there at the church.

Then through God's providence, he wound up leaving the church as well to go and to plant another church in another town.

The congregation met together, and they asked me if I would preach until they found someone.

They formed a pastoral search committee, and I agreed to preach for them until they found someone. At that point, my goal was still to finish school, to move to the mission field, do whatever it was the

Lord called me to do. Because at that point, staying in Lake City and being a minister of the gospel was not even on my radar.

But what happened is I found myself after several months in a position where God had given a congregation that I was a part of that was in need of a shepherd.

I knew at that point God had called me to teach, and he was changing my heart and conforming my heart in such a way that I cared deeply for the sheep inside of the local church.

As the years went on, eventually the search committee dissolved, and they quit looking.

I was sort of grandfathered into the pastorate at Grace Life Church. God has never allowed me the opportunity to finish any formal theological training.

I am a product of a local church that took the command to disciple young men seriously.

That's very encouraging for me because God has blessed our church with a lot of young men, some of whom show the desire to teach.

I know from experience how much you can learn inside of a local church that does not neglect the responsibility to disciple and to train up.

I was not looking to become the pastor at Grace Life Church, but at that point, what

God had determined before the foundation of the world became my will. The will of God and the will of Brandon converged through him changing my mind about what it was he had called me to do.

Not unlike what happened with John Calvin. He had no interest at that time in being a great teacher and pastor in Geneva.

What started out being something against his will became wedded with God's will.

Obviously, the rest is history, literally. Grace Life Church, there are, as you know, a variety of Calvinistic or Sovereign Grace churches that are

Baptist and also that are Paedo -Baptist. You have to be Baptistic or Baptist.

Are you part of a denomination like the Southern Baptist Association? Are you independent? Are you confessional? If you could tell us something about those things.

Our confession of faith that we hold to at Grace Life is based off the 1689

London Baptist. Now, our official statement of faith there is the 1689. Basically, me and some of the guys at the church, our commentary upon that.

We've changed some of the language, but our roots is in the 1689. The church that partnered with us to help us plant the church there in Lake City is a part of the

Southern Baptist Convention. We, however, are not. Our website designates us as a non -denominational church that is devoted to historic

Baptist doctrine. We don't hide the fact that we are Baptistic. However, we are not a part of any groups or organizations outside of associations with like -minded churches that we have sought out.

So, when did Grace Life Radio become a part of the life of Grace Life Church?

From the beginning, and here's another one of the stories of God's providential hand that caused things to happen that we would have never dreamed of.

There was a church that met in the building that we currently meet in. They applied for a radio station and a license for the last remaining open frequency in our area several years before we ever moved into the building.

They were initially denied that license. It was given to someone else in our town, but there's a contract that is given when you are granted a radio license with a timeline.

If you fail to uphold your side of that contract, then the license is taken away and given to someone else that has applied for the license.

At that point, the money that that church had designated towards paying for the radio station, they obviously were denied that, so they spent the money on other ministry opportunities.

So, we are in the building now, and I get a call in the office one day, and this is not even on our radar, saying that we were offered the license for the radio station.

Of course, this caught all of us off guard. None of us knew anything about radio. We had never even dreamed of the possibility or the option of having a radio ministry, even on another station, much less our own.

So, my response was, well, when do you need to know? So, we need to know immediately, and so they did allow us a couple of days.

We met together and prayed. We accepted, having no idea how we would pay for the building of the station, having no idea what we would do about programming.

At that point, we were very early on in our church plant work there in Lake City, and so we didn't have any perceivable way of paying for it, but we believe that in our area, there are other

Christian radio stations, but there is not another radio station that proclaims the true gospel.

And we're going to be picking up right where we left off with that interview when we return from our station break, so don't go away.

We are going to be right back with our interview with Justin and Brandon Ellickson of Grace Life Radio and other interviews that I conducted while at the

G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, as many as time will allow. And, of course,

I plan to air as many of these interviews as possible in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

Don't go away. We'll be right back. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the

Apostles' priority, it must not be ours either. We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750, that's 508 -528 -5750, or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our

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Welcome back. This is Chris Zarnes. And before I return to another segment of the interview that I just began before the break with Justin and Brandon Ellickson of Grace Life Radio 90 .1

FM WPGT in Lake City, Florida where Iron Sharpens Iron will have an added home being added in the pre -recorded version to their morning drive time 8 to 10 a .m.

and also to their evening drive 8 to 10 p .m. or evening slot, I should say.

I just want to remind you that Iron Sharpens Iron is in urgent need of more sponsors.

We are really in some serious financial difficulties right now.

So if you could remember to let me know if you know of any businesses, churches, parachurch ministries who are like -minded, who would have an affinity with us, who would have a burden to see this program remain on the air, please forward that information to me at ChrisZarnesInAtGmail .com

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Well, we're going to be returning to our interview that we began before the station break, as I mentioned, with Justin and Brian Ellickson.

They are the founders of Grace Life Radio and they operate that as a ministry from Grace Life Church and this is located in Lake City, Florida, and we hope that you enjoy the remainder of their interview.

And so as we began to look at the makeup of the community that God had placed us in, the desires that we had for expository preaching and for making known the true gospel, we felt that it was in keeping with God's will to pursue this and we desired that if the

Lord would have it to be, then he would provide. And so faithful saints at Grace Life Church, they committed to pray for the ministry.

Many of them committed to finance the ministry. And so we began the process of keeping with the contract and the time frames of building the radio station from the ground up.

None of us had ever worked in communications at all. None of us had any background outside of residential wiring of houses with electrical work.

But we didn't have the money to pay for someone to build the radio station. We didn't have the money to pay someone to erect the tower or to do all of the programming on the antenna.

But as the saints continued to pray, things began to get done. And a small group of guys there at Grace Life, we built the station.

We built the tower from the ground up. I actually climbed the tower myself and hung the antenna.

Amazingly, we got it all hooked up by watching YouTube videos of how to do things with FM frequency coaxial cables.

And so our deadline came, and we were ready to go on air.

And so at about 2 o 'clock in the morning one night, we got the go -ahead, and I had soldered the last connections, and we flipped the switch.

That's been three years ago now. Is that when you said, It's alive! It's alive! That is exactly the case.

And we kind of all broke down and cried a little bit right there as well as we just and my brother went out to his truck and turned the radio on 90 .1

and turned the speaker up. And, of course, there was nothing there. And we flipped the switch, and there was Pastor Jeff Noblett preaching from the book of Ephesians.

So our dream and the desire that we had had come to fruition. At that time in our ministry, our goal was for our radio ministry to simply be a tool to be used by our local church.

I wanted a resource for the people that attended our church in our local area to be able to tune in 24 hours a day, hear sound, expository preaching, and other men that were like -minded in their ministries.

But what happened is it was not a whole lot more work for us to do this as a live feed through the

Internet and to launch a Grace Life Radio app as well that could be live -streamed. And so we anticipated this as a local ministry, but now typically on a monthly basis we're in 52 countries, every single state in the

U .S., and hundreds of thousands of hours of live -streaming every single month. And so God has taken something that we would have never even dreamed of and He's provided it at every single point.

To this day we have never taken any outside funding for Grace Life Radio. It's a part of the missions budget of Grace Life Church in Lake City.

We love that aspect of it because we don't have to answer to anyone as to what we play on the radio.

And so we get to play faithful expositors of the Word that are faithful to the Gospel and also teaching that would be similar to what you would hear if you would visit our church because that ultimately is one of our goals as well.

We're a local church. We desire that God would draw His sheep and that they would hear His voice and they would come to be a part of our fellowship.

And God's been faithful for the past three years that almost every single week we have been blessed with a new family that showed up, that has tuned into the radio station, that they've enjoyed what they've heard and they've come and desire to be a part of our church.

Now some of them, when they begin to see all of what we believe, they decide not to be with us, but it's a privilege to be able to preach with them one time.

And so the Lord has just been continually faithful with that and growing that ministry and accomplishing things that we can only say

He has done by His power. Amen. So Justin, what exactly is your role at the radio station?

I'm the Director of Programming. I actually set up all the programming in the evening.

Brandon's actually at the church the days of week, so we don't have to actually have someone in the studio all the time because he is actually there on the premises.

So again, we're always looking for new content. It's amazing through the different programs that we have, the automation system and the different programs that we use.

I would never say it's a burden. Time -consuming, it doesn't take very long to do.

Well, I am delighted by God's providence that a new relationship appears to be percolating between myself and the

Alexan brothers, and God willing, in February.

In fact, this interview, depending upon God's providence and timing, this interview may be even airing at the time that Iron Shepherds Iron begins a new journey on the airwaves with Grace Life Radio, and I'm so delighted that this opportunity came about through being here at the

G3 conference. I'm excited to see what God has in store for us and the new listeners that will be brought in to discover

Iron Shepherds Iron Radio. And I'm so delighted to hear of your commitment to biblical orthodoxy.

And I have been in the radio industry for quite a number of years, starting in the mid -to -late 1980s, and then in Christian radio beginning in 1990.

And there is so much going on in the

Christian radio world that is disappointing, disheartening, frustrating, maddening, because of the fact that since a lot of money is required to drive these radio stations and networks, especially the larger they are, the more money they need to feed the beast.

And therefore, sadly, a lot of compromise is typically made. And I shudder when

I hear some of the programming that goes out over the airwaves under the name of Christian.

Though God even uses some of these stations and networks that have programming that all three of us would consider to be horrendous, the

Lord still sometimes uses stations and networks like that to include wonderful brothers in Christ that we would all rejoice around the airwaves, like John MacArthur and R .C.

Sproul and some of these other men of God that are included on the roster of some of these stations and networks.

But it's so good to hear about a station that is fully committed to remaining pure in all of its programming from sunrise to sunset.

And I am going to be obviously praying that the Lord blesses this station mightily, and I urge my listeners to not only discover for themselves

Grace Life Radio, because it could be heard anywhere in the world via live streaming, and tell us actually, tell our listeners about how they can listen to Grace Life Radio through not only the live streaming, but where locally in Florida they can hear it.

Well, our local radio station is based out of Lake City, Florida, anywhere in Columbia County, Union County, parts of Alachua County, reaching almost to the

University of Florida to be able to pick up 90 .1. Our coverage map, we have a directional antenna, so it's a little strange.

We've got a few airports next to us, which we cannot interfere with their airwaves. So if you happen to be on the other side of an airport from us, you're not going to be able to get us.

But if you move 10 miles to the left or the right, you'll be able to pick up the radio station there.

Our website is graceliferadio .com. There is a link to the live stream there.

You can also find Grace Life Radio on sermonAudio .com, and through Sermon Audio there is a

Grace Life Radio app. We also have an account set up with the call -in system.

Just don't have to give that to you. Yeah, it's through a service called Audio Now where you can just type this number and dial this number in your phone and listen to it anywhere on your cell phone.

And that number is 712 -432 -7178. Great. Well, it is, again, my honor and privilege and joy to have met you brothers by God's providence.

And I'm delighted that it seems that God is pleased to bring about a relationship with us for broadcasting the gospel.

And before I go, I have to at least have you discuss for a little bit the fascinating story that began yesterday about your relationship to Jesse James and a horse thief.

Your name is quite unusual. It's E -L -I -X -S -O -N, correct?

That is correct. I jokingly said yesterday when Brother Chris asked me what our heritage was, where we came from, our lineage, and I jokingly said we have no idea because our name is not very old.

Apparently in the 1800s, the best we can tell, there was a gentleman by the name of Eli. And there was some horse thievery that went on, and his son got excommunicated from the family.

And this gentleman took upon the name Ellickson, which if you break down, spells Eli's ex -son.

On the other side of the family, on Grandmother's side, our lineage goes to outlaw

Jesse James. And so only by God's providence and grace are we sitting here in this setting today.

And is that something that you've seen documented? Yes, sir, we do.

We've got all of the family albums and all of the family reunion pictures and everything there together.

Wow, and he was the son, as was his brother obviously, of a

Baptist preacher, correct? That's very encouraging because I have a couple of sons.

Brother Chris didn't know he had the gift of encouragement. There it is.

Well, we would obviously pray and hope that history doesn't repeat itself.

Amen. But it's truly been a joy talking with you today, and I look forward to many more conversations and interviews with you on Iron Sharpens Iron in the future.

And thank you very much for this opportunity to be reaching a whole new audience with Iron Sharpens Iron.

God bless you. Well, now we're going to hear an interview I conducted on site at the

G3 Conference with my dear friend Mike Gaydosch of Solid Ground Christian Books.

And, of course, their website is Solid -Ground -Books .com. Solid -Ground -Books .com.

Mike Gaydosch is not only a sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron, one of the gracious brethren who actually is financially backing this program and making sure it remains on the air, but he's also my very first pastor as a born -again believer.

He was also the one that immersed me in the waters of baptism, and that was back in the mid -1980s.

And thanks be to God, a friendship that blossomed back there in the 1980s still remains as strong as ever, perhaps even much stronger.

And I hope that you enjoy this interview with Mike Gaydosch of Solid Ground Christian Books.

And, once again, their website is Solid -Ground -Books .com. Well, Chris Armson back again here at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, at the

Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitors booth. And I have with me someone who actually has an exhibitors booth right across the aisle, someone who is no stranger to the

Iron Sharpens Iron audience, Mike Gaydosch, who is the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, Solid -Ground -Books .com.

And not only do you hear his ads every day on Iron Sharpens Iron, sometimes twice a day, but you have heard him a number of times interviewed about Solid Ground Christian Books.

He's also my very first pastor after rebirth, my first real pastor,

I should say. And it's great to have you back on Iron Sharpens Iron. Well, thank you,

Chris. It's a pleasure to be here. It's a pleasure to be able to serve the Lord together again, as we did two years ago when we accompanied

James in Florida. And it's been exciting. It's a little intimidating for me to look over your shoulder and see

R .C. Sproul and John MacArthur and Ravi Zacharias. Yes, these men are actually standing behind me right now as we speak.

They're all lined up to speak, but I get it first, so you're going to have to wait. And obviously, for those of our listeners who perhaps are first -time listeners, because,

God willing, they will be after all the people who have taken my contact information and have discovered

Iron Sharpens Iron for the first time here at the G3 Conference, some people listening to this may not know anything about Solid Ground Christian Books.

So why don't you give us a summary of Solid Ground Christian Books. Well, 16 years ago, the

Lord opened a door for ministry for me, and it was an opportunity for me to begin once again to bring back into print books that had been out of print for a long time.

I first began publishing when I was pastoring in Long Island, and Calvary Press was born.

The first book we did was J .C. Ryle's Thoughts for Young Men. And we are actually doing that book now as Solid Ground Christian Books.

And Solid Ground has published about 375 titles since 2001, four of them by James White.

Four of them are books that were sold here at the conference. They've all sold out now, so I have none of them left.

But Solid Ground has been serving and sending books throughout the world.

We have customers in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and really in all four corners of the globe.

And God has been very gracious. I'm thankful for Chris and Iron Sharpens Iron and the way that he continually holds up our work.

And it's always encouraging to get orders that will mention Iron Sharpens Iron as the source that they first heard about me.

And it's just good to be able to link arms together. Amen. And your books are from not only the past.

A lot of them are from the past that you have unearthed. Some of them forgotten treasures, long hidden treasures, but also some contemporary things.

Yes, we've done books by, well, as I just mentioned, James White. We've got four of his books. We've done Letters to a

Mormon Elder. Is the Mormon My Brother? From Toronto to Emmaus, which is a book on the resurrection.

I didn't even know that those books about Mormonism are now Solid Ground titles. Yes. We've been doing those for four or five years,

I think. And then the first book that I published with James was Pulpit Crimes. I'm the one that came up with that title.

You came up with the title and the cover. You had the cover as well. That was an amazing book because the time frame that we had to bring that book to pass was,

I think, what sold James on continuing to work with Solid Ground. He had a conference in North Florida that you were attending and involved in.

And Bishop Spong, wasn't he the one that he debated there?

His homosexuality compatible with biblical Christianity. We won't mention anything about his commenting on how handsome you looked.

Well, for the record, I don't think Bishop Spong himself is or was a homosexual.

Be that as it may, it was a very memorable moment.

Actually, I think he just complimented my tie. He did. That's right. As I recall, you're correct. But as it is, that particular book,

Pulpit Crimes, James got me the final draft, which still needed to be typeset, less than a week before the conference.

And I worked feverishly all weekend, rushed it to the printer, put the printer on demand that the book had to be printed and shipped and in Florida by Friday.

And it arrived Friday and James was overwhelmed that we were able to pull it off.

And the book has done very, very well. We brought 20 copies to the conference here. They all sold pretty quickly.

And I'm very thankful for the opportunity that I've had to be able to serve and use men like James White.

David Dykstra wrote a book, Yearning to Breathe Free Lessons on or Thoughts on Immigration, Islam and Freedom.

And it's a very timely book for the day and age in which we live. Even though he wrote it 10 years ago, it is even more relevant today with the rise of ISIS.

And that's another new title we've done and really dozens of others that we've also printed recently.

Yeah, that last title, which I read when it first came out. Basically, he's setting forth the wisdom in seeking to imitate

God's laws in the Old Covenant regarding boundaries for Israel, correct?

And which foreigners God permitted to enter into Israel and which ones he prohibited and so on.

Exactly. And I think that David did a very good job of laying forth the historical material and then seeking the practical material as well.

And how important it is for us to be on guard for those who are seeking to come into our country and desiring to destroy our way of life.

And because the Statue of Liberty is actually on the cover and it's Yearning to Breathe Free. It's drawn from the words that are there.

Ezra Lazarus's poem. Exactly. And the problem is the people who are coming, particularly the aggressive

Muslims who desire to have Sharia law, they don't yearn to breathe free. In fact, their desire is to rob us of the freedoms that we have.

And ironically, there are Christians who, due to perhaps a misguided sentimentalism, would say,

Oh, you know, we're supposed to be just nice to everybody and let everybody who wants to come here to America onto our shores.

And it's just mean spirited and bigoted to isolate certain people to prevent them from coming.

But those same people would not view their own homes that way. No. Typically, anyway, there might be some who would.

And people who don't want a fence around the country are the very ones who have fences around their homes.

Yes. Because they desire the privacy and protection of their own homes. And Dave, in the book, quotes from a poem that says good fences make good neighbors.

And it's very important that there be boundaries that distinguish one country from another.

And unless we give anybody the wrong impression that your solid ground Christian books is somehow politically driven, that's not the case.

Most of your literature is really driven by the precious truths of those who love the gospel of sovereign grace.

And these would be men and even some women from centuries ago leading up to the day, even the men that you just mentioned and some others.

Give us some highlights of things that you offer that you didn't mention. Before I do that,

Chris, let me share what happened here at the conference. Oh, sure. If that's okay.

Because I've shared those things many times on our program. But I came here on Wednesday night or Wednesday afternoon, and I wasn't sure what to expect.

I'd never been to G3 before. This is the first time because every year the G3 has been in existence.

We have a conference that I am the sole bookseller at in Mississippi.

And this was the first year that the conferences were not conflicting. And one of the reasons is because we wanted

James White at our conference. And since he was already coming here, our conference is a week later. And so I'm going to actually be with James again next week.

But for the debate, I had the opportunity to set up and be the only bookseller at the debate.

And there were about 800 to 900 people, I believe, that signed up to come to the debate. And that's about how many came to the

G3 in the past. And this was just for the debate itself. And what happened at the debate was something quite special and remarkable to me.

I was there about 5 o 'clock. The debate started at 7. And I was there with the boxes of books.

And I was just opening them up and starting to put the books on the table. And somebody drifted into the room and came over to the table and looked at the books and said,

Oh, I've wanted to get that book for a while. Can I buy that from you? And I said,

I guess so. I wasn't really expecting to sell yet, but yeah,

I guess. But let me run next door and get my invoices so I can take care of these in order.

By the time I got back, there were four more people standing around the table looking at the books, holding them, asking them if they could buy the books.

Well, I never got away from the table until about 10 .45, almost six hours later.

And the only times that there weren't people buying books was during the debate. And as soon as there was a five - or ten -minute break during the debate, people ran back to the table and were buying the books.

So that was a wonderful beginning for this week.

And really, since that time, I've had a steady stream of people now coming.

Even though there are other booksellers here and even though there's a huge bookstore of Lifeway, I've really had a steady stream of orders these last two days.

I get to see customers that I've had for years that I've never met, that I see their name tag.

And, oh, you're one of my customers. And, oh, yeah, I've been buying books for years. And they come to me.

And then I also get to see old friends. Walter Mouskas was here from Long Island. And I see

Lou Ivan is here from the church in Long Island. And so many others that have been coming up and introducing themselves.

And it's just been great. And I'm meeting new people and young people who have questions. And what book should

I read about this subject? What's the best book to read about this subject? And questions and questions and questions and conversations.

And it's really been such an encouraging time. I'm going to be exhausted, obviously, when I head home tomorrow.

But it's a good exhaustion. It's a very, very good exhaustion. I've been very thankful for G3 and for the opportunity to be here this year.

Amen. Well, as you know, the theme of this conference is the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation. I'd like you to, in summary form, let our listeners know.

It may be impossible for you to pick a handful of things. But what is it that is most precious to you about the

Reformation that you could possibly summarize and leave our listeners with something etched in their hearts and minds about this very historic event and also, obviously, movement in history that transformed the globe in regard to the gospel?

I would say it's the centrality of the Scriptures and how Luther recaptured the importance of Scripture alone as the authority.

And knowing that the Church had been overridden with tradition for hundreds of years and the people were not even allowed to read the

Bible in their own language. Men like Tyndale had to run for their lives because the

Catholic Church was seeking to pursue him and eventually caught him and killed him because of the fact that his desire was to simply translate the

Bible into the English language. And it is such an incredible blessing that we have that we must never take for granted the fact that we have the

Word of God written once for all and we are to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

And it is this year, 1517 to 2017, the 500th anniversary, that is caused for us to celebrate.

This entire year should be a year of celebration. I'm so thankful that G3 has grabbed hold of that and there are going to be conferences all year.

In fact, next week in Laurel, Mississippi, James White will be there and the subject will be justification by faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone to the glory of God alone.

Praise God. And I'm sure that one of the highlights for you being here is one of the highlights that I cherish being here is seeing our old friend

Conrad Mbewe. Well, it's wonderful that the very first two people that I saw when

I walked into the hotel were Chris and Conrad chatting together and I was able to walk right directly over and embrace them and Conrad is such a dear brother in Christ and such a gifted brother and I've told people for years about Conrad that he is more impressive out of the pulpit than he is in the pulpit.

And he's very impressive in the pulpit. And he is incredibly impressive in the pulpit. There are some men who they say once they're in the pulpit you wish they'd never get out.

Other men who once they're out of the pulpit you wish they'd never go back in. But he's a man who is the same inside and outside the pulpit.

And an incredible gift to the Church of Christ is a pastor from Kabwatha Baptist Church in Zambia, Africa.

Amen. And I still remember very well when working for WMCA radio and the office that I had in the church building was provided in exchange for rent and free advertising that the radio station gave

Grace Reformed Baptist Church and that there was a lot of stored up revenue there in free advertising and we blew a lot of it when

Conrad first came to Grace Reformed Baptist Church to preach. And so we aired perhaps a month or more of advertising with a clip of him preaching.

A very powerful clip. Well and the clip was interesting that Chris and I had both listened to the same sermon that I think had originally been preached at Jeff Thomas' church in Everest with whales.

And we both decided we kind of spent the weekend listening to the sermon and we said well let's come up with a clip or two that we might be able to use and out of that hour -long sermon with thousands of clips that could have been selected we both selected the exact same phrase, the exact same comment that Conrad had and Chris just brilliantly put it together as an advertisement.

And I'll tell you what ended up happening. Friday night, the very first night that Conrad was going to be preaching, the very first time he ever set foot on Long Island to preach.

Ordinarily on Friday nights, and we would have men like Bruce Walkie, Sinclair Ferguson, and we had phenomenal pastors and preachers come.

We might have a hundred people. And the congregation, the church there at Merritt could seat about 450.

And that night I remember somebody, and I don't know if it was Chris, if it was you or if it was somebody else, but I got a frantic phone call about an hour before the service was supposed to start.

And it said, Pastor Mike, you better get here. The place is packed on a

Friday night. That was not me, I don't think. With 400 people an hour before the service.

And remember we found people were coming from, weren't there even people that came from Canada and upstate

New York and other states that were coming in. And it was all because they had heard this clip that we both pulled off of that long sermon.

And God used that. And the whole weekend long was just one incredible blessing after another.

Yes, I remember, I'm sure you remember Mark Solon, who would be very prone to taking records of things.

And he said that over that three -day period we had over 500 visitors that were not a part of Grace Reformed Baptist Church.

Which is remarkable for a church our size. Yes. And it was ten times easily what we had ever done before with visitors.

And I remember a great number of those folks who visited were black charismatics or Pentecostals.

That's right, that's exactly right. And it was great to have them hear messages that they may not ever have heard otherwise.

Absolutely. God has given us some great memories of things that he's allowed us to use together.

And one of the things that I cherish and I was excited about coming here was the opportunity of being able to fellowship with Chris.

I don't get to see him often enough. I appreciate that very much. And we are, I'm proud of him, the work he's doing.

I really appreciate that. I appreciate Eric and his assistance and how he's actually making

Chris sound good. A near miracle.

But no, seriously, Eric has done a phenomenal job. And his wife Sandy has been an enormous help. Sandy's there to help him.

Eric to keep his sanity as he's working with Chris. We all are doing our part, aren't we?

Absolutely. Well, one thing that I learned over the years when you were pastoring me, when you were my under -shepherd, is that as extraordinary as the preaching abilities that you have, you were never so selfish that you kept your pulpit chained to yourself and you blessed the congregation by welcoming gifted men like Conrad and Beyway and others that I could not even count the number.

For regular conferences, I believe that we eventually reached more than two a year, if I'm not mistaken.

And it saddens me when I hear about other churches who have pastors, and I know that some pastors listening to my program may be offended by this, but I think that they should learn from this that I think it is a very great disservice to the flock to keep them only captivated by one voice and one brain exegeting the

Scriptures to them week after week. And you, as phenomenal a preacher and exegete as you are, you never did that.

And I thank you for that. Well, I think that the Lord taught me early on how important it was to supplement your ministry with the very best that you could possibly get.

And I was never concerned about getting necessarily the most popular names. I went after men who

I believed would speak to the hearts of our people. And because we did that for so many years and had men like Sinclair Ferguson come at least three, if not four weekends in the time that I was there and that he was in Philadelphia, Dr.

Bruce Waltke came several times, Peter Jeffrey from Wales. We were the first ones to bring him to the

States. Providentially also one time when my mother was dying, and he was privately with her at her bedside for at least a half hour alone.

Yeah, nearly the day that she died. I know that it was very close to the time she died. And I benefited so much, my children benefited so much from having these men in our homes.

Pastor Bill Hughes and on and on and on. Errol Hulse. Errol Hulse, Jeffrey Thomas, all these men.

And I always felt that it makes a man look very small who's fearful of bringing other men in to feed the flock.

And yes, there were times when I'd be frustrated when I hear something that was said by one of these men that I had said probably 50 times in my ministry saying,

I've never heard anything like that before. That would be frustrating. But at the same time,

I realized, you know, they need to hear that from a different voice. And the other thing that it would do is anybody that would say,

Gedash, you're out of your mind with the things you're preaching. Say, well, maybe you think I am, but Conrad M.

Bayway as well, Sinclair Ferguson, Bruce Waltke, and have all this list of men that would come in and support the work that we were doing.

And I always felt, and I know that it was true, that the church literally was lifted to another level by these men.

And it then forced me to have to rise to another level. And if you stay there by yourself and you're just the only voice, it is so easy to just get into a custom and a groove where you're comfortable, they're comfortable, and yet the

Spirit of God is not at work. And I was recently with a couple of the

Italian couples, the Scarlatta boys, Michael and Joe Scarlatta.

And Joe is now a pastor himself. He's not serving right now. He served as an elder, but he has served as an elder in the church there.

But we were just reminiscing together, and they just shared with me how they said, we don't expect that we will ever experience again what we experienced there on Long Island.

God just was doing something special. Peter Jeffrey talks about his years of rugby, and there was just something special.

Not that God didn't use him in other places, but those years in rugby, he saw conversions, and he saw church growth, and he saw things happening that he never saw before or after.

And I don't think it's just reminiscing in a negative way, but I think it's giving

God the glory and giving God the honor. And we do know that in heaven alone will we finally be able to see and experience and understand all that God was doing, because God was doing even more than we knew, above and beyond.

The verse that I used over and over again to end our services, now to him who is able to do exceeding, abundantly, beyond all we ask or can even imagine.

That's the passage we always ended with. It was to seek to leave us, no matter how tough the preaching was, no matter how difficult the subject we had covered, we always wanted to end up in the hands of God, and always to the glory of God, through Jesus Christ, be glory forever, through the church.

And that's the way we sought to end the ministry there. Amen. Well, I'm looking forward to your next visit to Iron Sharpens Iron.

I hope it's not too far off in the distance. Well, I can come back in five minutes, Chris. And you'll be the only one awake at that point.

And by the way, I still think you're out of your mind, but for entirely different reasons. But to remind our listeners,

Solid Ground Christian Books' website is Solid -Ground -Books .com.

That's Solid -Ground -Books .com. And when you order anything from Iron Sharpens Iron, please make sure you mention,

I mean, when you order anything from Solid Ground Christian Books, please make sure you mention Iron Sharpens Iron. And don't forget, whenever you're buying gifts for those you love, please order them, at least some of them, from Iron, I keep saying

Iron Sharpens Iron, from Solid Ground Christian Books. Solid Ground Christian Books has been a faithful supporter of Iron Sharpens Iron.

So if you love Iron Sharpens Iron, please support those who make this program possible, including

Solid Ground Christian Books. Solid -Ground -Books .com. Thank you again, Mike Adosh.

We look forward to your next appearance on Iron Sharpens Iron. Thank you, Brother Chris. God bless. You too. And now we're going to conclude

Iron Sharpens Iron with one more interview, a briefer interview that,

God willing, we will have enough time to air in its entirety. But this is an interview

I had with a listener in London, England, that I had met at the

G3 Conference, who I had never spoken with or even heard from that I can remember in my life, and it was so great to meet him.

Well, I am delighted to have someone who approached me here at the G3 Conference to let me know that they were delighted that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio had returned to the airwaves back in 2015, in June of 2015, after we were on hiatus for a number of years.

But it's a listener of mine that I am meeting for the very first time ever from England, and you're going to have to pronounce your name for me,

Brother. So my name is Kofi Edubohim. Can I just say Kofi? Kofi, that's just fine.

And you listened to the program all the way back in the days when we started in, began in 2006 in New York.

Yeah. How did you discover Iron Sharpens Iron in England? So I discovered Iron Sharpens Iron through the ministry of Dr.

James White. Oh, great. So he would mention on the dividing line that he was going to be on Iron Sharpens Iron, and I think one time he actually remembered to say, oh, and you can listen to it online.

So I thought, oh, okay. So I started listening, and I went to the website, and then I saw that there were shows of various people that I had been reading their books and had heard about their ministries, and I thought, oh, this seems like a really good show.

And so I started listening faithfully, and yeah, that's how I discovered Iron Sharpens Iron. Well, I praise

God that James has promoted the show over the years. Of course, if he would remember to give the website,

I'd probably have a thousand times the number of listeners that I have now, but he does.

In fact, I have, I have, I can't even count the number of times that people have discovered my program through the dividing line and through articles and things that he has posted on the

Alpha Omega Ministries website. But Kofi, where were you in your theological understandings when you were being raised?

What kind of religious atmosphere, if any, were you raised in in England? And by the way, where in England were you raised?

So I was born in London, lived there pretty much all my life, and grew up in a

Christian family. My dad is a Pentecostal pastor, and so I sort of grew up with that understanding of Christianity.

And so very fervent, we definitely were not nominal. My father took it very seriously.

We had family worship every, well, almost every night in church, sometimes up to four times a week.

And so I grew up around church and the gospel, and you know, you grow up around that, and you assume that, well, of course

I'm a Christian because my dad is a worker in the church, and he eventually became a pastor. We taught to read the

Bible. I read the Bible every day. I'm polite, I think. You know,

I'm a good kid, as good kids go. So yeah, of course I'm a Christian. And so that's kind of the misapprehension

I went around with until I was about 14. And when I was 14, a Sunday school teacher just shared the gospel with our

Sunday school class for the first time. And my first instinct was to say,

I'm a pastor's kid. My dad is your boss. Of course I know this.

But then she told me personally again, and it kind of hit me, actually, I don't know this.

I've never really given this much thought. And that was the end of 2004.

I was 13 at the time. And for months

I wrestled with it, and in March of 2005, at the age of 14, I was finally converted. Unfortunately, since all the

Christianity I knew was this Pentecostal church that I attended, and my dad was being more and more influenced by the prosperity gospel,

I found myself just going headlong into that. And so I listened to all the sort of big name prosperity preachers, and essentially that was my theology for the first two or three years of my

Christian life. And it really wasn't until God in his providence put people in my life who began to address some of these issues regarding the prosperity gospel that made me to kind of stop and sort of take pause and to kind of start asking some big questions.

And at the age of 17, finally was introduced to the doctrines of grace, and pretty much never looked back since then.

Wow. Now, how did your dad react to that? He did not take it well to begin with. And I think part of it was the way

I responded with it at times. So, you know, you're young, you've just learned something new, and you're just kind of almost beating his door down to try and force it down on him, and that didn't help matters.

But from the very first conversation where I hadn't said anything, he was very opposed to it to begin with.

But I think with time, as he's seen the sort of positive benefit that it's had in my own life, he's been able to say,

OK, maybe there's something to this. Even if I don't agree, you know, it's making him a better Christian. I can't argue with that.

To the point where he's asked me on occasion even, would you be comfortable taking a Bible study at my church, for instance?

Which I've always been happy to oblige. Oh, when you say taking, you meant actually leading it. I said leading it, yeah.

So would I lead the Bible study at the church in a midweek? Sure, no problem. And so, you know,

God's been faithful with that. It's still tough in places, but we have a much better relationship now than we did in those early days when

I was new to Reformed theology. And anybody else in your family who perhaps is still more offended by your transformation theologically, or are they all basically following your dad's lead and being more open and warm about it?

Yeah, I mean, so my mother wasn't opposed to it in any way. She knew that,

OK, if he's not abandoning Christianity, he's not going to become a Muslim, he's not going to join the cult.

She actually gave me the opportunity to explain what I was talking about, and though she didn't agree, she would say,

OK, I understand where you're coming from. So the rest of the family, my brother is unconverted.

My sister wasn't converted at the time. She is now. So it didn't really affect them as much.

So, you know, the issue was basically with me and my dad. And today,

I know that, obviously, from what you've said, you are a theologically Reformed Christian. Are you

Reformed Baptist? Are you Presbyterian? Are you cessationist, continuationist? Yes, I would definitely say on the

Reformed Baptist side of things, definitely a cessationist. I think that was, going back to that question about the relationship with my dad, that was hard for him to deal with.

And I didn't begin as a cessationist. I was sort of a leaky continuationist, if you will.

I still believe this, though. I'm not skeptical. Just with studying the Scriptures and being able to work these things out,

I became a cessationist. So, yeah, I would definitely say Reformed Baptist, a cessationist.

Yeah, that would be, if you were to kind of sum it down with what I believe. Where do you worship today? So I'm part of a church called

Grace Life London. So we're a church plant in central London. Been there the last five years.

It'll be five years this March. So my pastors came to study here in the U .S. and then went back to London to plant the church.

And that's been six years this year. And we're about 150 of us in the heart of central

London, about 47 countries represented in our congregation. So, yeah, growing church, and with growth comes challenges, but God's been faithful.

Well, I hope that at some point, I don't know how far he is from where you are, but my pastor in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, up until recently,

David Campbell, who is actually a native of Scotland, he just returned to the U .K.

to accept a call to a church in northern England. And I could get you that information at some later point because I don't have it at the tip of my fingers, but David Campbell is a precious brother in Christ, and he is now pastoring a

Reformed Baptist church there in northern England. Oh, awesome. And tell us something about, is it

The Bar or the BAR? Ah, yeah, The Bar. So The Bar podcast is a ministry of actually a friend of mine,

Dwayne Atkinson, who lives in sort of Greenville area. Greenville, South Carolina.

And so I got to just know him through the Internet. We've been friends for a while, and so he started this podcast just as a means of just sort of furthering, spreading of Reformed theology in a sense.

So he's become Reformed, and the podcast has been going for a while now, and he's had a few high -profile guests on there, so he's just sort of in the stage of building it.

And so I got to hear about it in the U .K., and I'm a really big fan of it. Oh, great.

So you're not actually a part of it, you're just a listener. Yeah. Well, one of these days I'll see you wearing an Iron Sharpens Iron t -shirt.

Yeah, if you make them, I'll buy one. If I happen to print them up, which I guess I should start doing.

But it's been an honor, Kofi, to have you on the program, and do you have, I don't know if you remember any kind of a website for the

Grace Life Church in London? Sure. So you can find Grace Life London at our website, which is www .gracelifelondon

.org. So gracelifelondon .org. Well, it's been great to meet you face -to -face.

I'm so delighted that the Lord is blessing people through Iron Sharpens Iron, even over there in the U .K. Yeah, thank you so much.

Well, God bless you. Thank you. Well, that's the last interview that we're going to air today, and we are going to resume airing as many of the interviews that I conducted at the

G3 conference as possible over the next few days. And, of course, those that we don't have time to air this week will be broken up over the days and weeks ahead,

God willing, until we get to every one of them, because I want you to hear all of the interviews that I conducted.

And I just want to thank everybody, again, who took the time to sit down with me, eagerly, enthusiastically took the time to sit down and allow me to interview them.

It was so much of a blessing to me to know that when

I was away from the exhibitors booth, my webmaster,

Eric Nielsen, texted me, and he said, Todd Friel left a note here wanting you to interview him as soon as you could.

So he was actually seeking out me to interview him, and when I picked up the note, it was an added blessing, because he said,

Dear F .E. That's F as in Frank, E as in Edward. Let me know if you'd like to do an interview with me.

I would love to be on your show. So I was wondering, what does he mean,

Dear F .E.? And then when he sat down with me before we went on the air, I said, Who is F .E.?

What did you write that for? And he goes, You dummy, don't you remember grammar school science? F .E.

is the abbreviation on the table of elements for iron, where iron sharpens iron.

And I realized that he had given me that nickname, and it totally blew me away. It made the interview even more precious to me.

But I cannot tell you how blessed I was by attending that event.

And I think more than anything, it was meeting all of the folks. Obviously, not every one of the

Iron Sharpens Iron listeners out there were at the G3 conference, so I don't mean all in that sense. But meeting so many of you who listened to the program that I would never even know existed had

I not met you at the G3 conference, because many of the folks that I met there who listened to Iron Sharpens Iron and have been listening faithfully, even going all the way back to the old days in New York in 2006, a number of them had never contacted me at all, had never submitted a question for a guest, so I had really no idea about many of these folks who approached me at the

G3 conference. And once again, I have to thank Pastor Josh Bice of Praise Mill Baptist Church there in the

Atlanta area for inviting me to have an exhibitors booth there and for making it a lot easier for me to set that time aside to be present there, much more easy and affordable for me to do that.

And of course, I thank all of my sponsors who enabled me to travel there and so on.

And I just thank all of you from the depths of my heart, all of you who have contacted me to let me know how much

Iron Sharpens Iron is blessing you. And I hope that you tune in tomorrow for more interviews from the

G3 conference that will be airing, God willing, on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. And we look forward to hearing from you in the future with all your questions for our guests on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.