February 17, 2025 Show with Lee Carter on “Racism in the Modern Church”

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

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Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now here's your host, Chris Arnson. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnson, your host of ironsharpensironradio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 17th day of February 2025.

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And before I introduce my guest today, I have a very urgent prayer request.

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Many of you have been already praying for my sister Mary, who just had her leg amputated last week and is recovering in a rehabilitation facility.

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Well, now I'm adding my brother Andy to that list, who many of you have prayed for in the past.

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He resides in a local nursing home here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Well, he was rushed to the hospital late last night.

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It was, I think, technically early, early this morning because of his inability to breathe and extremely dangerously low oxygen levels.

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Well, I was informed by his doctor that although he was in critical condition, he is thankfully in stable condition, but he is on a ventilator, and he is sedated and unconscious, and they intend to keep him on the ventilator for at least three days right now and take him off the ventilator after that point.

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I am praying, and I hope you join me in praying, that he will regain consciousness and that he will have at least several more years of life on this earth.

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Please continue to pray for him, not only physically, but spiritually. I have always had difficulty discerning whether his profession of faith in Christ is credible, and so I would ask of you that the

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Lord save him if he is not already born again, and that the Lord makes it very clearly evident to me that his salvation is authentic.

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So, I will keep you updated on not only my sister Mary, but my brother Andy in the days and weeks to come.

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But today on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, we have a guest who very generously donated to this program, and sometimes

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I discover a supporter of this program who has a fascinating story to tell, and today's guest is no exception.

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His name is Lee Carter. He is an entrepreneur, and he is the founder of Sleep Essentials.

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We'll have him give a summary description of exactly what that business is all about, and today we are going to be addressing true racism that exists in modern

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Christianity. But welcome for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Lee Carter.

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Well, thank you, Chris, for having me on your show. That's a very generous introduction.

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I didn't realize you would bring up the, you know, the entrepreneurial side of my life, so thank you very much for that.

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Why don't you give a summary description of Sleep Essentials for our listeners? Well, people have often asked me, you know, why did you start a mattress business, and my answer has always been because I'm 50 % crazy.

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I started that business 21 years ago as a, just a regular mattress store selling big brand -name mattresses, and as an honest man,

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I learned very quickly. I had not never worked in the mattress business before. As an honest man,

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I learned very, very quickly that the mattress industry is a very dishonest business, and what

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I mean by that is, is that, you know, when I sold mattresses, I would repeat the sales points that the manufacturer's reps would teach me, and it primarily lies.

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And when I learned that they were lies, I realized I can't keep doing this. This is dishonest.

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This is a dishonest business. So in order to be honest, I had to start making my own mattresses.

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Everything in the mattress industry today really terribly is they make you an inferior product and spin it to you through slick marketing, slick marketing lies, as if they are a superior product.

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And so as the old, as the old saying goes, if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself. So I started making my own mattresses.

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That way I didn't have to basically lie about the product in order to sell it.

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So Sleep Essentials is a retail business, primarily internet business, but not, not exclusively, but we make our own mattresses and sell them all over the country.

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And from what I recall from our conversation months ago, by law, mattresses that are purchased require a fire -resistant chemical to be used on them.

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And very often these fire -resistant chemicals are created in China and other places overseas.

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And they are believed by you and others to be dangerous to the health of those sleeping with their faces pressed against these mattresses pretty much every night.

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And so you developed a way to get around that. Am I, am I correct in that description?

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Yes. I dance around the regulations. I started this business, my retail business in 2004.

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By 2006, I started making my own mattresses. In July of 2007, the

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Consumer Product Safety Commission began requiring all mattresses sold in the United States must be flame retardant.

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And the only way to make a mattress flame retardant is either with a plethora of toxic fire -retardant chemicals.

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Now the chemicals that Consumer Product Safety Commission admits are toxic. So don't take my word for it.

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The Consumer Product Safety Commission says that in their own risk assessment that they're toxic. And, or using glass fibers or silica.

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Well, glass fibers can get out of a mattress if you uncover it, if you, you know, open it and ruin your home.

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The silica is the non -respiratory irritant that can cause cancer if you inhale enough of it.

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So there's no way to make a safe flame retardant mattress. I've always maintained, and I'm not going to get into all those details here if anybody happens to be interested in this long story.

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I've always maintained that the Consumer Product Safety Commission began these regulations to make the chemical industry rich.

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Like everything in our government, it's all bought and paid for. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission is a body of unelected people that can be easily bought off.

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There's really no reason to make a mattress flame retardant. You know, prior to 2007 where people just bring themselves up in mattresses left and right and we got to do something about this?

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No. And even the argument that the Consumer Product Safety Commission makes for making a mattress flame retardant doesn't hold water because they claim by making the mattress flame retardant, it gives you more time to get out of your house in case of a house fire.

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Well, most people die from smoke. So if a fire starts in the basement, in the kitchen, in an electrical source or heat source, by the time it spreads to your bedroom, you're dead in the smoke.

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The flame retardant mattress is not going to do a thing for you. So it's an argument to back up what they're really doing, and that is somebody's bought them off to make the chemical industry rich.

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So Americans are sleeping in toxic chemicals to make the chemical industry rich. That's what I maintain to be the reality of it.

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Because there's really no reason to have a flame retardant mattress. Okay.

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Well, if anybody wants more details on Sleep Essentials, go to sleepessentials .com.

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Sleepessentials .com. And, Lee, before I get a start on this disturbing and fascinating conversation about racism in the modern church,

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I'd like you to give, as I always ask of our first -time guests,

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I'd like to get from you a summary of your salvation testimony that would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which you were raised, if any, and the kind of providential circumstances our sovereign

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Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you. Well, yeah.

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I hope we've got some time. Yeah, we have plenty of time. Okay. Excellent.

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I would say that I felt the call of the Holy Spirit when I was at the age of 20. And here it is.

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Prior to that, I was living a sinful life, as you can imagine a 20 - or 19 - or 18 -year -old boy would be interested in.

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And I got a conviction upon my heart that that lifestyle is thin, and I got a conviction that that lifestyle leads to a high probability of divorce.

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Now, the reason it probably freaked my conscience is because of the background. My parents got divorced when

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I was 13. I was caught in the middle of their divorce. It was very ugly, and it wreaked havoc on my life.

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I was very angry at the world. I got into a lot of fights in school and so forth because of that anger.

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And when I became an adult at the age of 20, and I think primarily the move of the

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Holy Spirit, convicted me that I didn't want to live that lifestyle. I didn't want to end up divorced.

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And I recognized, again, I have to give God all the glory, that the lifestyle that I was living was going to lead in that direction.

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And I even actually started doing some research on my own showing that sex outside of the marriage covenant, sex before marriage, leads to very much increased influences upon divorce.

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And I could get into a lot of details as to why that is, but I was just convicted of that. And so I changed my lifestyle and started going to church, and didn't seek the young ladies like I had prior, and was convicted that I should get married, you know, get married without having sex before marriage.

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And so when I met my wife at age 26, she was one of the few ladies that I had met that didn't throw herself at me.

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I think that's a real problem in our culture. The women, young women are not protected by their fathers from sexual predator males.

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And so a lot of girls today are very sexually active, and that's going to wreak havoc on their personal life.

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It's going to wreak havoc on their married life. So I was very fortunate that God put a like that.

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And so we got married, and my Christianity has grown greatly over the years.

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But here's the—and this is a wonderful testimonial of the power of God, because it's easy for someone to say,

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I believe in God. That's easy. It's kind of like, do you believe a man can walk a tightrope pushing a wheelbarrow?

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Well, sure, I believe a man can do that. Faith is getting in the wheelbarrow. And so while from the age of 20 to the age of 27 or 8 or 9, up 29,

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I always believed God and went to church and I read my Bible, but I had never had faith in God.

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Now, here's the difference. My wife and I tried for six years to have children.

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We had no success. We went from expert doctor to expert doctor. They all said we were perfectly normal.

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And of course, when you're going through that, people will say to you, if you'll just forget about it, you'll have a child.

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Well, that's easy. It's a lot easier to say than to do. You want to have children. And so, of course, everybody says, if you'll just forget about it, she'll get pregnant.

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So as a man, I'm trying to solve the problem. That's what we men do. We solve problems.

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I'm going to solve this problem. And I thought to myself, there's probably something to this. If she'll just forget about it, she'll get pregnant.

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How can I get her to forget about it? And of course, at this point, after six years of trying, my wife was like, you know, we're not going to have any kids.

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We need to do something else. We toyed with the idea of in vitro, but we didn't like the idea of freezing children and throwing them away if you didn't use them.

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So we toyed with adoption. But it was always in the back of my mind, wait a minute, the doctors say we're perfectly normal.

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I'm not really on board with adoption. But I felt like if we start the adoption process, maybe that's some closure for my wife.

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And maybe, you know, by the time we get a child, she'll conceive. So I had this all figured out.

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So I thought, well, you know, when you start the adoption process, it's going to be a year or two before you can actually get a child.

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So you go through the motions, you go through the home studies, you do the classes, you pay a little money, but you don't have to come up with any real big money until they place you with a child.

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And of course, in the back of my mind, it's like, why do I want to come up with a bunch of money for somebody else's kid when, you know,

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I'm still holding on to this idea that we can have our own children because the doctor said we're normal. Well, a situation came up where a neighbor of mine whose father is a doctor in Mexico who treats women for infertility,

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I was talking to him one day about it. And he says, well, some women build up antibodies from exposure to cats.

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And I said, that's it. It's my wife's cat. I was just convinced this is it.

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We've got to get treated for this. He said, American doctors don't test for this, but my dad can tell me what antibodies are and we'll get her tested for it.

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I was like, it's it. That's it. We found the problem. So when I went back to my wife and said to her,

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I was like, we need to hold off on the adoption. Let's see if we get tested for this. And she said, she says, this is just a delay tactic.

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Now, if anybody out there is listening, has been through infertility issues, it's a tough time for a married couple.

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It's a very difficult, strenuous time. And she, she says rightly that I wasn't fully on board with adoption because I'm still holding out for this.

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You know, we can have our own, but she's a very sweet woman. My wife is the sweetest woman on the face of the earth.

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She agreed to go through the test. We got her tested for the antibodies and they came back negative.

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Now, how does this relate to my faith? Well, when the test came back negative, I had basically gotten to the end of my rope and I got down on my knees and I said,

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Lord, if it's your will that I be without children, I accept that. Lord, if it's your will that I be an adoptive father,

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I accept that. If it's, and I even, I even included in my prayer, if it's your will that I be an adoptive father of a special needs child,

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I accept whatever you give me. I'm done with this. I can't fix it.

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And I got up off my knees and I went to work and within two hours, the adoption agency called and said, we have a child for you.

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That's the difference between believing. Yeah, that's different than believing in God and having faith.

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And the beauty of God's grace is that he forces us to have faith because he has to.

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And that was my faith moment. There was one thing in getting me the conviction of my sin, and then many years later, bringing me into understanding

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I have a plan for you. By the way, whatever you did to change the position of your microphone to your face, keep it this way because your audio is much better right now.

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Okay, good. So that was the difference between, you know, believing in God and stepping out in faith.

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And I was forced at the end of my rope. And so every time I look at my son, who is now 20, every time

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I look at my son, I recognize the providence of God in my life. Now, here is the other thing.

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You know, once I got this child, I fell madly in love with him within days, even though I was like, you know,

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I wasn't expecting to adopt. I wasn't expecting to, you know, come up with a bunch of money for someone else's child.

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It took two days. It didn't matter to me. I was so madly in love with him. He was the most precious thing

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I've ever laid my eyes on. It almost brings tears to my eyes to even talk about it.

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But, you know, so much happened at once by the providence in the hand of God.

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It's amazing. Well, you know, so we wanted to adopt another child. We didn't want to have another one.

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I mean, we didn't want to have just one. So we were back in the adoption pool waiting for a child.

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And of course, when you go through adoption, the adoption agency doesn't want to give you a child you wouldn't be comfortable with.

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So, you know, if you only want a boy, they will only give you a boy. They wouldn't give you a girl.

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If you only want an infant, they'll only give you an infant. They're not going to give you a two -year -old. So, you know, you have to specify everything, even all the way down to the race.

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And of course, we chose Caucasian. Healthy, infant,

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Caucasian boy or girl. Well, the adoption agency called when we were ready for a second child and said that a mother showed up at the hospital.

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She had no prenatal care. She never saw the child. She delivered it and wanted to walk out.

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But we have a child for you if you want it. And of course, my wife and I, after the first one, we're like, yeah, we'll take anything you got.

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And so the birth mother was white. When we showed up to the hospital, the baby was two days old.

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He was pink. The birth mother was Caucasian, but she lied about the birth father's race.

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And of course, we really didn't care. You know, a baby is a baby. And, you know, it sounded like to me it was

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Caucasian. So we took him home. He was two days old. Every day we had him, it kept getting darker and darker and darker.

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And you realized, wow, we have a black child. And, you know, it made me, it reminded me of my prayer.

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I told God, I said, you know, whatever you have planned for my life, I accept it. And I realized his plan was for us to have this boy.

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And he's now 17. He's the absolute joy of my life. But, you know, we have a biracial child.

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And it has created some dynamics with my extended family. I was not raised as a

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Christian. My father passed away about two years ago, and my father did not accept a non -Caucasian child ever.

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Well, he was always nice to him, what little I was around my father. But, you know, growing up with my dad,

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I knew how bad of a racist he was. My brother and sister tried to deny that he's a racist.

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But, you know, some of that's just out of convenience or, you know, difficult dealing with the reality.

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But, yeah, my brother in the last year told me that everyone in my family said that they would not have adopted a black child.

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In other words, you shouldn't have done that. And, of course, that, you know, causes problems in a family.

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But it doesn't cause a problem with me and my wife and my two boys, because we are a very happy family. So, you know, it's fascinating that growing up in a race -hating, in a family of a race -hating father, that it didn't stick with me.

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And that's, again, the providence of God, because, you know, God takes that foolishness out of your heart.

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You know, because there was a time maybe when I was, you know, 14 or 15 years old, I might have said a racial joke or might have joked racially along those lines.

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But, you know, when you become a Christian, you don't see race anymore. You see humans. And, you know, and I see the prayer that I said,

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God, I'll accept whatever you give me, even if it's a special needs. I went so far as, you know, because I think a special needs requires, you know, special people to do that.

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I was accepting of if that's what he gave me. Well, when he showed up and he was, you know, a week later, he's black.

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It's like, that's what God wanted me to do. And I couldn't be happier. And now here's what's really fun about this is that when we showed up at the hospital to get him, the nurse said he was born two days ago.

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I was like, you're kidding me. Two days ago? She's like, yeah, he's two days old. I was like, two days ago was my birthday.

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So my youngest son and I share the same birthday. Oh, praise God. Yeah. It's just,

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I couldn't be happier. But, you know, the racial issue with some people's difficult and it's unfortunate within my direct family.

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Well, we're going to go to our first commercial break and we're going to continue this story. And we're going to enter into a different element of the story that involves racism in the modern day church.

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And I want to give a caveat to this topic. I am fully aware, as my guest is, that in our day and age, leftists hurl around the accusation of racism multiple times a day on every media format, whether it's

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TV, the internet, and other areas of spreading propaganda.

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They will declare factually, in their minds, that is, that all white people are racist and that we have to repent of even being white.

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So we realize that there is a lot of accusations being hurled around that are slanderous and false coming from the left about racism.

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But we should not react to that very true phenomena by coming to the conclusion that there is no genuine racism in existence, especially in evangelical churches in our modern era.

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And that, unfortunately, is hogwash. It does exist. It perhaps does not exist to the magnitude that leftists claim it exists, but it does exist.

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And that's a big part of the story we're going to be hearing from Lee Carter after these messages from our sponsors.

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So if you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

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Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, and I could readily understand this topic evoking questions that are personal and private.

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They perhaps involve the racism of a close family member, or perhaps you are battling with the sin of racism in your own mind and heart.

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And once again, I'd like to give another caveat or explanation. I hate the word racism because I believe there's only one race, that's the human race.

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And if you want to say that there's two races, Adam's race and the race of those born from above by the grace of Jesus Christ.

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But that has become a part of the vernacular to use the phrase racism, and so therefore that's why you will hear it from time to time on this program.

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But once again, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Now we're going to hear a word from one of our newest sponsors,

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Lebanon Federal Credit Union in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Daniel Wolford, CEO and President of Lebanon Federal Credit Union, and we're excited to be part of the

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Iron Sharpens Iron radio family. At Lebanon Federal Credit Union, we're proud to serve the community with six convenient locations across Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, and we're growing.

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I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Originally from Cork, Ireland, the

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Lord and his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

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At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession, we embrace congregational church government, and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's Word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost, and the glory of our triune

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God. We are also devoted to living out the one another commands of scripture, loving, encouraging, and serving each other as the of Christ.

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In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every

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Sunday. We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org.

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That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.

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Greetings, this is Brian McLaughlin, President of the SecureComm Group and supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Shopping Zion radio program.

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SecureComm provides the highest level of security systems for residential buildings, municipalities, churches, commercial properties, and much more.

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We can be reached at securecommgroup .com. That's securecommgroup .com.

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But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

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Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.

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In the film, Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt

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God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.

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I sense that same God -given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.

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That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a Savior who died for sinners, and that God forgives all who come to Him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

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I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the

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Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, call 516 -352 -9672.

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That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

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God bless you. I'm Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven, an

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Orthodox Presbyterian church in Comac, Long Island. I hold the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program hosted by my longtime friend and brother,

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Chris Arnzen, in the highest esteem, and I'm thrilled that you're listening today. I'm also delighted that Iron Sharpens Iron is partnering with one of my favorite resources for Reformed Christian literature for decades now,

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Oh, and make sure that you tell them you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, praise

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Chris Aronson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And we're now back with Lee Carter.

37:28

He is going to be giving us a testimony of racism in the modern church.

37:34

And he has already begun the story, and he was talking about how he adopted a child.

37:42

The baby, unbeknownst to him, would later prove to be a baby of mixed race, clearly having a black father because he knew that the mother was white.

37:56

And how folks in his family, especially his father, were very upset by this because his dad, as Lee has admitted, or was, he has departed this earth not long ago, but was a racist, a bigot.

38:16

And it's interesting, Lee, before we go on into the rest of the story, but it's interesting how the left wing is so insane that these days they would think you're a bigot for being white, adopting a black child because you're robbing that child of some kind of racial nurturing in the black tradition, or something as ridiculous and asinine as that.

38:48

And they come up with all reasons to consider white folk racist.

38:55

And in fact, even colorblindness now is racist because we're not supposed to be not recognizing and highlighting someone's race or ethnic origin.

39:13

That's supposed to be a big part of how we view them and celebrate them. But I'm sure you agree that this is absolute insanity.

39:25

Yeah, well, it's fascinating to me, having a black child, you go to Walmart, a grocery store, whatever, and you would see people that would look at your child and look at you and look at your child, look at you, and you just wonder what they're wondering.

39:42

But for the most part, we've never run into, my son's never run into any negative treatment because of his skin color.

39:53

The truth is most people will treat you according to who you are. Now, there was a time where we had a culture where we treated black people as inferior.

40:05

That's a fact. And I have in my family people that would actually say that black people were inferior.

40:14

And it's unfortunate. Let me add to this a little piece of information that long before I was married, after I had become a

40:26

Christian, but long before I was married, never having any idea that I would be an adoptive father, when

40:32

I was in college, I would have some time down between my studies, and I'd go to the library, and I would just pick up a book, you know, this looks interesting, and just pick it up and read it.

40:42

And one of the books was about race and intelligence. Since, you know,

40:49

I grew up in an era and a family that would say that black people are inferior, it was interesting to me to read it because it talked about how there is no intellectual difference between the races, and it documented it scientifically.

41:04

It's fascinating to me that God was preparing me long before even

41:09

I was married to adopt a black child, because I came to throw off the idea that my, you know, my parents' generation was stuck with, and that is that black people are inferior.

41:25

You know, and I shook that. I was able to shake that off by the providence of God and found it interesting to read such a book, you know, so that when this child was presented to me,

41:38

I understood being a Christian and understood the scientific facts. There's no difference.

41:44

There is only one race. It's the human race. So, I'm with you, Chris. There's only one race.

41:51

People are only different immaterially. Most of it has to do with whether or not we're sinners.

42:00

Some of us are more sinners than others, but we're all sinners and we're equal in that way, too. Right. That's true.

42:10

So, today, it's fascinating. I don't see racism as a big problem, you know, because, you know, if you think about my parents' generation, they were segregated.

42:18

They didn't go to school with black kids. You know, they even grew up in a time where you didn't drink from the same water fountain as someone who's black.

42:25

So, that puts an impression on you that you're supposed to be separate. You're supposed to be, you know, not together.

42:35

And that's unfortunate for that generation. But, you know, my generation, I went to school with black kids.

42:40

And when you go to school with black kids and you play ball and you play in the park and you play in the backyard with kids of a different race, you very easily recognize they're just like me, you know.

42:53

So, it doesn't stick in your mind that we're different. To kind of share with you a little bit about my family's background, you know, my parents' generation, my dad lived to be 85.

43:09

He died about two years ago. My mother, today, is 85. You know, they come from a different generation.

43:15

But my father idolized, is the best way I can describe it, his grandfather, which was his mother's father.

43:25

His mother's father was a very evil man up until the end of his life. So evil back in the,

43:32

I want to say, 1920s, he actually killed a black man and buried him in the woods.

43:37

Wow. Any particular reason that you know? Yeah. The story that I've heard is that he talked to a white woman and my grandfather, my great -grandfather said, you're not to speak to that white woman.

43:50

And the black man just scoffed at him or ignored him. And, you know, my grandfather decided he'd catch him somehow or some way and kill him.

44:01

And the family knows that, everybody in the family knows that he did that.

44:11

Because my cousin, I think, owns the rifle that he shot him with. And, and so, you know, this kind of Southern mentality racism runs deep in my family.

44:26

I wouldn't go so far as to say that my siblings are racist like that, but my dad definitely thought as black people being inferior.

44:34

I grew up with it. And in fact, to tell you a story when I was little, to show you my dad's racism,

44:41

I had this little, I had this little toy garage, had a little toy people and little toy cars.

44:46

And I loved that little thing when I was, you know, five years old, six years old. And I was getting it out to play with it one day and I couldn't find all the people.

44:54

And I searched and searched and searched. And then I asked my brother, who's three years older than me, I said, you haven't seen this, my little person, have you?

45:01

And he goes, yeah, dad threw it in a fire. And it was a little black person. So yeah, I come from,

45:07

I come from a dad that was like that. So you can imagine, he didn't like the idea of me adopting a black child.

45:13

But you gotta understand, I didn't set out to adopt a black child. God gave me a black child.

45:21

So, you know, cause when you go through the adoption agency, like I've already said, you have to sign up for what you want. So we didn't sign up for a, for a black child, just for family reasons.

45:30

Right. Not that we were against it, but when it came, it's like, yeah, he's black. So what? God meant him to be in my, my, my arms.

45:38

So I love him to death. I mean, that's the power of God. God, God will take a racist and convert him.

45:47

Now the story goes with my great -grandfather was in the last year of his life, he got saved and he cried every time he had nine children.

45:56

He cried every time his children came around him because he had basically been so, such a mean man that his children had basically disdained him.

46:08

And he had tremendous regret of the person he was. Yeah.

46:14

So my grandmother told me that, that he got saved at the end of his life. So it's a, it's a, you know, look what

46:20

God can do. He's an all -powerful God that can convert the hardest of hearts.

46:27

Amen. I think there's credible evidence that that occurred in the life of George Wallace. No kidding.

46:35

I didn't know. I haven't read that. Oh yeah. Yeah. In fact, the last time he ran for office right, right this second,

46:40

I can't remember what office that was, but he had the majority black vote. And this was,

46:46

I believe in the eighties, uh, long after his, uh, uh, discriminatory behavior in the fifties or early sixties.

46:57

Wow. Praise God. It's awesome. You know, and that's the reason why I could adopt, even though I was never on the, on the bandwagon for adoption.

47:06

And it was the reason why, um, you know, when we were handed a child that, you know, uh, after week became pink to black, like he was meant to be with us.

47:16

I'm happy to be his dad. Amen. Well, let's move on to this horrific aspect of your story, uh, that involves your membership in a professedly

47:32

Reformed church. You and I are both theologically Reformed Calvinists, and, uh, we, uh, disdain, as you've already made it clear, uh, bigotry against anyone, uh, because of the color of their skin or their ethnic origin.

47:52

And when, when you think about it, you can't come up with a more moronic reason for, uh, having any kind of grudge or hatred against somebody because of the, the, the percentage of melanin that they have in their skin or the texture of their hair or the size of their lips and the shape of their nose to hate somebody because of that is actually moronic.

48:18

Uh, but, uh, you were in a church, a professedly Reformed church where the leadership revealed just how evil they were in regard to that particular sin.

48:30

And if you could tell us the whole story about that, and we have about, uh, just to let you know in advance, we have about five minutes for you to, actually four minutes for you to start that story, and then we're going to continue it after the midway break.

48:46

Okay. Uh, question for you, Chris, give me some advice here. Should I keep the real names anonymous?

48:53

I'm going to leave that up to you. Um, well, this involves the

48:59

RPCUL. Are you familiar with the denomination? It's a micro

49:04

Reformed Presbyterian denomination. Which now does no longer exist. Correct.

49:09

By the providence of God, in my opinion. Um, it's, I was exposed to the

49:16

RPCUL through Joe Moorcraft. I found Joe Moorcraft, Pastor Joe Moorcraft, who I think, I guess you can basically say founded that denomination, um, through some online tutorials or, or CDs and so forth.

49:29

And I listened to his preaching on sermon audio, and I was just fascinated by his teaching. And so I had met another man that had the same mentality,

49:39

Reform mentality, um, that, you know, most churches today have strongly waned in their commitment to the word.

49:50

And so we got together and went to a conference they had and met Joe Moorcraft and told them we would like to start a church in Roanoke, Virginia.

50:00

And so they entertained that. And so how they did it was a particular pastor that was pastoring a church in Wytheville, Virginia, uh, agreed to, um, preach on Sunday mornings in Wytheville to his current congregation and then drive to Roanoke on Sunday nights to, um, preach, uh, our services.

50:26

And so we got that thing started and was very excited about it, that we were associated with, you know, what we seem to be people of like mind of Joe Moorcraft because we had listened to his stuff for so long.

50:39

Um, and that's how it all got started. And— And we have to make it clear that Joe Moorcraft is not a racist and that he is not the individual.

50:49

Yes, absolutely. Well, I want to be real clear about all of this. I do want to be very clear. I'm not going to claim that these, when

50:58

I tell you the story of what these people did, I don't want to claim they're racist, but I do want to say they have to be somewhat less conscious of a racial neutrality as they should be.

51:20

I'm real— I just— I just don't like to call someone a racist because I really don't know their heart. I don't know what they're thinking.

51:26

All I can do is tell you what they did. Right. And what they did, and from having heard the story from you,

51:32

I think reveals they were indeed racist. But I'll say that you don't have to say that.

51:39

Yeah, my wife would constantly, while we were going through all this, would say, you know, I believe these people are racist.

51:45

And my attitude was, well, I don't— I just can't call them racist. I think they've just got really, really bad history.

51:53

They've, you know, just as surely— surely as there is such a thing as fake news, there's also fake history.

52:02

There's been great deal amount of whitewashing the slavery history in this country over the several decades, trying to clean it up, make it not as as ugly as it actually was.

52:18

And this is what I was dealing with. And I always said they just got the wrong— they've been reading the wrong books.

52:23

They don't realize. Maybe they were racist. Maybe that was the driving force.

52:28

I'm not going to claim it's one or the other. I'm not sure. All I can do is tell the story of what they did and what their opinions are of the issue of slavery as it was practiced in this country, you know, in the

52:41

South. Of course, it was— I don't want to single out the South either, because the North is just as guilty of the slave trade.

52:49

But their view of that was, in this denomination— and I don't mean the whole denomination, because you're right,

52:57

Joe Moorcraft does not belong in this. In fact, Joe Moorcraft's church will hold somebody in church discipline if they demonstrate that they are racist.

53:11

I'm talking about his current church right now. But anyway, we have to go to our midway break, as I had mentioned.

53:20

So if anybody wants to join the conversation, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

53:27

And in fact, now we're going to hear an ad for the church pastored by Dr.

53:35

Joe Moorcraft, Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia. I'm Dr.

53:46

Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

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Every Christian who is serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight -volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the

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It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology.

54:23

Dr. Moorcraft is pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.

54:34

For details on the eight -volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com, westminstercommentary .com.

54:42

For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,

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Hello. My name is Anthony Uvino and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corum, New York and also the host of the

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But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

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That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a savior who died for sinners, and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

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I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the

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Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.

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That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.

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That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word, and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

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Welcome back. Before I return to my guest Lee Carter and his story of racism in the modern church,

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Earth, I have extensive lists spanning the globe of biblically faithful churches, and I've helped many people in our audience all over the globe find churches, sometimes even within just a couple of minutes from where they live, that are faithful to the

01:10:43

Holy Scriptures. So, if you are in that predicament, you are living somewhere and you cannot find a biblically faithful church that's doctrinally solid and theologically sound, please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:10:58

and put, I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Lee Carter.

01:11:05

He is an entrepreneur who is the founder of sleepessentials .com,

01:11:13

sleepessentials .com, and we are talking about his fascinating story and disturbing story of racism in the modern church.

01:11:24

And Lee, we just got around to you becoming a part of a small

01:11:30

Presbyterian denomination that no longer exists, and you can pick up where you left off.

01:11:39

Lee Carter Okay, well, yeah, we started a church plant in Roanoke, part of the RPCUS.

01:11:46

We had a pastor in the RPCUS who's pastoring a church in Wytheville that would drive to Roanoke.

01:11:53

Wytheville's about an hour and a half to two hours away from Roanoke. He would do that every evening after his service in the morning to pastor this and get this church started in Roanoke.

01:12:05

And it was slow going. It was very difficult to get people of the like mind of, well,

01:12:14

I'll just be very clear, this Presbyterian denomination was theonomic.

01:12:21

The RPCUS is theonomic. Christian Reconstruction is another term. I'm sure

01:12:26

Joe Morecraft would completely agree with either term. And so we were excited about having that, but it's hard to grow such a church.

01:12:34

So we had been having services for a couple of years, but over the couple of years,

01:12:39

I noticed that everyone in the church seemed to have an unhealthy love affair with everything

01:12:48

Southern to the point where, you know, if you had a discussion,

01:12:54

I don't even remember how we get into the discussions, but if you had a discussion about, you know, history and the

01:13:00

Civil War, the South was absolutely righteous and the North and Abraham Lincoln was absolutely tyrannical.

01:13:09

And, you know, I would always have discussions with them. You know, it's like my viewpoint was you just got your history wrong.

01:13:16

You're reading propaganda history, whitewash history. Yes, the

01:13:21

North was guilty of slave trading, and the South was guilty of owning and, you know, having slaves.

01:13:31

So everybody in the nation was guilty in a different way, but still guilty because slavery, as that was practiced, was sinful and diabolical.

01:13:42

And along those lines, they would even go so far as to say, well, you know, slavery's not as bad as people made it out to be, and most slaves loved their masters and, you know, just they tried to whitewash it.

01:13:56

And it came to a head. You know, up until this point, it was just lighthearted, maybe sometimes heated discussions about it with me and these other people.

01:14:10

And in fact, one person in the church actually said something that made me hot.

01:14:16

And I mean, I got very angry with it. And when he said this, I thought, something's wrong with you.

01:14:22

What he said was is that slaves were God's blessing upon the good

01:14:28

Christian people of the South. And I got hot. You know, how in the world you can have an attitude that God would bless an institution that the

01:14:43

Bible clearly says is founded in something that's worthy of the death penalty, that is, kidnapping people and enslaving them?

01:14:53

How he could come up with this idea is just absurd. But I'm trying to paint the picture of their mentality.

01:15:00

Now, this came to a head when we decided we were going to have a Bible conference, and we invited a pastor in the

01:15:07

RPCUS who was pastoring in Tennessee. Apparently, he had some great knowledge of the subject matter that we were going to do, so we invited him to come to this conference.

01:15:20

And so when he came to town, I told my pastor, tell him he can stay with me. I've got a spare bedroom in the basement.

01:15:26

He can stay with me. He doesn't have to get a hotel. I'll house him. Now, I've never met him before. And so we had the conference the evening, the first conference the evening he got into town, and then he didn't come to my house until that night, which was about 10 o 'clock when he showed up.

01:15:45

My kids were already in bed. And of course, when he came in, it was very cordial. I had already listened to him speak at the conference.

01:15:53

And so I walked him downstairs, and his wife commented, you have a beautiful home. Would you show us your home?

01:16:00

And of course, the next place to go into when we were downstairs, it was my office. And so when I walked into the office,

01:16:06

I was shown the office, and I had a picture. Now, you have to understand, I'm a history buff.

01:16:12

I love reading history, and I'm a fan of Stonewall Jackson simply because of his tremendous faith in the

01:16:20

Lord Jesus Christ. And the story of his passing is just fascinating.

01:16:26

So I had a picture of Stonewall Jackson, and he commented on it, and we were talking about the meaning behind the picture.

01:16:33

And then I kind of lightheartedly said, well, I'm kind of an unusual Southerner because I got a picture of Abraham Lincoln over on this other wall because I like Jefferson and Lincoln.

01:16:44

You know, I like these men. And then this pastor said, well, that's good for nothing but throwing darts at.

01:16:54

And I was like, here we go again. I'm dealing with somebody else that just has this the

01:17:01

South can do no wrong and the North could do no right mentality. And so it stoked a conversation about the history of the

01:17:09

Civil War. And he finally said to me, well, the

01:17:14

Bible roundly condemns abolitionism. And of course, if my wife and his wife were standing on the other side of the room, what a big room, but they were kind of chit -chatting together.

01:17:28

He and I were chit -chatting. My wife could kind of tell that this is a very—I better keep one ear on the conversation, right?

01:17:38

And so when he said that, I said, are you saying that all black people should still be slaves?

01:17:44

I mean, it's a logical question. You just said that the Bible condemns abolitionism.

01:17:50

We're talking about the Civil War. We're talking about abolishing slavery, and he's claiming the

01:17:56

Bible condemns abolitionism. So I logically asked him the question, are you saying all black people should still be slaves today?

01:18:05

Now, when I asked him that question, I immediately knew this is getting into ugly territory, because if this man answers in the affirmative, which is the only way

01:18:17

I could conclude that he would answer, I was not going to let him stay in my house that night.

01:18:24

So very, very quickly, I changed the subject. I said, well,

01:18:30

Pastor—and I'll call him Jack. I'm not going to use these people's names. I'll say, Pastor Jack said you'd keep me up till 3 o 'clock in the morning, and he laughed, and I think it broke the ice.

01:18:40

We changed the subject, and we moved on, because I didn't want him to answer that question.

01:18:47

I shouldn't have asked it, although parts of me wishes I would have let him answer it. If he had answered in the affirmative,

01:18:55

I would have said, you're not staying here tonight. He hadn't met my children, because he showed up at my house at 10 o 'clock at night.

01:19:05

My kids were in bed, and he probably didn't know I had a black child. Would that have changed his thought processes or his speech, you know, what he would have said?

01:19:16

One can always wonder. So what happened after that? The next day,

01:19:21

I called my friend, and I want to use that term loosely.

01:19:27

I thought he was a friend. As this unfolded, I found out he's not a friend at all, but I called him up.

01:19:32

He was an elder in training in the church for this new plan, and I said—I'll call him

01:19:39

William—I said, William, I've got a problem. This pastor's claiming that slavery is biblical and that slavery should never have been abolished, and William said, well, we need to—I know you're concerned about that.

01:19:54

Of course, William already knew my viewpoints of the history of the South, and so he was real concerned about it.

01:20:01

He says, well, we need to get together and talk about this. We need to, you know, let's make sure we're clear on our terms and all that.

01:20:07

I was like, yeah, absolutely. I agree with that. Let's do that. And so we were going to get together on Wednesday during lunch.

01:20:15

This was Monday night that this happened. We were going to get together on Wednesday at lunch and have a discussion about this.

01:20:22

Meanwhile, William called me up, I think the next day, and said, pastor, this pastor has sermons on sermon audio on the subject of slavery.

01:20:34

Maybe you should listen to them. And so I listened to them, and I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

01:20:40

This was not whitewashing slavery. This was making slavery glorious, and I decided before we had that meeting on Wednesday, I decided if these people believe this,

01:20:57

I don't want to be associated with a denomination of people that believe this. So I decided that I was going to tell them when

01:21:05

I met with them on Wednesday that if you believe this, if you stand firm on this,

01:21:11

I'm leaving the church. So when we had the meeting, regrettably,

01:21:18

I let them drag me into a conversation about the subject. And we went back and forth for,

01:21:25

I want to say, about two hours, and they were defending slavery. And instead of saying,

01:21:33

I'm not having a conversation with you about this, I'm done having a conversation, you know, it's fruitless to try to persuade you that you're in error on this because you're determined to believe it.

01:21:43

So I just wanted to transfer—I let them drag me into a conversation, and I regretted it. Well, it gets really, really interesting.

01:21:54

We ended the lunch that day without a conclusion of anything, and then some emails exchanged between me and my pastor and me and William on the subject.

01:22:10

And finally, my pastor says, we need to have another meeting. I said, fine, let's talk this out some more.

01:22:19

And when I went to this meeting, it was just my pastor and William and myself, and he wanted to discuss the subject matter of some of the emails that I had sent.

01:22:29

And so we discussed that, and he, my pastor, he had never done this before.

01:22:35

He had never talked about slavery or the South before in the two, three years that he had been pastoring us.

01:22:41

But since this pastor from Tennessee had defended it, now my pastor's defending it.

01:22:48

At the meeting, you know, we tried to discuss it. I was like, you know, slavery is diabolical the way it was practiced.

01:22:58

I said, and of course, my pastor kept saying, well, the institution is not wrong.

01:23:04

The institution of slavery is a biblical institution. I said, biblical slavery is a biblical institution.

01:23:12

Sinful slavery is not a biblical institution. And he would just say, well, you can't parse it up like that.

01:23:18

You can't parse it up like that. I said, sure you can. I said, you know, if you're kidnapping people and forcing them into slave labor, that's a capital crime.

01:23:27

He goes, well, we agree that's a capital crime, but once these people are slaves, we have to deal with slavery as it is, according to the

01:23:36

Bible. And I said, well, that's, you know, and I tried to explain that that's like saying when

01:23:42

I was a teenager, I bought a car stereo from a friend of mine, but I knew the car stereo was stolen.

01:23:50

So after buying the car stereo doesn't make that transaction legitimate because I know it's a stolen product.

01:24:00

I'm participating in theft if I buy a stolen product. I said, likewise, if slavery is, if these slaves became slaves by kidnapping, then it's an ungodly institution.

01:24:17

And he would not distinguish between the two of them. He danced around it. He would even go so far as to say that, you know, he put it like this.

01:24:32

He goes, you know, there can be tyrants in a marriage. You know, a husband can be a tyrant to a wife, but that doesn't destroy the institution of marriage.

01:24:43

I'm like, this is absurd. Yes, the institution of marriage is a covenant, but, you know, it's a

01:24:52

God -ordained covenant. But if you're stealing people and forcing them into slavery, that's not

01:24:58

God -ordained. These people should be set free. And he wouldn't distinguish between them.

01:25:05

He danced around it. And he would say stuff like, well, we don't really know how those people became slaves.

01:25:13

We just have to deal with the institution of slavery biblically. I was like, well, that's awfully convenient.

01:25:19

You don't know how they became slaves. And then, you know, realizing that he wasn't,

01:25:27

I guess, winning his argument, he tried to say, and this was really at the tail end of it, he said,

01:25:34

Lee, my problem with you is how you handle Scripture. So I, looking back on it,

01:25:42

I wish I would have said to him, well, my problem with you is how you handle Scripture. But what

01:25:49

I said was, you know, I paused a minute when he said that and I said, you know, because I'm thinking to myself, this is not going anywhere.

01:25:56

You know, there's no use having an argument with these, dare I say it, lunatics.

01:26:03

There's no use having an argument with these lunatics. So I paused a minute after he said that. I said, fine, excommunicate me.

01:26:11

No, I said, pray for me, excommunicate me. I'm done. And I got up and walked out. Now, it gets really interesting now, because we're not just dealing with the tyrannical view of slavery in the

01:26:27

South by a couple of men that are pastors in the RPCUS. They really show their hand and who they are, because finally, you've got to understand in this church plant here in Roanoke, we didn't have elders.

01:26:43

We didn't have enough men. We didn't have enough families in the church to have elders. So the pastor decided to take it upon himself to excommunicate me for, and what did he call it?

01:26:59

He called it basically troublemaking, that I was a troublemaker.

01:27:06

Now, the interesting part of this is when he wrote me a letter of excommunication, this is a pastor excommunicating a member in good standing on his own in a

01:27:15

Presbyterian denomination. I'm a touch getting ahead of myself.

01:27:23

Now, I thought everyone in the RPCUS was of this mindset. I had a real hard time thinking, could it be possible that Joe Moorcraft has this mindset?

01:27:32

I was, you know, because everybody that I had come in contact with was of this mindset. Finally, in the middle of all this,

01:27:38

I got a call from a pastor of the RPCUS that's in Paswell. And when he called me, he goes,

01:27:46

Lee, I want you to understand that we've been informed of everything that's been going on in this controversy.

01:27:53

He goes, brother, we agree with you. We believe that the pastor in Wytheville is in error.

01:28:01

We believe that he's teaching something that is sinful, and we're dealing with him and we're in discussions.

01:28:08

And of course, he was very positive. He says, I really do believe that this pastor,

01:28:13

I'm not going to name his name, this pastor is coming our way on this.

01:28:19

He goes, we're still in negotiation. He goes, but, you know, he has, he was basically saying that he has a problem with how you're dealing with this as well.

01:28:30

And of course, I had gotten contentious. That's the word I'm trying to think of. He said I was contentious, and I was contentious.

01:28:36

I don't deny that I was contentious. You're teaching something that's patently absurd. And I'm associated with this by being a member of the church.

01:28:45

I didn't want to be a part of that anymore. So it was a breath of fresh air that the pastor in Tazewell called and said he agreed with me because I thought

01:28:54

I was on an island by myself. So this controversy got quite ugly within the denomination.

01:29:03

Well, my pastor decided to write me a letter of communication for contentiousness.

01:29:10

Now here's where it gets really interesting. He put in the letter an incident that happened between me and a young man who was coming to our church, had been coming to our church, that lived with William, William being the elder in training.

01:29:29

He didn't live with his own family anymore. He was, I want to say, 18 years old. He had moved in with William because he had family problems.

01:29:38

But the controversy was, and this is fascinating because I really liked this young man.

01:29:44

I'd been going to church with him for a long time, and he was getting involved in a flying club, which my brother is in a flying club.

01:29:51

And I told my brother, I was like, you should get him into your flying club. He's a terrific young man. I said, you will thoroughly enjoy having him.

01:29:59

I mean, you know, training him to fly and all that. So I was very encouraging of this young man before all this happened.

01:30:06

I was a fan of this kid. Then my brother, who owns a machine shop, was looking to hire, maybe hire him.

01:30:15

And I said, you should definitely hire Joel. Joel is a sharp kid. He's a good kid. You should hire him.

01:30:21

And my brother hired him. So he worked, he was in the flying club and an employee of my brother's on my recommendations.

01:30:31

So I was a fan of this kid. I was not hostile to him whatsoever. But when we were going through this slavery thing, he lived with William and William had the same mentality of the two slavery pastor.

01:30:45

And so he was feeding this young man, I guess the, you know, his viewpoint.

01:30:52

Well, with an email exchange, he sent me an email saying, you know, do not,

01:30:58

I was sending everybody in the church email exchanges of what was going on so that everybody would know what was going on.

01:31:05

He got one of them. Well, he didn't like it. He sent me an email back saying, never send me any emails again.

01:31:11

Oh, okay. Well, several months later, I went to my brother's business.

01:31:17

And when I walked in, I walked over to Joel to be friendly with him. And, you know, and I said to him, you know,

01:31:24

Joel, I don't, you know, something, and I was smiling when I said it, I was being very friendly. I was like, I can't imagine, you know, what about my email you didn't like.

01:31:33

He immediately started cursing me and threatening me. And it just really shocked me.

01:31:40

That was what happened. But in the excommunication letter, my pastor wrote that I threatened and cussed him.

01:31:51

Now, clearly he's citing an episode of my contentiousness without interviewing the two subject matter of the, okay, this is a great error of his part.

01:32:04

So the only thing I said in response to the letter of excommunication was, one, you don't have the authority to excommunicate me by yourself.

01:32:13

And two, you should definitely believe everything this young man told you. And I just looked at that.

01:32:20

Because at this point I was like, you people are nuts and I really don't care to contend with you.

01:32:26

Well, I got an email later, a week later from my pastor saying, I thought

01:32:32

I understood the controversy, but I interviewed the young man and he confirmed that you did not attack and threaten him or curse and threaten him.

01:32:42

It was the opposite. I said, well, now your letter of excommunication shouldn't stand.

01:32:50

But this was a pastor that was willing to accept a story he heard secondhand.

01:32:58

Then didn't bother to interview me or the young man until after I said, you should definitely believe everything he said.

01:33:08

Yeah. He was completely violating the principles set forth in the inerrant

01:33:13

God -breathed words of the gospel of Matthew on how conflict resolution, discipline, and excommunication are to be handled.

01:33:23

I can only think that he couldn't stand that I challenged, dared to challenge his view on slavery in the

01:33:30

South or the subject matter. And so he wanted to get rid of me. So he excommunicated me on his own.

01:33:37

Of course, I just laughed at it. Like, you don't have the authority to do that. Now, when he was having, he had to convey all this to the church in Tazewell, because the church in Tazewell was the church that was funding the plant for Roanoke.

01:33:54

So everything has to be conveyed to them. And the pastor in Tazewell told me that he advised my pastor to take elders in dealing with the situation in Roanoke or dealing with me.

01:34:09

And my pastor refused to take the elders. In other words, he knew he was in a bad position if he had elders.

01:34:18

That's why he refused to take elders, excommunicated me on his own. He doesn't have the power to do that.

01:34:24

All because they were determined to defend their viewpoint of the righteousness of slavery, i .e.

01:34:33

the defense of the South. Well, this all became part of the Presbyterian controversy that when they had a

01:34:42

Presbyterian meeting down in Georgia, they had to address all this.

01:34:50

Now, here's the interesting piece of this, because, you know, John Warcraft was censured or what have you.

01:34:58

I don't know the exact terms because I don't know exactly what happened. I was never really up to speed or involved in what's going on with John Warcraft.

01:35:06

But because prior to this, there was a controversy with John Warcraft, and John Warcraft left the

01:35:12

RPCUS. This was before the slavery issue. I'll never forget when it was going on.

01:35:20

My pastor was relaying to me a story dealing with John Warcraft. And he said that John Warcraft said to him,

01:35:30

Pastor James, I'll just use the word James, I won't use a real name. He says, I just don't think I can get a fair trial.

01:35:37

And my pastor said to him, well, Joe, there's nothing I want more than to make sure you get a fair trial.

01:35:45

I'll never forget that incident because I was able to look back on it and realize now

01:35:50

I know why Joe Warcraft didn't feel like he could get a fair trial because that pastor excommunicated me without a trial at all.

01:35:56

Right, right. So this all went, the slavery issue, of course,

01:36:01

John Warcraft is gone at this time. The slavery issue came up to the Presbytery down in Georgia. I didn't go to the meeting because, you know,

01:36:07

I've got a business to run and it's too far away. So I didn't go. Part of me wishes I had went just to see how it unfolded.

01:36:15

But my pastor and the pastor that came from Tennessee left the RPCUS over the issue because they were not going to back down on their teaching of slavery.

01:36:27

Is this racism? I'm not one to say whether it is or not. Is it idolatry that they idolize the

01:36:37

South so much that they have to defend slavery? I mean, if the South is so righteous, then you've got no choice but to defend slavery.

01:36:47

Is it that? I don't know. It seems to be that. But I'm just not one to go about saying that, well, these people were racist.

01:36:59

I don't know their hearts. I don't know if it's racism or just an idolatry of everything

01:37:05

Southern or both or maybe something else. I don't know. But that's what happened to the

01:37:10

RPCUS, all because I decided that I'm not going to listen to this teaching that slavery is biblical.

01:37:20

Right. And we do have a listener with a question that goes right to the heart of this controversy,

01:37:26

I think. We have Jasper in Black Mountain, North Carolina. I have a very fond memory of Black Mountain, North Carolina.

01:37:34

I went to a wonderful Bible conference there about two years ago, maybe three. But Jasper says in Ephesians 6, verse 5, it says clearly, slaves be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling in the sincerity of your heart as to Christ, not by way of eye service as man pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.

01:38:07

How do you explain this in light of your view? Well, I know how I answer that, because I get this question very often, especially from leftists.

01:38:16

But go ahead if you want to answer first. Well, this, of course, very subject came up when we were debating it, you know, within my own church and denomination at the time.

01:38:29

And my answer to that is, the Bible does not expressly say what kind of slavery he's serving.

01:38:36

Is he paying off a debt? Well, yes, he's still obligated to pay off the debt.

01:38:41

He may want, you know, maybe—and I get the names confused—Onesimus and—what's the other person's name in Ephesians?

01:38:52

Onesimus and— Oh, well, it's not Titus. It's—man, now

01:39:00

I'm drawing a blank. The shortest epistle in the Bible. Yes, I don't remember which is which.

01:39:07

Jude, right? Okay, we don't know what kind of slavery he was serving.

01:39:12

So I have—I've always said I have a hard time believing that if he was a kidnapped human being, stolen, and forced into slave labor, that the apostle

01:39:27

Paul would have told him, go back and serve your master, that Paul would have been neutral on how he became a slave.

01:39:36

Because there's two different kinds—there's three different kinds of slaves. There's kidnapped, forced slave labor, which is what we practiced.

01:39:43

There is paying off a debt, and there is a penalty for a crime of theft if you can't pay it.

01:39:53

Then you work it off. You work for the person, you're their slave. You can handle it in different ways.

01:39:59

You can obviously, if he has a job, if a person has a job, you can confiscate part of his wages to pay off the debt if it's a debt situation or a theft situation.

01:40:10

But the Bible does not tell us in that what kind slavery he was serving. You have to distinguish them.

01:40:16

That was the big rub that I would bring up with my pastor is, well, you can't distinguish them because slavery is slavery.

01:40:24

It's like, no, no, you have to distinguish them because one type of slavery, the Bible says, is a death penalty crime.

01:40:32

You steal somebody like what's being done to those people in Africa being stolen by Europeans and sold to North Americans or the

01:40:42

Caribbean islands and so forth. That's like me buying a stolen car stereo that I knew it was stolen.

01:40:51

I'm participating in the theft then. Yes, and we have another question that actually is pertaining to what you just said.

01:41:04

CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, says, where in the Bible does it prohibit slavery on the basis of it is stealing another human or kidnapping him?

01:41:18

That's in Exodus 21, verse 16, whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him shall be put to death.

01:41:26

So it's not even just the stealer. It's the one who possesses the person stolen.

01:41:32

And I think that you can't use the excuse, well, that happened generations earlier or something like that.

01:41:41

You're still in possession of the progeny of people who have been stolen.

01:41:48

Yeah, and not only that, even in the cases of debt slavery or the paying off a debt for the results of a theft, and I may be a little bit wrong on the minute details here.

01:42:03

It may just be paying off a debt. Even in paying off a debt, you can only work at all for six years.

01:42:09

You're required in Old Testament Israel to be set free on the seventh year.

01:42:15

And I think Stonewall Jackson actually did that even though he believed in slavery.

01:42:22

I think he set slaves free on that basis. That I don't know.

01:42:28

I just remembered I had heard that he and Robert E. Lee were at odds with each other. Lee opposed slavery from the way

01:42:36

I understand it, which is— You know, this subject—I'm sorry to interrupt.

01:42:42

This subject is important because we do, as Christians, have naysayers and liberals that are going to say, well, you

01:42:50

Christians believe in the Bible and the Bible supports slavery. We need to be clear on what the

01:42:56

Bible says on this subject, that it absolutely condemns the type of slavery that we participated in in this country, holding black people in perpetual bondage, as opposed to, you know,

01:43:09

I always like to ask people, what's the proper punishment for theft? Chop their hand off?

01:43:14

That's not just. You make him a defendant if he chopped his hands off. Or should you put him in jail?

01:43:21

Well, everybody has to pay higher taxes to give that guy free housing, free food, free health care.

01:43:26

That's not just. Pay back the victim double what he stole. Now, that's just. And so if a person doesn't have the money to pay back the victim what he stole double, he's to work it off, i .e.

01:43:41

slave. So if he has a job, if that person stole something and he has a job, the civil government should not put him in jail, not chop his hands off, but make him pay back the victim by compensating part of his income.

01:44:00

Well, we have to go to our final break, and when we come back, we will continue on this very fascinating subject.

01:44:11

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. If we have time to take your question, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:44:17

Don't go away. We'll be right back. I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Lynbrook Baptist Church, a

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At Lynbrook Baptist Church, we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired

01:45:01

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01:45:13

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01:45:43

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01:45:50

That's L -Y -N -B -R -O -O -O -K -B -A -P -T -I -S -T -O -R -G. This is Pastor Keith Allen of Lynbrook Baptist Church, reminding you that by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.

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One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio,

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For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com.

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Joe O 'Reilly, an Iron Sharpens Radio listener, from Itoi in County Kildare, Arlington, Sanchu.

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

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01:55:43

Welcome back. And by the way, I misspoke in my haste to remind my guest of the source in the

01:55:52

Scripture for the slave Onesimus. It was not Jude. I was thinking of another very short book in the

01:56:00

New Testament. In fact, I think it's the shortest book in the New Testament, Philemon. Paul's letter to Philemon is where we find the story of Onesimus, and also he's mentioned in Colossians, but that was a mix -up on my part.

01:56:16

Yeah, I looked it up during the break as well. Yeah, I couldn't think of the name Onesimus and Philemon.

01:56:23

But, you know, again, the passages don't tell us what kind of slavery he was involved in or why he was a slave.

01:56:30

It just says that you're a brother, go back to your brother. I have a hard time, in addition to that, thinking that had, and I don't remember which is which, which is the slave owner and which is the slave.

01:56:44

Philemon was the slave? Onesimus was the slave owner? Yes, Onesimus was the slave.

01:56:52

Okay, that Philemon was a brother that Paul, that Philemon, you know, owned a slave out of kidnapping, out of the condemned death penalty crime version of slavery that he would have said, you know, treat him as a brother, go back to your brother.

01:57:11

I really think that if it was that kind of slavery that Paul would have called him out and said, you need to set this man free.

01:57:16

You deserve the death penalty for what you're doing, and a real Christian would set him free. Right, and very quickly, we have a listener,

01:57:28

Jackson in Manhasset Hills, Long Island, New York, who says, do you not believe it is completely acceptable to have sharp and strong disagreements with Abraham Lincoln and still not be a racist?

01:57:45

I agree with that. I think that because I know people personally who believe that Lincoln abused his power in what is a constitutional republic as president, but they are still vehemently opposed to the sin of slavery.

01:57:59

So I agree with that. I don't know what your thoughts on that are. Well, yeah, I've read at least six biographies of Abraham Lincoln.

01:58:08

I understand what he was dealing with quite well. Yeah, I mean, he was dealing with a war and there's no, what are the war powers?

01:58:16

They're not expressly stated in the Constitution. You know, Lincoln said that he felt like he had to break the

01:58:22

Constitution in some smaller ways in order to preserve it in the big way, because if the nation would have fallen apart, if they would have succeeded in their succession, that the nation would have ended because you've just taught the country, every time we have a disagreement among the states, you can just leave.

01:58:41

And well, you don't have a country anymore if you can just leave. But yes, it is a violation of the

01:58:46

Constitution. He did suspend the writ of habeas corpus. I mean, he did things that, you know, people will say, well, he was a tyrant.

01:58:56

You know, that's easy to say until you walk in his shoes and deal with what he had to deal with. And there

01:59:03

I was just going to say, well, there are many other things that we didn't have time to talk about. And of course,

01:59:08

I'm sure there were loving relationships between masters and slaves here in the

01:59:14

United States, but that was not the entirety of the makeup when you had marriages being broken apart, which is a wicked act of the devil.

01:59:24

And you have all kinds of things, the beatings that took place in the murders. But anyway, it's been a fascinating joy to have you on the program,

01:59:33

Lee Carter. I want to repeat your website, and that is sleepessentials .com,

01:59:41

sleepessentials .com. Well, I want... Thank you, Chris, very much for having me.

01:59:46

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