March 16, 2023 Show with Virgil Walker on “Is it OK to be White?” AND “A Response to Rick Warren’s Case for Female Elders”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 16th day of March, 2023.

The G3 Ministries Conference and the Sovereignty of God

I am so pumped up about the next G3 National Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. I have been to quite a number of the G3 conferences, Manning and Exhibitor's Booth for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and it is always an extraordinary blessing in every way, not only to be ministered to by hearing extraordinary preachers, some of the finest preachers alive on the planet Earth have been featured at the G3 conferences over the years, and not only am I blessed by that, but I'm always blessed as well, Manning my Exhibitor's Booth, to meet not only people that I've never heard from before who inform me how much they love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and encourage me greatly, but also to meet listeners that have very often submitted questions but I've never seen face-to-face until they stroll by the booth, and also to have an opportunity to do on-site interviews with some of the men speaking and some of the listeners.

And we're going to be talking about the 2023 G3 National Conference with the Executive Director of Operations at G3 Ministries, and we're also going to be talking about two themes today. We're going to start off with the theme, is it okay to be white?

And I will be anxiously waiting to hear the answer to that question as I mop sweat off my brow. And then in the second half of the program, we're going to have our guest give a response to Rick Warren's case for female elders.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Virgil Walker.

Hey, Chris, I'm honored to be with you, man. Always enjoy our conversations and looking forward to this one as well.

Amen. Well, tell our listeners who may be unfamiliar with G3 Ministries about this phenomenal organization. We do have, it seems, new listeners joining the audience almost every week from what I'm gathering from my emails that I receive.

So there may be some that are unfamiliar with G3, other than the fact that they're hearing at least three ads every day in my show promoting your conference. But tell us about G3 Ministries.

Yeah, G3 Ministries is a ministry that's been around since about 2012, 2013. The first conference actually took place in 2013 here on the campus of Praise Mill Baptist Church. It was the brainchild of Dr. Josh Bice, who is the founder and president of G3 Ministries, but is also the pastor of a local church.

His heart's desire was to bring a theology conference to his local church setting in an effort to expose them to just some of the great preaching that was available. He had great connections from his days at Southern Seminary and some of the other spaces and places that he had been.

So it was kind of a natural hand-in-glove fit for some great preachers that would come and participate in the conference. But from the very beginning, he knew that it was something unique about it in that the church holds somewhere in the neighborhood of about 600 people.

And the very first conference was absolutely packed with college students kind of showing up early, sleeping in their cars in an effort to get in. And he recognized pretty early on that definitely there was something special that was happening in that there were people hungry for sound biblical preaching, teaching, an expositional approach to the Scriptures, and just sound biblical theology.

And it was with that that over the course of years, the conference grew. G3 stands for Gospel, Grace, and Glory. And by 2017, they had to move away from the church, the local church, and move into a convention center.

They had moved to the GICC, the Georgia International Convention Center there in Atlanta, Georgia, where some 2 ,000 plus people showed up for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. And so they were excited about that, and the conference grew.

The thought was that they would return back to the local church, but the demand for attendees at the conference did not enable that to happen. So each year from 2017 to 2020, right before I came on, the conference has absolutely grown and exploded.

About 5 ,000 plus joined in 2020. That was about the time I got tapped on the shoulder for the opportunity to be in the role that I'm in as the Executive Director of Operations. I maintain oversight and function in my role as I cover all of the conference side of the house.

G3 transitioned in 2020 to not just a conference-based ministry, but a content-producing ministry. We recognize the need for local church pastors to have a lot of the resources, teaching tools, and things that we put in our exhibit hall.

They needed to have those in their hands. And so it was with that that Josh had in mind to make a shift, to move in a direction where we would have G3 Press, where we are able to publish books, a space where we can publish curricula for everything from homeschool moms to folks who are in Bible studies.

And so we provide a lot of those resources on our website for free. We hired an Executive Vice President, Editor-in-Chief Scott Anuel. He covers all of the content side. We do collaborate very often on a number of different key issues, but for the most part, I handle all of the conferences, all of the workshops that we do, our expository preaching workshop, our biblical worship workshops, and the like.

And so I get a chance to function on that side. We have a historic church tour happening that will be happening in October as well. So I get the joy of providing that function, and he does a lot of the editing and the books and the publishing and all of those pieces of the puzzle.

So 2021, we had our national conference where 6 ,500 people showed up. We are now preparing for our national conference, which is in every other year. It's a biennial conference in 2023. And we anticipate, Chris, and you've been around a long time, so you've actually watched this thing grow.

We anticipate somewhere in the neighborhood of about 8 ,500 plus people that will be at the upcoming G3 conference, September 21st through the 23rd in 2023.

Well, as always, you guys have a mind-blowing roster of speakers at this event. We've got Vodie Baucom, probably one of the finest, not only the finest preachers on the planet earth, not even probably, he definitely is, but probably one of the fastest-growing in popularity and in fascination of Christians of all stripes, theologically, who are discovering him and becoming riveted by him.

I am hearing more and more from people who are outside of the circles of the Reformed faith who ask me, have you ever heard of this guy Vodie Baucom? I saw him on YouTube. I am so blown away. It's just amazing.

And of course, as his popularity grows on one side of the coin, he's gaining enemies. I mean, the Bible says beware when all men speak well of you, and not all are definitely speaking well of Vodie.

Right. You're absolutely right. I mean, the circles he's beginning to travel outside of just our Christian circles, I'm watching him. He's attending events related to conservatism, entering some of the political spaces, but he's doing so from a standpoint of biblical worldview, Christian worldview, Christian ethics.

He's best known. I've learned of him almost a decade or more ago as a cultural apologist. And so not that he wasn't preaching, but that was the area of his study. And he was phenomenal at it and often gets called by different news media outlets to speak about issues of culture and the like.

And that absolutely is not going to slow down. So you're right. As notoriety of Vodie and men like him begin to increase, he'll be someone that new people are always just now discovering, though you and I have known about Vodie for a decade or more.

Yes. And also on the roster, Steve Lawson, Paul Washer, Phil Johnson, my dear friend of many years, in fact, several decades, James White, Mike Riccardi, Justin Peters, Ken Ham, Owen Strand, Josh Bice, your boss over there at G3, James Coates, Scott Annual, you and your co-host at the Just Thinking podcast, Darrell Bernard Harrison, Scott Brown, and Susan Heck.

I have interviewed all of these speakers at some point or another except James Coates. I hope to get him on the program. And I do have, although I have never interviewed her before, I have Susan Heck scheduled for an interview on Wednesday, March 29th.

But I hope to get all of the speakers or as many as possible interviewed again prior to the G3 conference. I just had Scott Brown on last week for the first time as a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron. We promoted the conference.

And so I'm really excited about this.

Yeah, well, I will tell you, the sooner you get those up, the better. We're going to be adding another 15 plus speakers to the roster.

What? How is that even possible?

Yeah, we just don't slow down and we're trying to gather the best of the best. And so we've got another list of about 15 additional speakers to add to that. They'll be in a variety of different spaces in places from plenary sessions to breakouts to we'll even have some some panel discussions kind of kind of on the side as well.

So just a lot of things that are going to be in the mix. And there'll be a number of additional people that you'll begin to see over the course of the next few months as we slowly announce new speakers, new topics all related to the main topic, which is the doctrine of the sovereignty of God.

And so as you as you can imagine, with a with a with a theological idea with the doctrine that large, we have to we have to solicit as many people to cover areas of their specialty as possible. It's going to be absolutely phenomenal.

People will not want to miss this conference.

And it's on one of the most important topics that a Christian could hear preached about and taught the sovereignty of God.

Absolutely. I can't think of a better topic subject. And primarily, Chris, it's because of the fact that right now, when you look at culture, secular culture, Christian culture, there are really two waves of attack that are taking place with culture in every way, shape and form.

God's sovereignty is under attack. Issues of gender, things that God's already decided. He is the he is the creator. He has made the determination of of what male and female is and how that's supposed to operate.

Ideas like marriage. He has a clear direction based upon Scripture that that's between one man and one woman in a covenant union for for life. He's made the determination on gender as well. And so as we witness culture militates against these ideas, what they're really against is God's sovereignty.

God's say so on these matters. And so it's it's it's imperative for believers to to gather together and understand, not be tossed to and fro by these crazy winds of doctrine that we have out there. And unfortunately, we're seeing them begin to invade the church.

So it's imperative that we gather together, understand the nature of the doctrine of God's sovereignty, understand how to explain these ideas in the various areas where we where we witness cultures is on the move and trying to attack.

We need to have answers for the hope that we have in Christ Jesus. And so it's an opportunity for us to sharpen, sharpen the sword where that's concerned, get clarity in our minds and so that we're not we're not confused.

In addition, I told you it's a two pronged attack. The first is mainly the one in culture that that attacks the sufficiency or rather the the sovereignty of God. The other matter relates in the church to the sufficiency of Scripture and where Christians fall down and lose it and begin to capitulate, begin to bow the knee to some of these godless ideas and ideologies that the world offers, is that we have neglected the fact that Scripture is sufficient to address these matters.

And so what we begin to appeal to, you know, I've talked about it on this show often and we begin to appeal to worldly and godless ideologies that that that begin to begin to be be promoted in the culture around socialism, ideas around critical theory, ideas around critical race theory, gender theory, queer theory and all of these ideas, these man-made godless ideas that are that are nothing more than an excuse for people to engage in their own form of sin.

And so they they they come up with an idea or a theory. They act as if that theory is is equivalent to Scripture. And unfortunately, Christians, rather than holding tightly to what Scripture says about these things, begin to be soft-hearted about these things, not believing that the Bible is sufficient to handle these.

And then they find themselves duped in the process.

Well, this event is going to be held from Thursday, September 21st through Saturday, September 23rd in Atlanta, Georgia. And if you want to register, go to g3men .org, g3men .org. You're going to be hearing ads throughout this broadcast, voiced by my friend Dr. James R. White, promoting this.

And please, please use the promo code G3ISIR. You will get 30 off the registration fee if you use the Iron Trump and Zion Radio promo code G3ISIR. There is a bit of a competition going on between all the venues and media outlets promoting the G3 conference.

I am smack dab in the middle. I am number seven out of 13.

And they're actually 15, just so you know. So you're right. You're smack dab in the middle. There are 15 folks that are doing this, 13 that were recognized. But yeah, 15 total.

OK, so I'm actually a little bit better than I thought. But folks, please help me rise up in that list. As I said, I'm very impressed that I'm beating out Sermon Audio at least. But please, folks, if you have not yet registered, please register.

In fact, this is an ideal conference for you to bring not only lost friends, but Arminian friends, Roman Catholic friends, and others who do not believe in the sovereignty of God, at least in the biblical sense of what that truly means.

And who knows, you may be walking out of that place with brethren in Christ who are on the same page with you theologically that were not when you walked through the door originally. God may use this conference to correct serious theological error and also reignite your own zeal and passion for the truth and further equip you to be even more ready to give an answer for the hope that lies within you.

So please register at g3min .org and use promo code ISIR. And we are talking, as I said earlier, about two themes today. We're going to start off with, is it OK to be white? Obviously, this is a rhetorical question, especially when people know who Virgil Walker is.

They know the answer to that question already. If you ask a lot of people today, the answer would be no, it's not OK. But tell us what drove you to actually discuss this theme that seems on the surface ridiculous.

Is It Okay to Be White?

Yeah, it really is interesting as I kind of began watching what's taking place. One, and first of all, just to kind of put some context around it, I think everywhere you look, you're beginning to see that that what's being called white, cisgender, heteronormative males.

Right. There's all these there's there are all these words to describe, you know, what we would call a man or a white guy. There are all these additional words and labels that are used. All of those are used to provide a category of male, of man in particular, that that we believe deserves to be oppressed.

And the reason for that is because in the historic narrative of those who hold to CRT and social justice, that the white male has for so long been the oppressor. And so in their system, rather than finding any kind of forgiveness, rather than finding any kind of any kind of reconciliation, what they have available in their system is is oppression.

So and rather than rather than seeking reconciliation of any kind, they have the tools of racism that they believe that that they've been abused by and of whore. They turn those around and use those against who they believe to be the majority.

And so what you have everywhere you turn, whether it's on your favorite news channel, whether it's a comedian in a comic show, whether it's movies, you name the arena. What you're going to find is that the white white males in particular, but whites in general, are talked about in ways that if you would simply reverse the language to some other ethnic group, what was said would be deemed racist on its face.

And so it's with that in mind that I began to think about this thinking, man, there's there at some point is going to be some backlash. Either one, you call someone a racist enough. They're going to say, you know what, I'll show you what a racist looks like.

Or two, they're going to buy into all of what is being said about them and believe that in some way, somehow they need to bow their knee and recognize that being white is, you know, again, according to according to current culture is some innate sin that that can't be washed away by any means.

And so that they're only they're only the only fix to this is a works based righteousness where you're kowtowing and bending the knee to to people of color, so to speak. It's with that in mind that it was interesting that there was a there was a Twitter rant by a man by the name of Scott Adams.

And so Scott Adams, pretty generic name until you understand that Scott Adams is the same person who is the American cartoonist and novelist, Scott Adams, who has a series in news media and newspapers published in thousands of newspapers and magazines all across, not just the country, but around the world.

He has a series called Dilbert. And if you've ever looked at cartoons, you've seen his Dilbert cartoon and maybe a followed it for a while and made note of it from time to time. He's also an author of several books.

He went on Twitter and began talking about his outrage about a Rasmussen poll. And the Rasmussen poll showed that 46 percent of the people who responded to the poll disagreed or were uncertain about the statement that it's OK to be white.

And so as he navigates this, he's looking at this 46 percent and he's thinking, OK, 54 percent think it's OK. But 46 percent, a very near majority minority only by a small margin of people of color and blacks who think perhaps it's not OK to be white.

And his rant, he went on to say, if that's the case, just generically speaking, if someone does not care about you or thinks it's not OK for you to be the skin color you are, or if they don't feel like anything that's been done, historically speaking, on your part or on the part of others who look like you who are white, then it's probably in the best interest not to be around these people.

Even even he's very explicit in his response to this. And he says, you know, just get away from get away from black people. And, you know, he said this very, very kind of stone faced, very stoic, but very emphatically that, you know, it's time to remove yourself from black people.

And again, he considered these blacks who felt this way about the issue of being white. He felt that they were a hate group and thought that it would be best to get away from them. Now, he left this up.

And as you can imagine, in our current climate, there was an immediate response and reaction to this. First of all, the first response was just outrage on Twitter, followed by the thousands of news organizations around the country who carried the Dilbert cartoon, canceled him immediately, canceled him immediately.

So that was that was the immediate response to his rant. So as I watched this, my initial thought about this, I was not outraged by anything that he said. I thought that there was probably a bit of logic in what he was saying.

But I was curious as to why, knowing what he knows, as smart as he is and with the level of success that he had, why he would do such a thing. So it caused me to kind of ponder that issue. And I ended up kind of beginning to write an article posted on the G3 website, G3men .org, and ask the question, is it OK to be white?

And in the article, I began by going backwards historically. I looked at James Brown. In 1968, he recorded a song that would eventually land six weeks at the top of the charts in 1968 called Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud.

And it's a song I've heard numerous times and thought little of it, thought, wow, this is this is kind of a great anthem. As I studied it, I recognized this was kind of in during the civil rights era.

This was kind of a Dilbert moment, if you will. Blacks had felt like they were the oppressed and were tired of it. And this was the anthem to say, hey, I'm going to say it loud. I'm black and I'm proud and I'm not going to deal with or tolerate racism any longer.

So the question I began to pose is, is what we're seeing with with Scott Adams and his Dilbert response. Is this his, you know, is this his James Brown moment? Is this his say it loud? I'm white and I'm proud.

Of course, again, you can't say those kinds of things in our current culture. But again, I love you know this about me. I love to challenge the status quo. I love to I love to get people to think. And so I posed the question in the article and began to ask some questions.

So that's kind of the background of how this whole reality got started.

By the way, I much prefer James Brown's living in America.

Yes, sir.

Black Pride, Hyperbole, and the Meaning of the Scott Adams Controversy

But we're going to go to our first commercial break right now. If you have a question for Virgil Walker on is it OK to be white or anything connected to the woke movement, social justice warriors, etc. Our email address is Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com.

Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com. Give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence. We'll be right back with Virgil Walker after these messages don't go away.

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here. I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the G3 National Conference.

That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday, the 23rd. On a theme that I've been preaching, teaching, writing about and defending in live public debates for most of my life. The sovereignty of God.

I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott Anuel and Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries. And there's more great news. Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio can get you a 30 percent discount off the registration fee.

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The G3 National Conference in Atlanta, Georgia on the sovereignty of God. Make sure you stop by the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio exhibitor booth and say hi to Chris Arnzen while you're there. Go to G3 Min dot org and enter promo code G3 I S I R for your 30 percent discount off the registration fee.

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We're now back with Virgil Walker. We are in the process of discussing our first topic today, is it okay to be white? And then later on, we're going to be discussing a response to Rick Warren's case for female elders.

If you have a question, send it to ChrisAronson at gmail .com, ChrisAronson at gmail .com. We have Joseph in South Central Pennsylvania who says, isn't it wrong for a Christian to be proud about anything other than the cross of Christ, no matter what our nation of origin is, no matter what our skin color or ethnicity?

Are those things worthy to be saying that we are proud of them? I mean, people very often use synonyms, proud and unashamed, or even proud and grateful, proud and thankful, proud and content, proud and happy.

There's nothing wrong with somebody saying, I am absolutely happy and content, even thankful to God, that I was born into a black family, raised by black parents, and I just love being black. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

But I understand where the listener is coming from. When you throw the word proud in there, it's an odd thing to be proud of when you had nothing to do with it.

Right, right. Absolutely, absolutely. I completely agree. In fact, the person who's responding there really kind of went to the kind of response side of what I delivered in my blog article. I kind of walked through the issue with Scott Adams, the challenge that he had with the 46 percent of those who disagreed with the statement that it's okay to be white.

He labeled them a hate group. He advised whites to stay away from blacks. He received a tremendous amount of backlash and outrage as a result, being really canceled, removed from thousands of newspapers and places where his cartoon had been featured, costing him untold amounts of money.

In fact, there was an interview that he did days after this kind of outrageous expression. And what he said was it really cost him everything as far as Dilbert was concerned. But he felt that it was important for him to be able to say what it is he felt.

He's a big believer in free speech, but he said free speech isn't free. That there's a high price, a high cost to it that only few are willing to pay. And he had decided as he went on his Twitter rant that he was ready to pay it so that he could say what he wanted to say and that people could hear what it is they needed to hear.

He used this moment in the same way that many use Twitter. It's a space to express things that create outrage. Twitter algorithms increase with the more outrage that can be examined as people give their thoughts.

If you can make the most outrageous claim or make the most outrageous statement, then your tweet gets a lot of likes, goes viral, people like it, and you're the one talked about. Scott Adams was not an ignorant man.

He knew what he was doing. He did it for a reason and felt that there was something that he needed to say. And this guy, while labeled by the media as a right wing conservative, he was far from it. In fact, he had done work with Black Lives Matter organization.

He was in support of reparations. He is in support of affirmative action. He voted for Democratic policies and their candidates for years. This is his own admission. He said he just became disillusioned when he recognized that organizations like Black Lives Matter.

He said, and I quote, it became immediately apparent that Black Lives Matter was not a serious organization that cared about solutions, end quote. So he's been on the inside of this thing, seeing it with a clear face, understanding what's taking place and realizing that that for the most part, those who are part of the organization really had every intention of taking advantage of black lives rather than black lives really mattering.