February 4, 2025 Show with Austin Huggins AND Dr. Edward Dalcour on “Recovering the Identity of the Church”

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.

The Purpose of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio

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 Tuesday on this fourth day of February 2025.

I'm thrilled to have two returning guests back on the program, two old friends, brothers in Christ, who I am honored to call my friends and brothers, Austin Huggins and Dr. Edward DelCour. Austin Huggins is one of the pastors at Mount Zion Bible Church of Pensacola, Florida, which is the home of Chapel Library, and he's the vice president of First Love Ministries.

And let me welcome you back first to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Austin Huggins. Thank you, brother Chris, it's good to be back with you again. And our second guest is Dr. Edward DelCour. He's an author, he's an apologist and president of the Department of Christian Defense, and he's a conference speaker.

Both of these men are going to be addressing the theme, Recovering the Identity of the Church, and we'll also be announcing the free conference in Florida on the same theme. But welcome back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Edward DelCour.

It's great to be back, Chris.

Great to see you, and great to see you, Austin. I haven't seen you for a long.

Time. Amen, brother. If anybody has any questions, our email address is ChrisOrensen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA.

Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Well, this is quite a provocative title for not only our discussion today, but for your conference that's coming up, Recovering the Identity of the Church.

Before we even dig deeply into the theme at hand, let our listeners know about the conference of the same title that's coming up later this month in Florida.

Yeah, thank you, Chris. First Love Ministries is going to be hosting our third annual Bible conference in the northwest panhandle of Florida in Santa Rosa County. This is Baghdad, Florida, an area in Milton.

The theme of this year's conference will be Recovering the Identity of the Church. We'll be addressing a number of plenary sessions regarding the church as the temple of the Lord, the people of the scriptures, the family of God, the church as a city set on a hill.

We'll aim to recover the biblical understanding of the church from the rubble of culture and even to set forth in a glorious portrait the head of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ. We'll be dealing with a number of breakout sessions regarding the biblical offices in the church, church membership, use of confession, church and state, church-driven missions, and even taking a look at and unmasking the enemy of the church.

This conference will be February 20th through 22nd at First Baptist Church of Baghdad, Florida, where we will be diving into these subjects. The conference is free, so if you are looking to attend a conference but funds is an issue, other than the money to get there and a place to stay, there is no registration fees whatsoever for this conference.

The conference is free to register. We encourage you to go to the website to check out all the relevant information on that. You can go to firstloveministries .org. Again, that's firstloveministries .org.

Right there on the main page, you'll see Register Now. Just scroll down right past it and you'll see a More Information button. Click that and you'll be able to see the entire conference schedule, all the different speakers that will be speaking.

Every attendee will also be receiving a pack of free books and literature relevant to the theme of this particular conference. We have resources that will be provided you not only from First Love Publications, but also from Chapel Library, as well as Martin Lloyd-Jones Sermon Trust, and a couple other ministries that are partnering together.

So please come on out, and we would love.

To have you as a guest. Great. That's firstloveministries .org, and you could scroll down and see all of the details that you need to register. Also, before we get into the theme of the day, Austin, why don't you let our listeners know something about Mount Zion Bible Church in Pensacola, Florida, and Chapel Library.

Mount Zion Bible Church and Chapel Library

Yeah, I appreciate that, Chris. Thank you. So I do have the distinguished pleasure and privilege of serving the saints here at Mount Zion Bible Church in Pensacola as one of two elders. I serve alongside Pastor Jeff Pollard.

We at Mount Zion oversee the ministries of Chapel Library, Mount Zion Bible Institute, the prison ministries, SpurgeonGems .org, and a couple other various ministries, Home of the Free Grace Broadcaster.

And so we are so very thankful that the Lord, over these past 40-plus years, has allowed us to be able to send forth some of the great works of the past into the world free of charge. We currently not only make available all of our resources, over 800 different books, booklets, and tracts, as well as A .W. Pink's work in the studies and the scriptures.

Available online, you can go to ChapelLibrary .org. You can look and order a bundle of resources whenever you go, every single month. We also have free quarterly offers that if you receive our Free Grace Broadcaster, you can go and also receive free resources there.

The Lord has allowed us to send literature not only here in the United States, but we've been blessed to be able to send the gospel into over a hundred different nations around the globe. And so we desire your prayers, if you'll just continue to pray for us here at Chapel Library, that the Lord would allow us to continue to do this ministry and to send forth the Word of God around the globe freely, as he pleases.

Yes, if anybody listens to Iron Sherpins Iron Radio with regularity, you know that on numerous occasions I have promoted Chapel Library when the theme of the discussion happens to be reflected in one of the many Chapel Library publications that come to mind during our conversation, and I plug that fine ministry that I have been making use of as long as I've been a Christian.

In fact, it is Chapel Library that God used to bring me to understand and embrace the doctrines of Sovereign Grace when I joined what was then Calvary Baptist Church in Amityville, Long Island, which was a Reformed Baptist Church.

It had since merged with First Baptist Church in Merrick, Long Island, and become Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick. The Amityville facility was sold, but when I was saved initially at Calvary Baptist Church in Amityville, Long Island, I was still an Arminian, although I had no clue who Jacob Arminius was, and had little idea of who John Calvin was or any of the great heroes of the faith.

And a dear brother who is now in heaven, Nigel Stone, who is from England originally, approached me and said in his very deep British voice, I understand you're having difficulty understanding the doctrines of Sovereign Grace.

Read this. And he handed me George Whitfield's Letter to John Wesleyan Election. And I read it. My initial reaction was, oh no, this is true, but I still hate it. But then, within probably less than two months, I came to absolutely fall in love with those teachings of the Sovereign Grace of God and have been very enthusiastically declaring them ever since.

But thank God for Chapel Library. And now, Eddie Delflore. If you could, Eddie, tell us about the.

Department of Christian Defense

Department of Christian Defense. The Department of Defense, that is, Christian Defense, is an apologetic educational ministry. I've been involved in that ministry since the 90s, since the late 90s, after coming out of another different kind of ministry, evangelical ministry.

And we provide lots of articles, lots of material. We have some of the books there that I've written on apologetics, on one is doctrine, on the Trinity, and a few others. And I just feel so privileged that the Lord has placed me in this particular area.

I teach at two, I say two and a half seminaries because one of the seminaries is in Amsterdam now, and I do it correspondently. I'm involved with Grace Bible University, and that's with First Love Ministries, with Austin and President Paul Nelson, and I'm vice president.

Great opportunity to give theological instruction and degrees to particularly people outside of this country who can't afford conventional seminaries because it's very expensive, but we now have a means to provide education for them.

So this is what basically one of the things the Department of Christian Defense is involved with, and I'm delighted to speak on the topic that I'm so passionate about, Christian education and apologetics.

And your website? ChristianDefense .org. ChristianDefense .org. We also have a YouTube page, it has a link right on the right on the home page of ChristianDefense .org. ChristianDefense .org. Great. Well, as I said before, the theme of the.

Conference is quite provocative, the reason being that when you make a statement that you are seeking to recover the identity of the church, that assumes in its very title that the identity of the church, the true identity of the church, has either been blurred, eclipsed, or totally lost.

So Austin explained that very weighty title there, recovering, I should say, recovering the identity of the church. Thank you, Chris. You're right to catch.

The nuance there, that the provocation is intentional. You know, down here in the Panhandle of Florida, you know, we're in the midst of, you know, right here in the Bible Belt area at the southernmost end of it, and most of our landscape around us, A, is not distinctly reformed.

And so there is a large swath of churchianity. There is large clusters of church buildings, all different kinds of expressions of Baptists and Assemblies and, you know, Lutherans and, I mean, all across the board of every different flavor, Apostolic churches and Assemblies and everything else.

But what you will find very little of in our context is a biblical grasp of what makes not only Christianity Christianity, but a lot of the essential doctrines of the faith have just been lost in the blur of the traditionalism that defines the culture around us.

So just keep in mind, this is the third annual conference. The first year, we set out at First Love to deal with the subject matter of looking at and examining the doctrine of regeneration. Because obviously, in the land of altar calls, in the sinner's prayer, in walking the aisle, in easy believism, you know, one of the first things to go is a clear understanding of the miraculous nature of what it means to be born again.

The second year, we dealt with the person and work of the Holy Spirit, you know, between the oneness issues that we have out here with his person, as well as the common errors of attributing all sorts of human emotional experiences, merely being the Holy Spirit as though he were some force that you feel when, you know, quote unquote, worship music is at its crescendo.

And not having an understanding of the Holy Spirit with regards to sanctification and holiness and growth and life and indwelling and sealing and all of those things, you know, that really represents the lay of the land here.

And so we aim to provide a corrective to that. So it's in light of that backdrop that we now approach this third annual Bible conference, Recovering the Identity of the Church. You know, I don't think any one of us, Chris, have missed at this point some of the insane, egregious advertisements that are becoming, you know, so permeated and ubiquitous out there on social media for different church campuses, satellite campuses, different, you know, camps and retreats and in church programs and Christmas pageants.

And, you know, much of the church in America has become very consumeristic, very entertainment driven, very performance oriented. And I think that even in a lot of the more liberal and extreme excess of what you see out there, even where churches may rightfully try and steer perhaps away from that because they think that they've gone too far or it's so overly commercialized that even the middle of the road, you know, lay people can see that this is not Christianity they recognize.

Even among those groups, there is a tendency to be so influenced and affected by the culture that if you're not careful, you can just, for preference sake, calibrate your particular church experience to be more conservative as you interpret it and as you feel it.

And although across the spectrum, there may be some superficial differences, at the core, there is an underlying problem that neither you nor they recognize that the church is not defined by human preference.

The church is not a product of the culture around us. The church does not exist out of the schemes and the councils of just well-intentioned men and flesh, but rather the church is God's idea. The church is an outworking of God's gospel and without the scriptures, without the Holy Spirit, without Christ, without God, there is no church.

And when you go into the scriptures and you allow the word of God to define what the church essentially is—and I mean, we're not even talking the deeps of ecclesiology—if you were to just take a cursory glance throughout the scriptures that relate to believers being gathered together and being the spiritual stones that make up a spiritual house, you know, or the scriptures where they talk about how we are the children of God and that Christ is our elder brother.

If you look at the scriptures, how the church is to be like the people of God are to be a city set on a hill, a light and a salt. Over and over and over again, the pictures, the construction pictures, the familial pictures, the relational pictures, the biological pictures, that we're like a body of Christ in every member, where He distributes gifts severally as He wills, playing its part.

All these pictures provide us in scripture a supernatural, tangible, beautiful, glorious institution that is not subject to the moving and shifting emotions and opinions of man and culture, but it has been divinely inspired and breathed out and settled in the mind of God.

And we have a responsibility to go into the word and not only study this out to see what the church really is, but if the Lord will allow us the opportunity to do so, this year, we really want to stir believers up to have a very worshipful and a very large view of God's glory in what He has done in bringing His bride into existence and to have a glorious picture of the institution of the church.

And that what we could recover, Lord willing, is not just the identity of the church, but the dignity of the church.

Why Reformed Christians Oppose Altar Calls

Well, we've got a listener in Champaign, Illinois, Brian, who says, why are you Reformed folks so opposed to altar calls? Perhaps we'll have Eddie Delcor start with that one.

Well, it's not just, you know, Reformed folks, as the question is posed, really, I don't put terms a lot on it, but it really is the people of the Reformed faith, or what's known as Calvinists, who have a strong emphasis on the sovereignty of God.

And that is the main difference. Non-Reformed, non-Calvinists have a sovereignty of man. So, look, I can speak authoritatively on an altar call. I was in the altar call ministry for almost 10 years.

And the problem with an altar call, it's the power, yeah, power to you. Thanks for that plug. No, but I have a power to that. Now, nobody's saying, no one's saying here that nobody gets saved at a altar call.

But here's the problem with altar calls. Number one, it's a very new view. Finney pretty much developed the modern day altar call. He's a man who denied the original sin. He also denied justification through faith.

But here's why the altar call is so popular, because it became a standard, really, of what to do after the service. The problem with the altar call is, number one, it does give the sovereignty of man.

It celebrates, it's a celebration of the decision of man. So when they walk forward, I've seen this over and over and over, when they all walk forward, the ones who allegedly received Christ in their heart, when they walk forward, everyone's clapping at the man or woman who is walking forward.

Very rarely, I can't even think of a time when I saw someone looking up, right? So it imposes a very new view into the church, but mainly one of my biggest problems is, it introduces the idea of a secondary mediator, the guy doing the altar call.

He has his hand with the sinner, and then he has his other hand with God, and then you have to repeat what he says. That's a mediator. That's an outside mediator, aside from Jesus Christ. I also have a problem with the whole concept of a sinner's prayer.

The idea of a sinner's prayer is when a non-safe person, all of a sudden he has the desire, still in a non-safe state, to make a decision that pleases God. Then God responds to him and saves him. Good problem theologically with that.

Now, again, why do us Reformed folks have a problem with the altar call? Because it's not biblical for several different reasons. I have a problem with things that aren't biblical. I want to stay biblical.

We're doing a conference on the identity of the church, and over and over and over in the Old and New Testament, there's a stress for Christians to be accurate in their presentation, to be accurate in doctrine.

When you have the main premise of a sinner's prayer, where the sinner, the one in bondage to sin, he can actually make a decision to please Christ, and then God responds and makes him born again, you have a reverse order in Scripture, because the biblical order is simply this, man is dead.

He has no sovereignty. He has no righteousness. The sinner's prayer implies that he's not dead. He has a little tiny bit of righteousness that he can use to make that great decision. The Scriptures say no.

In fact, Jesus says you're a slave. The person who's unsaved, chapter eight, Jesus does this whole teaching on the difference between a slave and the son setting the slave free. The slave doesn't set himself free.

Before one is saved, the Scriptures point out he has no ability to please God. Paul pointed that out in Romans eight, seven, and eight, zero ability, no ability, because he's dead in his sin. People do things naturally according to their own, they will things according to their own nature, I should say.

Jesus said you're a slave. What's a slave? What's the opposite of a slavery, of slavery? Someone listening to this in the first century, it would be simple, it really would, the opposite of freedom, right, is in bondage, you're not free, you're in bondage, and only the son can set a sinner free, only the son could do this.

And Jesus makes this analogy that you're a slave until God regenerates you. And as a result, and this is the biblical model, as a result of regeneration in John 1, 13 and 1 John 5, 1, as a result, as a result of being made alive, being born again, you believe, you repent, you obey, if you're not born again, if you're not regenerated, what does Paul say you are, you are a corpse, you are dead, you can go to the graveyard, and you can dig a dead person up and say, hey, I have a serum that would make you alive, they're not going to take it.

They have no idea, they're not thinking, they can't do anything because they're dead, and that's how Paul defines the unsafe. So why do I have a problem with the altar calls and sinner's prayer? Because it's unbiblical.

But again, if the gospel is preached, I'm not denying there's not salvation from the result of an unbiblical method, but we just want to be more honoring to the Lord and to Scripture and be accurate.

Yes, and from what I can remember, Errol Hulls, a great Reformed Baptist pastor in Leeds, England, for many years, who is now in heaven, in paradise with the Lord forever, Errol Hulls was saved at a Billy Graham crusade, and yet he wound up opposing the altar call nonetheless and wrote a book critiquing the Billy Graham methodology.

But before we have Pastor Austin Huggins also respond to that question, which is excellent, by the way, Brian in Champaign, Illinois, we're going to our first commercial break, and when we return, we'll have Austin Huggins chime in about the altar call.

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors. And if you'd like to send in a question of your own, chrisorenson at gmail .com.

I'm Simon O'Mahoney, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

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 God.

We are also devoted to living out the one another commands of scripture, loving, encouraging and serving each other as the body of Christ. In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every Sunday.

We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org. That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon. Greetings.

This is Brian McLaughlin, president of the SecureComm group and supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Shopping Zion radio program. SecureComm provides the highest level of security systems for residential buildings, municipalities, churches, commercial properties, and much more.

We can be reached at securecommgroup .com. That's securecommgroup .com. But today I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

Doug McMasters here. Former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur. In the film, Chariots of Fire, Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt God's pleasure when he ran.

He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God. I sensed that same God-given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God. 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.

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

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

I'm Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven, an Orthodox Presbyterian church in Comac, Long Island. I hold the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program hosted by my longtime friend and brother, 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, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. Well, with the economic nightmare that we're all currently enduring, cvbbs .com, I want to enable you to build a wonderful personal library of the best literature that the reformers, the Puritans, and the great Christian minds of today have to offer, and at affordable prices.

Not only does cvbbs .com offer up to 50 off retail prices, but you'll get an added 5 off orders of $50 or more by using promo code IRON, I-R-O-N, an added 5 off all of your orders of $50 or more from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

That's cvbbs .com, making the joy of reading the finest in Christian literature more affordable. Oh, and make sure that you tell them that you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron radio.

I'm Dr.

Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Every Christian who's serious about the deformed faith and the Westminster standards should have and use the eight volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the Westminster Larger Catechism titled Authentic Christianity by Dr. Joseph Moorcraft.

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.

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. For details on the eight volume commentary, go to Westminster commentary dot com Westminster commentary dot com.

For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit Heritage Presbyterian Church dot com Heritage Presbyterian Church dot com. Please tell Dr. Moorcraft and the Saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, that Dr. Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sent you.

When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors. It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience have been sticking with or switching to the NASB.

I'm Pastor Nate Pickowitz of Harvest Bible Church in Gilmanton Ironworks, New Hampshire, and the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Rich Jensen of Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

I'm Pastor Sulay Prince of Oakwood Wesleyan Church in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

I'm Pastor John Sampson of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

I'm Pastor Chuck Volo of New Life Community Church in Kingsville, Maryland, and the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Steve Herford of East Fort Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

I'm Pastor Roy Owens, Jr. of the Church in Friendship in Hockley, Texas, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

Here's a great way for your church to help keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. Pastors, are your pew Bibles tattered and falling apart? Consider restocking your pews with the NASB and tell the publishers you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Go to nasbible .com. That's nasbible .com to place your order.

Here at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, praise God for the generous monthly financial support of Royal Diadem Jewelers, educated by and affiliated with the American Gem Society, Jewelers of America, and the Gemological Institute of America.

For the perfect custom designed engagement ring, or any one of a kind piece of jewelry created exactly according to your imagination and specifications, Royal Diadem Jewelers has you covered. No matter where you live in the world, Royal Diadem will walk you step by step through every stage of the process, and even hold a high-tech internet virtual visit using state-of-the-art jewelry design technology to serve you.

They start by listening carefully to determine your needs. They're interested in making what you want, not what they want to sell you. From rough design to digital model, to photo realistic image, to wax prototype model, to the finished product, they're continually listening to your input, likes and dislikes, making any changes necessary along the way.

This will ensure that your custom jewelry will turn out exactly as you dreamed and well beyond your expectations. Visit royaldiadem .com. That's royaldiadem .com today. Sterling Vandewerker, owner of Royal Diadem Jewelers, his wife, Bronnie, his business partner and manager, Brian Wilson, and the entire family, thank you all for listening to, praying for, and supporting the work of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And don't forget folks, Valentine's Day will be here before you know it, which also happens to be my birthday. So if anybody out there wants to buy a breathtaking, head-turning, stunning piece of jewelry for your Valentine, please go to royaldiadem .com to do so and choose from among their wide variety of jewelry at that website, royaldiadem .com.

And of course, if anybody loves me enough that they want to buy me a piece of jewelry for my birthday, I'd be more than happy to receive that with joy, not only because I would love to receive a beautiful piece of jewelry, but because anybody who purchases jewelry from royaldiadem .com and mentions Iron Sharpens Iron Radio will ensure by doing so that we at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio receive 100 of the profits from that sale of jewelry.

So please go to royaldiadem .com and purchase your Valentine, his or her gift. If you're a wife buying for your husband, it would obviously be his gift. And if you're a husband buying for a wife, it'd be her gift.

And also, if you want a one of a kind custom design piece of jewelry, you don't have time to get that done for Valentine's Day. But Mother's Day is not too far off into the future, but far enough off into the future which will give them time to customize a piece of jewelry for you.

So keep royaldiadem .com in mind for Mother's Day for one of a kind custom designed jewelry. And of course, you can also just choose something from their assortment of jewelry that they have in stock as well.

And they will also overnight it to you or to the person you're buying it for to make sure that they receive it for the holiday that you are purchasing the gift for. And so please go to royaldiadem .com today to at least get the ball rolling on your purchase.

Royaldiadem .com and mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We are now back with Pastor Austin Huggins of Mount Zion Bible Church and Chapel Library in Pensacola, Florida, and also Dr. Edward DelCour of the Department of Christian Defense.

Both men are representatives of First Love Ministries as well. And we are talking about recovering the identity of the church, which is also the theme of a conference coming up in Baghdad, Florida later this month, coming up very soon.

And we were having Edward DelCour before the break respond to a listener in Champaign, Illinois, Brian, who asked, Why do you Reform folks have a problem with the altar call? And now it's your turn, Austin Huggins, to pick up where Eddie left off.

Why the Altar Call Confuses Regeneration and Conversion

Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you, Brian, for writing in your question. I mean, the straightforward answer is it does not have the biblical precedent, A, and then B, the whole underlying concept of the altar call actually contradicts the understanding of how regeneration works in Scripture.

So just keep a couple of things in mind. First off, whenever you talk about the altar call, you are talking about a relatively new invention. This is not something that has been a practice of the church in church history.

This is something that really comes out of the production of Charles Grandus and Finney's New Measures in the early, mid -1800s that was later taken and adopted by Billy Sunday, and which then had a huge impact and was further marketed out to the world through the ministry of Billy Graham.

And it relies upon the will, the emotion and the mind state and the attitude of the particular person at a given moment. And, you know, whenever you open and invite an altar call, you know, you're calling upon that person to make a decision, to decide something for themselves.

You're calling them to will something. The problem with Scripture has with that is that Scripture says that we are dead in our trespasses and sins, that we will contrary to God, that even our righteous deeds are filthy rags in the sight of the Lord, that there's none righteous, no, not one, that none seek after God.

And those who promulgate the altar call will have a huge issue with the Scripture saying that there literally are none that seek after God. But that is the state of affairs Scripture says. In John chapter three, where it talks about you must be born again, it talks about the Spirit blows where it will.

The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it. But you don't know where it's coming from or where it's going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. The Spirit is sovereign. God is sovereign in the salvation of sinners.

In John chapter one, Scripture is speaking of Christ. He came to his own and those who were his own did not receive him. But as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become the children of God, even to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

So Scripture sets forth God's sovereignty in salvation. Now, all throughout the Scripture, you see that the gospel is to be preached, that men everywhere are called to repent and to believe. We have a responsibility to carry the gospel, to faithfully proclaim the gospel, to proclaim the person in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, his finished work upon Calvary's cross for the remission of sin, his glorious resurrection and ascension.

And then we call men to repent of their sin and turn to Christ. But the work of salvation is a mighty, sovereign work of the Spirit of God changing and transforming a person's life. It's the taking away of a heart of stone and giving him a heart of flesh.

It's washing him spiritually from his idolatry. It is bringing him into awakening and life in fellowship with God from the least to the greatest. That's not something that comes from the will of the flesh.

That was something, as one preacher said, that all the old men of the old guard were agreed that salvation could not be manipulated by the preacher. You couldn't bring the music down and slow the tempo and dim the lights and plead and tell a sad story and tap the microphone like it's a heartbeat and then stop like you're dead and then say, this could be you, you need to come forward, you don't know when you have.

And then just try and grip someone's emotions and pull them down to make a decision and think that that decision has any saving power. I mean, I'm telling you as someone who, you know, when I was 12, I made a profession of faith.

I walked the aisle. I said the sinner's prayer. I squeezed the pastor's hand. I was publicly baptized. It would be another 12 years at 24 years of age before the Lord would break me, bring me to repentance of my sin and supernatural faith in Jesus Christ.