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

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February 5, 2025

February 4, 2025 Austin Huggins,one of the pastors of Mt. Zion BibleChurch of Pensacola, FL (the homeof ChapelLibrary.com), & VP ofFirstLove Ministries”, AND Dr. Edward Dalcour,author, apologist, President ofDepartment of Christian Defense &conference speaker, who will bothaddress: “RECOVERING the IDENTITY of theCHURCH (& announcing the FREEconference in Florida on the sametheme)” Subscribe: Listen:

00:03: Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer
00:10: George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend
00:16: Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,
00:23: Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:31: Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
00:38: 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.
00:50: 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.
00:58: And now here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,
01:09: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet
01:14: Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.
01:21: This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this fourth day of February 2025.
01:29: I'm thrilled to have two returning guests back on the program, two old friends, brothers in Christ, who
01:40: I am honored to call my friends and brothers, Austin Huggins and Dr.
01:48: 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.
02:02: And let me welcome you back first to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Austin Huggins. Thank you,
02:09: Brother Chris, it's good to be back with you again. And our second guest is Dr. Edward DelCour.
02:14: He's an author, he's an apologist and president of the Department of Christian Defense, and he's a conference speaker.
02:22: Both of these men are going to be addressing the theme, Recovering the Identity of the
02:28: Church, and we'll also be announcing the free conference in Florida on the same theme.
02:33: But welcome back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Edward DelCour. It's great to be back,
02:40: Chris, great to see you, and great to see you, Austin, haven't seen you for a long time. Amen, Brother.
02:46: If anybody has any questions, our email address is chrisorenzen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.
02:56: 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.
03:07: Well, this is quite a provocative title for not only our discussion today, but for your conference that's coming up,
03:17: 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.
03:35: Yeah, thank you, Chris. So First Love Ministries is going to be hosting our third annual
03:40: Bible Conference in the northwest panhandle of Florida in Santa Rosa County.
03:46: This is Baghdad, Florida, an area in Milton. The theme of this year's conference will be Recovering the
03:52: Identity of the Church. We'll be addressing a number of plenary sessions regarding the
03:57: Church as the temple of the Lord, the people of the Scriptures, the family of God, the
04:03: Church as a city set on a hill. We'll aim to recover the biblical understanding of the
04:10: Church from the rubble of culture and even to set forth in a glorious portrait the head of the
04:17: Church, the Lord Jesus Christ. We'll be dealing with a number of breakout sessions regarding the biblical offices in the
04:24: Church, Church membership, use of confession, Church and state, Church -driven missions, and even taking a look at and unmasking the enemy of the
04:33: Church. This conference will be February 20th through 22nd at First Baptist Church of Baghdad, Florida, where we will be diving into these subjects.
04:44: 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.
04:58: The conference is free to register. We encourage you to go to the website to check out all the relevant information on that.
05:04: You can go to firstloveministries .org. Again, that's firstloveministries .org.
05:12: Right there on the main page you'll see Register Now. Just scroll down right past it and you'll see a
05:17: More Information button. Click that and you'll be able to see the entire conference schedule, all the different speakers that will be speaking.
05:24: Every attendee will also be receiving a pack of free books and literature relevant to the theme of this particular conference.
05:34: We have resources that will be provided to you not only from First Love Publications, but also from Chapel Library, as well as Martin Lloyd -Jones
05:42: 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.
05:50: Great. That's firstloveministries .org, and you could scroll down and see all of the details that you need to register.
05:58: Also, before we get into the theme of the day,
06:04: Austin, why don't you let our listeners know something about Mount Zion Bible Church in Pensacola, Florida, and Chapel Library.
06:13: 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.
06:24: I serve alongside Pastor Jeff Pollard. We at Mount Zion oversee the ministries of Chapel Library, Mount Zion Bible Institute, the prison ministries,
06:36: SpurgeonGems .org, and a couple other various ministries, Home of the
06:42: 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.
06:58: We currently not only make available all of our resources, over 800 different books, booklets, and tracts, as well as A .W.
07:07: Pink's work in the studies and the scriptures. Available online, you can go to ChapelLibrary .org.
07:15: You can look and order a bundle of resources whenever you go, every single month.
07:22: We also have free quarterly offers that if you receive our Free Grace Broadcaster, you can go and also receive free resources there.
07:29: 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 100 different nations around the globe.
07:40: And so we desire your prayers, if you'll just continue to pray for us here at Chapel Library, that the
07:46: 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.
07:54: Yes, if anybody listens to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio with regularity, you know that on numerous occasions
08:02: I have promoted Chapel Library when the theme of the discussion happens to be reflected in one of the many
08:14: 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
08:28: Christian. In fact, it is Chapel Library that God used to bring me to understand and embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace when
08:38: I joined what was then
08:45: Calvary Baptist Church in Amityville, Long Island, which was a
08:51: Reformed Baptist Church. It has since merged with First Baptist Church in Merrick, Long Island, and become
08:59: Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick. The Amityville facility was sold.
09:06: But when I was saved initially at Calvary Baptist Church in Amityville, Long Island, I was still an
09:16: Arminian, although I had no clue who Jacob Arminius was, and had little idea of who
09:22: John Calvin was or any of the great heroes of the faith. And a dear brother who is now in heaven,
09:30: Nigel Stone, who was from England originally, approached me and said in his very deep
09:36: British voice, I understand you're having difficulty understanding the doctrines of sovereign grace.
09:44: Read this. And he handed me George Whitfield's letter to John Wesley on election.
09:50: And I read it. My initial reaction was, oh no, this is true, but I still hate it.
09:57: But then, within probably less than two months,
10:03: 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.
10:14: But thank God for Chapel Library. And now, Eddie Del Flore. If you could,
10:19: Eddie, tell us about the Department of Christian Defense. The Department of Defense, that is,
10:27: 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.
10:42: 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
10:53: Trinity, and a few others. And I just feel so privileged that the Lord has placed me in this particular area.
11:01: 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.
11:10: 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.
11:22: 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.
11:39: So this is what, basically, one of the things that the Department of Christian Defense is involved with, and I'm delighted to speak on the topic that I'm so passionate about,
11:50: Christian education and apologetics. And your website? ChristianDefense .org.
11:59: ChristianDefense .org. We also have a YouTube page, it has a link right on the homepage of ChristianDefense .org,
12:08: 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
12:33: Church, that assumes in its very title that the identity of the
12:42: Church, the true identity of the Church, has either been blurred, eclipsed, or totally lost.
12:49: So Austin explained that very weighty title there, recovering,
12:55: I should say, recovering the identity of the Church. Thank you, Chris.
13:01: You're right to catch the nuance there, that the provocation is intentional.
13:07: Down here in the panhandle of Florida, we're in the midst of, right here in the
13:12: Bible Belt area, at the southernmost end of it, and most of our landscape around us,
13:19: 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 Baptist and Assemblies and Lutherans, and all across the board of every different flavor,
13:43: 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
13:56: 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.
14:05: 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.
14:19: 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.
14:34: 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
14:52: Holy Spirit as though He were some force that you feel when, you know, quote unquote, worship music is at its crescendo.
15:00: 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.
15:14: 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
15:21: Bible conference, Recovering the Identity of the Church. You know, I don't think any one of us,
15:27: 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 church programs and Christmas pageants.
15:49: And, you know, much of the church in America has become very consumeristic, very entertainment driven, very performance oriented.
16:00: 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
16:26: 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.
16:50: 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.
17:03: The church is not a product of the culture around us. The church does not exist out of the schemes and the counsels of just well -intentioned men and flesh, but rather the church is
17:17: God's idea. The church is an outworking of God's gospel.
17:24: And without the scriptures, without the Holy Spirit, without Christ, without God, there is no church.
17:30: And when you go into the scriptures and you allow the word of God to define what the church essentially is—and
17:38: I mean, we're not even talking the deets 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 the 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.
18:52: 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
19:00: 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.
19:21: And that what we could recover, Lord willing, is not just the identity of the church, but the dignity of the church.
19:30: Well, we've got a listener in Champaign, Illinois, Brian, who says, why are you
19:36: Reformed folks so opposed to altar calls? Perhaps we'll have Eddie Delcor start with that one.
19:43: Well, it's not just, you know, Reformed folks, as the question is posed.
19:54: Really, I don't put terms a lot on it, but it really is the people of the
20:00: Reformed faith, or what's known as Calvinists, who have a strong emphasis on the sovereignty of God, and that is the main difference.
20:08: Non -Reformed, non -Calvinists have a sovereignty of man. So, look,
20:13: I can speak authoritatively on an altar call. I was in the altar call ministry for almost 10 years. And the problem with the altar call, it's the power, yeah, the power to you.
20:24: Thanks for that plug. No, but I am an altar man. Now, nobody's saying, no one's saying here that nobody gets saved at a altar call.
20:37: 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.
20:45: He's a man who denied the original sin. He also denied justification through faith.
20:51: But here's why the altar call is so popular, because it became a standard, really, of what to do after the service.
20:58: 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.
21:07: So when they walk forward, I've seen this over and over and over. When they all walk forward, the ones who allegedly received
21:14: Christ in their heart, when they walk forward, everyone's clapping at the man or woman who is walking forward.
21:21: 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.
21:49: 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.
22:00: 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
22:11: God. Then God responds to him and saves him.
22:16: Good problem theologically with that. Now, again, why do us Reformed folks have a problem with the altar call?
22:23: Because it's not biblical for several different reasons. I have a problem with things that aren't biblical. I want to stay biblical.
22:29: 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.
22:41: 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
22:50: 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.
23:01: He has no sovereignty. He has no righteousness. The sinner's prayer implies that he's not dead.
23:07: He has a little tiny bit of righteousness that he can use to make that great decision. The Scriptures say no.
23:14: In fact, Jesus says you're a slave. The person who's unsaved, chapter 8, Jesus makes this, does this whole teaching on the difference between a slave and the son setting the slave free.
23:25: The slave doesn't set himself free. Before one is saved, the
23:31: Scriptures point out he has no ability to please God. Paul pointed that out in Romans 8, 7 and 8.
23:38: 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,
23:47: I should say. Jesus said you're a slave. What's a slave? What's the opposite of a slavery, of slavery?
23:53: Someone listening to this in the first century, it would be simple. It really would. The opposite of freedom, right, is in bondage.
24:02: You're not free. You're in bondage and only the son can set a sinner free.
24:08: Only the son could do this. And Jesus makes this analogy that you're a slave until God regenerates you.
24:14: And as a result, and this is the biblical model, as a result of regeneration in John 1, 13 and 1
24:20: John 5, 1, as a result, as a result of being made alive, being born again, you believe, you repent, you obey.
24:32: If you're not born again, if you're not regenerated, what does Paul say you are?
24:38: You are a corpse. You are dead. You can go to the graveyard and you can dig a dead person up and say,
24:45: 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.
24:51: They can't do anything because they're dead. And that's how Paul defines, defines the unsafe.
24:57: So why do I have a problem with altar calls and sinner's prayer? Because it's unbiblical. But again, if the gospel is preached,
25:03: I'm not denying there's not salvation from the result of an unbiblical method.
25:09: But we just want to be more honoring to the Lord and to Scripture and be accurate. Yes. And from what
25:15: I can remember, Errol Hulls, a great
25:20: Reformed Baptist pastor in Leeds, England for many years, who is now in heaven, in paradise with the
25:31: Lord forever, Errol Hulls was saved at a
25:36: Billy Graham crusade, and yet he wound up opposing the altar call nonetheless, and wrote a book critiquing the
25:45: Billy Graham methodology. But before we have Pastor Austin Huggins also respond to that question, which is excellent, by the way,
25:55: Bryan in Champaign, Illinois, we're going to our first commercial break, and when we return, we'll have
26:01: Austin Huggins chime in about the altar call. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.
26:09: And if you'd like to send in a question of your own, chrisorrenson at gmail .com. I'm Simon O'Mahoney, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
26:18: Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord and his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.
26:27: 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
26:43: 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.
26:51: In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every
26:57: Sunday. We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org.
27:04: That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.
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27:54: But today I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.
28:07: Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence and grace to you, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.
28:15: In the film Chariots of Fire, Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt
28:20: God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.
28:27: I sensed that same God -given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.
28:34: 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.
28:46: 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
28:54: Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.
29:03: That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.
29:12: 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.
29:39: I'm Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven, an Orthodox Presbyterian church in Comac, Long Island.
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38:39: Royaldiadem .com and mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We are now back with Pastor Austin Huggins of Mount Vernon, Mount Zion Bible Church and Chapel Library in Pensacola, Florida.
38:54: And also Dr. Edward DelCour of the Department of Christian Defense.
39:00: Both men are representatives of First Love Ministries as well.
39:07: 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.
39:20: And we were having Edward DelCour before the break respond to a listener in Champaign, Illinois, Brian, who asked why do you
39:31: Reform folks have a problem with the altar call? And now it's your turn, Austin Huggins, to pick up where Eddie left off.
39:40: 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,
39:49: A, and then B, the whole underlying concept of the altar call actually contradicts the understanding of how regeneration works in Scripture.
40:01: 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.
40:11: This is not something that has been a practice of the church in church history.
40:16: 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.
40:40: And it relies upon the will, the emotion and the mind state and the attitude of the particular person at a given moment.
40:50: 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.
41:00: 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 side of the
41:20: Lord, that there's none righteous, no, not one, that none seek after God.
41:25: 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.
41:32: 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
41:40: 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.
41:49: So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. The Spirit is sovereign. God is sovereign in the salvation of sinners.
41:57: In John chapter one, Scripture is speaking of Christ. He came to his own and those who were his own did not receive him.
42:05: 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.
42:19: So Scripture sets forth God's sovereignty in salvation. Now, all throughout the
42:24: Scripture, you see that the gospel is to be preached, that men everywhere are called to repent and to believe.
42:33: We have a responsibility to carry the gospel, to faithfully proclaim the gospel, to proclaim the person in the work of the
42:41: Lord Jesus Christ, his finished work upon Calvary's cross for the remission of sin, his glorious resurrection and ascension.
42:48: 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.
43:02: 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.
43:09: It is bringing him into awakening and in life, in fellowship with God from the least to the greatest.
43:15: And 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.
43:27: 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.
43:42: 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.
43:52: I mean, I'm telling you as someone who, you know, when I was 12, I made a profession of faith,
43:57: 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
44:04: Lord would break me, bring me to repentance of my sin and supernatural faith in Jesus Christ.
44:10: And I would actually be a regenerate born again Christian. I mean, the altar call produces, you know, for every one person that in spite of that process is legitimately born again, you've got 50, you know, that are just chaffed, that are produced out of this thing, thinking they have the gospel, thinking they're saved because at one point in their life, in an emotionally vulnerable spot, they made a decision and they're not trusting
44:38: Christ for salvation, they're trusting in the sincerity of their decision. No, salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, not of the will of the flesh, not of the will of man, but of God.
44:51: The altar call obscures that, it blurs that, it confuses that, and we are just called to preach the gospel and call men to repent and believe and trust
45:01: God's timing for when that takes place. Amen. Well, let me give you a little pushback here.
45:07: I am thoroughly Reformed, as you two know. I reject the altar call as well.
45:15: In fact, I remember back in the 90s, a very close friend of mine, who still is a sovereign grace -believing
45:26: Baptist pastor, he nonetheless practiced the altar call in his worship services, and I was used of God to get him to rethink that and they, at the lead of the pastor, discontinued having altar calls, and they still, to this day, do not have them.
45:45: Having said that, are we not compelling, urging men to make decisions, like, for instance, we have in Joshua 24, 15, if it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the
46:04: Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served, which were beyond the river, or the gods of the
46:13: Amorites in whose land you are living. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. There seems to be a command to the hearers of Joshua to make a choice, and being someone who is firmly committed to the
46:35: Reformed Ordo Salutis, the order of salvation, I realize that nobody can make a saving decision, a decision that pleases
46:45: God when they are in the flesh, that regeneration precedes conversion, not the other way around.
46:54: But nonetheless, is it out of line—and perhaps we'll start with Eddie this time— is it out of line to tell people, choose this day whom you will serve?
47:07: No, in fact, there's many if clauses, both in the
47:12: Old and New Testament, and that's not our problem. That's not a problem. I mean, that's something that I preach, of course, when
47:19: I do open -air evangelism. You know, if you believe in Christ, you will have eternal life.
47:24: That's exactly some of the phraseology and some of the things you see in the Apostle Paul's presentation and also
47:30: Jesus himself. But the question is, when we give that, when we give the if clauses, you know, if you believe, we present the gospel.
47:42: And that's another, I think, point that I may go through in the conference, and we'll probably address this in the conference, is that the gospel definition is completely mottled, it's an incomplete in modern -day evangelism.
47:58: It's an incomplete message for many reasons, particularly focusing not on the gospel, but the love of God and all these other things, the end times or whatever, never getting to the crossword.
48:09: We present the crossword, and we present, if you believe in this Jesus, who was God in the flesh, who died on the cross, literally died, who was physically resurrected, ascended to another person,
48:21: God the Father, you put your trust in Christ, if you believe in him, you will have eternal life.
48:27: We, I say that all the time, but the difference is with the Arminian, with the non -reformed or the non -Calvinist or the non -sovereign believer, and I say this because it is an issue of sovereignty, it's
48:42: God working alone in salvation. When we present the if clauses, we are not presenting decisionism.
48:51: We are not presenting a doctrine called decisional regeneration, meaning your decision, your decision is the very cause of the regeneration.
49:02: Arminians and Calvinists can say the same things. They can say the same words, they both use the word faith, they both use the word
49:09: Christ, but on some of the phrases, we have different meanings, to be sure.
49:15: When I use the if clause, you know, if you put your faith in, because look, frankly, you know, gospel proclamation does not require that you go through every nut and bolt and teach about what reprobation actually is and all the details about election and predestination, all these things.
49:35: No, we preach the gospel, right? The simple gospel, but when we say the if clauses, we're relying on God to make them alive in which they'll respond, they will believe.
49:49: See, my decision or my prayer is not that just they make a choice and then
49:57: God responds to the choice. My prayer is for God to make them alive in which they make a choice.
50:04: As the apostle Paul made a choice, he was on the road to Damascus. The Lord approached him, right?
50:11: He saw Jesus Christ. But when he said, when he embraced the
50:16: Lord Jesus, he did not embrace the Lord Jesus and believe in him, in and of himself, outside of regeneration.
50:25: That's the difference, outside of regeneration. The faith act is a work. The faith act, that's what it is.
50:31: Works do not save. The unbeliever can never make a choice that pleases God unless he's born again.
50:39: And that's why we give the if clauses. So there is, you know, that that's biblical to give the if clauses, but we have to keep in perspective who's the sovereign one over salvation.
50:49: What Paul says in Romans chapter 10, verse 9, if whoever, if confesses
50:55: Christ as Yahweh or as Lord and believes in his heart that he was raised from among the corpses will be saved.
51:04: Hey, we believe that, but that verse does not address,
51:09: Paul doesn't need to because he addresses it in other places, it doesn't say why someone confesses, why someone believes.
51:19: So that would be the difference. God working alone or is it man and God? And that is really closer to Roman Catholicism, how it's man and God as a team, this synergistic view, how man adds to the regeneration work of God.
51:35: Yeah, the doctrines of grace are best learned when you are learning from a ministry and from a pastor, where pastor is plural, that teaches the whole counsel of God, because if you isolate certain passages, you may come to the wrong conclusion that the things that are happening are coming from the own willpower and the person's own steam to embrace
52:10: Christ and so forth, that when you read the whole counsel of God, you realize that there are invisible things going on by the sovereign hand of God, like we don't see
52:21: God electing people before the foundation of the world, we don't see the
52:27: Holy Spirit regenerating people, we only see and hear the results of that. And the first of which is somebody repenting and believing, but a lot of people ignore those invisible things that are going on by the sovereign power of God, and they just go by what they are visibly seeing and hearing here on this earth, but I'm going to have
52:52: Pastor Austin pick up where you left off, Eddie, when we return from our midway break.
52:59: And once again, if you have a question of your own, send it in to chrisarnsen at gmail .com, give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence.
53:08: Keep in mind, folks, this is a long break in the middle of the show, so please use this time wisely, write down as much of the contact information for as many of our advertisers as you can, so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to our advertisers, whether that means visiting their churches, buying their products, using their services, attending their special events, but if you can't do any of those things, at least thank our sponsors, obviously contact them from the contact information they provide in their ads, contact our advertisers, and thank them for sponsoring
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01:06:02: Edward Delcor on the theme, Recovering the Identity of the
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01:09:36: and say in the subject line, I need a church. Uh, I will do my best to help you find a church no matter where you live in the world.
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01:10:07: Austin Huggins and Dr. Edward Delcor on recovering the identity of the church.
01:10:14: chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least city and state and country of residence.
01:10:19: By the way, uh, Dr. Edward Darrell core, what church, uh, are you a member of?
01:10:25: So we could plug that as well. Uh, a little mug here.
01:10:31: Covenant church, Burbank covenant church, Burbank. Well, as soon as you said
01:10:36: Burbank, I immediately thought of the Johnny Carson show because that's where it's at.
01:10:42: Well, that's where it was at. I don't know. I don't know if the tonight tonight show is still being filmed out of there.
01:10:48: Maybe it is. It's not too close from there. Um, I think that's more in Fairfax, but, um, there's a lot of industry in Burbank.
01:10:58: It's amazing how there's actually Christians that exist in Burbank. Yeah. I can still remember
01:11:04: Johnny Carson making fun of Burbank, but, uh, going back to a pastor, uh,
01:11:12: Austin Huggins, uh, we were still in the process of responding to Brian in Champaign, Illinois, who was wondering why reform people have a problem with the altar call.
01:11:24: And if you want to chime in. Yeah. The only thing I have left to add is just take a look at Spurgeon, take a look at George Whitefield, you know, look at these men who were fine to plead even with tears for the souls of men, pleading and, and calling men to repentance and calling them to, you know, choose this day, who they're going to serve.
01:11:51: None of these, uh, these imploring, searching, decisive calls are in any way without harmony, uh, in the doctrines of sovereign grace.
01:12:04: There is a, the reality that the scripture said God makes them willing in the day of his power, right?
01:12:13: When, when Paul sees the one whom he has sent against Saul of Tarsus, when he sees the one whom he sent against that these, you know, what he thought were heretics that he's hunting down like rats are indeed the children of the
01:12:25: God of his fathers. You know, he is absolutely undone, you know, and whenever, uh, a person who is, whose eyes are opened to the glory of the gospel, when, when awakening and regeneration comes to them, right, they are moved.
01:12:40: Yeah. So like Moses who chose rather to suffer with God's people than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.
01:12:47: It's not that the God's sovereign grace does not move the will, but just the opposite scripture says, it's he who works in you both to will and to do for his good will and pleasure.
01:13:01: So these two things are not antithetical. We just know that the power of regeneration is not with man's will.
01:13:08: Yeah. And I don't want to take too much more time focusing on the altar call. I didn't, and I want to let our listeners know, by the way, that I have conducted an interview that I found fascinating.
01:13:21: Uh, on July 6th, 2023, I interviewed Jason Cherry on the theme of his book,
01:13:28: The Culture of Conversionism and the History of the Altar Call. Uh, you can type in the search engine at ironsharponsignradio .com.
01:13:40: Cherry, and I'm pretty sure that's the only interview link that will pop up.
01:13:46: I don't recall anybody else's name being Cherry that I've ever interviewed or that being a part of a theme.
01:13:52: Uh, so, uh, you could look for that interview from July 6th, 2023, The Culture of Conversionism and the
01:14:00: History of the Altar Call. But just to wrap up that conversation, uh, maybe we'll go back to Edward Delcor.
01:14:08: Uh, the biggest problem that I ever have had with altar calls is what is often said by the pastor or the revival preacher, whoever it is, uh, what is said by that individual when he does, uh, perform an altar call, uh, when the salvation of either one individual or a whole sea of thousands, depending upon how big the meeting is and how many people have come forward, the declaration that they are certainly saved, that is very dangerous, very unscriptural, and it grieves me.
01:14:54: Uh, of course, to repeat, uh, I'm not broad brushing here because not everybody who does so -called altar calls or open invitations and altar calls actually a strange, uh, title for that practice when the churches that do them are not, do not have altars in their buildings.
01:15:15: But, uh, isn't that the most dangerous aspect of a so -called altar call?
01:15:21: It's what's being said if it is unbiblical. Yeah. I think, um, the few points that a lot of pastors or the ones running the altar call make is it's a focus on first an unconditional love of God, and then they give a false sense of security.
01:15:40: So you come forward and you know, there's, it's, and if there's no regeneration, they just come forward and they automatically assume that they're saved.
01:15:48: And that is very dangerous. And it's very dangerous. What is stated beforehand. Um, again, you have sinners and bondage to sin, dead people, spiritually dead, who now are saying, you're not really spiritually dead.
01:16:01: Um, in fact, you have the power to be the decisive one to make yourself alive.
01:16:09: And then God responds. And, um, yeah, I think the whole thing is dangerous. And you know,
01:16:14: Chris, it's very interesting because I was in one of the largest altar call ministries. We would see on an average in the nineties, we would see on an average about 350 ,000 people come forward every single year.
01:16:28: That's bigger than Billy Graham. We were the biggest altar call ministry. I didn't know much in the early nineties.
01:16:36: Um, but the fact of the matter is something very interesting. I've always observed the three groups that would come forward.
01:16:42: Group number one, I would see people come forward every night, responding to the altar call every single night, proving they have no idea what they're doing.
01:16:51: They just come forward because it feels psychologically, it's psychologically efficacious to their mind, right?
01:16:57: And they may even want to be drawn. They may even want to draw attention to themselves. Exactly. And then there's another group.
01:17:04: Um, the guy would come because his girlfriend came or vice versa. Then there's people that come because they're scared of hell.
01:17:12: You know, they just come forward. They're scared of hell. And then I do believe, um, and it's, it's fair to say there, there, as long as the gospel is preached, there is actually saved people.
01:17:22: They just don't know anything, but they know the sufficiency of the gospel, assuming that was preached, right?
01:17:28: So you have all these different kinds of people. And as you know, Chris, there's been Chris, there's been statisticians and not just one, but many groups who give stats on altar call would, who would ask the question, how many people who came forward at an altar call are still in the church 10 years later?
01:17:48: And you know, this it's 2%, 3 % at the most. In other words, they're not working. It's an unbiblical activity and it promotes decisional regeneration, opposes a regeneration, preceding faith.
01:18:00: And it also consider this, it also closes the state of the unregenerate. The Bible puts that status as dead.
01:18:08: Austin just quoted a verse in Romans chapter three, verse 11, where it says, no one seeks for God.
01:18:14: Paul wasn't, Paul was speaking about non -believers. And it's interesting, Chris, when he says, no one seeks after God, the word seek is ex -Zayton.
01:18:24: You have the participle Zayton, which means seeking, but then he affixes a preposition out.
01:18:30: Paul says, nobody's seeking out for God. The altar calls on an exception to what
01:18:37: Paul said. And then it promotes the idea of a secondary mediator. But right. I think the whole thing's dangerous.
01:18:43: It gives false hope. It gives false sense of security, puts the sovereignty, the image construct on man as the decisive one.
01:18:50: They're celebrate man, they celebrate man's decision. And I thoroughly are so disappointed with pastors because they're the ones that should be teachers.
01:19:02: And I know Austin and I and others in the conference coming up in Florida, we're going to teach about the role of pastors.
01:19:12: And you make a strong identity by a strong pastor, not the other way around.
01:19:18: These days, pastors are just so mushy. They're afraid. Do you notice that, Chris? So many pastors are just afraid.
01:19:24: They're afraid to do anything, to say anything wrong. They want to be cruise ship directors and get the big numbers. But that's not the qualification of a pastor biblically.
01:19:34: So unfortunately, we have altar calls because we have many weak pastors who just, they themselves are not theologically credentialed or have a solid biblical education.
01:19:45: Yeah. And Austin, I'm sure you agree that another danger attached to this practice is that many, many millions of professing
01:19:56: Christians have come to adopt this. They would probably never call it this, but they are treating it this way as a third ordinance of the church.
01:20:10: Yeah. Well, I heard one preacher refer to it as, you know, the golden calf of our generation.
01:20:15: If you don't do it, you're, you know, you're anti -gospel or anti -evangelism or something. But I'll say this, and this ties back to the actual theme of the conference coming up.
01:20:26: I mean, what is the end result of that? You fill your churches with chaff.
01:20:32: You fill your churches with unregenerate membership. You fill your voting rolls because when you bring these, you know, unconverted people in who are still, their hearts are still hard against the
01:20:46: Lord. They are still, they may be religious. They may be searching after certain benefits in, in, you know, that, that kind of therapeutic element to, to Christianity, the, the, the, the cultural, social aspect, not converted.
01:21:04: The spirit of God is not at work within them. And then you fill your churches with a mindset that thinks the church is ultimately by design to satisfy the wants and the needs of the people rather than serve and worship
01:21:18: God on his terms. And what you end up with are these institutions that bear the name of Christ and that carry on in the name of Christianity, but underneath the hood, actually in the engine of what's running the thing, it's flesh, it's man.
01:21:35: Right. And before we move on to another vital aspect of recovering the identity of the church, let me turn the spotlights back on the reformed community that we are of which we are a part.
01:21:51: Uh, there's probably no other group within the Christian faith that has elements.
01:22:00: And obviously I am not broad brushing here because I am a member of a reformed
01:22:06: Baptist church. I do not believe that the church to which I belong is, is guilty of this error.
01:22:13: But out of all the theological systems, one of the problems that exists, like with any truth, there are those that don't quite fully understand the truth deeply enough, and they wind up distorting it.
01:22:32: You have reformed churches and reformed pastors that don't compel anybody to repent and believe in Christ in their worship services.
01:22:45: They only use that as a time for instruction and teaching the
01:22:51: Bible. It could be indistinguishable from a seminary class.
01:22:59: And I have actually had conversations with some reformed pastors.
01:23:05: I can remember one pastor in particular, who I'm glad that he is no longer pastoring this church that he once was called to pastor.
01:23:17: But we were having a conversation, I think it might've been my first meeting with this individual where I was bringing up this very fact.
01:23:28: And he said, no, I disagree with you. It's not my job to call sinners to Christ.
01:23:35: It is my job to feed the sheep and the sheep's job when they leave the four walls of our sanctuary.
01:23:43: It's their job to call the lost to Christ. That's not what I'm doing in my worship services.
01:23:49: I never will. I am only feeding the sheep, instructing them, edifying them, and expositing the word and offering the sacraments.
01:24:04: But I don't invite anybody to repent and follow Christ. That is a dangerous and not only anti -historical practice, which the reformers rejected, it's unbiblical.
01:24:23: Yeah. Yeah, without a doubt. No, I think, I mean, I hear what you're saying,
01:24:29: Chris, and among reformed churches, you know, and goodness, it's hard when you say that to not, you know, broad brush and say, you know, this is true across the board.
01:24:41: So, you know, any of the listeners listening, there are real categories in a spectrum.
01:24:47: But with that being said, yeah, I believe in our day and age among the reformed churches, we really need to be at war against dead orthodoxy.
01:24:57: We really need to be at war against a kind of cold, elitist apathy.
01:25:03: We really need to be at war within the heart realm and the heart elements of what makes
01:25:08: Christianity, what the Puritans called, you know, experimental or experiential by today's language.
01:25:16: You know, the Christianity that gripped the early church, the proclamation of Jesus Christ and the power of it that enabled the apostle
01:25:24: Paul to come and say things like, brethren, for you see what manner of men we were among you for your sake.
01:25:31: He was able to say, we didn't come to you in word only, but in power and demonstration of the spirit. He didn't want the trust of men to lie in the enticing words of man's wisdom, the persuasive speech, but in power and demonstration of the spirit.
01:25:47: That's a real power. It is demonstrable. I mean, when the spirit of God moves upon men, there's real conviction, there's real brokenness, there's a real godly sorrow that leads to repentance.
01:25:59: And, you know, early church history knows nothing of stoicism. You know, there is a real pleading.
01:26:06: There's a real sense of urgency. Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, not the apathetic, you know, prophet.
01:26:12: We're called to even work out our salvation with fear and trembling, not with apathy and indifference. I mean, the
01:26:17: Christian life is visceral. The Christian life touches the deepest, most sensitive parts of who we are because it's at the most deepest and sensitive parts of who we are.
01:26:29: That the spirit comes and targets when he makes us new creatures in Christ. To say that we have a new heart is to say the very core and the citadel of not just right and wrong, but what we love and hate has fundamentally changed.
01:26:43: And to say the spirit of the living God is at work there and we're not roused up, we're not stirred up, we're not constrained, we're not drawn, we're not moved, we're not provoked is antithetical to the fruit of what the gospel does when it changes a life.
01:27:00: So, yeah, our churches, we need to be at war against losing our first love. And we must be fully aware, and this is especially for the pastors and elders, which
01:27:09: I believe the same office, by the way, folks, that every church, even in its membership, has someone who is lost.
01:27:20: It's foolish and unbiblical to think that everybody in your building is regenerate.
01:27:28: Now, of course, that was a bit of hyperbole. There are congregations that are so small, there may be no unregenerate people in their membership roles.
01:27:37: But, you know, the larger a church gets, the more likely there will be, unbeknownst to us, lost people, even in membership, maybe even in leadership.
01:27:46: But one of the things I love about the new church that I am a member of, the new church plant,
01:27:55: Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, whose ad you heard right at the beginning of the show, we observe the
01:28:01: Lord's Supper every single Sunday, and I love the fact that every Sunday the lost are provoked to jealousy because they're told, you cannot participate in this family meal.
01:28:15: This is a meal for those who are truly born again, and please let the elements pass you by.
01:28:23: Don't partake of them if you are not a believer in Christ Jesus and if you're not a member of a biblically faithful church.
01:28:30: So it is a form also of calling those people to repentance, even if during that exact moment those words might not be said, but they are being provoked to jealousy because they're being told, don't participate.
01:28:48: Go ahead. I was going to say, that's an excellent point. One thing that really bothers me is how lax too many churches are when it comes to the
01:28:57: Lord's Supper where, hey, come on, come on, come on, just get some, you know, and all these people come forward, there's no vetting at all.
01:29:05: Maybe the pastor may say, if you're baptized or if you're a good Christian, you know, but there's no meaningful vetting.
01:29:12: And the result of that, you have non -saved people coming because they think everyone thinks they're saved.
01:29:19: They come and they have no idea what they're doing. And really they're, I think they're being induced to the, under the judgment of God, that's why
01:29:29: Paul says some of you are weak, sick, and dead. And his prerequisite of a worthy
01:29:36: Lord's Supper was a remembered ceremony. How does a non -believer remember the sacrifice and what
01:29:43: Jesus did in a meaningful way? That was Paul's main problem. That was how he defines an unworthy
01:29:49: Lord's Sacrament, Lord's Supper, by people not remembering.
01:29:54: But that's a very good point. People are too lax. Pastors are too lax when it comes to the Lord's Supper. And one of the things,
01:30:00: Austin, moving on to a different aspect of recovering the identity of the church,
01:30:09: I am a former Roman Catholic, and one of the sins, one of the heresies of the
01:30:18: Church of Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy, and even some evangelicals might be guilty of this if they have a cultic approach to their church,
01:30:31: I mean, there are evangelical and fundamentalist churches, congregations that say that their actual congregation is the only group of saved people, if not in the world, at least in the area in which that church exists, there is the heresy of exalting the church too highly above its biblical role and identity.
01:30:59: But that, I think, is a heresy that's in the minority, especially when it comes to evangelicals, the rampant sin that I've experienced, and I've been a
01:31:13: Christian since the 80s and met many different Christians, especially since I'm involved in the media, is an indifference towards the church, a denial of the requirement to be a member of a local body of believers where you're under the authority of specific elders, and it seems to me,
01:31:39: I don't know how much of this is the root cause of this, but it seems to be, it may have begun at the very least amongst evangelicals as an overreaction to the heresy of Rome's view of the church, where the church has become a nice little frosting on the cake, maybe, or, in some cases, a horrible thing.
01:32:02: Oh, I don't believe in organized religion, just give me my Bible and I'm just gonna have a small group of people gather in my living room and we're gonna fellowship and study the
01:32:11: Bible, but I'm not for this membership nonsense, and so any comments you're here to make,
01:32:18: Austin? Yeah, I do. You know, perhaps some of that could be a reaction to the kind of, you know, views that are common in Roman Catholicism.
01:32:33: I happen to hold the opinion that in America there was such a high degree of superficiality, of lukewarmness and pragmatism that has, you know, grit the churches for so long, a kind of business model pageantry that, you know, do what works, that, you know, true and genuine people who are under conviction and looking for reality and for truth, you know, were finding it more common to find anything but spiritual reality in these institutions, and the larger the institution, the bigger the church, the more structure and external size it had, seemingly the more rotten it may be internally, not across the board, but just a generalization, you know, and I've known people who have come out of these movements that were looking for something real, looking for something that would actually speak to the inward realities that they were dealing with as they read
01:33:39: Scripture, as they saw the life in that early church, as they read of the exploits of the saints of old, as they saw the prayer life of the saints.
01:33:48: And some of these people were moved to other sects and other groups. Some of them, you know, fell in with Plymouth Brethren type guys, some of them with like higher life
01:33:59: Watchmen Need type guys. And there were people, I think, that were looking for something that was more felt.
01:34:06: But what they ended up doing was the pendulum swings so far over that they're only looking for experience.
01:34:13: They're only looking for that kind of intangible element. And they end up setting aside so many scriptures that deal with God's will for the local church that these house church movements take off.
01:34:25: These guys like Frank Viola and all these other guys are writing this stuff and young people are eating it up.
01:34:34: And there's these huge movements of a kind of American anti -authority, lone wolf, magbrick, lack of accountability, hyper -spiritualism that really began to influence to dominate the landscape in a big way.
01:34:49: And I think some of it is a reaction to the superficiality in the churches. Some of it is a kind of sensitivity to the
01:34:57: American ideal of independence and not being held accountable to one another. And I think that in this kind of hodgepodge of multicultural influences that America is anyway, at least at this point, the flesh is in agreement.
01:35:12: We don't really like accountability. We don't really like being made to be close with those with whom we are going to have to divulge weaknesses and ask for forgiveness and apologize.
01:35:27: And yet when you look at the New Testament and all the one another aspects of what we're commanded to do, it's only in the context of a local church that you can obey the scriptures as it relates to the imperatives of the
01:35:41: New Testament Christian life. God's design for the local church was ultimately for his glory.
01:35:49: But one of the chief functional benefits for us as saints is it is a means by which we are conformed to Christ, sanctified, we bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ, and we are aided by the gifts that the
01:36:07: Spirit gives to others that we ourselves don't necessarily have. Church membership is absolutely important, without which there's no church discipline that we read about in scriptures.
01:36:16: There's no accountability to eldership that we read about in scriptures. There's no submission to authority whatsoever that we read about in scriptures.
01:36:23: The moment you get rid of church membership, accountability to the brethren in a particular local church with people who know you, they know your wife, they know your kids, they know your testimony, they know how you walk and talk, they know what your convictions are, they know what your doctrine is.
01:36:36: As soon as you remove that degree of accountability, so many of the New Testament imperatives fall apart, and there's no way to walk in them.
01:36:46: I want to take this time to plug a book co -authored by my personal general practitioner, my own doctor, physician,
01:36:58: Dr. Joel Yeager of Heritage Family Health in Newmanstown, Pennsylvania.
01:37:07: He and two other authors co -authored the book,
01:37:15: Coronavirus and the Leadership of the Christian Church, A Sacred Trust Broken, and the other two authors are
01:37:23: Ernie Springer and Dr. Daniel O 'Rourke, who is a cardiologist,
01:37:30: I think, in California. And basically, it was a rebuke to the leaders of churches all over the world who shut down worship services because of the mass hysteria and also the unbiblical mandates of certain governments, earthly governments, that forbid the opening up the doors of the church for gathering.
01:38:02: And this was one of the areas that the authors say, no, this is where you don't obey your local government, you obey
01:38:10: God. And the harm that that practice of churches all over the world allowed themselves to be duped by to close down their churches, even for very long periods of time, it has wreaked havoc in the body of Christ, and to this day,
01:38:41: I still meet people that I've known for decades, some of them, who, in a casual conversation, say, how are things going at church?
01:38:53: Oh, I don't go to church anymore. What? Oh, I'm just watching services on TV.
01:39:00: What? That's not worship. So we have the church, the importance of the church being so belittled, you have people who have allegedly been born again for decades who think it's completely fine just to stay at home and watch a worship service on TV.
01:39:20: I mean, Eddie, do you got any comments on that? Yeah, I know at the conference, one of the breakout sessions is on church membership, and I'm sure they will address that.
01:39:34: But interesting, after the lockdown, and Austin and I have seen this in the Philippines and other places, and here, after the lockdown, people, as you said, were just not going to church because they were so used to doing
01:39:48: Zoom. And again, it comes down to this. What is the function of a church? I don't think most
01:39:54: Christians know what the function of a church is and why do they go to church. It's not because of the music. And after that lockdown,
01:40:02: I think it damaged the whole mentality. Keep in mind, the average Christian, it seems to me, the average
01:40:07: Christian is very unread in terms of reasons why they go to church and who the church is for and those kind of things.
01:40:15: And unfortunately, this is a huge, I don't know if we'll ever recover from this. Hopefully we will.
01:40:22: People will start going to church. And there's also an increase, and I've seen this, of apologists,
01:40:29: Chris, where there's so many apologists now, well, self -proclaimed apologists, that are lone rangers.
01:40:37: Typically, they're single men. They're men that are single, but they have no church home.
01:40:42: None of them have church homes, not every single one of them, but many do not have church homes. Now, that number, these kind of evangelists slash apologists is growing.
01:40:54: No church home. They have a very low stock on church and church membership because they just don't want to go.
01:41:01: It's just not for them. Too many of them have that mentality. And I always think, if you're out there refuting people or practicing some kind of apologetics, what do you say when someone asks, so what church do you go to?
01:41:14: What church should I go to? Should I get into a church? They can't, you know, to be hypocritical, they'll probably say, yeah, you need to get into a good church when they themselves have zero, this much, zero accountability.
01:41:25: So yes, Chris, I've seen the damage after lockdown of this very thing you're talking about.
01:41:31: And we have to go to our final break. Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors.
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01:47:05: Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.
01:47:12: In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt
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01:47:24: I sensed that same God -given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain deeper knowledge and love for God.
01:47:32: 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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01:48:00: That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.
01:48:10: 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.
01:48:29: I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Linbrook Baptist Church, a
01:48:48: Christ -centered, gospel -driven church looking to spread the gospel in the southwest portion of Long Island, New York, and play our role in fulfilling the
01:48:56: Great Commission, supporting and sending for the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth. We're delighted to be a part of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio advertising family.
01:49:07: At Linbrook Baptist Church, we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired word of God, inherent in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak.
01:49:24: We believe in salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This salvation is based upon the sovereign grace of God, was purchased by Christ on the cross, and is received through faith alone, apart from any human merit, works, or ritual.
01:49:41: Salvation in Christ also results in righteous living, good works, and appropriate respect and concern to all who bear
01:49:49: God's image. If you live near Linbrook, Long Island, or if you're just passing through on the
01:49:54: Lord's Day, we'd love to have you come and join us in worship. For details, visit linbrookbaptist .org.
01:50:01: That's l -y -n -brookbaptist .org. This is Pastor Keith Allen of Linbrook Baptist Church reminding you that by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.
01:50:13: It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast of the
01:50:20: Lord's blessing and the knowledge of himself. I'm Simon O'Mahony, Pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
01:50:31: Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.
01:50:40: 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
01:50:55: 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.
01:51:03: In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every
01:51:09: Sunday. We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org.
01:51:17: That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.
01:51:24: And folks, please never forget that this program is also paid for in part by the law firm of Buttafuoco &
01:51:30: Associates. If you are the victim of a very serious personal injury or medical malpractice anywhere in the
01:51:38: United States, please call Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, a dear friend of mine since the early 1990s.
01:51:46: Call him at 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, or visit his website 1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com.
01:51:53: 1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com. Make sure you mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio when you call
01:51:59: Buttafuoco & Associates. Also, I am thrilled to welcome to the
01:52:06: Iron Sharpens Iron Radio family of advertisers, Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, whose ad you just heard.
01:52:14: And also, don't forget about their website, trbccarlisle .org,
01:52:21: trbccarlisle .org. And you will soon be hearing ads from another new sponsor, annual sponsor of this program,
01:52:30: Lebanon Federal Credit Union in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Go to LebanonFCU .org
01:52:38: for more details, LebanonFCU .org. And we are thrilled that there are long -time sponsors of this show that have renewed their advertising contracts, like Lindbergh Baptist Church in Lindbergh, Long Island.
01:52:53: Their website is lindberghbaptist .org. And also, our dear friends who publish the
01:53:00: New American Standard Bible, that's nasbible .com, nasbible .com.
01:53:05: I thank God for all of those who are not only advertising in this show, but also donating to this show to keep us on the air.
01:53:14: Well, I would like each of you men to take a couple of minutes to summarize the most important aspects of recovering the identity of the church.
01:53:25: And I guess we'll start with Eddie Delcor this time. Thank you very much,
01:53:31: Chris. It's of utter importance that Christians today get back to the basics of recovery, of identification of the first century church.
01:53:43: The first century church was built on two things. It was built on love and doctrine.
01:53:49: You can't have one without the other. If it's just doctrine, well, that's not very good.
01:53:55: If it's just love, then the result of that is confusion, utter confusion.
01:54:01: And the subject matter that we'll be dealing with at the conference, it's a wide variety of particular subjects that emphasize, that laser light the biblical identity of the church, which is of the utmost importance.
01:54:19: We need to get back to solid evangelism. Pastors need to do their job. Do your job.
01:54:25: Stop wearing the skinny jeans and being fun and quoting verses out of context. There's 27 qualifications of a pastor.
01:54:33: You got to do your job. Then the identity of the church will be so supportive and so solid in their presentation of the gospel.
01:54:42: We got to get back to the identity. I just want to really emphasize the conference that's coming up, and we want to invite you.
01:54:49: There's several different breakout sessions, several different main topics. It will truly be edifying for all that attend.
01:54:58: And Pastor Rostin -Huggins? Yes, at this conference,
01:55:05: I'm going to be addressing the topic of the church as a city set on a hill.
01:55:11: And so when we open up this conference, we're going to deal with the church as a spiritual institution, a unique dwelling place of the
01:55:20: Lord. This church is historically identified by God's will as revealed in the scriptures.
01:55:28: That Christ is the head of the church and that the spirit has been given to us to accomplish a work that we cannot do in the flesh.
01:55:37: The church is to be a city set on a hill, a light to the world. It is to be a salt in the earth.
01:55:43: It is to be a luminous beacon of truth, life, and evangelistic hope in the darkness of the surrounding culture.
01:55:51: The church is to be a preserving savor and prophetic voice of gospel accountability to the world around us.
01:55:57: And my prayer is that over the few days, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, we'll be able to address all of these various themes that relate to the identity of the church and recover something of the identity, beauty, dignity, and the glory of the institution that Christ shed his blood to purchase and to not only die for and make his own, but to inhabit and to make like himself.
01:56:23: The world only has one institution to address the malady of mankind, its sinful, perilous condition, hell, death, eternity, heaven,
01:56:35: God, his identity, his glorious person. There's no other institution in the world that has been given by God to address these eternal issues.
01:56:45: Either the church will rise to the occasion according to the power of the Lord given to us, or we'll be caught in the deception of the age, and our stand will be taken away.
01:56:58: And the consequences of that will be that there will be people, brothers and sisters, family, mothers, fathers, children, co -workers, those around us, who will be without a life -saving light of the gospel of Jesus Christ in their environment.
01:57:14: Well, somebody on Facebook who uses the name
01:57:20: Reform Theology—I don't know if this is an individual or an entire organization that's represented on Facebook by that name, but it's obviously an individual who wrote this.
01:57:32: I think it's the most important question of all about this event you're having.
01:57:38: He says, Dr. Edward Delcor, will there be food? Yeah, I know who he is.
01:57:50: Yeah, he comes to a lot of the conferences, and he would probably come if I told him, yeah, there'll be a lot of food.
01:57:56: He lives out here, actually. Yeah, I know who he is. That's pretty funny. Well, once again, if anybody wants to attend this conference in Baghdad, Florida, especially if you can get there reasonably easily by train, plane, or automobile, please go to FirstLoveMinistries .org,
01:58:18: FirstLoveMinistries .org, and you'll see all of the information just by scrolling down a little bit that you'll need to register for this free conference.
01:58:29: We hope you will make every effort to do so. I want to remind our listeners to continue to pray for my sister
01:58:37: Mary, who lives on Long Island in West Babylon. She is on the brink of having a very serious surgery that could mean the partial amputation of one of her feet or the amputation of her entire leg, right leg, up to above the knee.
01:59:01: Please pray for her. Please pray not only for a reason to really rejoice over the outcome of this, but also pray for my sister spiritually and draw her even closer to Jesus Christ, the result of this, and please let her abandon all of the falsehoods that she may be clinging to as a
01:59:25: Roman Catholic so that I can know with certainty that she has embraced the true gospel.
01:59:32: But I thank all of you who pray for me and this program, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater