November 13, 2025 Show with Shaker Khoury on “The Testimony of an Arab-Israeli who Came to Christ & His Views on the Modern State of Israel”

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

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

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

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

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 13th day of November 2025.

Before I introduce my guest for today, I want to remind all men in ministry leadership that I'm having my next free biannual Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon on Thursday, March 5, 2026, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is Perry County, Pennsylvania.

And for the second time, I am having as my keynote speaker a man, I believe, literally without being guilty of sinful exaggeration or hyperbole or flattery, I can honestly say this man is the most powerful preacher on the planet Earth, Dr. Conrad Mbewe, pastor of Kibwata Baptist Church of Lusaka, Zambia, Africa.

He is also the founding chancellor of African Christian University, and he labored with the late Vodie Balcombe for nine years there on the invitation of Conrad. Vodie uprooted his family here in the United States and moved to Zambia and labored with Conrad for nine years, and then not only returned home to America, but returned home to the Lord very surprisingly and shockingly not long ago.

But Conrad is just a remarkable brother, and I've known him since 1996, and I am so looking forward to his return to the Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio Free Pastors Luncheon. Not only is admission free and your meal free and your opportunity to hear Dr. Mbewe preach free, but every man who attends will receive a heavy sack, possibly even two heavy sacks, of free brand-new books personally selected by me and donated by Christian publishers all over the United States and the United Kingdom.

All of it is absolutely free, and this is all by design of my precious late wife, Julie, in the 1990s, whose brainchild these Pastors Luncheons are. She came up with the idea. We began doing them in the 1990s, and we continue them—or should I say, I continue them to this day in loving memory of her and in honor and tribute to her.

And I hope that you can make it on Thursday, March 5th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m., if you are a man in ministry leadership. And also, just to let you know, if you are a business owner or a leader in a parachurch organization or a pastor of a church, if you want to sponsor an exhibitor's booth there, that will be available for you to do.

Just contact me at chrisarmson at gmail .com. And for further details on the luncheon, go to ironsherpanzionradio .com. Ironsherpanzionradio .com, and you will see the rotating banner at the top of the page with that announcement for the luncheon.

On the night before the luncheon, Wednesday, March 4th, Conrad will be preaching at the church where I'm a member, Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and that will be at 7 p .m.

That event is open to everyone—men, women, and children. All are welcome. And for details on Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, go to trbccarlisle .org. By the way, pray for Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Tonight, I am attending, along with other patriotic citizens of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and also some leftist traitors to our Constitution, I'm attending a borough council meeting tonight where there is going to be a vote on making Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a sanctuary city, which will no doubt be a living nightmare should that occur.

Please pray for Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and that this vote is squashed and that this desire of the leftists for us to be a sanctuary city does not happen. But today, I am so thrilled to have as a first-time guest Shaq Corey.

I had attended, not long ago, the Future of Christendom Conference, which I try to attend as often as I can. This one was held in Lancaster, or actually Ephrata, Pennsylvania, and I always thoroughly enjoy these events hosted by my long-time dear friend, Pastor Joel Saint.

And one of the speakers I had never met or heard before was Shaq Corey, and I was so impressed by his message that I immediately, after his message was complete, I approached him and asked him, would you be willing to join me on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio?

And he very quickly accepted my invitation, and I'm so delighted to have him. Shaq is a Christian of Arab-Israeli background and a speaker, as I just mentioned, at the Future of Christendom Conference, and today we're going to be addressing the testimony of an Arab-Israeli who came to Christ and his views today on the modern state of Israel.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio for the very first time, Shaq Corey.

It's a pleasure to be here, Chris. Thank you for inviting me. And when I saw the list of the people that have been on your show, I was truly delighted to be on here. Then I found out that my father-in-law, Joel Saint, was on here, so I was like, well, I'm not as delighted anymore.

Yeah, I forgot to mention that. I just found out not long ago after I had invited Shaq on the program that he is the son-in-law of the aforementioned Joel Saint. I did not know that when I invited him, but that's an extra blessing to know that.

And Shaq is also the owner of a roofing establishment that everyone should know about, and that is called Legacy Roofing, and you can find out more about Legacy Roofing on Facebook, where they have their own page.

Just type in Legacy Roofing, and I'm assuming there are no competitors with that name, but if there.

Are, just look for the one in Lancaster. Exactly right. There are competitors in other states, I believe, but of course, ours is the best roofing company in the world.

Great. Well, this program is going to feature, for at least a good portion of the beginning of our discussion, your salvation testimony, which would include the kind of religious atmosphere in which you were raised in Israel, I believe in an Arab-Israeli community, and how you came to Christ and how your theology developed over the years to the point where you have come to be a Reformed Baptist and post-millennialist, and I would love to hear your story.

Early Life in Israel and Coming to Christ

So, start from your earliest years where you have a conscious thought there in Israel.

Yeah. So, I grew up in a town called Al-Ram, which is in the West Bank, but it's about 15 minutes, or I should say 15 miles north of Jerusalem. And I grew up, my mother was a, she grew up Catholic. My father grew up actually in the Coptic church.

There's a Coptic community there in Jerusalem. And my uncle, my mom's brother, was saved, got saved later on in life, and was attending a church in Jerusalem called the First Baptist Bible Church, where he was also a preacher there.

And my uncle would come over to our house pretty much every day, and he would argue with my mother about doctrines and things of the faith. And he would take us to church, and my mom had no problem with that.

She wasn't really a true Catholic in that sense. She didn't care if we went to a Baptist church. And so, I heard the preaching of the gospel at a very young age, and I was saved at a very, very young age.

I knew that I was a sinner, and I needed Christ. I needed to repent of my sins, and I needed Christ. So, I was saved at an early age at six and seven. And what was also very beneficial is that my father had sent us to a private Christian school that was a school.

It was started by an American missionary, and so all the teachers were American missionaries, and it taught everything in English. And so, they were all Christians as well. So, that was also a blessing that I not only attended church with my uncle, but I would go to a school that was also a Christian school.

And so, that kind of strengthened my, that was sort of my discipleship, because I didn't really have discipleship at home yet, quite yet. From then on, my uncle kept pushing on my mom, pushing on my mom.

And one day, she just, her testimony is one day, she woke up and she said, Jesus Christ is the son of the living God, and I need to repent. And when my uncle came, he was armed and ready to start the argument.

And she looked at him and she said, because that was the main argument, is Christ the living God. And she looked down and said, Christ is the son of the living God, and I repent, and I believe in Him as my Savior.

And then my father as well became a believer, is now a pastor there at a couple of churches.

There in Israel. Wow. Now, tell me before we move on to your theological journey, something about what it was like to be raised in Israel. The kinds of friends you had, were they all Arab Israelis? Were they all of a Christian or nominal Christian background?

Did you have Muslim friends? Did you have Jewish friends and that kind of a thing? Tell us about that.

Yeah. So most of my friends were either nominal Christians or Muslims. And yes, most of everybody I grew up with would have been an Arab Israeli, Arab living in Israel. Some of them were not necessarily Arab Israelis.

By Arab Israeli, we mean somebody who has the Israeli passport. Some people didn't have the Israeli passport or Israeli citizenship. It's a complicated term. Some people don't understand it. But yes, mainly were Muslims and nominal Christians.

And the neighborhood that I grew up in actually was a Christian neighborhood, an Arab Christian neighborhood, not very common over there. But all my aunts lived in that neighborhood. A couple of my uncles lived in that neighborhood.

And so I lived in that community, but there was also Muslim neighbors and things like that. So that's pretty much who I grew up around. Arabs either mainly were nominal Christians, not a lot of saved Christians that I knew, and Muslims that I grew up with and were friends with grew up in Israel.

Now, most of these Muslim friends, were they also nominal or were they strict,.

Quranically faithful Muslims? Yeah, some of them were. Some of the mothers would wear the garb and stuff, but some of them were not. They were not strict in that sense. But I would say most of them were not.

And so they weren't really strict in that sense. And so we had good relationships. There was no animosity growing up with Muslims much from my experience. Now, there are other parts where there is animosity, but where I grew up in the community around me, we didn't have much animosity.

Now, how about Jewish friends? I know that you didn't mention any. Is there a reason why you had few to none who were Jewish? And of course, secularism I know is rampant in Israel. Not every Israeli is a practicing Jew.

But was it geographic reasons just because the community that you lived in didn't have too many, if any, Jewish residents? Tell us about that.

Yeah. So where I lived, I lived in the West Bank. So there was no Jewish neighbors or any of that. Where I went to school, there were no Jews who went to that school. So it was pretty much that. We didn't run in the same circles.

And you don't see that as much now. In Jerusalem, if you had lived in Jerusalem, you probably would have a couple of Jewish friends here and there because it's a big mix. But the circles I ran with, I didn't know any.

Of course, I knew Jewish people, but none of them were close friends of mine. And there was also the language barrier. Now, both my parents speak very good Hebrew. I didn't learn it as well. I could speak a little bit of Hebrew, but because it was Arabic and most Jews cannot speak Arabic, there was that.

Oh, that's interesting. Now, was there any animosity? Was there any hatred that you had in your own heart and mind or that your friends had towards the Jews?

Growing up, I did feel a little bit of like, you know, they're not like us. They don't like us. I had to cross a lot of checkpoints, which were controlled by the Jewish, you know, Israeli soldiers and things like that.

So I did have a little bit of a, you know, maybe not like hatred, but yes, there was this feeling that I don't belong with these people. I belong over here, you know, that they treat me better here. These guys don't treat me as well.

But then there was the church I went to. It was a dispensational church. So that was kind of a, I had a hard time with that concept. I was like, well, the Jews are kind of like our friends because they believe, you know, they believe the same Bible, the Old Testament, they use the same Old Testament.

So for that reason, I didn't really hate the Jews. I can't.

Say that I've ever hated the Jews. And how did you eventually wind up here in the United States? And I want to hear, obviously, about your continued journey in theology.

Education, Marriage, and First Questions About Dispensationalism

Yeah. So like I said, I went to a church called First Baptist Bible Church, and the pastor there, Pastor Arthur Pamede, had four daughters who all attended Bob Jones University. And the school I grew up in, all the curriculum was in English.

So it just followed suit, and my father wanted us to go to college in the U .S. He just thought there's a better education there. Everything is better there. So he wanted to send us to the U .S. Now, I wasn't that smart where I was going to get a full scholarship to Harvard, you know.

Actually, one of my cousins got a full scholarship to Colgate or something. I wasn't that guy. So I needed to find a college that would accept me, and that was cheap, and also Christian. So Pensacola Christian College fit all those descriptions.

I think I paid like 10 grand or something for room, board, everything for a whole year. And so that was the place to go. So in 2019, I packed up my bags and came to Pensacola Christian College down in Florida, where the blue angels fly.

Yes, I have been to Pensacola once. It was at a Bible conference down there. One of the areas of Pensacola, which changes its time zone, I remembered. It's not eastern standard or eastern daylight down there.

That's correct. And so you're down there, and this college, I'm assuming, was a dispensationalist college. Very dispensational.

Yeah, so I'm down there. Actually, I didn't know about all the rules. I mean, I don't know if the listeners know anything about Pensacola Christian College, but when I went there, you couldn't wear jeans.

So I didn't even know about all the rules.

Ever? You couldn't wear jeans ever?

You couldn't wear jeans to classes.

Oh, okay.

Saturdays, you could wear them at certain events or things like that. But mainly, you have to wear a tie and a suit coat to dinner and that kind of stuff. So I didn't know any of the rules. I was really, really surprised when I got there.

So I went there, went four years there, studied pre-physical therapy. But my first semester there, I spotted my prey, my wonderful wife. And I went right for her. And so she had grown up, obviously, you know, Pastor Joel Saint, my father-in-law.

She grew up in Reading. So we started dating. We began dating. It was long-term dating at some point because she only did a two-year degree there at Pensacola. And I stayed there for the entire four years.

We were dating all those four years. Then we got engaged. And in 2012, August of 2012, we got hitched. And we decided we're going to move to where her family lives. And so our first house was in Adamstown, Pennsylvania, very close to Ephrata, where we.

Live now. And I'm assuming, perhaps I'm wrong, that your father-in-law, Joel Saint, was not reformed at this time because I'm wondering why on earth did he send his daughter to a.

Dispensationalist college? It is the funniest thing that you say that, man. Everybody asks him that question. He was very, very, very reformed at that point. Yeah. And so I think what he says is he would never have sent his boys to Pensacola.

But he was like, the girls, I don't know his reasoning, but he had sent him two of his girls down there. So, no, he was reformed, very reformed at that point. Yeah. Yeah. But people do ask him that. Yeah.

I have reformed.

Friends that sent their children to Bob Jones, which is not reformed. In fact, until recently, Bob Jones had a history of being vehemently anti-Calvinist.

Yeah. There were some sermons at Pensacola against Calvinism and things of that nature as well.

So, I'm assuming that you're meeting and developing a relationship, which led to marriage, with the daughter of Reformed Pastor Joel Saint. I'm assuming that had something to do with your discovering and eventually embracing Reformed theology.

Let's not give him that much credit.

Well, it really goes to God anyway. If you're Reformed, that's what you got to believe.

Amen. Amen.

But we're going to have you pick up on that story when we return from our first commercial break. And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for Shaq Corey, our guest today, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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And tell them Chris from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio sent you. Don't wait. Be informed. Be prepared with Gold Wealth Management. Welcome back. If you just tuned this in, my guest today is Shaq Corey, who is of an Arab-Israeli background.

He is a born-again believer in Christ. He is a Reformed Baptist. He is the owner of Legacy Roofing. And we are not only talking about his theological journey today, but we are going to be eventually getting his own thoughts on the modern state of Israel, which is at the center of very heated debates in our day.

The views, the differing views, have fractured what has been called the MAGA movement. And we, most of us, or many of us at least, saw on television Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz go head to head on their differences on that.

In fact, folks, if you want to hear a response to that debate that Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz had, you can go to IronSharpensIronRadio .com and type in the search engine Joe Moorcraft, or simply his last name, M-O-R-E-C-R-A-F-T, and you will see among a number of interviews I've had with Joe, an interview where he was giving his response to that debate between Tucker and Ted Cruz, taking the side of the traditional Reformed position, which does not believe the modern state of Israel is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, unlike Ted Cruz's position, who is a dispensationalist.

Probably easier for you to type in Tucker, because I don't think I've ever discussed Tucker Carlson as a major part of a theme before on this program, and that will probably be the only link that comes up if you type in Tucker, and I hope that you are blessed by that.

But so tell us about when you began to question your dispensationalist ideas, and I just want to quickly let our listeners know who happened to be dispensationalists. I have many beloved friends and brethren who are dispensationalists.

One of my modern-day heroes in the faith was the late John MacArthur, who I had the privilege of interviewing on the program once, who wrote a wonderful, glowing endorsement for Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

So I'm not intending to have a dispensational bashing session, but I happen to be Reformed. I have my own views that I hold with many other Reformed Christians—not all, because there is a variety of views on this issue, even amongst the Reformed.

But I just wanted to get that out of the way so you don't think that we're just here to bash people. But when did you start to question your dispensationalism? Was it before you were married and dating Joel Saint's daughter, or did that come after the marriage?

How did that happen?

From Dispensationalism to Reformed Theology

Yeah, so I was questioning it before we got married. What I realized as I was going to Pensacola Christian College is they would talk a lot about the Jews and Israel and things like that, and I knew there was a lot of Palestinian Christians, Arab-Israeli Christians, out there that they just would not talk about, would not mention, would not give them any acknowledgement.

And so I had a sit-down with the president of Pensacola Christian College at that time, Dr. Mullinex, and I asked him those questions, and his responses were just inadequate, in my opinion. I just did not find them adequate.

Did you say his name is Mullinex?

Yeah, Dr. Mullinex.

Because it sounds like a drug you take to get over mullinism. Sorry, I just, I had to say that.

It's all right. He had a perfect head of hair, too, man, Dr. Mullinex. But our conversation was just, it left me wanting for more, and at that point, I started to question dispensationalism. And to her credit, my wife, we would also have arguments, you know, reformed versus non-reformed arguments.

We would argue whenever I was around Joel.

I'm surprised he let the relationship continue.

Yeah, I don't know why he did, but praise the Lord that they did. But yes, we would argue a lot, and honestly, it was just a slow process for me. Romans 9 was just a tough one. I don't know how you can get away from Romans 9.

It's just a very, very tough passage. There are obviously other ones in Philippians and Ephesians and all that. But that one, for me, began the process, and slowly—I still attended IRBC, Pastor Joel's church.

I attended it before I was reformed, and I wasn't, again, I didn't think that there was, again, there's no animosity. Some people do have animosity towards Reformed theology, but I wasn't that. Of course, I married my wife, so that would have been trouble if I had animosity.

But slowly, I just believed that that's what the Bible teaches. It's what it teaches, and so I embraced the Reformed theology.

Can you remember what the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back was? A defining moment when you said, you know something? She's right. This Reformed stuff is really the truth. Do you remember anything like that?

Let me say this about my wife.

She is the most wonderful woman in the world. After we got married, we didn't really argue about that much. She wasn't kind of, you know, she was not that type. She just let me be, and she, you know, slowly—so my wife did not really push me too much on that.

Did you ever have arguments where you would, when she would get mad at you for something, where you would just say, hey, it was predestined. You can't blame me.

Of course I did. Of course, that's too easy. But yeah, so slowly, like I said, I embraced Reformed theology, and then with Reformed theology, that was kind of the, you know, I guess there are dispensationalists who embrace Reformed theology as well, but to me, it just made so much sense.

Now with postmillennialism, all of that together, it just made so much sense. I felt like the Bible, that's what it teaches, and so with that went dispensationalism as well.

And did any prominent theologians have any central role in your being further nurtured in the Reformed faith, like R .C. Sproul or any, you know, the great men of God who have written books on it and whose sermons and lectures and teachings are available in the media so readily.

Nowadays? Yeah, definitely. Dr. Sproul, Dr. Moorcraft, I listened to him, Dr. White as well. I've listened to plenty of Dr. White's debates. He debates that topic heavily, so I've listened to that. But I must say, my father-in-law, Pastor Joel St. had a great influence in that sense.

My brother-in-law's as well. We have all kinds of discussions about that topic, and so all that played a role. And some men in my church that have given sermons that I thought were very eye-opening.

You know, I'm thinking of Conrad Martin and Chris Hume as well, who had some influence in that sense as well.

Yeah, you mentioned two people who, God willing, I'll be interviewing soon. Your brother-in-law, Luke St. and Chris Hume, on their new book. That's, I believe it's come out or it's coming out.

Are you familiar? Yeah, it's been out.

Oh, it has been. I am. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Well, they've agreed to be on the show. They just haven't picked a date yet, so I'm looking forward to that. I've interviewed both of them before, but this will be fun to have them back in the program.

As far as the role that Israel has, the modern state of Israel in Reformed theology, although there are differing opinions, there are actually there are Reformed Christians who do believe that the modern state of Israel is indeed a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

There are even Reformed Baptist pastors who are in Israel who take that position or at least take an agnostic but hopeful position about it where they would not rule it out. But how did your views of Israel, the place of your birth and upbringing, how did they evolve as time went on as your Reformed theology grew?

The Modern State of Israel, Talmudic Judaism, and the Gospel

Yeah, so like I said, early in my life, I thought the Jewish people are sort of like an ally. They're like halfway there. So that was my thought process. As I moved on in life, I went to Pensacola Christian College, and like I said, there was a disconnect for me because we're more concerned of the Jewish people who don't believe in Christ than we are in the Arab Israelis, the Palestinian Christians who do believe in Christ.

So we're more concerned with them. I thought, man, that's a disconnect. There's something wrong here that cannot be right. And the more I started reading the Bible and really focusing in on that area, dispensationalism, I started to realize, okay, the Bible is not talking about the Jews.

The Christ is not talking about modern-day Jews to Him. What a modern-day Jew to us is was the Pharisee to Christ. And the way He was speaking to them was not like some people at Pensacola Christian College were saying, you know, you got to bless Israel so you can get blessed, or you got to curse them.

If you do curse them, you might get a curse. And I thought, well, that's not how Christ is talking to the Pharisees. He's not talking like that to the Sadducees. He's giving them woe, saying woe to you, and that's a curse.