December 3, 2018 Show with Dr. Cliff Boone on “Christ Victorious: How To Experience Christ’s Victory Over The Devil in Your Everyday Life”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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

Proverbs 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 whom we converse with 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 hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon,

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

We're listening via live streaming at IronSharpensIronRadio .com. This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday.

On this third day of December 2018, and I am delighted that I have for the very first time on the program today,

Dr. Cliff Boone. Dr. Cliff Boone is an author and the pastor of Cedar Crest Bible Fellowship Church in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

I had the privilege of meeting him at a Bible Fellowship Church Pastors Conference in the

Poconos, I think it was about a year ago, where Phil Johnson, the Executive Director of Grace to You Ministries was speaking.

That's the ministry of John MacArthur, and was delighted to meet

Dr. Boone and get to have an introduction to him and to find out about his book that we are addressing today,

Christ Victorious, how to experience Christ's victory over the devil in your everyday life.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Cliff Boone. Well, thank you,

Chris. I really appreciate it. It's a privilege to be here with you. Great.

Well, before we go into the subject at hand, since you are a first time guest, what we normally do is when we have a first time guest is we have them start off the program with a summary of their salvation testimony, what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, you were raised in, and what providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you? Well, I love telling that story.

I was a military brat. My dad was in the

Air Force, and we moved around to various places, including living overseas.

But we finally stopped moving when my dad was in the state of Maryland. My dad and mom.

So, everywhere we went, they brought us to church. They were regular church goers.

We wound up in a mainline Presbyterian church, and it was one of those you might call neo -Orthodox situations where there was so much good, and yet the gospel was not clearly communicated.

But in that church, the pastor allowed a young couple to take charge of the youth group, and they had met

Christ, and there was a burgeoning high school group in that little generation there, and I was a part of that.

And they made sure that all of us heard the gospel, and gradually, as they were actually teaching the scriptures,

I got real convicted. Of course, I didn't know the language back then, but I was being drawn to faith.

I had a prayer that I had made up myself, and I would say that every night when

I went to bed. It got to the point, though, as God was working on me, that every time

I would go to pray, I would think about God, and in doing so, then I would feel this sense of foreboding, that something was wrong between me and God, but I didn't understand it.

And it got so intense that I got to the point where I was afraid to go to bed, because every time

I'd go to bed, I would instinctively go to pray, then this would kick in all this feelings of conviction.

And in that time of turmoil, this young couple brought the youth group to a meeting.

It was just a meeting for high schoolers in the area, and at this meeting, the speaker, who to this day,

I do not know his name, but he presented the gospel, and I realized that I did not know

Christ. I actually didn't have a relationship with Christ. I was in the church, but I wasn't actually a

Christian, and the lights just went on. So now I look back on it, and I realize that was God opening my eyes, and I surrendered my life to Christ that night.

And well, of course, everything changed after that.

And how and when did you realize that you had a calling placed upon your life, your heart, by God to become a pastor?

Yes, well that's another interesting story. So I was about halfway through my junior year in high school when

I was converted, and my thoughts and I was just so overcome with the

Lord, and you know, my friends didn't know what to do with me. And then what happened was, it didn't take long,

I began thinking, I think I want to, I should be a minister. I should be a pastor.

And then somewhere during my senior year of high school, I read the biography of Peter Marshall.

I don't know if you've read that, a man called Peter... Yes, the host of the Hollywood Squares. No, I'm just kidding.

Right. Different guy, same name, yes. He was, wasn't he the chaplain for the

United States Senate or something, or the Congress? Exactly, and he came over from Scotland. It's a remarkable story.

And my grandmother, who's, my family is from the South, she remembered him.

She heard him preach. But I was, in those days,

I looked at that example, and I thought, oh my, if that's what you have to be to be a pastor, I could never do that.

So I turned, I reverted to my first love, which is the outdoors, God's creation. And I went to West Virginia University and majored in wildlife management.

And I joke now that that training came in handy when I became a youth pastor.

But I was in wildlife management, and while there, I was involved in a campus ministry.

And gradually, over those four years, I just began to see God using me in evangelism and Bible studies.

And that's also when my eyes were opened to the issue of missions. Being in a kind of a quasi -liberal church, missions isn't an issue.

You know, but now I was hearing about this world and entire people groups that didn't have the gospel.

And by the time I graduated from college, I did graduate with a wildlife management degree, but I knew at that point that, no, the

Lord has something different for me. I eventually, I worked two more years with the campus group and then went to seminary and then ended up, you know, going into the ministry and then missions.

So yeah, it was a gradual, a gradual realization that the Lord had something for me other than the animals and the trees, which are also important, but the calling of my life was different.

Well, now tell our listeners something about Cedar Crest Bible Fellowship Church in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Okay, yeah, we're in the Bible Fellowship Church denomination, which, depending from where you're from in the country, can be confused with...

There was a time where a bunch of graduates were coming out of Dallas Seminary and starting independent churches called

Bible Fellowship. That's a different movement than ours, and the two didn't really know anything about each other.

We actually come from the, in the old days, we were called the Mennonite Brethren in Christ, and we're based mainly in Pennsylvania, in the northeast,

Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York State, some in Maryland, Delaware, in that area mainly.

So it's an interesting group. I really enjoyed being a part of it. I wasn't born into it, as I've already said, but we come from an

Anabaptist stream of church history, but I say we dug a little canal from the

Reformed stream, and a lot of the theological waters came over from that stream into us.

So we weren't Calvinistic to begin with, but we are now. It's an interesting story.

The entire denomination changed from an Arminian to a Calvinistic perspective on salvation, which is a story in itself.

Yeah, in fact, I've had the privilege of interviewing a couple, at least, of your pastors.

Josh Miller of the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg.

Right. And also Ron Cole at the... Quaker Town. Yeah, where they have the

Quaker Town Conference on Reformed Theology. Exactly, yes. Interviewed Ron on his victory over cancer, much to the, or all to the praise, honor, and glory of God.

And he's a dear, humble brother. I really enjoy fellowshipping with him. Well, actually,

Ron is from this church, from Cedar Crest. Oh, wow. When I first was senior pastor here, he was the youth pastor, so we ministered together until he got his call to Quaker Town.

So I know Ron very well. Great. Well, I would love to have him back, and you can spread the word amongst your pastors in your denomination that I would be more than happy to interview any of them, because I have nothing but the highest confidence, knowing of the theological background of the

Bible Fellowship Church denomination, that I won't have any problems. And if I have any disagreements,

I'm sure they are minor. Right, exactly, yeah. I'm going to give our listeners the email address for them to join us on the air with a question of their own, if they have one.

It is ChrisArnzen, at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N, gmail .com.

Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside of the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if you have a personal and private question.

And, obviously, with a subject like this, how to experience Christ's victory over the devil in your everyday life, you may have, or should

I say we may have, some people who have personal and private questions, because that is quite an intimately and personal subject, as well as a topic of theological discussion.

So, first of all, tell us about what led you to write this book to begin with,

Christ Victorious, how to experience Christ's victory over the devil in your everyday life. Yeah, thank you for that question.

As I've grown over the years, and I share in the book a little bit, just in the general sense, that there were some things that happened in my life that were obvious manifestations of the unseen realm, and I was confused and scared by that.

Could you tell us, could you describe that for us? Yeah, I could.

At times, there have been, I won't say everything, but there were, in our early marriage, there were manifestations of,

I'm not sure what happened, and we lived in a mobile home, and I'm not sure what had gone on before that, but there were apparitions appearing at night inside the trailer.

Wow. Yeah. And what were those apparitions looking like? Yeah, it was just kind of a shadowy figure, and there were some other things, some things that occurred while dreaming, you know,

I don't mean that in an Old Testament vision type of sense, but just dreaming.

There were things that happened in dreams that were disturbing. There were some occasions with a grip of, kind of a sense of oppression, and this is something

I talk about in the book, too. This whole realm is,

I'm comfortable not defining everything precisely, because I think what happens is, in this realm, there's a fog.

I think you probably, you read the book, so you remember me using that phrase, that sometimes if things are just foggy, and it's because we're not quite sure what's happening.

But I also, then, we ministered up here, after seminary, we ministered up here in Allentown, in this church.

I was the youth pastor then, back in the 80s, and the Christian education director, and we ran into some people with severe problems, and I had taken some of what

I had learned and tried to implement it to help people and ourselves, and then the

Lord took us to East Africa, so we ministered in Tanzania for 11 years. And there, in that culture,

Satan's surface strategy is a little different. I think his core strategy is the same, no matter what the culture is, but the surface strategy can change, depending on how he's already influenced the culture.

So, whereas things like the occult and overt demonic manifestations seem to be kind of undercover in ours, or not mainstreamed, or not talked about as if they're really real, in our setting in Tanzania, it was all up in the open.

Everyone was from an animistic background, so there was all sorts of stuff going on right up front.

Nobody, in broad daylight, it wasn't being tried. No one's trying to hide it.

It's right out front. So, we were taught a lot by our African brothers and sisters in Christ, who dealt with that, and we just kept learning.

But in the middle of that, I was thrown into Bible study.

So, I remember in those early days in Tanzania, I thought, I have got to learn what the

Lord, what is it that, what does the Lord want in this realm, or what's real and what's not?

So, I began studying every occurrence of the demonic in the scriptures, and I just kept studying, kept studying, kept studying, and then eventually kind of came to the place where I am.

I was also helped by a couple other books that were already written, and by a mentor of mine who's with the

Lord now, a man named Dr. Harold Burchett. He helped me with some principles.

I've quoted him in the book also. But then I got back. So, then

I came back to Allentown after 11 years. I've been pastoring here now for about 16.

And what I find is this, is that when a person who's experiencing some sort of manifestation from the unseen realm, when they realize that the pastor is going to take them seriously and not consider them to be a case of mental illness, this is the issue.

When they realize that you're actually going to take them seriously, then you hear the stories.

And I am no longer surprised when people begin to open up and tell me what's going on in their life.

You know, I have a chapter about dreams because that's one of the biggest, that's one of the first things people will talk about with me.

And other issues, I realized that Satan's just kind of going a little underground here, but he's as active here as he is in Africa.

But people think you're going to think they're loony if you start talking about it, so people don't talk about it.

And then the other issue is good brothers in the Lord, you know, good pastors, brothers that I would consider it an honor, you know, to be ministering with them are not equipped in this area.

They're just, we didn't get taught it in seminary, we don't exactly know what to do with it, and so that all brought, you put all that together, and I thought,

I just, and I prayed, obviously, I just prayed, and I was like, I think I need to write this to help people because I know they need this help.

You know, I just know they need it. Yeah, the subject that we are addressing is either on one end of the spectrum, on the charismatic

Pentecostal side of the spectrum, it's usually sensationalized, not by everybody in that, those movements, but very often, if not most often, when these issues of the demonic realm come up, they are sensationalized.

And then you have the other end of the spectrum, people in our circles of fellowship, theologically reformed,

Calvinist, or even the fundamentalist circles, these are topics that are typically ignored.

So it's always refreshing to hear a biblical subject that needs to be addressed, brought up in a truly biblical fashion, and not one for entertainment purposes, or to scare people into giving money, or whatever the case may be.

In fact, I don't know if you're familiar with a ministry called To Every Tribe, but they are a sovereign grace ministry, dedicated to bringing the gospel into parts of the world that have not been evangelized.

And I have had an interview with someone who I believe was the president at one time,

David Sitton, I don't believe he is currently the president, or the

CEO, but Brother Sitton told me about some pretty frightening things that happened on the mission field, where he believed that he was actually witnessing genuine demonic supernatural activity and manifestations that were not the product of trickery and that kind of thing.

Right, yes, and we did too. But I see it here too, and see, it's interesting, in our setting that we were in, in East Africa, what happens is, because everyone's attention is heightened towards these kind of things, then we would say witch doctors, but that's probably not the best way to say it, but the religious specialists of the people group would attempt to solve people's problems dealing with it.

But there would be mixed into that a lot of trickery and deceit. So out there, you wouldn't take everything at face value, because some of it is just, you know, deceit, but some of it wasn't.

It just was not. It was real. We, in those early days, because we were in an unreached people group called the

Sundawe people, there was rarely a conversion that didn't involve a confrontation with the demonic, in one way or the other.

And often, see, we don't do that in our culture, but part of our follow -up, our initial follow -up of people who have made a profession of faith was a discussion at their home.

What do you have in your home? What paraphernalia do you have that is associated with reaching into the unseen realm?

And everybody had stuff. And so we would have burnings at people's homes where they would renounce

Satan's grip on their life, renounce him, and say, I'm with Christ.

And the Christians would gather around, we'd sing hymns, we'd get the fire ready, but they would light the fire, and then they would throw the things in and burn them up.

And it was a wonderful time of, you know, Christ getting the glory for setting these people free.

And then, at times, there might be an outbreak of some sort of the demon. I know in one case there was that, but in others, you know, it was just a great victory celebration.

We don't have that in our normal discipleship manuals here in America, do we? No, we don't.

We here in the United States and in the West, the Western world, we have so much preoccupation with battling those within the church that undermine the responsibility professing

Christians and Christians in general need to take for their own sin, because of the fact of the easy -believism movement being so rampant in the

Christian church at large, especially modern -day evangelicalism, that bringing up the demonic, even though it's a biblical subject, one very often feels like, well, are we going to be giving

Christians another excuse not to take responsibility for their own sin? You know, blaming the devil as Flip Wilson used to say, the devil made me do it.

So it's one of those things where, especially since actual demonic ritual practice and ceremony and religion is not nearly what it is in Africa and other parts of the world, we tend to relegate this subject to a lower rung of importance.

But I'm not saying that that's appropriate. I'm just saying that I think that very often we who are in circles that tend to ignore this issue are doing it because of the fact that we've got so much on our plate already trying to get people to take responsibility for their sin.

Yes. And I would say, too, another factor in our culture is that we're already on, you know, what would, what generation are we now in terms of having a secular education?

I don't know, are we on the fifth generation? I'm not sure what number, but how you'd count it.

But we've had a lot of years with the education system being secular, and so there isn't really a place in a secular thought for this kind of stuff except mental illness.

So they've got a category where then they've got it categorized as, they're still not admitting that there's some, there's an actual being, a spiritual being separate from you that exists.

They're just saying that in your mind you've got some sort of problem. So Christians, pastors, you know, we've grown up in this culture, and so we're, we ourselves are programmed without knowing it to kind of not know what to do with this subject, whereas in Africa it was the opposite.

They were programmed to see demons where they weren't. You know, they saw them everywhere, where they, lots of times they weren't there.

But here we're the opposite. We can have them right in front of us, and we don't, we've got them categorized somehow else, and I think that's part of our problem.

Well, I have to add to that, you know, I've heard, you know, just kind of bad theology.

You see, we don't know what to do with it, so then we say things like, well, you know, when the

Spirit indwells us, then Satan can't be there. You know, Satan can't be where God is.

And it's like, well, God is omnipresent, and Satan exists somewhere.

So, I mean, that's, it's, just look at the text in Scripture. It's saying that Satan's after us, he's trying to get footholds in our life, and there's a way to resist him.

You know, we can resist him. It's, uh, the Scripture portrays

Christians as, like in Ephesians 6, we are, you know, we're in, we're wrestling against these entities.

First Peter 5 says we're resisting the devil. But many American Christians don't look like that.

You know, they don't look like that, and that's, that's where I'm coming from, trying just to fill in a blind spot.

I'm not contradicting anything. I'm just filling in a blind spot that, that we've missed.

Yeah. And we have to go to our first station break right now. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please, as always, give us your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We're going to be right back,

God willing, right after these messages with Dr. Cliff Boone and Christ Victorious, how to experience

Christ's victory over the devil in your everyday life. Hi, Phil Johnson here.

I'm executive director of John MacArthur's media ministry, Grace to You, and I'm also an occasional guest on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

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We are now back with our interview with Dr. Cliff Boone, author and pastor of Cedar Crest Bible Fellowship Church in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

We are discussing Christ Victorious, How to Experience Christ's Victory Over the Devil in Your Everyday Life.

That also happens to be the title of his new book. And we do have some listeners waiting to have their questions asked and answered.

If any of you would like to join them, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -s -e -n at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, 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. And we do have

Linda in Hilltop Lakes, Texas, who says, Brother Chris, my question for Dr.

Boone is, children often have fears of the boogeyman in the night.

Is there any truth that this could be a demon? What would you suggest as an answer for this phenomenon?

One pastor speaks at the boogeyman and says, oh, it's only you. Also, when missionaries first come to a foreign country, they often see much demonic activity in the area.

Then after the gospel is preached and souls are saved, one doesn't see demon possession as much as they used to.

Salvation comes through believing in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Have you seen a correlation between the gospel and the lessening of demonic activity?

Thank you for tackling this very sensitive but very real subject.

Good question. Let me take the second one first.

When we went in to the Sindawi people, we were the first missionary team sent in.

So you can imagine a people group. So there were about 40 ,000 strong spread across 32 different villages, this very rural setting.

We lived out in the bush. But imagine a people who their entire history was gospel -less.

Since they ever became a people, however many, whenever that was, thousands years ago, they had no gospel.

So there's a lot of demonic activity. And because we were the first, not a lot of time has gone on.

But what we did begin to see was in those families that believed, then in those families, the demonic stuff faded away.

And I think that maybe that's what happens is that as more and more families trust in Christ and Satan loses his grip on certain families, but he's still active.

About the children, I have a whole chapter in our book telling the story of an episode that occurred with our son.

And so I would say that sometimes it's just the child being scared of nothing.

A coat on a coatrack? What's that? It could be a coat on a coatrack or anything.

Yes, right, right. And that's the issue is that we need great discernment.

But sometimes, and see, Satan does not fight like a gentleman. You see these old movies where there's a sword fight between a good guy and a bad guy, and the bad guy's sword falls out of his hand and the gentleman stops, lets him pick up his sword and keep fighting.

Well, Satan doesn't fight like a gentleman. And there's nowhere where that's more seen than with children, that he would attack children is horrible.

So he does. And we as parents need to be in prayer. We need to be availing ourselves of the means of grace and teaching our children to do the same.

But we also need to be equipped to resist the devil in a pointed way when that's called for.

And I think, I was hoping that sometime during our interview, Chris, I could maybe talk a little bit about the difference between a kind of a preventative resistance of the devil and a pointed resistance.

Yeah, in fact, right after this next question that I'll read, we'll do that.

By the way, Linda, please make sure we have your full mailing address in Hilltop Lakes, Texas, because you have won a free copy of Christ Victorious, How to Experience Christ's Victory Over the

Devil in Your Everyday Life by Dr. Cliff Boone. And thank you so much for being such a faithful and generous and loyal listener in the

Iron Trump and Zion Radio audience. We have Ted in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, with a question.

And by the way, Ted, God willing, I'm going to be in your neck of the woods in 2019.

I'm going to be at the Deep South Founders Conference in Mississippi, Laurel, Mississippi, on January, between January 21st and 27th, somewhere in those dates.

And also in Alabama itself at the True Church Conference in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, February 14th through the 17th,

I believe, of the dates. But that's just a roundabout figure of the dates that I'm going to be in there.

So keep that in mind if you want to go to either or both of those conferences. But Ted in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, says,

I'm wondering if Pastor Boone can address the difficult question of how to decide when to bring a pastor or even a counselor who specializes in spiritual warfare into a situation in which a believer becomes convinced that they are being affected by demonic forces, or whether that believer should best rebuke those forces and attempt to deal with the situation on their own.

Okay, so that's a great question. In my opinion, with the experience that I've had, and I operate under this one guideline is that the person who's having the trouble has to engage their own will.

So they have to understand and then engage their will in resisting.

And the more you can teach and help a person to understand certain truths so that they realize why it is that they can resist the devil, if they're in Christ, and how to do that.

And then the more they involve their own will, the more successful you are in the long run.

Sometimes there's some inroad has been given where the person is just so beaten down that they need somebody to resist the devil on their behalf.

And this sometimes, you know Chris, you mentioned that in some groups they're kind of extreme and kind of fantastical.

There's some problems in some groups where they immediately gravitate to somebody else praying for and doing something to the person who's troubled.

My approach is, I get the person and we teach them. The stuff that I've put in the book is the things that I teach people and help them to understand themselves and resist.

But our elders here at our church are equipped now so that sometimes, I'm thinking of one young man in our church who was really downtrodden and there was an evil spirit involved.

And in those early days, an elder and I would meet with him repeatedly, teach, pray, lead him to resist on his own.

Gradually, he got freer and freer and he was doing it himself. And the great thing was, he was under all these kind of psychotic drugs because the system had said that, well you're hallucinating and this and that.

But he was actually being visited by an evil spirit. But he got to the place where his psychiatrist kept taking him off of all of his drugs.

And when he told the guy, he says, well actually, it's because I've been taught how to pray.

That's what his answer was to his psychologist. And the guy said, well if everybody was like you,

I'd be out of a job. Isn't that, I just give the praise to the

Lord. The Lord gets the glory for that. But in those early days, he needed help.

He needed somebody to be praying for him and with him. But now he's standing on his own two feet and doesn't need that.

Do you think I answered the question, Chris? Or is there something else I need to add? I don't think there's anything else you need to add other than I'm assuming you would agree with me, though, that something that is that serious, whether or not it is actually demonic or not, if the person is believing that it's demonic in a supernatural way, it must be serious, that this is not something that should be hidden from a pastor of a church that they are, whose care they are under.

I mean, that would be, to me, pretty ridiculous to not inform your pastor about it or your elders, plural.

Yes. And I've had other pastors ask me for help because they realized they weren't trained in this when they were in seminary.

They don't really know what to do. But they're still the pastor of the person.

So I can come alongside and help, for example, or somebody else that has some experience.

And sometimes that is very helpful, but not separate from their own shepherd or their elders.

I wouldn't be interested in doing that. The pastor himself needs to be involved.

And he can learn while we're involved together. But sometimes things are just, you know,

I'm not going to say that I know what to do in every circumstance. And so sometimes, you know, it's like, wow,

I need help. I've got to call somebody else. You know, in Tanzania, often

I was leaning on my African brothers who had more experience with this, and I was learning while we were in the middle of it together.

Yeah. But you got to understand, too, that often in our culture, like I mentioned before, if somebody's having trouble and they think evil spirits are somehow involved, they're hesitant to say it because of the response they get from people.

And unfortunately, some of that is even from our pastors. They don't really know what to do with it, and they say things, you know, like, well, have you gone for a mental health exam and stuff?

And that's not what the person needs right then. They need somebody to say, well, maybe I don't know exactly how to do this, but I know that Christ came to destroy the works of the devil, so I am going to pray with you and work with you until we see

Christ's victory in your life. That will mean more to that person than being referenced off to another counselor.

By the way, we got an email. It's not a question. It's just someone who wanted to say hi to you.

He says, tell Cliff Boone that Harold Snyder says hi.

No kidding. Okay. Well, that's amazing. Well, great.

Hi. Tell him hi back. Oh, I guess he's hearing it. Yeah. Okay, and what

I'm going to have you do is I'm going to have you go into that two -fold presentation that you were just mentioning.

I'll have you do that when we return from our midway break because we have to go to a midway break now. Okay. This is a longer than normal break.

Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of our show because they localize

Zion Trip and Zion Radio to Lake City, Florida with their own public service announcements and commercials.

So please be patient with us as we take this elongated break and also use this time wisely by not only writing down questions for our guest,

Dr. Cliff Boone, at chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com,

but also write down the information provided by our advertisers so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize them.

The more you patronize our advertisers, the more likely they are going to remain our advertisers, and that means the more likely we are going to be able to remain on the air because we depend upon the finances provided by our advertising sponsors in order to exist.

So please patronize our advertisers as much as much as you can and write down the information during this break that they provide so that you can more frequently and successfully do so.

Don't go away. God willing, we will be right back after these messages from our sponsors with more of Cliff Boone and Christ Victorious.

I'm Dr. Gary Kimbrough, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Laurel, Mississippi. God tells us in James 127 that pure and undefiled religion is a visit to fatherless and widows in their affliction.

In the providence of God, three years ago, I discovered a poor small church outside Lusaka, Zambia, in a township called

Kabanana, who are taking care of 24 orphans. I found them just at the time when they had lost all their funding.

What was I to do? Could I just say, God bless you, and walk away? The situation of the children set heavily upon me.

As I was praying concerning this need, it came to me, I trust from the Lord, to tell the orphans' plight to a broader audience.

The entire need for their clothing, food, education, and some medical services is $73 per month per child.

If just 50 of us would give $35 a month, we could meet the need. Bethlehem Baptist Church will pay the fee to get the funds there, so if you give a dollar, a dollar will get to the orphans.

In this season of hope and giving, will you consider giving hope to 24 orphans? Please send your gift of any amount to Bethlehem Baptist Church, 838

Reed Road, Laurel, Mississippi 39443, or donate through our website, bbclaurel .com.

Again, the address is Bethlehem Baptist Church, 838 Reed Road, Laurel, Mississippi 39443, or bbclaurel .com.

Thank you. Iron Sharpens Iron welcomes

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Got to tell you, for my money, Chris Arnzen's radio program is just the best.

Iron. Criticizing. I think that's what it's called. This is

Todd Friel of Wretched Radio and TV with Phil Johnson of Grace To You, inviting everybody to come to the

G3 Conference, which has almost instantly become one of the best conferences in the country. And it is.

It's a great conference. I love it. And Chris Arnzen was there last year. He's been there, I think, every year.

It's great to see him there. You and I actually did some recordings in the lobby at that place, which is a highlight to me.

So tons of stuff going on. Tons of great speakers. And no matter where you are in the building, you will hear Chris Arnzen's laugh.

And that's worth the price of admission alone. If you would like to join Phil, me, Chris, and a cavalcade of great preachers, so it should be a cavalcade of great preachers and me, g3conference .com,

g3conference .com. Hello, my name is

James Renahan, and I'm the president of IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas. The Word of God says, if a man desires the office of an overseer, he desires a good thing.

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It's been a wonderful partnership. Now we have advanced our school into an independent seminary offering a full program of courses leading to the

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Do you sense a call to serve Jesus Christ and his church as a pastor? Why not consider IRBS Theological Seminary?

You'll find more information at irbsseminary .org. That's irbsseminary .org,

two s's in the middle. I hope to hear from you soon. God bless you. Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is sponsored by Harvey Cedars, a year -round

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That's 631 -385 -8333. Or visit liyfc .org.

That's liyfc .org. Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I would like to introduce you to my good friends Todd and Patti Jennings at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

Todd and Patti specialize in supplying reformed and Puritan books and Bibles at discount prices that make them affordable to everyone.

Since 1987, the family -owned and operated book service has sought to bring you the best available

Christian books and Bibles at the best possible prices. Unlike other book sites, they make no effort to provide every book that is available because, frankly, much of what is being printed is not worth your time.

That means you can get to the good stuff faster. It also means that you don't have to worry about being assaulted by the pornographic, heretical, and otherwise faith insulting material promoted by the secular book vendors.

Their website is cvbbs .com. Browse the pages at ease, shop at your leisure, and purchase with confidence as Todd and Patti work in service to you, the church, and to Christ.

That's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service at cvbbs .com. That's cvbbs .com.

Let Todd and Patti know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. And you can call cvbbs .com

Monday through Friday between 10 a .m. and 4 30 p .m. eastern time at their number, which

I am going to be giving you any second. The number is the toll -free number is 800 -656 -0231, 800 -656 -0231.

Mention Chris Arnzen and Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio and purchase a minimum of $50 worth of merchandise and you will receive absolutely free of charge the book

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Christmas sale where they are taking 10 % off everything in the store. So please take advantage of that holiday sale at cvbbs .com

or by calling 800 -656 -0231, 800 -656 -0231

Monday through Friday 10 a .m. to 4 30 p .m. eastern time. Of course you can order online 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

We have a few special announcements of special events coming up that we hope that you take advantage of and to get your pen and paper ready to write down the information.

First of all, tomorrow we're going to be discussing a cult known as the

Black Hebrew Israelites. Perhaps some of you who especially live in the inner city,

I know that I have encountered them in New York City on several occasions, but they are a growing phenomenon, the

Black Hebrew Israelites. We're going to be discussing them with author Vocab Malone on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio tomorrow,

God willing, 4 to 6 p .m. eastern time. So make sure you mark your calendar for tomorrow and listen to that program and get your questions ready for author

Vocab Malone. Also coming up next month in January, there are some events that I will be attending where I will be also manning an

Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitors booth and I hope that you can join me there. The first is an organization that I am running myself.

It is my biannual Iron Sharpens Iron Radio pastor's luncheon and every man in ministry leadership is welcome, whether you are a pastor or an elder, which

I actually think are the same office from what the scriptures teach, but some churches have those distinct offices.

But if you are a pastor, an elder, a deacon, a parachurch ministry leader, you are welcome as long as you are a man in those offices.

This is exclusively a men's luncheon and so if you would like to join us that day for this free luncheon which will be

Thursday January 3rd 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at the Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall, just send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Please give us your name and church and so on and we will put you down on the list.

In fact, I hope that my guest, Dr. Cliff Boone, attends and invites as many pastors within the

Bible Fellowship Church denomination as he possibly can. It is absolutely free of charge, I said. Every man there will receive not only a free lunch but you will receive at least one but perhaps even two heavy sacks of brand new books that have been donated by major Christian publishers all over the

United States and the United Kingdom. Every year these publishers are generous enough to give me 100 copies each of a title

I select from each publisher that I think will bless the men in leadership and attendance at my luncheons and the vast majority of the major publishers in the

United States and the United Kingdom comply eagerly with my requests and I have been doing so since the 1990s.

So I hope you'll take advantage of that. That will be absolutely free of charge. There is nothing for sale at my luncheons.

That was the insistence of my late wife Julie who started these luncheons in the 1990s out of the generosity of her beautiful heart.

She wanted me to treat men in ministry that I knew personally to pastors luncheons and this grew into an extremely large event where I eventually had to get corporate sponsorship to help me.

So this will be once again a tribute to my late wife Julie now spending an eternity with Christ. Our speaker for the second time at my luncheons is

Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary and I am looking forward to that very much.

He is a wonderfully gifted speaker and a very wonderful brother in Christ. So send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com

if you'd like to attend the January 3rd free pastors luncheon sponsored by Iron Trip and Zion Radio and then immediately following that from Friday the 4th of January through Sunday the 6th of January I have organized a three -day conference also featuring

Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary that will be held at the Enola First Church of God in Enola, Pennsylvania where my dear friend

Pastor George Jensen is the pastor and the theme will be the greatest threats against the

Christian church in North America in the 21st century. That is the theme for the three -day conference. If you would like to attend that conference and by the way the conference is open up to anybody not just men and not just leaders men women and children are all welcome at this free conference even non -Christians.

In fact we would love more non -Christians than Christians to show up. If you would like to join us there at this free conference you can call 717 -732 -4253 that's the

Enola First Church of God in Enola, Pennsylvania 717 -732 -4253 or you can go to enolacog .com

e -n -o -l -a -c -o -g .com. You can also email me again at chrisarnsen at gmail .com

and put Tony Costa Bible Conference in the subject line or something similar.

Then after that later that same month I am going to be heading to Atlanta, Georgia College Park to be more specific from Thursday January 17th through Saturday January 19th at the

Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia where they are having once again the

G3 Conference which stands for Gospel Grace and Glory. I will be manning my third exhibitors booth there.

They are expecting between four and five thousand people to attend so I would strongly urge you if you have a business professional practice special event parachurch organization or church that you want to promote in that crowd of between four and five thousand people

I would urge you to also register for an exhibitors booth in addition to registering to attend.

Go to g3conference .com g3conference .com and there will be a special Spanish speaking edition of the conference on Wednesday January 16th so tell your

Spanish speaking and bilingual friends about that. But as far as the English speaking conference from the 17th to the 19th of January the speakers include

Dr. James R. White, John Piper, Stephen Lawson, Vody Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad M.

Bayway, Tim Chalies, Phil Johnson, Todd Freel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, Stephen J.

Nichols the founder or should I say the president of Reformation Bible College which was founded by the late

R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries and many more are on that roster. Go to g3conference .com

g3conference .com and then after that I will for the very first time be manning an exhibitors booth at the

Deep South Founders Conference in Laurel Mississippi at the Bethlehem Baptist Church of Laurel.

The theme is going to be sanctification and the conference is

January 24th through the 26th. The speakers include

Rusty Reed, Gerald Henderson, Jason Goodwin, Bobby Crenshaw and the keynote speaker is once again

Dr. Conrad M. Bayway who you just heard me mention is also speaking at the G3 Conference. He is the most powerful preacher alive on the planet earth in my humble opinion and I've known

Brother Conrad since 1995. What a blessing to the body of Christ he is. Pastor of Cubata Baptist Church, Lusaka, Zambia, Africa and Chancellor of African Christian University.

If you'd like to attend the G3, I'm sorry the Deep South Founders Conference go to deepsouthfounders .com

deepsouthfounders .com. Last but not least if you love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, you don't want us to disappear from the airwaves, you love sharing the free mp3s with your family friends and loved ones, you love hearing the topics and the guests featured on my show that are sometimes never heard anywhere else, well then

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click support, then click click to donate now. Never siphon money away from your regular giving to your local church in order to give to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, never do that, never put your family in financial jeopardy by giving to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, those two things are commands of God, so remember

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio obviously is not a command of God, meaning supporting it is not a command of God, but if you are financially blessed above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands then please give as heavily as you can and as frequently as you can by going to ironsharpensironradio .com,

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and put advertising in the subject line and we will help you launch an ad campaign as quickly as possible as long as whatever it is you're promoting is compatible with what we believe.

You don't have to believe identically with me but you'd need to be promoting something that's compatible with what I believe and we would love to help you do that ad campaign because we are in great need of your advertising dollars.

Also if you are not in a biblically sound church home where you live and if you're not prayerfully looking for one, you're living in disobedience and rebellion against God, please send me an email if you're having a hard time finding a church home.

I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the world and I have already helped a number of listeners in my audience to find good churches near them so you can be one of them by sending me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com

and put in the subject line I need a church home or something similar and I look forward to hearing from you.

That's also the email address by the way where you can send in a question to our guest Dr. Cliff Boone who will be with us for approximately another hour.

His book Christ Victorious, How to Experience Christ's Victory over the Devil in Your Everyday Life is our subject and that's chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

chrisarnsen at gmail .com and if you could pick up where we left off those two major points that you wanted to discuss

Dr. Boone. Yeah thank you. I was thinking during the break that perhaps

I might have given the wrong impression. Right in the beginning you asked me to give a few examples of how was it that I was in my early

Christian life bumping up against the unseen realm and I mentioned a few that were kind of you know extraordinary but also in my experience at the time

I didn't recognize the demonic element to it but at times I was tempted where there's temptation that's particularly strong or there's a strength to it that you can't seem to shake or then even getting into habitual sin where you're in some sort of habitual sin pattern that you can't seem to get out of and the subtitle of the book is

How to Experience Christ's Victory over the in your everyday life. The bizarre things can and do happen but often

I'm not writing to turn people into exorcists I'm just writing to help people recognize the unseen realms reality and power and realize that we're equipped to resist.

So then to go to your point your question you know we're told twice in the

New Testament resist the devil their their commands and often what happens is we we don't really treat them like we treat other commands when we're told love one another we we know what we have to do or this or that but then it says resist the devil and westerners we kind of look at that command scratch our head and go on.

I see it in general there's a preventative resistance and a pointed resistance so the preventative resistance is everything that we already know about availing ourselves of the means of grace you know we're we're taking in the word of God in all in various ways that we do that we're participating in prayer the fellowship of the saints we're serving people we're we're partaking of communion and and baptism and we're doing it all with hearts of faith and submission and it's like that normal Christian life builds up protection around us but sometimes um the wall is breached in some way or we're just uh we're just attacked.

Jesus had no sin so he never was at fault for being attacked by the evil one he just was so sometimes we bring the attacks on ourself through some sort of spiritual negligence or sin or rebellion other times we're just attacked and in those times there's a there's we have to recognize that so this isn't all the time but sometimes there's an evil presence so when there's an actual evil presence involved in this situation what do

I do now well that's when there's a pointed resistance needed um that's over and above your normal availing yourself of the means of grace and in that pointed uh resistance

I take the example of Christ uh when he was approached by Satan in the desert as uh giving us a pattern to follow now there's a whole hermeneutical question behind that but we probably don't have time for that but I do take that as teaching us what to do and so we draw on his courage and then we open our mouth and we speak so in our case we're speaking in the authority of Christ in the name of Christ we're addressing the evil one and we're we're resisting him and ordering him out of the situation and when we do it we quote scripture that's what

Jesus did each time he pushed back against Satan's temptation he quoted scripture and if the

Lord needed to quote scripture then I need to quote scripture so um so I I use if I sense if this isn't all the time but when when

I sense that there is an evil presence in one way or another you know

I just I break off from my praying so I'm it's all couched in addressing the Lord and worshiping him praying asking for help and then

I'll momentarily break and I'll address the evil one present and I'll say um

Satan in the name and in the authority of Jesus Christ I resist you now you must flee because the word of God says and in many cases

I'll quote James where it says resist the devil and he will flee so now you must flee but then

I that's it then I turn back my attention to the Lord and go on but I've seen over and over again just the personal sense of oppression or or um or weakness or being attacked uh the atmosphere in rooms at times where something's going on and and uh it could be in the midst of a conversation or something and you begin to sense that there's another player on the field here that our eyes can't see now

I'm going to address that player and get them out of here and and I resist in the name of Jesus Christ and and um they leave you know and the freedom comes after that now when you say they leave how do you know this because some of this

I'm assuming is subjective I mean I don't know how often you are absolutely certain that what you are experiencing or witnessing right is a bonafide supernatural demonic experience or manifestation so I'm assuming that sometimes you are just playing it safe by going with your gut and trying to obey the scriptures in the midst of that experience but you're not really absolutely sure that what you're you're experiencing or witnessing is supernatural yes that that's true sometimes

I am but at other times I'm sure but it is interesting because um you know we could we're in uh communities of faith that um we emphasize the cerebral let's face it we can be kind of cerebral and and there's there's it's good you know we we study the scriptures we want to know the truth um so there and there's corresponding weakness or the opposite of that we see in other communities of faith that are de -emphasized serious study and they're not very cerebral and they get off in all kinds of error yet we have to we have to acknowledge that a lot of life is subjective and and I mean we're experiencing life as we live it and in this realm we we have to be willing to realize that you can't always quantify some of this it is the unseen and um so sometimes there's just a um even even with temptation this is where sometimes you you know you're tempted in one way or another and then sometimes there's a strength to it um that shakes you and um you've got to you now you see in my early days

I didn't recognize that this is this is satanic before it before I did I wasn't thinking that way now it's like okay

I'm getting I'm pushing back in the name of Christ I don't know if you remember this one story uh that I gave in in here where um oh here it is can

I read it to you it's as an example yes of course yeah it's Brad's story he says one evening

I was at home alone didn't have anything important to do and so turned on the television there was a movie on that seemed vaguely interesting so I put the remote aside and started watching after only a few minutes with no warning a scene erupted on the screen that was an intense combination of sensuality and violence

I was so shocked that my head even went backwards like I had been struck I fumbled with the remote until I finally shut off the tv my heart rate was up I felt out of breath my spirit was reeling with what my eyes had seen so I began to pray

I asked God for forgiveness for any responsibility I bore and asked for his cleansing there was a sense of oppression and weight that stayed with me

I kept asking God for his help but the sense of darkness and uncleanness continued to weigh on me

I couldn't get the scenes out of my mind finally I opened my mouth and said out loud

Satan in the authority of Jesus Christ I resist you I take back any ground that you gained in my life through this and I order you out be gone because the word of God says resist the devil and he will flee from you the sense of oppression and uncleanness immediately left so stories like that and in my life uh also it yes they're subjective there's no you know there's no question and yet um uh in my experience the the occasions where you act were for in God's sovereignty he allows you for some reason to actually see that realm and those are rare in my case

I that has happened to me they're very very rare um most are kind of like that story of Brad's where it is subjective but it's very real and um

I've learned to live with that um you know with with that and and sometimes you don't know but sometimes as the years go on it's like oh

I know I I know this is I can't see it with my eyes but I know um maybe it's just learned by experience well we have a listener named

Kofi in Medford Oregon originally originally from the United Kingdom and Kofi says thank you for this scintillating discussion

I often find in our reform circles that the devil and the demonic aren't really discussed or addressed and so I am always thankful when it comes up my question is how much of what we consider satanic or demonic activity is culturally tailored to where we find ourselves

I ask because as someone who is of African descent I was raised with wild and wonderful stories that sound insane in western cultures but I know the evil one is at work in our culture that's

Kofi in Medford Oregon oh boy great yeah great question um

I I think um now here I'm I'm getting a little bit probably out of uh

I'm some of this is is kind of educated guess but um same as behind the scenes he has an indirect effect on us too as he as he and his demons affect the culture at large the results of that come our way and touch us and in those cases he's indirectly affecting me um and that's real my book is dealing with yeah but what happens when it's right there directly affecting me but that effect on cultures he he's doing different things in different cultures so like he's referring

Kofi uh he's from the UK um I'm not sure originally he's in Medford Oregon now oh he's in Oregon okay um but yes um so the culture where I lived in East Africa was rife with the stories and and and all these fantastical stories that were spoken about as fact there was no one was doubting any of it um and now here

I'm on kind of on the other end of this spectrum so I think Satan has affected both of the cultures differently to get us kind of approaching the subject differently but underneath it his core stratagem is always the same and that I talk about in the book is he's looking for a place in us

I compare John 1430 with what Satan was trying to do to Jesus where Jesus says you know

Satan's coming after me but he has nothing in me he has no thing in me he has no foothold with the passage in Ephesians 4 where Paul said uh you know don't let the sun go down in your anger don't give the devil a place or an opportunity that's that's translated in different ways in English his core strategy is through deception sin however he's looking for a little foothold in our life then his intent as Jesus taught us in John 10 is to steal kill and destroy he's gonna he wants to take what's not his rightfully what's rightfully belongs to another he wants to extinguish life he wants to render useless something to destroy it so he works that way but his starting point can be different in the big picture depending on the culture that you're in and he works against Christians that way there's there what

I bump into is this kind of naive belief in some sort of spiritual immunity that oh

I'm a Christian so Satan's not gonna do anything to me and I my my answers will then why why then did

Paul say we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against this and why are we told resist the devil there is a reality that we have to face up to now we're not going to be possessed in the sense of our ownership being changed when

I'm in Christ I'm in Christ that cannot change Satan will never own me but he will take as much ground in my life as I give him because he cheats and as long as I let him cheat you know he'll cheat but when

I recognize what's going on and I stand in Christ and in the name of Christ and I have

I have a chapter two chapters really dealing with what's it mean and in this discussion what does it mean to be in Christ and then the difference between authority and power those are two crucial pieces to understand so in the authority of Christ I can stand and resist the devil and and take back any ground he's gained in my life and at the core that's where I end up whether I'm starting as an

African from that culture or a secular American from our culture I end up right there at the same spot thank you so much

Kofi and make sure that we have your full mailing address in Medford Oregon because you have won a free copy of Christ Victorious how to experience

Christ's victory over the devil in your everyday life and now we are going to our final break it's going to be much more brief than the last one and so if you want to join us on the air with a question of your own

I would do so now because we're rapidly running out of time our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com

chrisarnsen at gmail .com please give us your first name your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter don't go away we'll be back with the conclusion of our discussion with Dr.

Cliff Boone right after these messages from our sponsors James White here co -founder of Alpha and Omega Ministries and occasional guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio I'm so delighted my friend

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that's g3conference .com Paul wrote to the church at Galatia for am

I now seeking the approval of man or of God or am I trying to please man if I were still trying to please man

I would not be a servant of Christ hi I'm Mark Lukens pastor of Providence Baptist Church we are a

Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 we are in Norfolk Massachusetts we strive to reflect

Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things that's not the best recipe for popularity but since that wasn't the apostles priority it must not be ours either we believe by God's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love if you live near Norfolk Massachusetts or plan to visit our area please come and join us for worship and fellowship you can call us at 508 -528 -5750 that's 508 -528 -5750 or go to our website to email us listen to past sermons worship songs or watch our tv program entitled resting in grace you can find us at providence baptist church ma .org

that's providence baptist church ma .org or even on sermon audio .com providence baptist church is delighted to sponsor iron sharpens iron radio hello i'm dr cary kimbrell senior pastor at bethlehem baptist church in laurel mississippi and i'm hoping that many of you who listen to chris arnson's iron sharpens iron radio program will join chris and me at the deep south founders conference thursday january 24th through saturday january 26th here in laurel if you love god's word and love to hear it powerfully preached i can assure you that you will not be disappointed our speakers at the deep south founders conference this year include rusty reed gerald henderson jason goodwin bobby crenshaw and our keynote speaker all the way from zambia dr conrad mbaywe who has received the nickname the spurgeon of africa and i for one believe it's a very accurate description of brother conrad for more details go to deep south founders .com

that's deep south founders .com i look forward to giving a big mississippi welcome to many iron sharpens iron radio listeners january 24th through january 26th thank you linbrook baptist church on 225 earl avenue in linbrook long island is teaching god's timeless truths in the 21st century our church is far more than a sunday worship service it's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant it's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement it's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people in healing we're a diverse family of all ages enthusiastically serving our lord jesus christ in fellowship play and together hi i'm pastor bob waldeman and i invite you to come and join us here at linbrook baptist church and see all that a church can be call linbrook baptist at 516 -599 -9402 that's 516 -599 -9402 or visit linbrookbaptist .org

that's linbrook baptist chris sorensen host of iron sharpens iron radio here i want to tell you about a man i have personally known for many years his name is dan buttafuco dan is a personal injury and medical malpractice lawyer but not the type that typically comes to mind dan cares about people and is a theologian himself recently he wrote a book titled consider the evidence for the bible ravi zacharias wrote the foreword dan also has a master's degree in theology dan handles serious injury and medical malpractice cases in all 50 states he represents many christians in serious injury matters all over the country dan is an exceptional trial lawyer he wrote the test for the national board of trial advocacy and currently his firm has over 100 cases that have settled for 1 million dollars or more and in approximately 10 different states in illinois his lawyers had the fourth largest settlement in the state's history in new york his case involving a paralyzed police officer made the front page of the law journal if you have a serious personal injury or medical malpractice claim in any state i recommend that you call dan consultations are free there is no fee unless you win dan buttafuco's number is 1 -800 -669 -4878 1 -800 -669 -4878 or email me for dan's contact information at chrisarnson at gmail .com

that's chrisarnson at gmail .com charles haddon spurgeon once said give yourself unto reading the man who never reads will never be read he who never quotes will never be quoted he will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves he has no brains of his own you need to read solid ground christian books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the prince of preachers to heart the mission of solid ground christian books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to christians in the present and future and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world since its beginning in 2001 solid ground has been committed to publish god -centered christ exalting books for all ages we invite you to go treasure hunting at solid -ground -books .com

that's solid -ground -books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past or present you can unearth from solid ground solid ground christian books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of iron sharpens iron radio hi i'm stephen limblad assistant professor of systematic theology at irbs theological seminary in mansfield texas i accepted this call to teach at the seminary because i'm firmly convinced that the people of god in the churches of our lord jesus christ need to be firmly grounded in the truth of holy scripture i'm excited to be teaching such subjects as the nature of theology and the doctrine of scripture and even the doctrine of the person and work of jesus christ our churches and our people need to be well grounded in these truths indeed future ministers of the gospel need to understand these truths in order to proclaim them to all of god's people if you want to learn more about our program visit us online at irbsseminary .org

my name is steve lawson founder and president of one passion ministries as well as teaching fellow for ligonier ministries i serve as professor of preaching and oversee the doctor of ministry program at the master's seminary in los angeles i would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students andy woodard serves as the pastor it's called new covenant church nyc they are a reformed baptist church that meets in midtown manhattan you can find their service times and location on their website which is www .ncc

.nyc they believe in a sovereign god who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel if you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching which is simply biblical preaching in new york city i'd like to recommend that you visit new covenant church nyc again their information can be found at www .ncc

.nyc have a great day listening to christian radio can be a big gamble spiritually even many of the major christian networks that include excellent biblically faithful teachers on their lineup sadly often also include the worst of doctrinally dangerous heretics if you are a lover of the doctrines of sovereign grace you need not fear listening 24 hours a day to firstloveradio .org

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welcome back and i just want to remind our listeners since linbrook baptist church of linbrook long island's ad got cut off short there accidentally i just want to make sure that you have linbrookbaptist .org

linbrookbaptist .org that's l -y -n -b -r -o -o -k baptist .org i thank pastor bob waldeman and deacon sal d 'antona and the congregation of linbrook baptist church for being so faithful in their financial support of iron sharpens iron radio we are now back to the final 15 minutes of our interview with dr cliff boone on his book christ victorious how to experience christ's victory over the devil in your everyday life if you intend to write in a question i would do so quickly now because we are rapidly running out of time our email address is chrisarmson at gmail .com

chris armson at gmail .com we do have gordy in mechanicsburg pennsylvania who asks how do we distinguish between attacks of satan and attacks that are neutral i'm sorry let me read it over how do we distinguish between attacks of satan and attacks that are a natural result of the fall or is there no distinction uh great question no there is a distinction i think um like i was saying before there's uh satan has a lot of indirect effect on us uh through his effect you know that results in changes in the culture and people around us um and we know we've got these three sources of trouble right we have our our flesh our sin nature within us the world in which we live and and the devil so we've got these three sources of trouble and sometimes it's more one than the other or two out of the three and so many times we're being tempted and it's just it's just because of the world and the flesh um or it's just an indirect issue from satan um and then sometimes there really is a presence that we have to get rid of and um i i would say that um some of it comes just by praying for god to give discernment that his spirit would would help us in the midst of things uh but one warning flag for me and i i do i say this both from personal experience in my own life as well as um counseling others is habitual sin you see what's happening with habitual sin is is that i'm i'm abrogating the use of my will which god in christ gives me the ability to use my will to to obey him and to follow him so if i'm just you know given a certain circumstance boom i'm going to fall to a certain temptation and i'm not getting a consistent um relief from that and living clean from it i would suspect some sort of uh satanic piece to that in that um my mentors that told me once uh satan never passes by an open door so if i'm just not using my will in a certain case it's like an open door he said well i'll go in there then you know and um i'll take a little piece i'll get a foothold in this life uh so that would be one red flag for me is habitual sin and and then in other cases sometimes it's just an increased strength and awareness of of strength that's opposing you in one way or another yeah well thank you gordy and because you live so close to cumberland valley bible book service who ships out our winners their free books why don't you save them some shipping costs by popping over there tomorrow or sometime soon to pick up your copy there on north hanover street in carlisle pennsylvania that's cumberland valley bible book service and we thank you for sending in your excellent question on christ victorious how to experience christ's victory over the devil in your everyday life we have an anonymous listener okay uh the anonymous listener says knowing that you are in a non -charismatic non -pentecostal and very conservative sovereign grace believing denomination have you received any pushback or opposition from your colleagues in ministry in that denomination over what you have written since it does lend itself to the sensational i'm not saying that you are purposely doing that i'm just saying obviously the subject matter is very often abused with sensationalistic responses to an actual biblical manifestation and experience that can occur right um well i have a long history with my um ministering brothers and so we know each other so um in that sense there's been no opposition because we we know each other but there has been uh some quizzical looks and um and and some i would call it um you know cautiousness in in in the whole subject but i understand that and it and we should be cautious about it yeah right so like there has been some what would i say some less than enthusiastic response but it's not really opposition because we know each other and they know oh okay that's cliff and well i'm a little i'm a little quizzical about this whole subject but let me listen to what cliff is saying that kind of thing well thank you anonymous and if you give me off the air of course your full name and mailing address we will ship you a free copy i think this is the final copy that we have of christ victorious how to experience christ victory over the devil in your everyday life i'm going to ask you a question sure that's kind of personal and i know that you are would not have infallible knowledge of this i'm just curious what your response is uh there was a period of my life tragically uh after 18 years of sobriety before i became uh well should i say after i became a christian initially in the 1980s i was completely sober from alcohol or of imbibing in alcohol for 18 years and i backslid for a period back into that in a very serious level of an of habitual intoxication i was under church discipline and restored uh and thankfully i think that that church discipline actually saved my life and i have actually done an interview for anybody who cares to hear it with one of my patent like one of my former pastors on long island new york who actually was one of those in authority disciplining me in the church so after the fact we did an interview on that subject because it's a very i think important subject and neglected subject but during that period of wandering in darkness as a alcoholic drunkard whatever you want this however you want to describe it uh i would on occasion meet in bars and taverns different people that to my knowledge they didn't even know each other and they would say to me oh look who it is it's the pastor we have a pastor here ladies and gentlemen and the pastor is drinking hard liquor isn't that funny blah blah blah and i i never have been a pastor uh and i would correct these people i'd say i'm a born -again christian i'm not a pastor oh yes you are pastor and the reason why it became eerie is that it was the same kind of line being delivered saying that i was a pastor interesting almost the the mistake almost lent more credibility in my mind to the fact that this could be demonic activity going on that actually the lord obviously was using to prick my conscience right but it was strange to me that they wouldn't just say oh i know that you're a churchgoer i know that you're a born -again christian uh it's interesting that you are drinking so heavily they would always say it's the pastor it's what do you make of that do you think that there's a possibility that could have been some kind of a demonic thing going on especially since it happened close to 10 different times with 10 different people that were strangers to me by the way total yeah and not only that another part that makes me think it was you know demonic is that it's a lie right you were not a pastor right yeah so he's a liar jesus teaches us that that john 8 44 and when he when he says when he speaks a lie he's being consistent with who he is so so yeah that that and and then you combine that with the setting what's going on in your life but then why 10 different people that don't even know each other surely but the wondrous piece too about this is you you kind of alluded to it whether it was that the lord gets the victory and and i i just it's wondrous because here's satan using a liar against you but then god turns it to prick your conscience and i have one chapter in the book about jobe lessons we learned from jobe and part of that touches on that age -old question why does evil exist but you know that god gets the victory the lord gets the victory even though there's a mystery as to why he's allowed evil he does overrule it and in the end he'll silence it and so but yes i i would in from my perspective hearing just what you've said i'd i would i would think so and here's a here's the thing that happens too what i what i realize in pastoral ministry is sometimes there's problems that come through the church are disruptive people in one way or another especially those that are taxing the pastors or elders and they seem unrelated like that the people are not talking to each other they're different issues but i've i've learned as the years have gone by that you look past that and you realize they are related back in the unseen realm satan's working against the church trying to tax or tempt or distract the leaders as well as destroy other people's lives in the process and a lot of things that look on the surface as they're unrelated are actually related back a notch you know back behind the veil and when you begin to recognize that and then pray against satan in an aggressive way you begin to see more relief than if you approach it only without that perspective you're just trying to deal with this person that person this situation but you're not resisting the devil who's behind the scenes orchestrating it um and so even in ministry in church ministry we find much greater relief being aware of that realm and some of the strategies well right now i'd like you to in about two minutes time summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today about how to experience christ's victory over the devil in your everyday life well i i want to end this thinking about the lord jesus that when he was tempted he he never gave up not even a millimeter's piece of himself to satan so he was victorious in all of his temptations and attacks during his life in the last week of his life on the cross he obeyed right to the end and in his death he defeats the evil one rises from the dead ascends into heaven and invict and now he gives us the holy spirit and his word and he he manifests his victory that he he got on the cross over the evil one he manifested more and more through his people first through his apostles now through us as we obey the injunction resist the devil so we resist in his name we're pressing the victory of christ we're pressing that victory against the evil one that's giving us trouble and all of this is with a view to the end when he finalizes that victory and all of his purposes on this earth are done we have the new heavens and the new earth and he has cast all the evil into everlasting judgment and he silenced leviathan in the end and we'll experience that great victory there and our our struggle will be over so it's it's all about the lord jesus and he is wonderful and he he's our strong captain he's the victor and he gives us the authority to walk in his name amen amen well i want to remind our listeners about how they can get in contact with you if you live in allentown pennsylvania or if you're just visiting there or if you have friends family and loved ones who live in or nearby allentown you can find out more about the grace bible i'm sorry the cedar crest bible fellowship church in allentown pennsylvania by going to cedar crest dot church cedar crest church that's easy to remember and you can find out more about ordering the book christ victorious how to experience christ's victory over the devil in your everyday life there do you have any other contact information that you care to share uh yes i've just begun a website to blog with i i've just begun it but it's uh www .gospelfreedom