June 7, 2021 Show with Charles Stolfus on “Wokeness: Philosophy, Sociology, or Spiritual Warfare?”

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

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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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.

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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,

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon

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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.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 7th day of June, 2021, and I'm thrilled to have as a first -time guest today

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Charles Stolfus. He is associate pastor, director of the

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Theological Institute, and coordinator and teacher in the Young Guns program, which is an intensive men's discipleship program at Denton Bible Church of Denton, Texas.

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We're going to be addressing the theme, Wokeness, Philosophy, Sociology, or Spiritual Warfare?

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How Satan uses this movement to undermine and destroy the true mission of Christ's Church, and we're also going to be promoting the

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Wokeness and the Gospel conference in Denton, Texas, where our guest is one of the speakers, and where I will be in attendance manning an

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Iron Sharpens Iron radio booth, an exhibitor's booth for the program.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Charles Stolfus.

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Thank you, Chris. It's good to be with you. And I hope I'm pronouncing your last name correctly. Yes, Stolfus, S -T -O -L -F -U -S, evidently is from German, and my relatives were probably from the

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Hamburg area, then settled into the Pennsylvania Dutch region, then spread across the country, and so here

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I am. Well, that's interesting that you mentioned the Pennsylvania Dutch region, because your last name is popular amongst the

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Amish around here. Well, you know, I've heard from my grandfather that the spelling of my name assimilated from another form like Stoltz -Oos, which is very popular,

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I understand, out there in the Pennsylvania Dutch region. Yep. Well, tell us about Denton Bible Church of Denton, Texas.

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Well, Denton Bible Church has been going since probably the late 70s, and it was the church that no one wanted.

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I guess the senior pastor tells the story about that small church that began—yeah, it began with a bunch of college students in the

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Optimist Gym, and then it spread and developed, and God has blessed it to grow into, you know, really a church that's dedicated to expository teaching, really personal discipleship, and missions.

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From the very beginning, we've had a great heart for missions both locally and internationally, and we're very pleased that the

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Lord has blessed that missions movement to where it's really in about 26 to 28 countries of the world where we have ongoing work in training leadership and establishing churches there.

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But again, I think probably discipleship and expository teaching are really the bedrock of our missions view.

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Now, tell us more about the theological institute that is housed at the

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Denton Bible Church. Yes. You know, when I was a young college student—I actually had graduated college,

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I'd graduated seminary, I was brought on to establish a theological institute.

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Our senior pastor said, listen, we need to really offer some classes that are really where the cookies are on the top shelf, where you lay men and women that really want to go deeper, have an opportunity—maybe they'll never go to seminary, never go to Bible college, but the church, the local church, can indeed be a resource in teaching theology and apologetics and church history and even languages.

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We've had several times we've taught the Greek language so that people could understand some of the basics of Greek as they study the

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New Testament. And so it's something that we offer not only to our church, but to those in the community, and it's really been a neat, neat ministry throughout the years.

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And now, I love the name of your Intensive Men's Discipleship Program, the

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Young Guns Program, but tell us more about that. Yes, that was a program where our senior pastor,

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Tom Nelson, years ago, back in, I guess it was the early 80s, he built an addition onto his home, and then he moved four guys in to really have an in -person intensive discipleship experience.

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And actually, I was one of those, the first four. And we moved into his home, and we met at 6 a .m.,

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five mornings a week, and we studied theology and Bible and apologetics.

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We got involved in missions projects, really service projects in the community.

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We helped the Senior Citizen Center clear some land. We did a lot of things like that, but really an opportunity for personal discipleship and a deepening of our spiritual roots into the

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Word of God, really the context for the Church, you know, in Church history, how to defend the faith, evangelism.

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And so he started that back in the early, I guess it was the early 80s, and then I began teaching in it after a while, and then after a while,

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I took over the leadership of that, and so we're still going strong. Probably about eight or nine hundred young men have been through the program, and not just in full -time ministry, but really in lay ministry around the world.

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And so it's really one of the distinctives of our Church is individual personal discipleship, and this is one aspect of that.

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Great. Well, if anybody wants to find out more information about any of these programs or about Denton Bible Church itself, go to DentonBible .org,

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and that's D -E -N -T -O -N Bible .org. Well, now tell us about, in summary form, the

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Wokeness and the Gospel Conference. I'm very excited to be attending this conference and to be manning an exhibitor's booth for Iron Trip and Zion Radio there.

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My first time ever in Texas, other than when I was in layover in the airport, and I never left the airport.

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This was many years ago, over 30 years ago. And so I'm glad to be spending five days there this time.

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Two of those days are going to be for the conference, and I'm also going to have time to worship at Denton Bible Church on Sunday and visit with my brother, my oldest brother

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John, who's 76, and I need prayer, folks, because my oldest brother John is not a born -again believer, and he has cancer, critical stage emphysema, and an inoperable aneurysm.

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So I am praying that the Lord uses my time with him this week very powerfully for his praise, honor, and glory.

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But tell us about the Wokeness and the Gospel Conference. Yes. Actually, this weekend, the conference is on June 11th and 12th.

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It's Wokeness and the Gospel, and it's really targeting an ideology called wokeness, which we see as an umbrella term that really covers issues like critical race theory, intersectionality, efforts by kind of the secular left to divide humanity up into an oppressed class and oppressor classes.

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And so seeing whiteness or systemic racism as one of the fundamental sins of America that really has never been solved, that we've never departed from, and so it's seen as really as a kind of a secular religion of sorts, and we see it as fundamentally opposed to the

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Christian gospel. And so, tragically, we see many Christians uncritically aligning themselves with this, even though it has a kind of a thoroughly secular and even anti -Christian root, and yet we see evangelicals that have uncritically aligned themselves with this movement that we see as fundamentally opposed to the claims of Christ.

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You know, Paul the Apostle said, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ, that the work of Christ alone can completely solve the problem of sin, that there's no remainder of work that a human being is required to do.

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It's all of Christ that he saves us utterly and completely, and so we see this as kind of a new moralistic, secular philosophy that is fundamentally opposed to the

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Gospel. So we wanted to critique it, but we also want to elevate the Gospel as the only solution for man's continued problems that humankind experiences.

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Well, if anybody wants to find out more about this conference and to register, especially,

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I hope to see as many of you in the Iron Sharpens Iron radio audience there as possible.

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That's the 11th and 12th of this month, which is this Friday and Saturday. Go to WokenessandGospel .org,

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WokenessandGospel .org, and you'll have all the information that you need there at that website.

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Well, before we enter into our major theme today, Wokeness, Philosophy, Sociology, or Spiritual Warfare, How Satan Uses This Movement to Undermine and Destroy the

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True Mission of Christ's Church, we have a tradition here on Iron Sharpens Iron radio where when we have a first -time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation story, which would include the kind of religious atmosphere they were raised in, if any, and what providential circumstances our

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Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

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And I'd love to hear your story. Absolutely. And I was saved at the age of about 11 or 12.

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I actually can't remember the year it was, but it was about 11 or 12. I grew up in a small little

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Baptist church. I attended religiously every single time the doors were open.

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I mean, that was our habit as a family, Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday night,

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Thursday evening. I mean, but in one sense, it was more churchianity than it was Christianity, and yet I continued to hear the

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Gospel. And then on one occasion, our church back then, the Baptist churches,

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I don't know if they still do it, but they had what were called revivals. And so we would meet every evening for a week or two, and we would usually bring in an evangelist to come in.

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And I was in Southern California as a young boy, and our church brought in a Texas evangelist, and his name was

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Jack Clark. I don't know what has happened to him since, but he came and preached the

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Gospel, and it was a Friday night. At the end of the service, he asked everyone to turn to the person next to them and ask them if they were a

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Christian, and I was shaking in my boots because my dad was standing right next to me, and I knew that he was going to lean down and ask me if I was a

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Christian, and I was not. I knew it, and yet he certainly did. And I broke down in tears, and I walked forward, and I prayed a prayer, you know, a sinner's prayer as they, you know, typically model it.

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And I'm not exactly sure if I got saved that night. I know not much changed, but I had a desire, in a sense, to grow, but there really wasn't a kind of a discipleship environment there at the church.

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It was basically just simply attend church. And yet, I can say this with certainty.

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About a year and a half later, I remember lying on my bed and being so gripped with fear that I perhaps was not a believer.

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And I cried out to God, and I said, God, if I have never trusted you with my soul, with my eternal soul, if I've never done it until this time,

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I am doing it now. I'm placing all my confidence in you. I understand that Jesus is the

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Savior alone for my sins, and I said, I trust you completely in that.

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You know, it's interesting, after that point, I never again doubted my salvation.

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And so there's some sense in which I looked to that evening where I was lying in my bed where that question of my salvation got resolved.

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And from that point, I just had a heart to go to church. I had a desire to go to church, and then eventually

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I actually came from California out to Texas on a music scholarship, a jazz trombone scholarship, and got involved in a church here, and that's where really discipleship really took off.

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And I really began to grow into my faith that I had. And so that's my story up until today.

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And how did you come to be an associate pastor over there at Denton Bible Church and come to embrace,

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I'm assuming that you share the beliefs and the doctrines of sovereign grace with that church, and how did this all come about?

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Absolutely. You know, I told you about the Young Guns program, and after that one year of discipleship there with Tommy Nelson, I decided to go to seminary.

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And I wasn't exactly sure if I was called to be a pastor, but I knew this would be on a shadow of a doubt that I wanted to be,

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I had a desire to be in full -time ministry. In fact, I remember talking to Tom and saying, you know, what is the call to the ministry?

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And he said this, he said, ask yourself, you know, what do you want to do and what are you good at?

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And it was a very practical, pragmatic way of assessing that, and really that really developed within me a conviction that I wanted to be in full -time ministry, and so I did.

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I went to seminary. And when I got out of seminary, you know, the thing that Tom wanted me to start doing was to start the

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Theological Institute, and so that's one of the primary jobs that I had was to start this

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Theological Institute, and then eventually I came on to do some other things like the

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Young Guns program. Now, was there a major shift of any kind in your theological understanding from those days when you went forward and said what they call the sinner's prayer?

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Was that church known for believing in the doctrines of sovereign grace, or is that something that you discovered at the studies with Pastor Tommy Nelson?

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I think it was something more that I discovered with the studies that I had with Tom, you know, that where I grew up,

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I mean, they preached the gospel, and it was Christ alone that saved. They didn't articulate it in the terms that I do now, you know, with the soul laws of the

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Reformation, but they believed that you placed your trust only in what Christ had done on the cross, and that there was no contribution that we make.

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I mean, the only contribution we make to salvation is that we sin. That's how they would put it. And so that was very, very clear, but there was no element of theological depth.

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It was basically a salvation message every single Sunday, and that was one of the things as I looked back, once I began to grow out here in Texas and I looked back on my experience there, that was one of the things that really deeply disturbed me, that for so many years that I did,

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I was in the Church, but I really wasn't growing and deepening in my faith, and it was not until I got here that I began to be studying theology and really committing myself to expository teaching, and a lot of that happened in the context of personal discipleship.

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I mean, it was like, you know, I would, before the Young Guns program, I met with Tom in personal discipleship, you know, once a week at 6 a .m.,

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and we would basically just study the Bible. I mean, we would open the Bible, you know, and go verse by verse exposition, and then we would step back and say, okay, theologically, what do we understand here?

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And you start developing what I would later recognize as the doctrines of grace and articulate them in maybe more sophisticated theological terms, but, you know, that's really where I came to a deeper, richer understanding of Christianity.

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Well, praise God. And now, let us begin to explore this theme that we have now, wokeness, philosophy, sociology, or spiritual warfare, how

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Satan uses this movement to undermine and destroy the true mission of Christ's Church. This is going to be repetitive, because we've done many programs on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, many interviews on wokeness, especially since there are a number of books that have come to be in print over this, and also events such as the

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Wokeness in the Gospel Conference. So I have explored these issues with quite a number of people, but still, there are always people that are tuning in for the first time, listening to this program, and so I'd like you to give a brief definition of what wokeness actually means.

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Yes, as I mentioned earlier, wokeness is something of an umbrella term that entails primarily something called critical race theory, where we find race as the defining characteristic of human beings, and either you are, on the one hand, an oppressor, which would be someone that's, say, a

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Caucasian, a white person, or you would be an oppressed person, which would be a person of color.

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And so this philosophy of sorts has its roots way back in a kind of a political ideology.

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In one sense, it's kind of a neo -Marxist idea. The roots of critical race theory go back into the 1920s, back into what was called the

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Frankfurt School, and there was a school of Marxist philosophers that really came to America, eventually, and they recognized that Marxism was not making any advance in the

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West, and they said that the reason for that was what they described as the sustaining institutions in the

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West, and that would be the Church, that would be a traditional view of sexuality and marriage and a number of other things, and so they've set about what they call the long march through the institutions, where they sought to deconstruct or to dismantle these social structures that sustained the

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West. And it came in the form of this critical race theory, which also entails something even more than race, it entails things like class and sexuality, and that's where the philosophy started from.

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And so, you know, the title of my talk this weekend is Wokeness, Philosophy, Sociology, or Spiritual Warfare, but I'm going to acknowledge that yes, it is philosophy, yes, it is sociology, but primarily, it's spiritual warfare.

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And some of the buzzwords, buzzphrases that are associated that you've mentioned some of them already, but you have critical race theory, critical theory in general, you have cancel culture, you have social justice, social justice warriors, and there are probably others that I can't even think of right now, but they seem to all be intertwined.

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Right, systemic racism and identity politics, political correctness, a variety of different kind of sub -ideologies that really are the ways in which this ideology of critical theory or critical race theory gets implemented in a society or expressed or described or defined.

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And one of the things I think that is clearly associated with it is the insane idea, utterly laughably insane, well actually you don't know whether to laugh or to cry, but a lie that is perpetrated by none other than the

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President of the United States, Joe Biden, that white supremacy is the major existential threat to the

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United States and is more dangerous than even the threats of terrorism from al -Qaeda and Islamic extremists, etc.

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White supremacy is the leading danger that we as Americans face.

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That is the utterance of a madman. When we're living in a day and age when groups like the

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Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party are far from their glory days and their heights of membership, isn't this just absurd?

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I can't help but to think that even people that are giving lip service to this and even those people that applauded when

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President Biden said that, I can't help but think that they know this is not true, but we have to go along with the program.

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What are your thoughts on that? Yes, I think it's crazy, like you say. It really is anti -reason, it's anti -logic.

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In fact, one of the characteristics of this movement is that it's kind of impervious to evidence. It's like they're not interested in evidence, they're not interested in dialogue, it's not about a discussion that can be made.

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It's basically a presumption, it's a presupposition that they come to the discussion, which is not a discussion at all, it's basically a one -directional lecture, and it's basically you need to submit and acknowledge what they've decreed to be the case.

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I think that's just simply false. I mean, for a country that elected and then re -elected an

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African American president to be described as so fundamentally, blindly racist, that just simply is a crazy proposition.

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So, again, it's hard to have a discussion about this subject because they don't want to enter into the discussion.

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I used to speak a lot on college campuses on what we would say are kind of controversial issues like gay marriage, like homosexuality, like creation evolution, a lot of subjects like that.

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And I remember over the last 20 years, the moderators started beginning the so -called discussion or debate with a statement, well, neither of these guys up here think that they have the right view.

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They're just here to offer their perspective or their ideas about that, and I would have to the first thing out of my mouth would say, no, actually,

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I think he's wrong and he thinks I'm wrong. Then all of a sudden, I started seeing that there was an anger on the opposite side, and then all of a sudden,

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I stopped getting asked to come. And I think it really was tracking with the development and the advance of this set of ideologies that basically, like I said earlier, they're not interested in a discussion.

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They have a presuppositional way of looking at the world, and they're not interested.

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Hello, Brother Stolzner. Okay, yeah, you cut out there for a second. I don't know where it gets cut off.

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Yeah, just repeat the last couple of sentences that you said. My point was that over those years, as I saw the change in the perspective on panel discussions, on debates, it changed to neither of them feel that they're right to really an anger from one side against the side of traditional theology or traditional values, and to a point where they really rejected even the idea of a discussion, because in their view, there was no discussion to be had.

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That the views that I was espousing on marriage, on sexuality, on truth, were basically like a flatter kind of an ideology.

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So they shouldn't even have a hearing. And I think that's what I see in the woke umbrella of ideologies.

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In their view, this thing is settled one way. And so they start with the presupposition that they're correct, and that you're wrong.

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And there is no contrary evidence. So please be quiet. And usually they don't say please.

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And we have to go to our first break right now. If you have a question that you'd like to ask Charles Stolfus, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence.

27:27

If you live outside of the USA, don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. The Wokeness in the

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Gospel Conference is coming to Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas, June 11th and 12th.

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Register now by going online to wokenessandgospel .org. Featuring speakers such as Dr.

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Owen Strand. If you just buy this ideology, the world's going to be made right. No, it's not.

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Only Jesus Christ makes the world right. Daryl Harrison of the Just Thinking Podcast.

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Sinners like you and me can be reconciled first and foremost to God and consequently to one another.

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Pastor Tom Buck of First Baptist Church in Lindale, Texas. Like Satan in the Garden, woke hermeneutics undermines the very authority of the

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Word of God. I don't say that lightly. Also hear from Tommy Nelson, Charles Stolfus, and Rodney Brown.

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Confronting the lies being impressed upon the culture today, threatening even to divide the church, and answering with the

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Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Wokeness in the Gospel Conference coming to Denton Bible Church, June 11th and 12th.

28:28

Register online at wokenessandgospel .org. Chris Arnsen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, announcing a new website with an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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Christian perspective. Try World Now at no charge for 90 days by going to getworldnow .com.

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More than 20 other speakers will be joining us, and the lineup this year includes my pastor, John MacArthur.

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on the air. Welcome back.

35:00

This is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in. Our guest today for the entire program is

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Charles Stolfus, Associate Pastor, Director of the Theological Institute, and Coordinator and Teacher in the

35:14

Young Guns Program and Intensive Men's Discipleship Program at Denton Bible Church of Denton, Texas.

35:21

We are also promoting the Wokeness and the Gospel Conference this Friday and Saturday, June 11th and 12th, in Denton, Texas.

35:29

We are discussing specifically the theme today, Wokeness, Philosophy, Sociology, or Spiritual Warfare, how

35:36

Satan uses this movement to undermine and destroy the true mission of Christ's Church. Our email address is

35:42

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

35:47

As always, give us your first name, at least. City and state of residence and country of residence, if you live outside the USA.

35:53

Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And one of the things I was going to say before the break that gives credence to the fact that this is an utterly insane ideology promoting that white supremacy is the greatest threat to the lives and safety of American citizens, above all other forms of terrorism, including

36:19

Islamic extremist terrorism, the fact that there are floods of non -white people from other countries still and always trying to cross the borders of our country to either legally or illegally live here and be employed here and enjoy the freedoms and liberties that we take for granted here.

36:47

I mean, it's insane to think that this is a hotbed of white supremacist activity and yet all of these brown, yellow, and black folks are trying to get into the country from other nations.

37:03

Yeah, absolutely. And if you've traveled any around the world, and I've had the great privilege of traveling in multiple, probably 20 or 30 countries, you find out that America actually does it fairly well when you have a mixing pot of races and identities.

37:21

And actually, I don't use race. It's more an ethnicity.

37:28

I think there's one human race and then there's multiple ethnicities. But the point is, if you go around to other countries, they struggle far more than America does.

37:36

America does it extremely well. And again, as I said earlier, I mean, we elected and reelected an

37:41

African -American president, and then you have floods of people from all of these other countries coming in. And it's because they recognize that there are...

37:49

You don't have to defend America in everything we do to actually recognize that, wow, we do it fairly well.

38:00

Amen. We have an anonymous listener who says,

38:06

I am right in the middle of a feud over this issue, and I'm trying not to cause a further rift with those whom

38:16

I love over this topic, so I am remaining anonymous. I was calling to ask you, he actually emailed,

38:25

I was asking the question in response to a statement recently made on Fox News by Trey Gowdy, and I was wondering what your opinion was.

38:38

Trey Gowdy said that he wondered if those who have given their lives for the freedoms of this nation in battle were able to have their voices heard now.

38:51

He wondered whether they would still desire to give their lives for this country, knowing that the liberties that the nation's soldiers have been fighting and dying for for centuries now have been eroded and are gradually being ripped away from us.

39:13

I was wondering what your guests' thoughts were on that. I'm sure they would recognize this as kind of dispiriting, the fact that they would make an ultimate sacrifice for those that would not even appreciate it in the least.

39:27

But I think they would still nonetheless, many of them, make these sacrifices, because they're in it, not so much because everyone appreciates it like they do, they're in it because they believe so deeply in the virtues of the

39:43

American system, and they see it as a high calling to serve at great sacrifice, at great expense, sometimes ultimate cost.

39:59

Yes, but it is an interesting thought that Trey Gowdy posed, because we are becoming more and more like, as a nation, we're becoming more and more like the enemies that we have either battled with in war or have had a face -off in Cold War against than what we have been for over a century prior to this, and what we were founded to represent in the world.

40:34

I mean, it's just really insane when you think about the vanishing of the

40:40

First Amendment, the Second Amendment, things that are so much a part of the identity of this nation that are so quickly evaporating right now.

40:54

Yes, and I think a lot of people that serve in these places, like in the military or like in police forces and places of service like that, that now are being defunded and maligned,

41:08

I think many of these people that are there now, they developed the desire to serve in those areas at a time when

41:15

America did in fact appreciate kinds of sacrifices. But the question is really a good one to pose.

41:23

In a setting in which people don't appreciate these sacrifices or they think that all police officers are oppressive and racist, you wonder, will individuals still have an interest in doing these jobs that need to be done and that require such great sacrifice?

41:45

And I think that it's an open question. You know, there is an old saying that I'm sure you remember, because it was used quite frequently, even up until fairly recent in history.

41:59

It's a phrase that was typically uttered by both those that could be identified as conservative and liberal.

42:06

And the old saying went, I may disagree with what you believe and say, but I would die for your right to believe and say it.

42:18

I think that we are living in an age where folks on both sides would be very hesitant to make that statement.

42:26

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think you're correct on that. You know, it's kind of just a stunning place that we are that is so anti -reason and anti -logic and anti -person almost.

42:49

I mean, I see some of what we find in the woke movement as really an attack upon what it means to be a human being.

42:58

Efforts to deconstruct your sexuality, you know, movements that really are so fundamentally at odds with reason.

43:16

I guess what I'm thinking about is the Kavanaugh hearings that took place a couple of years ago, and I just heard such fundamentally anti -reason positions being espoused there.

43:30

I thought that was crazy. Yeah, I agree with you completely.

43:36

I thank you, Anonymous, and keep listening to Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio. If you are a first -time questioner, give me your full name and your full mailing address via email, of course.

43:48

We won't expose your identity. But to you, if you are a first -time questioner, you have won a free

43:56

New American Standard Bible provided by the folks who publish the

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NASB and also by the Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

44:06

We'll be shipping that Bible out to you if you are a first -time questioner.

44:12

We have Bebe in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says, Can your guest please articulate in detail how the woke movement is actually a threat to the gospel?

44:26

Not that the gospel can ever truly be destroyed because it is a gospel from God, but at the same time, it could be so distorted that it is misunderstood by even greater multitudes who will believe in falsehoods unto their eternal damnation.

44:47

Yes, it's...wokeness is fundamentally opposed to the distinctives of the gospel. There is no mercy, there is no grace, there is no forgiveness, there is no hope, there is no peace, there is no reconciliation, and in those ways it is opposed to the gospel.

45:05

You know, John the Apostle talks about the spirit of Antichrist, and I think what we find here is a philosophy that is in many ways an anti -Christian gospel.

45:22

And the preposition in Greek, anti, can sometimes be used opposed to or in the place of, and what wokeness represents is both.

45:33

It's an effort to supplant these Christian elements of the gospel, and it's fundamentally opposed to that.

45:41

I mean, when it places individuals in a place of condemnation with no hope of forgiveness, with no hope of reconciliation, with, frankly, no hope, with no hope of peace, that is fundamentally at odds with the gospel.

45:59

And I think, you know, that's perhaps how I'd answer that.

46:05

Thank you, Bebe. We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who says,

46:12

What is your opinion about special services and events being set aside during the month of February for Black History Month?

46:22

I understand it is true that perhaps great heroes of American history that happened to be black have been neglected in times past, but as far as identifying events because of the color of one's skin, is that helpful or a hindrance to true biblical unity?

46:42

Well, I don't have any problem with that at all. I mean, to highlight the distinctives of individual groups of many kinds is fine.

46:52

The question is whether or not someone advances that as in place of or superior to other groups.

47:00

That's where it can become a problem. And I think we have to constantly come back to the proposition that is so clearly advanced in the

47:11

Scripture that we are all God's children. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.

47:18

That is a fact. That, as I said earlier in my remarks, I think there's one human race.

47:24

There are multiple ethnicities. These ethnicities sometimes show themselves in different color skin, but the question of melanin in one's skin is a very, very minor issue.

47:38

The Bible addresses all of us as descendants of Adam. We are all ultimately related back to Adam, and that we all approach

47:48

God equally. As someone once said, the ground at the foot of the cross is level.

47:55

No one stands any higher or lower than anyone else. And so let's make sure, as we highlight the distinctives of maybe one group or another, we don't unwittingly or wittingly advance this idea of superiority or inferiority.

48:13

Yes, and that is clearly being done by the leading proponents of wokeness.

48:22

When you say that, and I can't say with certainty that all members or proponents of wokeness are in agreement with my statement that I'm about to make, but it's certainly a prevalent ideology.

48:40

When you say that if you are black, it is impossible for you to be a racist or a bigot because you have never experienced a position of authority that is a necessary element to make one guilty of racism and bigotry.

49:05

Well, first of all, that's nonsense. Hating someone because of their color or their ethnicity does not require any kind of authority.

49:19

And as I've said many times in this program, the Apostle Paul had to rebuke

49:26

Peter and had to very, very strongly condemn the

49:32

Judaizers because they were Jews who were looking upon the

49:39

Gentile Christians as something inferior and to the point where they didn't even want to eat with them.

49:47

And the Gentiles were the ones that had been in authority over the

49:52

Jews for centuries, and yet they were not the ones who were being targeted by Paul in his condemnation of of racism, for lack of a better term.

50:05

He was condemning his fellow Jews who were Christians. Am I making sense here? You are, and I think

50:11

I would agree with you. And I think that your observation that everyone is capable of being preferential in a way that we might describe as racist, that it doesn't really require or entail any position of power, though it sometimes manifests itself in that situation.

50:32

I would also say, observe, that what you've just observed, it really points me to another observation that leads me to this idea that really there is at its base a kind of a satanic strategy here.

50:49

That, you know, the Bible talks about the schemes of the devil. You know, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2, he talks about Satan, that we're not ignorant of his schemes or he talks about craftiness and deceitful scheming that's a reflection of evildoers that are followers of Satan.

51:08

Or Ephesians 6, he talks about standing firm against the schemes of the devil. And I think when you start unpacking that idea of schemes, you find the skillful ways in which

51:21

Satan can confuse an issue. And one of the ways he does that is through confusion of words.

51:27

Is that you redefine words in ways that are really not logical or not accurate.

51:34

And so you define racism as entailing a necessary element of a power differential, and so that would mean that only, you know, maybe a white person could be a racist and a black person could not, when in fact everyone is capable of that kind of sinful preferential treatment.

51:57

Yes, and I agree with you 100%. And we have to go to our midway break right now.

52:02

I hope that you be patient. You are patient with us, folks, because as always, the midway break is a little longer than the other breaks in the show.

52:10

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

52:18

FCC requires of them to localize their programming, such as Iron Sharpens Iron, geographically to Lake City, Florida, by means of public service announcements and other local announcements and things that they air to localize this show to Lake City.

52:39

And while they do that, we simultaneously air our globally heard commercials. So please use this time wisely.

52:45

Write down as much of the information as you can for as many of our advertisers as you can, so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to those advertisements.

52:54

And of course, we would love it if you would respond by purchasing their products, using their services, visiting their churches, and supporting their parachurch organizations as often as possible.

53:05

But when you can't do any of those things, please at least reply to the advertisements by saying thank you for sponsoring

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and for keeping this show on the air. If indeed that is what you believe, that this is an important show, and you thank our advertisers for keeping us around.

53:24

If you believe that, please thank our advertisers because they, other than God himself and the generous folks out there who donate to this show, the advertisers are the key reasons we are able to remain in existence.

53:42

So please thank our advertisers and also send in questions to our guest today, Charles Stolfus on Wokeness.

53:50

And our email address again is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. We'll be right back after these messages. Don't go away.

53:56

The Wokeness in the Gospel Conference is coming to Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas, June 11th and 12th.

54:02

Register now by going online to wokenessandgospel .org. Featuring speakers such as Dr.

54:08

Owen Strand. If you just buy this ideology, the world's going to be made right. No, it's not.

54:15

Only Jesus Christ makes the world right. Daryl Harrison of the Just Thinking Podcast. Sinners like you and me can be reconciled first and foremost to God and consequently to one another.

54:27

Pastor Tom Buck of First Baptist Church in Lindale, Texas. Like Satan in the Garden, woke hermeneutics undermines the very authority of the

54:34

Word of God. I don't say that lightly. Also hear from Tommy Nelson, Charles Stolfus and Rodney Brown.

54:40

Confronting the lies being impressed upon the culture today, threatening even to divide the church and answering with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

54:47

The Wokeness in the Gospel Conference coming to Denton Bible Church, June 11th and 12th. Register online at wokenessandgospel .org.

54:58

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57:05

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Good to be back. Chris, I always enjoy our time. I have to tell you, I'm one of the better interviewers out there, and I've been doing this for more than 30 years.

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Wow, that's some compliment. How much do I owe you for that? You don't have to owe me anything.

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United States listening to this show. We also have a first -time listener right now, or should

01:13:14

I say a first -time questioner, because he may have been listening for many years but has never sent in a question before, and I'm enlarging his question because the text is microscopic in the email, so I have to enlarge it, and while I'm doing that,

01:13:33

I will give our email address again. It's chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:13:41

We have Scott in Dallas, Texas, who asks, first he says, thank you,

01:13:49

Chris. Then he says, Charles, aren't we one race, two divisions, believers and nonbelievers?

01:13:56

With that, we now can see throughout history decisions made by those who trust and those who do not trust

01:14:03

God, and now clearing our government's policies and laws are based on the common denominator, a disbelief in God.

01:14:15

As always, many thanks. Okay, your responses to Scott in Dallas? Well, I think

01:14:21

I would agree that we are one race under God, created from the first individual,

01:14:28

Adam, and then throughout all of human history, we all are related through that, and the tragedy is that I think governments have really divided that and have divided us up into groups and divisions, and I think even advocated a false understanding of how we are related to one another by saying that we're multiple races.

01:14:49

So, yeah, I think I agree with that, and the tragedy is that we find ourselves in a day in which the levers of government, which are substantial, are being used against some of these physical distinctives that used to be more commonly embraced.

01:15:05

So, yeah, I think if I understood his question correctly, I think that's what I would say. Well, thank you,

01:15:11

Scott, and make sure you give us your full mailing address, because you have won a free New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the

01:15:18

NASB, and compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com. We'll be shipping that Bible out to you when we get your full name and mailing address.

01:15:30

We have another listener. We have Christopher in Western Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, don't you think that this whole wokeness heresy may even help to fan the flames of the white racism they claim is so prevalent today?

01:15:53

It's a well -known fact that there are people who enter into prison who are white, who, although never before, could have been identified as a bigot or racist.

01:16:03

In order to preserve their own lives, they have joined things like the

01:16:08

Aryan Brotherhood and other white supremacist gangs just out of sheer safety.

01:16:14

Don't you think that that could multiply in numbers with your average citizens today who are not in prison just because they are fearful of the world appearing like everyone is ganging up on them?

01:16:28

Now, I don't believe for a second a truly born -again, regenerate person who is filled with the Holy Spirit could ever, at least for a long period of time, become a racist.

01:16:38

But as far as the un -regenerate population, could this not even create a problem that didn't really exist in the dominance that it is now being proclaimed to be?

01:16:53

Absolutely. I think when you divide the world up into an oppressor class and an oppressed class, you are basically categorizing people not according to their behavior, but according to their group identity.

01:17:07

And so it's not because you've done something racist or said something racist that you're called a racist, but it's because you belong to a particular race that is deemed to be the racially oppressive class.

01:17:20

And so now there's a resentment that happens in the wake of that. I remember my daughter came home a couple of weeks back and she was saying, listen, why would someone call me a racist when

01:17:32

I've not said anything racist? I've not done anything racist. Simply because I have white skin, I'm deemed a racist?

01:17:37

I think that's a serious problem, that this whole idea of wokeness, it promotes identity politics, where it artificially categorizes people into these identity groups.

01:17:52

It foments resentment rather than solving some of the issues that exist between human beings.

01:18:01

It imputes guilt or victimhood to people according to their skin color. I mean, this is really, like I think,

01:18:09

Chris, you said earlier, it's crazy. It's anti -rational, it's anti -reason. And I think people end up becoming more resentful when you are dismissing them or categorizing them according to something that they haven't said or haven't done.

01:18:30

Yeah, I mean, theoretically, this kind of rhetoric by the President of the

01:18:35

United States, Joe Biden, and all those on the left who helped perpetuate this heresy of wokeness, this could even bring an all -time rise, numerically, in membership of the

01:18:47

Klan. It may restore the Klan to their former place of prominence, of evil prominence.

01:18:57

I mean, I can imagine the dwindled numbers of actual white supremacists who are sitting in their living rooms and sitting at their meetings that they have that have diminished radically in numbers from the heights where they once enjoyed.

01:19:19

I can imagine them actually being excited and happy to hear that, according to the

01:19:24

President of the United States, they are making a bigger dent on society than the reality would allow us to believe.

01:19:33

Well, that's an excellent point you make there. You're attributing more power to that group, that despicable group, than it really possesses.

01:19:41

And so that can, in turn, lead to actual increases in the numbers of people that would identify with that kind of a group.

01:19:49

And so, I think also the other dimension of this is that, you know, a believer has some internal resistance to that kind of a response to being wrongly charged.

01:20:01

But think about someone who does not have the Spirit of God operating within them. That individual, they're going to be reacting from their own fallen impulses and desires.

01:20:15

And so they're, yes, going to be inclined to be reacting in maybe a violent way or in a hateful way.

01:20:23

And so I think there's a great danger in this movement that these people don't fully appreciate.

01:20:30

Yes, I am very routinely reminded of how

01:20:36

Adolf Hitler gained such popularity in Germany. In reality, he was using, in many ways, the same rhetoric as the woke movement, other than the fact that he was not targeting his own fellow white citizens of Germany.

01:20:55

He was targeting, of course, the Jewish population was white, but he was not targeting what he would call

01:21:03

Aryan. The Jewish population is predominantly white, that is. There are Jewish folks of different skin colors and so on.

01:21:13

But basically, Hitler's whole idea was that these wealthy, powerful

01:21:18

Jewish groups and individuals were the ones that controlled the banks, were the ones that lost

01:21:28

World War I, the ones that brought Germany into the point of being crawling out of the rubble of that lost war.

01:21:42

And he was appealing to the fact that the average middle -income -to -poor citizen of Germany have these wealthy elitists, of his opinion, of a different race, to blame.

01:22:04

And to me, it seems strikingly similar to the movement. It's just the target of alleged evil is people of a different skin color.

01:22:15

Am I making sense here? You're making perfect sense. It's a great parallel there. You're exactly right that in the aftermath of World War I, in the build -up to World War II, Hitler was a nobody.

01:22:27

But he was able to leverage the growing resentment on the part of the German people because they were suffering, because inflation was out of control, because they were stigmatized as those that had caused such devastation in World War I.

01:22:42

So he appealed to that. And then all of a sudden, he also adds into that this marginalizing and stigmatizing of an enemy group.

01:22:51

And so you can now breed resentment towards these individuals that are the explanation for your perceived suffering.

01:23:01

And so I think I see an interesting, tragic parallel between what is happening under woke ideologies and what happened with that madman

01:23:12

Adolf Hitler back in the lead -up to World War II. Yes. I mean, Hitler had no interest in continuing the employment or providing employment opportunities for highly qualified Jewish citizens.

01:23:29

He wanted to let those appointments and job positions and opportunities be filled by even people of far inferior skill and capabilities to the non -Jewish population, which you have going on today with reverse discrimination, as it used to be called, where you have people being hired, or the movement is pushing for the idea that we should even hire an airline pilot, for instance, more because he has black skin than because he, in tests and other evidence provided in training, is at the top of the class, as it were, in their skill and capabilities to become a pilot, which is a very frightening thing.

01:24:26

It's very frightening to me as I'm going to be getting into a plane any day now to go down to Dallas, Texas, for the

01:24:35

Wokeness in the Gospel conference in Denton. But this is really utterly insane, isn't it?

01:24:41

It is. It is. And I think a lot of people don't really fully appreciate that the Woke movement actually would reject

01:24:48

Martin Luther King's well -known phrase that he looked forward to a day when people would be judged on the content of their character as opposed to the color of their skin.

01:24:59

And people within the Woke umbrella of ideologies openly, directly, explicitly...

01:25:07

Are you there? Yeah, you disappeared. Well, my only point was that people within the

01:25:13

Woke movement explicitly reject Martin Luther King's statement about longing for a day when people would be judged on the content of their character as opposed to the color of their skin.

01:25:26

They openly, explicitly reject that, and they see that as a part of the problem. And so now they would argue for a spoils system where, according to their own ideas, people would be given places in society, like you said, hired as an airplane pilot or getting a scholarship or any number of other things that are based upon racial identity as opposed to someone's own achievements or talents.

01:26:04

Now, we who are from the camp known as Calvinistic, as a nickname, we tend to, unfortunately, underplay, downplay the reality, even though the activity of Satan and his minions comes up in sermons briefly and things like that.

01:26:35

We don't deny the reality of a devil and devils, plural, and demons, but it seems to be downplayed as far as a worldview, very often.

01:26:52

Of those who share our soteriology and theology and history,

01:26:58

I think sometimes, perhaps, either consciously or unconsciously, Reform people don't want to present an idea that people are using the devil as a scapegoat to escape from their own responsibility and guilt for their sins or what have you, or they don't want to appear to be sensationalistic like many in the

01:27:25

Charismatic and Pentecostal movements who see a devil under every rock and who maybe even believe that genuinely born -again, regenerate

01:27:36

Christians can be demon -possessed. But at the same time, we have to really look seriously at Satan's activity involved in this whole movement, don't we?

01:27:49

Absolutely. You know, I mentioned earlier the Young Guns program, and each year

01:27:55

I teach these young men a section that's almost a month long, and it's angels, demons, and the afterlife.

01:28:03

It's a physical exposition of angels throughout Scripture, an exposition of what the

01:28:11

Bible says about demons, as well as heaven and hell. And I'm struck every single time I go through that how much information there is on the angelic realm, on the demonic realm, and how extensive the information is on that.

01:28:27

From the very, very beginning, Satan appears in the Bible as the one who tempts Adam and Eve to place themselves in the role of God, to act independently from God.

01:28:39

The very next chapter, in chapter 4, Cain and Abel, there's this opposition in how they would respond to God in offering sacrifices.

01:28:48

The New Testament tells us that was demonically inspired. The book of 1

01:28:53

John says that Cain was of the evil one. Because his deeds were evil, he rose up and murdered his brother.

01:29:04

And you go from there throughout the Old Testament into the New Testament, and you find an extraordinary amount of information on Satan and the demonic realm.

01:29:15

Every New Testament writer speaks of Satan's existence. In 19 of the 27

01:29:21

New Testament books that mention Satan, they mention one of his names. Christ refers to Satan in 25 of the 29 references to him that are in the

01:29:32

Gospel. I mean, we're familiar with the Temptation account, and there's actually a detail there that says that when

01:29:39

Satan left that Temptation, he left, quote, for a more opportune time.

01:29:45

In other words, his activity did not cease at the Temptation. So, we find an extensive amount of information there.

01:29:53

And then you add to that, Paul the Apostle, as I mentioned earlier, he talks about the schemes of the devil, that individuals are held captive.

01:30:04

The God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving that they might not see the light of the

01:30:09

Gospel of the glory of Christ, who's the image of God. I mean, it's everywhere to be found. So we're not overly emphasizing this when we acknowledge that there are multiple schemes of the devil, conspiracies of the devil, that are at work in our experience, in our lives.

01:30:29

Satan is not merely an opportunistic deceiver. He's a schemer, a strategizer, and he's the master schemer and strategizer.

01:30:40

And so I think we have to be on guard against this one who would prowl about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

01:30:51

Do we take that seriously? And I would argue that the schemes of the devil are advanced through multiple ideologies and philosophies.

01:31:02

And you find political ideologies, but you also find issues like wokeness.

01:31:09

That I'm not arguing that they explicitly are advancing or knowingly advancing, you know, the agenda of the devil, but I am saying that they're advancing agendas that Satan would have invent that really oppress people, that lead to the destruction of individuals.

01:31:29

And so I think we have to take it seriously. Amen. We have another first -time questioner,

01:31:35

Liz, in Argyle, Texas. Chris, please ask Charles to speak to feelings and how white people might respond to fear.

01:31:45

The assault of this woke movement on whites creates a certain amount of fear, and will this lead to anger and rebellion after a time of being oppressed by the woke movement and violence?

01:31:59

And yeah, we were kind of already hinting at that or even clearly stating that in our discussions of an unfortunate reaction to this, that the lies that are being perpetrated by those in power in our government and those who just have a loud voice in the media, the lies that white supremacy is the leading threat to the safety of the population, that actually may be creating a reality of those lies by the reactions of people across the country.

01:32:37

But if you could comment yourself on Liz's questions and statements here. Yeah, the tragedy is in our humanity, we might tend to react, and it might, these, the ideology of wokeness might intend to foment separation and disunity and anger and resentment, but the beauty of the

01:33:01

Gospel is that there is a genuine reconciliation. There is a basis for peace.

01:33:09

It's not simply happy talk. You know, this is not simply kind of, you know, a kind of a superficial way of dealing with some of these things, but the

01:33:22

Gospel provides the means by which individuals that are so distinct and separate in their humanity can now be reconciled.

01:33:32

That in the Gospel, there's neither male nor female, there's neither Greek nor Jew, there is only one, and Jesus offers

01:33:43

Himself to us equally, and there's a basis for our kind of reconciliation.

01:33:53

You know, even when it says that we are rejected or persecuted, we can indeed find blessing there as Christ sustains us.

01:34:04

Lest of those who are persecuted, even wrongly, there is a blessing that God gives through the influences of His Spirit, through the comforts of His Word, through the knowledge that God is sovereign and He can use even devastating errors and oppressive ideologies.

01:34:27

There can be great good that can come from that. So, I think that that's the beauty of the

01:34:34

Gospel. That's the superiority of the Gospel. Liz, please email me your full mailing address in Argyle, Texas, so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

01:34:48

can ship out to you a free New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the

01:34:53

NASV. Thank you very much for submitting a question for the first time on Iron Sharpener's Iron Radio.

01:35:01

And also, another way that people are letting fear enslave them over this is seen,

01:35:13

I believe, in politicians who don't even believe in this rhetoric, but are giving lip service and, in fact, even enacting policies and pushing for the establishment of laws that echo the insanity and evil of the woke movement just because they want to remain popular or become popular.

01:35:37

They don't want to lose any kind of status that they already may have, or they want to achieve status that they don't currently have.

01:35:44

I think that there is a fear of even average citizens to be viewed as anti -intellectual or ignorant or unsophisticated.

01:35:58

You have people who, I think, out of fear of the destruction of their property because they fear the rising of further rioting and so on, they have these signs on their front lawns of the

01:36:15

Black Lives Matter movement. I can't help but think that many of these folks that have these signs are just using it as a way of saying, please don't destroy my house.

01:36:25

I agree with you. Being more fearful of man than fearful of God is one of the key sins that mankind has been guilty of throughout all ages of history, correct?

01:36:43

That's right. And the perfect love that God gives us in the Gospel casts out fear, that we need not fear.

01:36:52

But I agree. What you've just observed, it's enough to make one cynical. When you see those in positions of influence, they can't possibly believe these irrational things, and yet they advance them.

01:37:06

You know, when you're talking about, under wokeness, math is a means of, or logic is a means of oppression, it's really kind of bizarre.

01:37:17

They can't possibly believe that personally. This must, in fact, be some cynical advancement of their own provincial or personal or selfish interests.

01:37:30

And again, that's enough to make one cynical unless, of course, we are rooted and grounded in the

01:37:37

Gospel, in our relationship with Christ, that there is a

01:37:42

God who is in control, and that there is a day coming in which all things will be reconciled, all things will be made new.

01:37:53

And so my hope does not rest in this life. My hope is eternal, into heaven.

01:38:01

And that actually, that invests more meaning in this life than less meaning.

01:38:08

You know, some people talk about heaven being pie in the sky. No! Actually, that gives me greater motivation to make the most out of this life, which is the life on the way to this best of all possible worlds, which is heaven.

01:38:24

Amen. We're going to our final break right now. It's going to be a lot more brief than the other breaks. If you intend to send in a question, please send it in quickly because we are rapidly running out of time.

01:38:35

Our email address again is chrisarmson at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

01:38:42

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

01:38:48

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away.

01:38:54

We'll be right back with Charles Stolfos after these messages from our sponsors. Hello dear ones, my name is

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The Wokeness in the Gospel Conference is coming to Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas, June 11th and 12th.

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Like Satan in the Garden, woke hermeneutics undermines the very authority of the Word of God. I don't say that lightly.

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01:49:45

This is Chris Arnzen, and once again, if you have a question for Charles Stolfus while we still have time, which is less than 10 minutes, send it in immediately to chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

01:49:56

chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state of residence. Your country of residence.

01:50:02

Charles, I would like you to, for several minutes, have some uninterrupted time to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today about wokeness before we run out of time today.

01:50:16

Absolutely. You know, we talked several times about the multiple schemes of the devil.

01:50:22

This is, it shouldn't surprise us that in our day, we have expressions of those conspiracies that Satan has animated.

01:50:33

From the very, very beginning of our Bible, we see Satan active in deceiving Adam and Eve, and then

01:50:38

Cain against Abel, and then we find even someone as godly as David, who was influenced to engage in that census, which was an act of sin, that he knew that.

01:50:49

Or you come to the New Testament and you find other statements about the ways in which

01:50:54

Satan holds people captive. He's said to be a god of this age, a god of this world, the ruler of this world.

01:51:03

So it should not surprise us when we find various ideologies that, you know, come from time to time that are opposed to the gospel, or seeking to actually displace or replace the gospel.

01:51:19

And that's how I see wokeness. I see this as a false religion. I see it as one of the variety of ways in which

01:51:27

Satan seeks to kill and to destroy. And he does it mentally. He does it spiritually.

01:51:34

You know, there are a lot of ways in which Satan can get people. He can discourage us. I mean, even someone as godly as Elijah or even

01:51:41

Paul talked about how discouraged he got at one point. He says, we were burdened excessively beyond our own strength on one occasion.

01:51:49

We despaired even of life. So he seeks to discourage us. He sometimes seeks to disqualify us by tempting us to sin or leading us off into doctoral compromise.

01:52:02

Or sometimes he just simply distracts us into other things and so that we're not concerned about the most important thing.

01:52:08

But I think also one of the other ways in which he seeks to attack us is through deception.

01:52:15

And again, this is how he got the great men and women of the Bible. It's through his skill at deception.

01:52:23

And I would see this umbrella of ideologies under the title of wokeness as one of the ways, the many ways in which

01:52:34

Satan would seek to deceive us. And I think the answer for us is to respond with our confidence in the gospel.

01:52:43

That there is a possibility of a genuine, complete forgiveness of sin.

01:52:49

A healing of the fundamental problems that we have as human beings. A genuine reconciliation between us and God.

01:52:59

Despite the devastating consequences of sin, whether it's just simply our fallen natures or it's our own individual sin, that God has a solution for that.

01:53:10

And it is a full, complete, final solution. And so we seek to elevate the gospel as the only final, complete response to the problems of humanity.

01:53:23

And wokeness we would reject because it's fundamentally opposed to those distinctives that we have in Christ.

01:53:30

So I want to leave people with hope. We want to leave people at the end of this conference with this idea that the gospel is bigger than wokeness.

01:53:40

The gospel is not only right, it's better. It's superior. It's supreme.

01:53:47

And it's those things because it's from God. Amen. We have

01:53:53

RJ in White Plains, New York, who asks, Could you please provide for us some practical counsel and suggestions, giving the nuts and bolts of how a conference, a lecture, or other things that a church may do to further educate those that are being threatened by this heresy of wokeness?

01:54:20

And I'm speaking specifically to courses and other things that a pastor or elders or gifted members of churches may do in order to bring the population to sanity, by God's grace.

01:54:38

Well, first of all, at the conference, we seek to do two things. One, to expose...

01:54:49

To expose? You disappeared from the airwaves again. Expose was your last word.

01:54:56

Okay, there are two things we want to do at this conference. One is to expose the errors of wokeness and how it's fundamentally flawed.

01:55:07

But then the second point is that we want to elevate the gospel as the only full and final solution to the problem that man faces.

01:55:16

And so, you don't even have to understand the distinctives of critical race theory or intersectionality or systemic racism or any number of these other kind of ideologies.

01:55:28

One guy once said it's the ick -asms and spasms of philosophy.

01:55:35

You don't even have to understand them fully. You need to understand something of them to be on guard against them, but you don't have to be a professor to understand that.

01:55:45

What we do have, however, need to be is well -aversed in the gospel.

01:55:51

We need to be so thoroughly grounded with the gospel that our spidey sense is awakened when we hear error.

01:55:59

And when we see these destructive influences of wokeness, that we're on guard against that.

01:56:06

And the solution is the advancement of the gospel, the heralding of the gospel, to lift up Jesus Christ as crucified and as the only solution for the problem of man's sin.

01:56:23

And that includes racism, that includes any number of other ways in which humanity,

01:56:29

His fallenness is expressed. But the gospel is the solution. And there are a number of things you can do.

01:56:36

I mean, you've got to study the gospel, for sure. There are studies out there. One that I'm reviewing right now, and we're considering offering in one of our classes, is produced by Answers in Genesis, and it's called

01:56:51

One Race, One Blood. And so that is really a terrific study that will really develop a physical argument for how we are indeed one race, but perhaps multiple ethnicities.

01:57:08

The other study that I've recently come across is something called

01:57:17

Answers for Difficult Days, Justice. And it's a series of seven

01:57:23

Bible studies on the subject of social justice, or just simply the concept of justice, physically speaking.

01:57:30

It's done by Ben Quine. It's published through Cornerstone Curriculum. And I found it to be a really good, solid, physical grounding in the concept of justice, lest we be led astray by these false understandings of so -called social justice.

01:57:47

I think it's an error to start subdividing justice. I think we need to speak of it comprehensively as the

01:57:54

Bible speaks to it. And this is a good, short little series of seven Bible studies called

01:58:00

Justice by Cornerstone Curriculum. So maybe those are some practical offerings.

01:58:07

Yeah, and let's not forget Owen Strand's book, since especially he's one of the speakers at the

01:58:15

Wokeness in the Gospel conference. Dr. Strand's book is going to be published in July.

01:58:25

Yeah, Christianity and Wokeness. Also, there's an excellent book,

01:58:31

Social Justice Goes to Church, The New Left in Modern American Evangelicalism by John Harris.

01:58:38

And the title that you just mentioned before, One Race, One Blood, is actually a book that Ken Ham and Charles Ware co -authored.

01:58:53

And I've conducted interviews with all of these folks that I've mentioned on this issue.

01:59:00

You can, if you go to the ironsharpensironradio .com search engine, just type in woke or social justice or any of the buzz phrases associated with it, and you will get all the interviews that we have provided.

01:59:14

Well, we're actually out of time. I just looked at the clock and we're gone. I want to make sure that our listeners have the websites that they need to get in touch with you.

01:59:24

First of all, the Wokeness in the Gospel conference website is wokenessandgospel .org, wokenessandgospel .org.

01:59:32

And the Denton Bible Church website is dentonbible .org, D -E -N -T -O -N, bible .org.

01:59:39

I want to thank you so much for being such an excellent guest today, Charles. I want to thank everybody who listened. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater