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

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Opens With Proverbs 27:17

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. And now here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this seventh day of June 2021.

Introducing Charles Stolfus and the Wokeness and the Gospel Conference

And I'm thrilled to have as a first-time guest today, Charles Stolfus. He is associate pastor, director of the 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.

We're going to be addressing the theme, Wokeness, Philosophy, Sociology, or Spiritual Warfare? How Satan uses this movement to undermine and destroy the true mission of Christ Church. And we're also going to be promoting the 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 Iron Sharpens Iron Radio booth, an exhibitor's booth for the program.

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

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 I'm from the Hamburg area, the Dutch region, and spread around.

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

Well, you know, I've heard from my grandfather that the spelling of my name assimilated from another form to stand out there in the Pennsylvania Dutch region.

Yep. Well, tell us about Denton Bible Church of Denton, Texas.

Well, Denton Bible Church has been going since probably the late 70s, and it was the church that no one wanted. 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 Optimist gym, and then it spread and developed, and God has blessed it to—you know, really a church that's dedicated to expository teaching, a great heart for missions both locally and internationally in 28 countries of the world where we have ongoing work in training leadership.

But again, I think probably discipleship and expository teaching are really the best—.

Tell us more about the theological institute that is housed at the Denton Bible Church.

Yes. You know, when I was a young college student—I actually had graduated college, I had graduated seminary—we need to really offer—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, history, and even languages. 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 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.

And now, I love the name of your Intensive Men's Discipleship Program, the Young Guns Program, but tell us more about that.

Yes. That was a program where our senior pastor, Tom Nelson, years ago, back in—I guess it was—he built an addition onto his home, and then he moved to really an in-person home, and we met at six. We studied theology and Bible.

We got involved in the community. We helped some land—I mean, we did a lot of things like that. But really, an opportunity for—and so he—and then I began teaching in it after a while, and then after a while, I took over the leadership of probably about eight or nine hundred young men who have been through the program—full-time ministry, but really in lay ministry around the world.

Really, one of the—individual personal discipleship, and this is one aspect of that. 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, and that's D-E-N-T-O-N Bible .org. Well, now tell us about, in summary form, the 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. My first time ever in Texas, other than when I was in layover in the airport, and I never left the airport.

This was many years ago, over thirty years ago, and so I'm glad to be spending five days there this time. 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, 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, so I am praying that the Lord uses my time with him this week very powerfully for his praise, honor, and glory.

But tell us about the Wokeness and the Gospel Conference.

Yes, actually, we're, this weekend, the conference is on June 11th and 12th, targeting an ideology called Wokeness, which we term that really race theory, intersectionality, efforts by kind of the secular left, humanity up into an oppressed class and oppressor, 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 a secular religion of sorts, and 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.

You know, Paul the Apostle said, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who can completely, that there's no thing is required to be saved, so we see this as kind of a new moral, fundamentally opposed to the Gospel, so we wanted to, we also want to elevate the Gospel as the only solution kind of experience.

Well, if anybody wants to find out more about this conference.

And to register, especially, I hope to see as many of you in the Iron Sharpens Iron radio audience there as possible. That's the 11th and 12th of this month, which is this Friday and Saturday. Go to wokenessandgospel .org, wokenessandgospel .org, and you'll have all the information that you need there at that website.

Charles Stolfus Gives His Salvation Story

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 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 Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to Himself and saved them, and I'd love to hear your story.

Absolutely, and I was saved at.

The age of about 11 or 12. I actually can't remember if it was 11 or 12. A little Baptist church. I attended religion. I mean, that was Wednesday night, Thursday night. In one sense, it was more churchianity than it was Christianity, and yet I continued to hear the Gospel, and then on one occasion, and we would usually bring in an evangelist to come in, and I was in Southern California as a young boy, and our church brought in a Texas evangelist, and his name was Jack.

I've known him since, but he came in and preached to God. He, at the end of the service, taken in my boots, and yet he certainly did. I prayed a prayer. I had known not much change. I had a desire, in a sense, to grow up in the environment there, and yet I can say this with certainty.

About a year and a half later, I remember lying on my bed and being so gripped with fear that I perhaps was crying out to God, and I said, God, if I have never trusted You with my eternal soul, if I've never done it until this time, I am doing it now.

I'm placing all my confidence in You. I understand that Jesus is the Savior alone for my sins, in which I look. Lying in my bed, where I was a Texas music scholar, and got involved in a church here, and that's where really...

How did you come to be an associate pastor over there at Denton Bible.

Church and come to embrace... I'm assuming that you share the beliefs and the doctrines of sovereign grace with that church. How did this all come about? Absolutely. I told you about the.

Young Guns program, and after that one year of... I wasn't exactly sure, but I knew this, that I wanted to be... I remember talking to Tom and saying, what is the call to the ministry? And he said this.

He said, ask yourself, what are you good at? 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.

I went to seminary. And when I got out of seminary, what Tom wanted me to start doing was to start the Theological Institute. The primary job that I had was to... And eventually I came on to do some other things like...

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? 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?

I think it was something more that I.

Discovered with, you know, that... I believe that you placed it down on the cross, and that there was no contribution that we make. 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. It was basically a salvation message every single Sunday, and that was one of the things, as I look back, once I began to grow up there, that was one of the things that really deeply disturbed me, that for so many years that I really wasn't growing.

And it was not until I got here that I began to be studying, really committing myself. I mean, it was like, you know, I would... Before the Young Guns program, I met with Tom in personal discipleship, once a week at 6 a .m., 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? And you start to recognize that as the doctrines of grace, and articulate them in maybe more sophisticated theological terms.

Well, praise God. And now, let us begin to explore this theme that we have now, Wokeness, Philosophy, Sociology, or Spiritual Warfare, How Satan Uses This Movement to Undermine and Destroy the True Mission of Christ's Church.

Defining Wokeness as Neo-Marxist Race Theory

This is going to be repetitive, because we've done many programs on Iron Trip 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 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. Yes, as I mentioned earlier, wokeness defined race as the defining character of an oppressor, a neo-Marxist idea. The roots of critical race theory go back into the 1920s, back into what was called the Frankfurt America, that Marxism was not making any advance in the West.

And they said that the reason for that was what they described as the positional view of sexual other things, what they called the long march through the institutions, where they sought sociology or spiritual warfare, but I'm going to acknowledge that yes, it is...

And some of the buzzwords, buzz phrases.

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. Systemic racism and identity politics, political correctness, a variety of different ideology. 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 president of the United States, Joe Biden, that white supremacy is the major existential threat to the United States and is more dangerous than even the threats of terrorism from Al-Qaeda and Islamic extremists, et cetera.

White supremacy is the leading danger that we as Americans face. That is the utterance of a madman. We're living in a day and age when groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party are far from their glory days and their heights of membership.

Isn't this just absurd? I mean, I can't help but to think that even people that are giving lip service to this and even those people that applauded when 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.

I mean, what are your thoughts on that?

Yes, I think it's crazy, like you say. It really is anti-reason. It's anti-logic. In fact, one of the characteristics of this movement is that it's kind of impervious. They're not interested in dialogue.

It's not about a discussion that can be made. 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.

I think that's just simply false. I mean, for a country that elected and then reelected an African-American president to be described as so fundamentally blind, simply is a crazy proposition. Again, it's a subject because they don't want to enter into the discussion.

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. 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.

They're just here to offer their perspective or their ideas about that. And I would have to actually, the first thing out of my mouth would say, no, actually, 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, I stopped getting asked to come. And I think it really was the advanced ideology, like I said earlier, presuppositional way of looking at the world.

And they're not...

Brother Stolzler? Okay, yeah, you cut out there for a second. You may have to...

I don't know where it gets cut off.

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, neither of them, to a point where they really rejected even the idea of a discussion of an ideology, shouldn't even have a hearing.

And I think that they're correct, and that you're wrong, and there is no contrary evidence. So please be quiet.

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, 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, if you live outside of the USA. Don't go away. We'll be.

Right back after these messages. The Wokeness and the Gospel Conference is coming to Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas, June 11th and 12th. Register now by going online to wokenessandgospel .org. Featuring speakers such as Dr. Owen Strand.

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

Pastor Tom Buck of First Baptist Church in Lindale, Texas. Like Satan in the garden, woke hermeneutics undermines the very authority of the Word of God. I don't say that lightly. Also, hear from Tommy Nelson, Charles Stolfus, and Rodney Brown.

Confronting the lies being impressed upon the culture today, threatening even to divide the church, and answering with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Wokeness and the Gospel Conference coming to Denton Bible Church, June 11th and 12th.

Register online at wokenessandgospel .org.

The Anti-Reason and Anti-Logic of Wokeness

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Wokeness, White Supremacy Claims, and National Division

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in. Our guest today for the entire program is Charles Stolfus, Associate Pastor, Director of the Theological Institute, and Coordinator and Teacher in the Young Guns Program and Intensive Men's Discipleship Program at Denton Bible Church of Denton, Texas.

We are also promoting the Wokeness and the Gospel Conference this Friday and Saturday, June 11th and 12th, in Denton, Texas. We are discussing specifically the theme today, Wokeness, Philosophy, Sociology, or Spiritual Warfare?

How Satan uses this movement to undermine and destroy the true mission of Christ's Church? Our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name, at least.

City and state of residence and country of residence, if you live outside the USA. 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 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.

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. 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.

And actually, I don't use race, it's ethnicity. I think there's one human race and then there's multiple ethnicities. But the point is, if you go around to other countries, and again, as I said earlier, I mean, we elected and re-elected an 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, you know, you don't have to defend America in everything we do to actually recognize it.

Amen. We have an anonymous listener.

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

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. 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.

I was wondering what your guest's thoughts were on that. I'm sure they would recognize this as.

Like they do in the American high calling to serve. 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 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.

I mean, it's just really insane when you think about the vanishing of the 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. Yes, and I think a lot of people that serve in these places, like in the military or like in police force funded, and I think many of these people that are there now, when America did in fact appreciate these kinds of sacrifices.

But the question is really a good one to pose. In a setting in which people don't, you wonder, will individuals still these jobs that need to be done and that require such great sacrifice? 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. It's a phrase that was typically uttered by both those that could be identified as conservative and liberal.

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

To make that statement. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think you're correct on that. It's kind of that we are an anti-logic. And I see some of what really an attack upon what it means to be a human being, morality, movements that really go fundamentally at odds, reason that, I guess what I'm thinking about is the Kavanaugh hearings that took place a couple of years ago.

Fundamentally anti-reason. Yeah, I agree with you completely. I thank you, Anonymous, and keep listening to.

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We'll be shipping that Bible out to you if you are a first-time questioner. We have a BB in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says, can your guest please articulate in detail how the woke movement is actually a threat to the gospel?

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 believe in falsehoods unto their eternal damnation.

Yes, it's...wokeness.

Is fundamentally opposed, and I think what we find here is a philosophy that is, in many ways, anti-Christian gospel. And the preposition in Greek, anti, can sometimes be used opposed to or in the place of.

And what wokeness represents is to be opposed to that. I mean, when it places individuals in a place of condemnation with no hope mentally at odds with the gospel. And I think...

Thank you, BB. We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who says, what is your opinion about special services and events being set aside during the month of February for Black History Month? I understand it is true that perhaps great heroes of American history that happen 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?

Well, I don't have any problem.

With that at all. I mean, to highlight the distinctives of many kinds is fine. The question is whether or not someone advances that as in place of, or constantly come back clearly advanced in the Black and white.

As I said earlier, I think there's one human race. There are multiple ethnicities. These ethnicities sometimes show themselves in different color skin, but the question of melanin in one's skin, and that we all approach God equally as distinctives of maybe one group or another, will wittingly advance this idea of superiority.

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

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.

Well, first of all, that's nonsense. To hating someone because of their color or their ethnicity does not require any kind of authority. And as I've said many times in this program, the Apostle Paul had to rebuke Peter and had to very, very strongly condemn the Judaizers because they were Jews who were looking upon the Gentile Christians as something inferior and to the point where they didn't even want to eat with them.

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

He was condemning his fellow Jews who were Christians.

Am I making sense here? You are, and I think I would agree with you. And I think that your observation is that everyone is preferential in a way that we might require or entail any position that sometimes manifests itself in that situation.

I would also say, observe, that what you've just observed leads me to another observation that leads me to this idea that really there is panic. You know, the Bible talks about the schemes in 2 Corinthians 2.

He talks about Satan, that we're not ignorant of his schemes of evildoers, of the devil. And I think when you start unpacking that idea of schemes, you find the skillful ways in which Satan can confuse an issue.

And one of the ways he does that is through confusion of words. Redefine words in ways that are really not logical or not accurate. And so you define racism as a necessary element of a power. 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... Yes, and I agree with you 100%. And we have to go to our midway break right now. 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, 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 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.

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So please thank our advertisers, and also send in questions to our guest today, Charles Stolfus, on Wokeness, and our email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com. We'll be right back after these.

Messages. Don't go away. The Wokeness in the Gospel Conference is coming to Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas, June 11th and 12th. Register now by going online to wokenessandgospel .org. Featuring speakers such as Dr. Owen Strand.

If you just buy this ideology, the world's going to be made right. No, it's not. Only Jesus Christ makes the world right. Darrell Harrison of the Just Thinking Podcast. Sinners like you and me can be reconciled first and foremost to God, and consequently to one another.