April 15, 2020 Show with Dr. Latayne C. Scott on “Mere Coincidence vs. God’s Providence”

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

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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, 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 at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 15th day of April, 2020.

I'm so thrilled to have back on the program a returning guest who's one of my favorite guests,

Dr. Latane C. Scott. She is a former Mormon who came to saving faith in the true

Jesus Christ and true gospel of the true scriptures. She is an award -winning veteran of the

Christian publishing industry, having written over two dozen books, and having earned a Ph .D.

in biblical studies. Today we are going to be addressing mere coincidence versus God's providence, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

Latane C. Scott. Oh, what a pleasure to be here. Thank you. And I want to give our listeners our email address right away if they have questions.

It's chrisarnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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

.A., and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And if you want to hear any of the previous interviews that we've conducted with Dr.

Scott on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, if you go to past shows podcast and click on that on ironsharpensironradio .com,

and you will see a search engine, and you can type in the word or the name,

I should say, Latane, L -A -T -A -Y -N -E, and all of her interviews will come up, including one where she gives her testimony of leaving

Mormonism. In fact, she's done a couple, perhaps several, on that very issue. But today we are addressing mere coincidence versus God's providence.

That theme came to mind when hearing your own story, things that you have just recently revealed to the public about your life with Dan and the trials you have gone through that you have never mentioned in public before.

I'm assuming, since they're on YouTube, that you feel comfortable doing it to our audience as well. Absolutely.

And because of the fact that many people, many Christians, fall into two extreme errors,

I believe, when it comes to trials and difficult circumstances in their lives, on one extreme you have those who believe that whatever happens in our lives, perhaps if you're talking about a

Christian, they would say that it is just bad luck, it is coincidence, it's happenstance.

There are things that are completely separate from God's activity. He almost becomes the

God of the deists at that point, where he is standing far away or sitting on his throne far away, observing things that happen in our lives, and he has no part of them.

And then you have the other extreme, where you have Christians who either believe themselves or are being told that whatever bad circumstances arise in their lives, it is a punishment or chastisement from God, they are guilty of something, typically an unconfessed sin, and you have people who have added to their own misery of the trial they're experiencing a horrible guilt that may be compounded by the fact that they are not certain what it is exactly that God is chastising them or punishing them for.

So you have those two extreme ends of the spectrum, and I believe that the Bible, although obviously he does chastise those whom he loves, if a person has been sexually promiscuous and they contract

AIDS or some other disease, obviously that is a chastisement of God. And if they are a habitual smoker or involved in unhealthy activities and they get an illness, obviously that is in the same category.

But unfortunately we have dangerous folks out there like those in the

Word of Faith movement who teach that anybody who is not healthy and wealthy is guilty of having a weak faith or guilty of unconfessed sin.

But if you could pick up from there on how you see the differences between those two.

And let me also just comment quickly. Although I believe that the word coincidence is overused by people,

I think that there can be such a thing in regard to the false meaning that we often import into things that arise in our lives.

Let's say a woman has been longing to hear an invitation for a date from a man in her church and she has been praying about this for years and then all of a sudden she is sitting in a cafe sipping coffee and the man walks in the door.

So she is convinced that that is not just coincidence, that is definitely God's providence that she is going to be asked out on a date and eventually marry that man.

Now obviously that is absurd that we should not immediately import our own conclusions or meanings behind things that happen in our lives.

But at the same time I believe that everything that happens, sparrows falling to the ground, and even as David said that every page in his book were written before one of them came to be by God himself.

I believe that God is intimately involved in everything that occurs in our lives. But perhaps you could pick up with your own thoughts on that and then

I want you to give your story. It is somewhat of a riches to rags story about you and Dan and the trials that you have experienced.

Well Chris I am so happy to be able to do this and the video that you are referring to is on YouTube and it is called

Skin On Skin In, the one that you watched that was my story. I started off by saying that one of my favorite stories is about a little boy that was afraid and his mom prayed with him and read him

Psalm 91 and told him that the angels would watch over him and he didn't need to be afraid to go to sleep.

And he came in and told his mom, angels are fine but I need someone with skin on. And I was encouraged to make these videos not because I like making videos.

I didn't know anything about them. I had never made one before. But because I felt that people needed in this very unsettled time to be able to have something to hold on to from scripture and to see that someone who had held on to it could encourage them.

And so all these things are triadic. You know, there's not just the intersections of things on this earth.

They gain meaning when God intersects with them, when He is involved, when it's you and the circumstance and Him.

And in Malachi chapter 3 there's this wonderful verse that I just love, this passage, where people are discouraged just like many people are right now.

And they are saying to one another, it's futile to serve God. In other words, it doesn't make any difference whether you serve

Him or not. You know, everybody's in the same soup. And I think a lot of Christians feel that way, especially with this virus that, you know, we're all being mowed down by it.

But in Malachi chapter 3, there are a group of people who are in a similar circumstance where you couldn't really always clearly see the hand of God and interpret, be able to interpret what

He's doing. And a bunch of people got together and talked together. And Chris, that is exactly what's happening right now as people are listening to this program.

We are doing what they did in Malachi chapter 3 because we are talking about the faithfulness of God. And it says in Malachi 3, 16, those who feared the

Lord talked to one another, and the Lord listened and heard. There's that third part.

A scroll of remembrance was written in His presence concerning those who feared the Lord and uttered

His name. They will be mine, says the Lord God Almighty, in the day when I make up my treasured possession.

I will spare them just as in compassion a man spares his son who serves him. And you'll again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve

God and those who do not. So at this very moment, Chris, God is making a scroll of remembrance with you,

Chris, and me, and anybody who's listening, and we're talking about the faithfulness of the Lord. He's making a scroll of remembrance right now and recording our faithful words.

And I feel so privileged to be able to tell my story, not because we should ever base anything on the experience of someone else, but, you know, it's a story in the

Bible. Let not him boast who goes out with his armor on like he who comes back with it on.

In other words, you come back from the battle. You still got your armor and you still got your life. The day that you have something to say about the battle.

Isn't that true? Amen. Amen. And so tell us about how you were at one point enjoying with your husband,

Dan, a life of relative wealth, and you had, in some senses, a carefree life, at least in regard to finances, and then things that you were not expecting.

Just as we read in the Scriptures that everything that we intend to do, according to plans for the future, we are to pray in the

Father's will, and we don't know what could arise in our lives in the future. But if you could tell us about this story, a somewhat sad story that turns into a very encouraging story.

Well, my husband and I have been married about almost 40 years, and we had been very blessed with two wonderful children, with my ministry, with his successful career as an insurance agent.

His great contributions to our community here and helping to raise millions of dollars for charities in this area.

His involvement with Christian education, both at the undergrad and grade school and high school level.

I mean, he was on the Board of Directors of the Christian College, of Christian schools. So we were blessed with God to be able to use our resources to bless other people, and also for Dan, who has a charming personality, to help raise money for charitable causes.

And we had a beautiful 4 ,000 -square -foot house that we shared with our daughter and son -in -law, and a four -car garage, a recreational vehicle, two cars, lots of money in the 401k.

I mean, Dan had just turned 60, and we were on the curve to a fulfilling retirement.

And within 24 hours, on December 1, 2011, Dan went from walking into a doctor's office to being intubated, unconscious, and paralyzed for months on end.

Wow. And he got a disease that he had had once before, and he actually contracted a third time.

It's kind of a medical marvel. It's called Guillain -Barré syndrome. And if you've ever had a flu shot, down in the fine print, it says that you acknowledge that you can get

Guillain -Barré from having a flu shot. Well, Dan's Guillain -Barré was not from a flu shot, but it was catastrophic.

It was the profoundly severe axonal Guillain -Barré, which means that his body attacked its own nerve cells and destroyed the outer lining of all of his nerve cells.

And so, thank God, we had had the foresight to have a will made that gave me power of attorney, financial and medical, so that I could oversee his care.

And the first six weeks of this illness, I slept in the ICU with him and stayed there day and night, bathed there.

It was my privilege to be there, because I didn't want him to wake up and not have me there.

Well, you know, as people are aware right now, with the coronavirus and the uncertainty, bills go on.

And so, with the power of attorney I had, seeing that this was going to be a major and long -term illness, as it indeed turned out to be, when

Dan woke up several months later, I sold the car, I sold his car,

I sold the house, I sold the travel trailer, got rid of the dog for a while. And what were his reactions to that?

Well, once he was able to understand, you know, with that kind of neurological damage, it was a while before we could actually,

I mean, into a year or two before we could actually communicate because he was proud of me. I mean, we could communicate, but where he could actually process things.

I mean, his deficits were enormous, enormous. But he was proud of me because that is what we had set that up for, so that I could speak for him medically and so that I could dispose of our assets.

But we went from being very, very wealthy people with big bank accounts and lots of stuff to now, almost nine years later, about $6 million worth of medical bills.

His, you know, his care has been enormous during this time. And the 401K disappeared, the savings accounts disappeared, you know, all of that.

And I'm saying that not because I like talking about my finances publicly, but there are people listening today that are afraid of that kind of catastrophic loss because of an illness, this coronavirus.

And so I do know what it feels like, you know. And I do know what it feels like, you know, to use only the leftovers of hospital shampoo and soap for an extended period of time to have friends cut your hair.

But I felt God's great presence and blessing through all of this. You mentioned being punished.

You know, the Lord disciplines. He can discipline without punishing. Yes. It says in Hebrews, it says that the

Lord disciplines those he loves and you should treat it as friendship. And I would tell

Dan, when he was in a coma, I would lean over him and say to him,

Dan, you did nothing to deserve this. You didn't drink, you didn't smoke, you weren't drunk driving, you weren't gambling, you weren't using drugs.

This is something that has happened because the Lord is our master and our supervisor.

He's going to bring good through this. We're going to see his hand in this. But meanwhile, I will stay with you.

I will not leave you. And so I got to mirror for Dan. I had the privilege of mirroring for Dan the role of God who promises us, you know, that Jesus will never leave us or forsake us.

And so I want your listeners to know that you can face this kind of catastrophic loss, but if you have the

Lord and his body of believers, I mean, people have been astonished at our church, the

Mountainside Church of Christ, which has helped in any way you can possibly think.

And the many generous and kind friends who, when they saw what an enormous thing this was going to be, you know,

I mean, he will never completely recover from it. He right now is in a $64 ,000 wheelchair paid for by Medicaid, for which we're very grateful.

But, you know, the costs are ongoing. And I have not done without a single meal.

I have not lost my dignity. I've had clothes to wear. I've had friends and family help me through this.

My mother, who just passed away last week, and my brother paid for all my groceries for years.

My condolences. I did not know about your mom's passing. Yes, yes. I'm sorry. Yes, she passed away very suddenly a week ago, a little over a week ago.

But triumphantly, she was a believer. And even in this very difficult circumstances,

I was able to hold her in my arms as she died in the hospital. A great privilege, a great privilege.

Yes, my mom died in my arms in our living room, in a hospital bed in our living room.

And I was able to sing to her Amazing Grace, which became her favorite song. And she kissed me on the cheek, and she went home to glory.

Well, we have those precious memories. You know, we have those precious memories. And because she was a believer, it was triumphant when the doctor came in to pronounce her passing.

I told him, he walked in the room, I said, You are looking at two triumphant people. My mother is triumphant because she has gone home to her

Lord that she served, and I'm triumphant because I got to help her. So, yes, Chris, I didn't know we shared that.

That is a wonderful thing. But back to my point, you can lose everything.

And there are people right now that are listening that are afraid, I'm going to lose everything. And I can say to you, you might.

That's not what it's all about. What it's all about is the maintenance of your faith through all these things.

And in 1 Peter 1, 6 through 9, if you don't mind me reading a scripture, is that okay? Oh, of course.

Let me get over here to it. And I laughingly say often when I'm taking the time to actually look up a scripture that I would not have remained a

Mormon for as long as I had if I looked up scriptures that people pointed to me and said what they would say to it.

While you're looking it up, I'm going to give our e -mail address again, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And as always, give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence, and only remain anonymous if it's a personal or private matter.

Okay. Peter was talking to people, Christians of the first century, about trials.

And he says, In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

These have come so that your faith, of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may be proven genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when

Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you haven't seen him, you love him.

Even though you don't see him now, you believe in him. And you're filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy because you're receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

And I just say, hallelujah, because we cannot evaluate our experiences,

Chris, on the basis of how they make us feel. That's always a mistake. We have to evaluate our experiences on the basis of the character of God who supervises and superintends every single trial that comes our way.

You know, every time we say something faithful about him, I hear that divine pin scratching out our names and the dates on a scroll in heaven because we're talking about him.

We're glorifying him. And doesn't that totally obliterate the common notion of coincidence about happenstance when these are things that God intended as your text that you read?

Absolutely. And in Hebrews, it says the same thing. If you don't mind me reading that one in Hebrews chapter 12, it's even more specific,

I think, in Hebrews chapter 12, verse 11. And this is a verse that I shouldn't even have to look it up.

I have memorized this, and I say this to myself all the time. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.

Well, I mean, that's like a no -brainer, of course. You know, it doesn't feel good. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who've been trained by it.

Our trials are a training ground where we get to express our faith in God.

You know, when I first became a Christian, after leaving the Mormon church, I thought to myself, boy, I would have loved to have lived in the first century where I could, you know, be in the

Coliseum and give my life for Jesus. And Chris, as you know, I actually wrote about that scenario in my book,

A Conspiracy of Breath, about the early Christians. But I wondered, I thought, couldn't I do that?

But I get to do that every day by this training ground that God has put me in.

The more unpleasant the circumstance, as long as I know, as you pointed out, that I haven't brought this on myself, you know, that I didn't make this happen, just as Dan didn't make his

Gilmore happen. As long as I can be assured in my heart that I'm not being turned aside from sin, then

I am being trained in this, and I'll have that harvest of righteousness.

Well, you don't harvest your crop when you plant it. You don't harvest it while you're watering it.

It takes time. And so it says later on it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who've been trained by it.

By the way, you and I have different prayer lives because I very often have prayed, I thank God I was not born in the first century and fed to lions in the arena, in the

Colosseum. Well, we all have our own arenas and Colosseums.

That's right. And it may be whether or not we choose to acknowledge his name before people or we just kind of hide our faces and mumble something else.

It may be whether or not we're honest in our business dealings when we wear the name of Christ.

It may be whether or not we choose to stick our neck out in the name of Christ to someone else.

You know, the panhandler, if we say to him, I'm doing this because of Jesus.

You know, I'm doing this because of my Lord. By the way, we... Oh, I'm sorry.

To finish that thought, I was just going to read a question from a listener, but go ahead. No, no, go right ahead. B .B.

in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, says, Chris, when you were talking about the extreme differences of those believing either in coincidence or in being punished by God for everything that inflicts them, you forgot to mention a key factor believed by many

Word of Faith people, that all ill that comes upon Christians comes from the devil himself.

That's a very good point. I did not mention that, and that is very true, that the Word of Faith teachers believe that any kind of uncomfortable thing or tragedy that occurs in your life does come from Satan himself.

And they believe that God has nothing to do with it if you're a faithful Christian. And that is,

I think, a heresy. Although, I believe that with God's permission, just as with the trials that Job went through,

Satan does assault humans and Christians alike, meaning non -believers and Christians alike.

He does assault us, but he can never do so without the permission of God, which sounds like a strange thing, but it's a very biblical thing that we see in the book of Job.

Is that not right? Well, I would agree with that. And going back to Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews said,

You've forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons. My son, do not make light of the

Lord's discipline, nor lose heart when He rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those

He loves, and He punishes everyone He accepts as a son. Amen.

Well, thank you very much, Bibi, for sending in that question, and please continue spreading the word about Iron Trup and Zion Radio and contributing with your questions to the program.

And we have to go to our first break. If you have a question, please send it in to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And as always, give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. Latane C.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than 90 minutes to go is

Dr. Latane C. Scott, an award -winning veteran of the Christian publishing industry having written over two dozen books and having earned a

Ph .D. in biblical studies. We are addressing mere coincidence versus God's providence and our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail dot com chrisarnzen at gmail dot com

And Latane, it sounds like much of what we are discussing is reflected in a book of yours that I hope comes back into print in the very near future,

Crisis Cruciform of Praise. Crucible of Praise. Well, actually, you're not the first person who's mentioned that in the last few days.

That book was about some of the medical issues that we went through with our daughter before Dan had his medical issues.

I'm about to sneeze, for a minute if I sneeze. But yes,

I am working actively toward getting that back into print and getting it into people's hands because before Dan had this major medical issue, our daughter at age eight developed a malignant tumor on her skull that destroyed part of her skull.

And then three years later, she was at a friend's house swinging on a rope that broke and slammed the other side of her head into a brick wall.

In the midst of this, my mother had a stroke. And so the book was,

I wrote the book about how to activate our, I didn't have the language then,

I do have the language now, how to activate our neural pathways in our brains to form praise and to get our minds to travel along these neural pathways of praise instead of discouragement or depression or other pathways that we sometimes carve out for ourselves.

Well, keep your eye out for it, folks. It may come back into print. In fact, I'm sure you can order a used copy on Amazon.

It's Crisis Crucible of Praise and that's by Dr. Latane C.

Scott. And you can also see and hear Dr. Scott on YouTube.

And I'm so glad that you're on YouTube because I was able to listen to some of your devotionals and watch some of your devotionals on my television set rather than on my small phone.

Oh, dear. So it was good that I could watch it on a much larger screen.

Oh, wow. You know, I have another book which is in print which actually takes many of the principles that are in Crisis Crucible of Praise called

The Hinge of Your History, The Phases of Faith. And based on the teachings of Dr.

John Aller and Dr. J. Michael Strawn about triadic structure and about faith coming in phases,

I was able to, with God's help, write this book that is extremely useful for someone who's going through a period of discouragement or doubt.

It's not a personal book at all. I don't think I have hardly anything personal in it about my own life.

It's based on the lives of Abraham and Sarah and shows how this process, not a process, this sequence of phases of faith happened in everybody's life.

Abraham and Sarah received great and wonderful promises about an heir and about land.

And the further along in their lives they went, the more extravagant and lavish and specific the promises became, while at the same time the less able their bodies were to the point of what we hear in Hebrews impossibility to bear a child in terms of especially

Sarah. And if there's one thing I have learned that is more useful than any other concept to maintain my faith,

Chris, it is that faith comes in phases, that you have the promises of God but they are always followed by contradictions to those promises.

Situations, circumstances, thoughts, people that directly oppose the promises and make it seem as if the promises cannot be fulfilled.

As in Sarah's age when she was promised that she would give birth to an heir of Abraham and yet they obviously doubted it and Sarah left.

Yes, exactly. But see God's getting, as I said, more lavish and more specific in His promises and yet they're looking down at these old bodies and thinking, yeah, right, you know.

But it says that Abraham never wavered in unbelief concerning the promises of God.

Very interesting Greek term there, Chris. The Greek says he did never decide against the promises of God in unbelief.

And it really, many times when we are in crisis or other things we have to make a decision to believe the promises of God, to trust

Him and to reject other systems of thought. Now why do you think he took the concubine into his bedroom if he did not waver in his faith on that?

Oh, he didn't waver in his faith that he was going to have an heir but at that time Sarah had not been identified as the mother.

And so Sarah actually says to him, look, this isn't working and implied, we both believe the promise, let's help

God out by getting this younger gal in here and then we can participate in the promises of God.

We saw how that worked. I mean, the struggles in the Middle East are still being played out over that one decision to take the wrong woman to bed.

Right. In fact, Go ahead, I'm sorry. No, you go. I was just going to say that you brought up in one of your devotionals that when we are faced with decisions during a crisis, a trial, and we immediately gravitate towards the least uncomfortable route, it is typically the worst decision we could make.

You know, if there's anything this coronavirus quarantine has pointed out, it is that in a difficult situation, what is the most comfortable and way to avoid pain is not always the best thing.

I mean, I think many of us laid around for the first week in our sweatpants and pajamas and watched movies, but the least, the most comfortable and least painful thing resulted in hounds packed on our bodies and not feeling well and, you know, a lot of other good things, you know.

So our American culture, especially, has almost deified the concept of escaping from pain or escaping from difficulty.

You know, anything you can do to avoid pain or difficulty. And, you know, again, going back to what

God said in the Bible, no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful, but later on it yields a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who've been trained by it.

So, again, we can't evaluate the rightness or the goodness, the essential rightness of a situation by how it makes us feel.

You're going to feel bad when the Lord's disciplining you because it's supposed to feel bad. It's supposed to be a contract to other circumstances.

And yet we can look at that and say, what can we learn through this? What can we learn through this? One of the great examples of that is when our daughter was in the

ICU after she had that closed -head concussion falling against the brick wall.

It happened on a Friday night and one of our son's friends was spending the night and we ended up taking him to the hospital, just, you know, kind of gathering people up and following the ambulance and going to the hospital.

And during the whole time that the doctor was trying to find out what was wrong with Celeste and why she was so ill, the two boys, these two 11 -year -old boys, our son

Ryan and his friend Steven are out in the waiting room speculating on all the good things that God was doing through this and wasn't it great that this happened while we were in town and not on vacation?

Wasn't it cool that the ambulance got her right here to a doctor? You know, wasn't it neat that we're all together and we're not having to phone each other, you know, information?

I mean, that's what God loves is when people in trial talk about what

He's doing good through it when they assume the best of His character. When they, when they, when the primary purpose of their actions and their reactions is to show a unity with the purposes of God.

And that brings righteousness and peace. That brings great reward. Amen.

We have a comment actually from CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York.

And he says, I think an ideal quote that perfectly matches what you are discussing today is a quote from the great hymn writer

John Newton who penned Amazing Grace. And that sentence is,

Everything is necessary that God sends our way. Nothing can be necessary that He withholds.

Amen. I agree with that 100%. Excellent. Oh, I love that. I love that. I love that. And I'll tell you why this is an example of what

I call redundancy. When Christians are together and they're thinking and God puts similar thoughts in their heads,

I want to tell CJ, and that's who this was, right? Yes. Was it

CJ? Yes, CJ from Lindenhurst. CJ, thank you for that comment because one of the things

I want to share with listeners is the truth that is in Matthew 6.

And it's very familiar to us. You know, don't worry about tomorrow. God knows what you need and all that.

What that means is that if I prayed yesterday that God would give me what

I needed, that when I got up this morning, what is in my path is what He gave me that I needed.

Amen. That means my provision, that God is constantly throwing provision out in front of my path, whether it's provision of trial, whether it's provision of sustenance, whether it's provision of godly friends, whether it's provision of whatever, that if I pray,

God give me my daily bread and meet my needs, that when I get up the next morning, I have what I need.

The definition of contentment, and that is why I am so content living in a little low -income, small place, driving an old car.

I am utterly content because this is what God wanted for me and provided for me. And I just praise

His name, glorify His name for taking care of me because He threw out in my path yesterday what

I needed when I woke up this morning. I just stumbled across the provision and I'm so grateful to Him.

Amen. I want to read that quote again because it's so good by John Newton, the hymn writer of Amazing Grace and others.

Everything is necessary that God sends our way. Nothing can be necessary that He withholds.

Amen. And that perfectly intertwines with Romans 8 .28

That all things work together for the good for those who love God and are the cold according to His purpose.

And unfortunately, some people, some Christians, perhaps with good intentions, I think misuse that text and share that message of peace with unbelievers and they cut the sentence in half.

They just say, well, things work together for good. Well, that's not true unless you are the cold of God and you love

God and are the cold according to His purpose. Oh, you know what that means? It's that we live in a different cause and effect system than the rest of the world.

That means that we are in, we are all in the same circumstance that God has promised to soon ergao, work together, energize together every single event in our lives for our good because we have been called and because we love

Him. I used to tell my kids when they were in school, you can be sitting in a classroom and the same thing happened to every person in that classroom.

That you, my child, my son, my daughter, you and your Christian friends, the same circumstance will hit you but the effect on you will be different because you are called and He's going to energize things together for your good.

Amen. Even though it looks like the same thing is happening to all of you. You're in a different cause and effect system.

Amen. Now, I believe that it is very appropriate and good to use that text in Romans 8, 28 to evangelize the lost but you have to use the whole quote in its context, the whole text in its context and you use that to urge them to repent and believe upon Christ knowing that whatever it is they are facing, even their past sins that have perhaps brought their lives to complete ruin,

God will even use those things together for their good if they love God. And if they are called according to His purpose.

Yes. Absolutely. Well, we have to go to our middle break right now. The middle break is the longer than normal break because Grace Life Radio 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida requires of us a longer break in the middle of our show because they have to by FCC regulations air their own public service announcements and other things that localize this show to Lake City, Florida and while they do that we air our own globally heard commercials.

So I urge you to make wise, make best use of this time by writing down the information provided by our advertisers so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize them and that means subsequently we will more than likely remain on the air for a longer future because we absolutely depend upon our advertisers to exist as a program.

The funds that come in through the advertising are absolutely necessary and so therefore please try to keep our advertisers happy and patronize them as much as possible and if you can't patronize them send them a letter or email them or call them and say please keep supporting

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio we thank you so much for helping them remain on the air. Also use this time to write down questions for Dr.

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Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support

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As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

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Before we return to our discussion with Dr. Latane C. Scott on mere coincidence versus God's providence, we just have some very important announcements to make.

And the first is that tonight Pastor Joe Jakowicz, dear friend of mine, who is the founder of First Love Radio, which live -streams this program every day,

Pastor Joe has his own program on this very live -streaming network at FirstLoveRadio .org,

FirstLoveRadio .org, and he is going to be conducting his weekly show every

Wednesday night, Three Reasons to Hold Fast to Your Confession, with a special emphasis on Hebrews 4, verses 14 -16.

That's Three Reasons to Hold Your Confession on the Bible Talk program with Pastor Joe Jakowicz, which is heard tonight and every

Wednesday at 10 p .m. Eastern Time and 7 p .m. Pacific. That's Bible Talk with Pastor Joe Jakowicz.

Also, I want you to know that tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, we are going to be interviewing a friend, both of Dr.

Latane C. Scott, my guest today, and myself, Dr. Efflegard Smith. It's been a while since Dr.

Smith has been on the program, and I'm looking forward to our discussion with Dr.

Efflegard Smith. That's going to be tomorrow, 4 -6 p .m. right here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

The theme will be Hoarding vs. Prudent Preparation in Times of Panic.

That's Hoarding vs. Prudent Preparation in Times of Panic, and Dr. Efflegard Smith was at one time a faculty member at Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, California, and he is an author of numerous books, and we're looking forward to his return to the program.

And then, I might as well mention that on Friday, Joe Jakowicz returns to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to our weekly coronavirus update, as we have been doing every

Friday for quite some time. This will be, I believe, the fifth edition of that program on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And then, coming up, I'll skip all the way to May 21st, since it is another mutual friend of Dr.

Latane C. Scott and mine. Rosaria Butterfield will return to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to discuss how to be hospitable during an isolation crisis.

So, it will be, I think, an interesting and very helpful program, and I want to thank Rosaria's husband,

Kent Butterfield, for actually promoting today's interview with Dr. Latane C. Scott on his

Facebook page. We really appreciate that very much. Pastor Kent Butterfield is pastor of First Reformed Presbyterian Church of Durham, North Carolina.

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Don't put your family in financial jeopardy by giving to us, because those two things are commands of Scripture providing for your home and providing for your church.

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And now we are back with Dr. Latane C. Scott, award -winning author.

And she is also a former Mormon who by God's grace and mercy came to believe in and embrace the true

Jesus Christ of the true scriptures by his true saving gospel.

And we are delighted to have her back on the program. We are discussing mere coincidence versus God's providence.

And our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

And please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And we have such an anonymous question for you now,

Dr. Scott. I am having difficulty understanding the true meaning of one of the

Ten Commandments to honor thy father and mother in light of the fact that I was horribly abused by my ex -spouse.

And therefore, it is difficult to have my children honor him even though I know that they must to some degree.

But what does that actually entail? Do we ask of our children to act as if their father had done nothing wrong, etc.?

It is a difficult problem for me, and it also is a difficult problem for me to forgive him, especially since he does not express any admission of guilt nor a desire to be forgiven.

That hits really close to home, Chris. Because my own father was violent and mentally ill.

And when I answer that question, I'm answering out of a great deal of empathy for the person who wrote.

Because there are people who don't, by their lives, deserve respect.

There are people who, because of their lives, you can't continue to have a relationship with, which the reader or the listener certainly is in that position.

But I'll tell you what other people have said to me about my father, which has been very helpful to me.

They acknowledge the fact that because that person gave me life, my father gave me life, that was the avenue

God chose to have my life come about. God is the giver of life.

I realize people make decisions to come together in sexual union to produce bodies,

I know that, but God gives life. And since he made that decision, we honor

God by thanking him for anything we can think of that is good about that person. My father is now passed away.

It is edifying and helpful to me when someone says, I thank God for your father because he gave you life.

It is edifying and glorifies God when I say something like, I do have a few good memories of my father, and I try to think about those good memories.

Another thing, and again, this is such a personal question, but from the point of view of someone who no longer has the opportunity or ability to relate to my father because he's gone, it gives me an enormous amount of sobriety about the importance of this earth life.

Now is the day for salvation. Now is the day that decisions have to be made. I put my father and other people who have passed on in the hands of a

God who is both just and merciful. Because each of us has that end, each of us will die.

Each of us will go before the Father in judgment. Each person we meet and interact with or marry or divorce will have the same end eventually.

We all will meet God before the judgment throne. I choose, and again the person is asking for advice,

I choose to use that as a stern warning about the seriousness of sin and the importance of this moment, this day, to show faith, to show action.

And as is so difficult to do, to snatch someone back from the flames if you have that ability.

We don't always have that ability when someone's alive. Someone may not listen to us. They may not respond to us in the way that we want them to.

But our conscience, we have at least the salve on our conscience that we tried.

Having been the child in the scenario that your listener is talking about, it's better,

I guess, I would have been better served not to know a lot of things that I knew about my dad.

But children can accept things as inexplicable because a great deal of the world is inexplicable to them.

And a parent can say, I choose to look at this good thing and remember this good thing while understanding that we can't have a relationship with that person.

I hope that helps because that is deeply personal to me and very painful, as I'm sure it is for your listener.

Amen. And obviously, the command to honor thy father and mother does not mean that we are to do something that God forbids, and that is lying.

We're not to candy coat anything. We're not to act as if something doesn't exist when this person, especially if they are an unrepentant individual, by our silence may continue to seriously harm other people's lives.

So I think that obviously with the counsel of one's own elders in their church, the way that they respond to these things, obviously we're not to do evil to our enemies.

We're supposed to love and pray for our enemies. So that would include a parent who has done horrible things to you and may be continuing to do so or to a spouse or someone like that.

And so we are to pray for them. We are to show them love.

But showing love is also telling them to repent, commanding them to repent. And that is the best thing for them, to repent.

And even though being told to repent is an unpleasant thing, a hurtful thing, being obedient to God and being someone who loves another person, who is looking out for their best, sometimes means doing things that hurt them.

Am I not right, Latham? I agree 100 percent. If we don't operate on our feelings but rather on God's commands, we're protected.

He protects our hearts and our minds if we obey Him. And He takes the brunt.

God takes the brunt of these things. Again, it's Romans 8, 28. If we love Him and we're called according to His purpose and we obey

His commands, then He becomes our protector. He becomes our helper.

Now, of course, you know, one of the books, as you know, Chris, that I have co -written with another author about sexual predators, there are situations where you have to keep a child away from an adult.

Yes, that's right. Dr. Beth Robinson, correct? Yes, yes. You have to be proactive in those things.

I didn't get the sense that your listener was talking about an extreme like that.

I got the sense that this is an unrepentant person who has damaged the family, but not in that way.

So I don't want to hedge on that, but, you know, sexual offenders are a special case.

And a lot of the rules of compassion and other things are only appropriate when they protect the child who can't protect himself or herself.

You know, one of the things that you brought up in one of your devotionals was how the truths we are discussing today, some of them are brought up and seen clearly in the account of Joseph in the

Old Testament after his jealous brothers beat him, strip him, and throw him into a pit and then sell him into slavery.

And then he later rises to power in Egypt and his brothers are brought before him and they're terrified.

And Joseph puts them at ease, or at least attempts to put them at ease, by saying, what you meant for evil,

God meant for good. Isn't this a clear picture of God's intimate involvement even in the worst trials in our lives?

But he means them for a different purpose. It's not that he is uninvolved. It's not that he was just watching these things happen from his throne in heaven as a passive observer.

He has been always intimately involved in everything that we're going through. And in his providence brought them about to bring about a greater purpose.

There's a very interesting reference to Joseph in the Psalms where it talks about when

Joseph was in prison that the word of the Lord tested Joseph. We don't think about God's word testing us.

But Joseph was able to do what he did at the end of his life with his brothers to assure them that he wasn't going to take revenge on them for the bad things they'd done to him.

He said, what you meant for evil, God meant for good, for the salvation of many people.

And in the Psalms it says that the word of the Lord tested him. Joseph, sitting in a jail cell, repeatedly being thrown in a jail cell, you know, more than once, being brought up and then brought down, up and down in his life.

Joseph had to sit there within his head with the promises of God that were manifested by these two dreams that he had about his brothers and his parents bowing down to him.

That was what God showed him and yet nothing could be further than the truth than him sitting in a jail cell and the word of the

Lord was testing him there. Phase 1 promises, phase 2 contradiction to the promises.

It's exactly what we're doing. And Chris, I'm so glad you brought up Joseph because here's the truth of this.

We are tested every day by the word. Will we believe what

God said or are we going to look at our own circumstances and say, I'm going to assess what's going on by what

I see or I'm going to assess what is going on by what God has told me about the situation.

The word of the Lord tests us all and only when you're able to get through that terrible circumstance, you can do what

Joseph does further down the road. What you meant, what you meant for evil, what you intended doesn't make any difference because God's sovereign purpose was so active that no matter what you meant to happen,

God sooner or later will move together, ground together, you know, move together the circumstances to bring good not only for the individuals directly in the situation but for generations of people afterwards.

And of course the perfect example of that truth is the murder of Jesus Christ.

He did say that no one takes his life but he lays it down willingly. But at the same time,

God used to fulfill his prophesied and ordained act against his own son, which he always had intended to be the sole hope for the salvation of his people.

He used the sinful and satanic and wicked acts of men to bring that about.

Even when Judas betrayed him, the scriptures tell us that a devil entered him.

And we have the torture of the perfect spotless lamb, the only sinless man on the face of the earth who ever lived and ever will live, not only being tortured verbally by those saying cruel and wicked things to him, but physically being whipped and beaten and spat upon and then dying one of the most excruciating deaths imaginable to mankind on the cross.

And on top of that, even worse than his physical fate, receiving upon himself the wrath from the

Father that we as sinners deserve, that he did not deserve. And I love the phrase, the great exchange, because our sins were imputed to him and his righteousness has been imputed to us in our salvation.

But that is a perfect example, I think, of an ordained act of God that involved the most unjust and satanic and evil act in all history that was used for the benefit, the eternal benefit, of countless men and women and children who turned to him in faith.

I'm reminded of what Stonewall Jackson once told some people. He said, you know, let us not take the counsel of our fears.

The big difference that occurred to me as you were speaking, Chris, and I just so much appreciate what you said.

As you were speaking, I thought, you know, the difference between you and me as we dread something, as we fear something, is it's like it's this endless realm of possibilities of how things could go.

Jesus, in that garden, praying, is there any other way? And then saying, thy will be done, not mine.

He knew what he was going to have to go through. He knew this was going to end in death. He knew this was going to be, at least temporarily, a disaster.

You know, total loss. Humiliation, as you said. You know, being stuck up on a pole, literally, to die.

I am so grateful to him that while I am sitting here percolating in this could happen and that could happen, you know, in my fears, he knew the route it was going to take.

He said, you know, if there's another way, let's talk about it. But he knew the route it was going to take. And he entered into that knowing that the worst really would happen to him and that he had to, as it says in one of my other faithful letters, one of my favorite scriptures, that those who suffer according to God's will commit themselves to their faithful creator and continue to do good.

It all comes back to the character of God. If you trust him, if you believe he is who he says he is, then you can do even what

Jesus did. Throw yourself on his mercy and trust him to bring you through. And he always, always will.

Amen. And we are now going to our final break. It's going to be much more brief than the last one. If you intend to write in a question, do it immediately, because we're rapidly running out of time.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We're going to be right back with Dr.

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We are now back with Dr. Latane C. Scott for the final segment of our interview. And we have

John in Bangor, Maine, who has a very interesting question. He said, does not viewing the trials we go through as solely being a...

I have to enlarge the email here, I'm sorry, the font is very small. Here we go.

That the source is only Satan himself, and God has nothing to do with it. Does that not make it appear as if Satan is more powerful than God, at least during those times, and that Satan's will trumps

God's if we remove God completely from these trials and circumstances? I agree with that statement,

I don't know, how do you respond to that, Latane? I do too, and Chris, you had mentioned earlier that the

Book of Job shows us that God gives permission to Satan to do something, and of course the one giving permission is always more powerful than the one being permitted, is that not true?

Great, thank you, John in Bangor, Maine. And we have Ronald in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who has something similar to say, but from the other end of the spectrum.

Those who say that the trials that come into our lives have nothing to do with God, but are a pure happenstance or coincidence, don't they import meaninglessness into these trials that we face, rather than trials that have been designed lovingly by a

God who truly cares for us, who knows that these things will bring about the best in us and be the best for us?

I like what he said, and it occurred to me that maybe another way, maybe not better, but another way of saying that is that God crafts individually trials for us.

If He's the one that knows every hair on our heads, if He's the one who knows the data bussing, if He knows us inside and out, as David said, if there's nothing in us hidden from Him, then why would such a loving

Father not individualize things in such a way to help us grow, to help us to get the maximum benefit?

I often say that God is a very economical God. He does exactly what is needed in any situation to promote our well -being, to return us to Him.

He's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repent. This is a

God who cares so intimately for us that He would not treat each of us just like He treats our neighbor.

If He gave us individual fingerprints, He'll give us individual trials. Yes, and the listener touched on something that this has brought me the greatest comfort through the worst of my trials in my own life, is knowing that there is a purpose.

And the listener was talking about if we say these things come by coincidence or happenstance and not from the very hand of God, they are meaningless.

If the loved one dies, it absolutely has no purpose, has no meaning, and therefore that brings about much greater misery.

I think sometimes people trying to defend God and defend

His character in ignorance, in a way that doesn't reflect the truths of the Scripture, they wind up doing more harm to the integrity of God than doing

Him any service because they really diminish His omniscience, His omnipotence, and it really is not a biblical understanding.

As I mentioned earlier on in the program, it is more of a deist understanding of who

God is. I agree. I agree, Chris. That's very perceptive. Well, I want to make sure before I go to any more listener questions that you at least have four or five minutes to distill and to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we go off the air.

Okay. Thank you, Chris. Would you like for me to do that now? Yes, exactly. Oh, okay.

I'm sorry. The most important thing I've learned is that faith comes in phases.

We have the promises of God, but they are always followed by a contradiction to those promises and that's where our testing takes place.

The Book of James says, Consider it all joy when you face many kinds of trials. The Greek word is multicolored.

The trials are multicolored. Chris, what you go through is colored differently than my trial.

My trial of 20 years ago is colored differently than this trial.

In each of these contradictions to the promises of God, we have the privilege of rising up, showing our joy and our confidence in the

Lord that we know we're being treated as sons and daughters. We know that He is doing this only for our good.

We know that He doesn't have it in His nature to harm us, to try to hurt us if we are called and if we love

Him. So I want everyone listening to hear in my voice, in my heart, how greatly

I praise the God of my trials, how much I glorify His name, how grateful

I am to Him that He has honored me with trials. I am so grateful to Him. Yes, amen.

And one thing that we have time to bring up, and I know that you're open to discussing this briefly, since we only have a little bit of time, but since I have interviewed you on this very subject before,

Bar, you were almost, on a human side of the spectrum, obviously

God did not intend this before the foundation of the world, but you were almost a number that could have been listed amongst the casualties of murdered children in the womb because your mom had considered having an abortion when she was pregnant with you.

I mentioned that my father was not a good man. He had some good characteristics, but he was not a good man and his actions were not good, let's just put it that way.

My mother, thousands, over a thousand miles away from home, 19, 18 years old, or 19 years old when she became pregnant with me, she told me one time that if any abortion had been available to her, she would have spared a child growing up in that household that kind of upbringing.

She didn't want to abort. She wouldn't have wanted to abort me because she didn't love me.

She would have wanted to abort me because she did love me. But God protected me in that, and I see in that the depth of unhappiness, the depth of misery she was in.

But the truth in Hebrews is, it's appointed to a man or a woman who wants to die in the judgment.

This is the only life I had. If it had been cut short in the womb, that was my life.

God has been gracious enough to allow me to live, allow me to praise his name, to glorify his name.

He's given me privileges through these difficulties, and I'm so grateful to him.

Yes, so we thank God that he intervened in that circumstance and your mother had a change of heart, and that you have blessed the body of Christ through your gifts that he has given you.

And I am just so thrilled that I have had the privilege of knowing you as friends since the 1990s, and trust that friendship will continue into the future as long as we have breath in our lungs.

And let's see here. We have an anonymous listener who asks,

One thing that I cannot find comfort in is fearing the eternal state of those whom

I love who have passed without knowing Christ, and I continue to have terror and anxiety over my children right now because none of them are born -again believers in Christ.

How do I overcome this sadness and this fear? I understand that.

I understand that. I comfort myself by knowing that they go before a

God who is completely kind and completely loving and completely just.

When they go before him, he makes the right decision. He knows the insides and the outsides of every heart, every motivation, every person.

If exceptions are going to be made, they have to be made by God, not by us. So I rest in his character, the

God of justice who is kind and loving. Some things we can't do anything about.

That's one of the realities of this earth life. People have human will, they will do what they want to do, they will be destructive.

The only way I can keep myself from going crazy, as this person is describing, you know, with a great sorrow, is to remember that he is completely kind and completely just.

Amen. And that great text from the scriptures, shall not the judge of all the earth do right?

Do right, yes. Shall not the judge of... Yes, Abraham, Abraham to God. Abraham said that to God.

He was reminding God that he knew that the judge of all the earth would do right.

He will do right. That is something that comforts me whenever I have faced or thought of similar circumstances.

And also we have to remember, unless we are physically present with someone when they die, we do not know with omniscience that that person did not come to faith in Christ during their last moments.

Had it not been recorded in scripture and had the loved ones of one of those thieves on the cross, if he had family members that were gathered nearby, but if they had not been nearby nor later read what happened there, they would have assumed if they had faith of any kind that that person was in hell.

And that person, not long before he took his last breath, was saved by Christ himself.

So when people have told me with certainty that their father is in hell, that their mother is in hell, that their children who have died prematurely are in hell, that kind of thing,

I ask them, were you with them? And they say no. And I say, well, don't completely rule out the fact that if you have evangelized them and if you know that they have heard the gospel, you can't rule out what might have occurred moments before they left this earth.

I mean, I'm not saying that we should have an overly emphasized trust in that kind of thing, but it's still a ray of hope.

No one knows what goes on underneath the closed eyelids of a dying person. Amen. No one knows.

Amen. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Latane C. Scott. And if anybody wants to find out more about her, her writings and her other activities, go to latayne .com,

L -A -T -A -Y -N -E dot com. And you can also find her devotionals on YouTube and just type in Latayne, L -A -T -A -Y -N -E

C. Scott, L -A -T -A -Y -N -E C. Scott, and you can find her videos of devotionals that she has created.

And I look forward to your return to our program, Latayne. Thank you so much, Chris. And I want everybody to remember, for the rest of your lives, that Jesus Christ is a far greater