April 15, 2024 Show with Terry Basham on “From Man’s Free Will to God’s Free Will”

Iron Sharpens Iron

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April 16, 2024

00:03: Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer
00:11: George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend
00:16: Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,
00:23: Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:31: Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
00:38: 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.
00:50: 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.
00:58: And now here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,
01:10: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet
01:16: Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.
01:21: This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 15th day of April 2024.
01:31: And last week, some of you may remember that I had an interview with an independent fundamentalist
01:42: Baptist who came to the Doctrines of Grace. His name is Tim Crockett, and he was our guest last week and had a thoroughly enjoyable time interviewing
01:56: Pastor Tim, who is the pastor of Bible Way Baptist Church of Worcester, Massachusetts.
02:04: But today I have on the program a friend of his who has made a very similar journey, and he's also a mutual friend of a man who almost became my pastor a number of years ago,
02:20: Pastor Josh Fryman, who at one time was pastoring in Riverhead, Long Island, where I was intending to move before I unexpectedly moved to Pennsylvania.
02:33: And I was all set to have Pastor Josh be my pastor, but God had different plans, and Pastor Josh is also pastoring in North Dakota now.
02:46: But today we have on the program Terry Basham, who is pastor of Faith Baptist Church of Sheboygan, Michigan.
02:55: And today we're going to be addressing From Man's Free Will to God's Free Will, an independent fundamentalist
03:00: Baptist's transforming discovery of the doctrines of sovereign grace. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Terry Basham.
03:13: Hey, thank you. Thank you very much. And am I— That's a great title. I'm sorry, you broke up a little there, brother.
03:20: I said that's a great title, From Man's Free Will to God's Free Will.
03:27: I like it. Amen. And tell us about this church that you pastor,
03:35: Faith Baptist Church of Sheboygan, Michigan. Yeah, I've been the pastor here at Faith Baptist Church for a couple years.
03:43: It is technically an independent fundamental Baptist church still.
03:51: It doesn't meet the normal standards of those terms, though. It's a GARBC church, and my fundie friends usually don't recognize these kind of churches as autonomous, independent churches, but they are.
04:07: Yeah, and I've heard the slogan, the grand army of rebelling Baptists. That's funny.
04:17: So this church is more like a Southern Baptist church, traditional Baptist polity, pastor, deacons, except we have a more contemporary style of music.
04:29: It's not a Reformed church or Reformed Baptist. It's inscribed to the New Hampshire Confession, and it's a church that's serious about the gospel and doctrines, because we have tons of Bible studies going on all the time, just teaching through God's Word.
04:46: But the church is basically pretty chill on stuff that's not front burner issues.
04:55: It's a new kind of church for me. I came from a very strict, ultra -separated kind of churches.
05:04: Yes. Then I moved into a different kind of churches, and you're just kind of following the doctrines, following the truth, going where you're supposed to go.
05:16: And I spent almost 10 years in Oklahoma pastoring a church that was a landmark
05:23: Sovereign Grace Baptist church. Oh, wow. And that is where I, in that fellowship of churches,
05:32: I actually preached at Bible conferences with Primitive Baptist, Hardshell Baptist, Absolute Predestination Baptist, Anti -Free
05:42: Offer Baptist. That was a very interesting period of my life.
05:49: When you were in the Sovereign Grace landmark Baptist church, did you ever become acquainted with Jack Green in Texas?
05:59: I do know that name. Jack Green's in Thailand now. Yes. He's been in Thailand.
06:05: Yeah, and so Jimmy Nelson, who pastors his old church. That's right. That's right. I want to say that's
06:11: Landmark Baptist Church. Is it Landmark? Yes, I believe that's the name of it.
06:17: And they also had a newsletter and a seminary. Yep. I've preached with Jimmy before.
06:26: Small world, because Jimmy wouldn't know me, but I am familiar with that ministry.
06:32: And I used to listen to Jack Green's sermons. I always enjoyed his preaching.
06:37: He was a very powerful preacher. Yeah. You know, he has a little book he wrote.
06:43: Well, I've only seen one copy of it. I never owned it. But it's called The Calvinism of J.
06:49: Frank Norris. And he went through some of Norris' books and sermons.
06:57: And he said, this is Calvinistic language. This is Calvinistic language. It kind of pulled it out to show that that's the side of the fence that Norris was on.
07:06: But, you know, he may have been reading that into Norris. I'm not really certain. I'm not a Norris scholar, so.
07:13: Yep, and of course, as you are probably aware, there are a landmark Baptists that are vehement anti -Calvinists.
07:22: Yes, there are. Yeah, well, if anybody wants to find out more about Faith Baptist Church in Sheboygan, Michigan, you can go to their website, faithbaptistupnorth .org,
07:34: faithbaptistupnorth .org. And God willing, we'll be repeating that website later on in the program.
07:43: Well, we have a tradition here whenever we have a first time guest on the program, that guest gives a summary of their salvation testimony.
07:53: And that would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which you were raised, if any, and what kind of providential circumstances our sovereign
08:02: Lord rose up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you.
08:08: And in this case, since we are talking about a theological journey that the
08:15: Lord took you on, that radically transformed your thinking, basically in one degree or another, our whole program today, our whole interview is going to be about your testimony.
08:26: But if you could start with your upbringing, where you were raised, and what kind of family, and what kind of religious atmosphere, etc.
08:35: Sure, I was very blessed to be born into a Christian home.
08:41: My father was ordained to the gospel ministry October of 1978, and I was born in April of 1978.
08:50: So I've spent my entire life in the ministry against my free will.
09:01: So I grew up in a just a traditional Baptist home, and my father was a
09:08: Bible student, and he went to Bible college near East Peoria, Illinois.
09:15: Our college is not there anymore. It's called Fellowship Baptist College. And then we moved, to my great chagrin, when
09:23: I was eight years old, we moved to Virginia from Central Illinois. And my dad pastored there, a little country church.
09:33: And when you grow up in church, I made all the childhood professions.
09:39: I got baptized when I was eight years old. And I don't really remember anything about the conversion experience.
09:46: I remember getting baptized because, you know, getting held under the water by your dad. I can still remember it.
09:54: And then we moved back to Illinois when I was a teenager.
10:00: My dad pastored church, and I was about to get in some big trouble.
10:07: And, you know, I kind of would act like I wasn't saved that way, because dad couldn't punish me just for being lost, right?
10:14: So I worked the system a little bit. But when I was 15 years old,
10:20: I was in church, and I really don't remember anything my father said that particular
10:29: Sunday. But throughout the whole service, I had, for the first time, conviction of my sins.
10:38: Wow. I really knew that I was unrighteous. And how old were you again? I was 15.
10:43: Okay. 15 years old. I knew that I was unrighteous. When you grow up in a certain tradition, you always have to wait till the end to get saved.
10:58: So I waited till the sermon was over, and I went forward and got on the mortar's bench and prayed and confessed
11:07: Christ as my Savior. And then the Lord really saved me.
11:13: He really flipped on the light in my dark heart, and I was a different person.
11:20: About a year later, when I was 16 years old, I got baptized that fall. Oh, so in other words, you got baptized again.
11:29: Yeah, I got baptized again. I have heard of people not having childhood baptisms, and then having a profession of faith and not being rebaptized.
11:42: I've heard of that. My dad said, if you weren't saved the first time, it wasn't
11:50: Christian baptism. It's just empty formality. Actually, I agree with that, actually. Yeah.
11:56: So I went forward, because now I was a believer. And I went forward again on a
12:01: Sunday morning and told my dad I wanted to get baptized as a believer. And usually, a good
12:08: Baptist will wait until you got a whole bunch of people to baptize, right? And so we waited several months until we had a pile of them.
12:17: The church my dad passed through did not have a Baptist tree. It was in a small building. So we borrowed a
12:24: Baptist tree down the street. It was called a General Baptist Church, which
12:30: I think those were Armenian Baptist churches. They were not GRBC. They're a little different breed.
12:37: And they would let us use their Baptist tree. Me and a couple other guys were baptized over there. And then about a year later,
12:45: I was riding down the road in my truck. And I really felt like the
12:50: Lord was calling me to preach. And I can remember where I was at on the street in a little town in Illinois.
12:58: And I also remembered I did not want to do it, because my dad was a pastor. It looked like a really stinky job.
13:06: And I wanted nothing to do with it. And so in that old Southern tradition,
13:11: I felt the call. And then I went running the other way, you know. And so I spent three years.
13:18: I was 16 to, I guess I was 16, almost three years, trying to get away from the call to preach.
13:28: I tried to do a lot of sinning, see if I could get rid of it that way, you know.
13:34: And nothing worked. And then finally, when I was 18 years old, I surrendered.
13:41: I just told the Lord, I said, Lord, I'll just, whatever you want me to do, I'll do. And I surrendered my life to preach.
13:49: That's how we did it. There's different thinking about the call to ministry, you know. But the tradition
13:55: I grew up in was, if you had the call, that's when you became a preacher, you know.
14:02: And so I surrendered to preach, preached my first sermon a week or so later.
14:09: And then off to Bible college, and I've been at it ever since.
14:15: Praise God. And you mentioned earlier, as far as the Baptist church of your upbringing, that it was a traditional
14:22: Baptist church. If you could be more specific, I think that you also, I know that, and I believe you said you're currently in a
14:31: GRB congregation, but was your dad also GARB? No, my dad, that's interesting.
14:42: I was thinking about the different kinds of Baptist churches I've been a part of. My dad was saved at a church in Illinois that was pastored by a guy from Greenville, well, he went to Harold Sightler's school in Greenville, South Carolina.
15:01: So it had a definite camp meeting revivalistic atmosphere. And so the kind of church
15:06: I grew up in was just a pastor, deacons, when
15:12: I say regular Baptist, just normal Baptist polity. Nothing special, congregational government, that kind of thing.
15:18: And I'm not sure if I'm saying that the right way.
15:29: Well, it sounds like an adequate description to me. Just the normal stuff.
15:36: And where was your dad on the doctrines of sovereign grace? You know, at one point, my dad probably would have said he was a
15:47: Calvinist. But he doesn't say that anymore, because he wouldn't say that anymore, because there's a definite stigma that goes along with it.
15:58: Of course, when my brain became able to think about things, my dad had already been in the ministry, you know, 20 years.
16:08: And he'd already thought through a lot of stuff. My dad was a prolific reader. He really was a big fan of the
16:18: Civil War. I've been to Stonewall Jackson's home tons of times in Lexington, Virginia, and a lot of those places.
16:25: I was there too, by the way. Yeah. And so because those guys were
16:31: Presbyterians, my dad was a Baptist, he still had respect for their soteriology.
16:37: And so when I was growing up, there was a lot of emphasis on the conviction of sin.
16:44: So my dad really wasn't a hyper -soul winner, or we call them quick prayer artists, you know, one, two, three kind of stuff.
16:53: Like Jack Hiles. My dad was more... Yeah, yeah. But I married a girl who both of her siblings graduated from Jack Hiles' college up there.
17:02: So I got into the Jack Hiles kind of fundamentalism when
17:07: I went to college. Because when I left home, I thought, I'm going to go to Bible college. It was a school that was ran by one of my dad's friends who had...
17:18: He actually introduced my parents to each other from Illinois. But he had moved to Arkansas and started...
17:23: He was pastoring a church and started a college. And he was a Hiles -ish kind of person.
17:30: And so I went to a school that was Jack Hiles on every level.
17:36: I mean, just basically a knockoff of it in many ways.
17:44: So I really left a very kind of healthy kind of Bible teaching environment to go to a place that wasn't that great.
17:53: And of course, I didn't know beans from buttermilk, to be honest with you. And I went to school down there, learned the...
18:03: It was not a very theological school. I learned how to work a Sunday school bus and do junior church.
18:09: And one thing I got to give it up to the Fundies is they were always very motivated to get the gospel to people.
18:19: I mean, they were always knocking doors. That was passing out tracts, preaching on the street.
18:26: That's one of the things that I really, I still admire about that group is their evangelistic zeal.
18:34: And sometimes they focus too much on results and numbers.
18:42: But I don't know, it's just... You can go to extremes, right?
18:47: And the tendency of man is to overcorrect. Yeah, and there could also be... And I'm pleased,
18:54: I hope that nobody misunderstands me to hear that I am broad brushing or something and accusing all independent fundamentalist
19:03: Baptists of what I'm about to say. This can be true with anybody. There can be a pride element where you are bragging, even if you would never in a million years admit to that or even view it that way, where you're bragging about how many souls you've won to Christ.
19:21: And that can be a part of the motivation to put notches on your belt.
19:27: And when that becomes a part of your motivation, you very often will accept or adopt a
19:35: Jack Hiles form of evangelism where you are telling people that they are without question, they are saved, they are born again, simply because they favorably respond to how you coach them with a sinner's prayer or something to that effect.
19:58: My dad, my dad, I'm sorry. No, no, I'm finished. My dad's pastor, he taught that assurance always came later.
20:09: And he said, it's not always immediate. And so you would make a profession of faith, and if it was a really a genuine conversion, you'd almost have almost a work of grace.
20:22: Where you really came to know in a deep way, I belong to Christ.
20:28: I've been born again. I've been made new. Now something that, like my grandmother, she said she grew up in the
20:36: Pentecostal holiness church, and they were never sure that they were saved.
20:43: And so when she started going to the Baptist church, and she was born again, it took her two years before she really had assurance of her salvation, because she still had that old thinking she had to get out of there.
20:58: And that kind of experiential religion was my core, my foundation, a real hearty, authentic spiritual life.
21:11: When I got into college with the hiles kind of stuff, it was less deep.
21:17: It was definitely more shallow. Then after I finished college,
21:23: I got married while I was in college. The best thing about going to college was I met my wife, and we were 19 when we got married.
21:30: We've been married for 26 years. We've had five children. And she was the best part about that.
21:38: And I accidentally married a wonderful Christian girl. I didn't really understand.
21:46: Well, it might've been an accident on your part, but it wasn't on God's. That's right. Tons of times.
21:53: Lloyd Sprinkle, I don't know if you ever run across him. Oh, yeah, I have spoken with him.
21:59: I know he's with the Lord now, but I used to purchase books from him.
22:04: And he also used to donate books every year to my free pastor's lunches, because I give away free books at my pastor's luncheons.
22:15: And Lloyd used to provide 100 copies every year of a title that I selected from him.
22:26: And then even after he went home to be with the Lord, his family continued that tradition for at least a few more years.
22:36: Yeah, that's great. I had the privilege of... I preached with him at a Bible conference in Oklahoma.
22:42: We preached in the same meeting. And we had good - Ironic that he was a
22:47: Baptist with the name Sprinkle. Yeah, I know, isn't that funny? Sprinkle Publications, yeah, the
22:54: Baptist, that's great. Wait, I was just gonna say, he said, he told me in talking about this kind of stuff at that conference was that we don't make...
23:07: He said, don't make Providence your Bible, make it your bed. We rest in the
23:12: Providence of God. Oh, that's a great saying. Yeah, I got written in front of one of my
23:19: Bibles, the Bible I had that week. Schofield Bible, incidentally. Now, it seems to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, that when you went to Bible college, that kind of temporarily derailed a sounder
23:39: Baptist theology that led you into, as you were comparing it to more of a
23:47: Jack Hiles understanding in methodology, which is a breeding ground for false converts.
23:53: It seemed that that college experience derailed you in that direction for a while.
24:00: Yep, and of course, we have to chalk that up also to the Providence of God and that kind of thing. So that was,
24:06: I got out of school, I was ordained, I went out into the ministry. And then
24:12: I worked in those kinds of churches as an assistant pastor and youth pastor. And then
24:18: I moved to, I'm not gonna say where I moved, I've moved to the
24:23: Midwest and to work for a pastor who was gonna retire when
24:29: I got there, that's what he told me. But once I got there, I quit my job at UPS to move up there to be the assistant.
24:36: Then he was gonna retire and I was gonna become the head pastor. And when I got there, he told me, you know what,
24:42: Terry, I changed my mind. And so I really, I was very angry about it.
24:51: And then I wound up, he said, just stay here and be my assistant pastor. And I said, I can't stay here and be your assistant pastor because I don't like you anymore because you're a no good liar.
25:01: And so I went to a really large independent fundamental church that had a pastor there who was a high, he is a
25:13: Hiles graduate. He'd also gone to Fairhaven Baptist College. And there was a steady stream of people from those colleges going to and from those colleges at that church.
25:26: And while I was there, I wanted to pastor I was tired of being an assistant.
25:33: I got in connection with a guy named James Beller. James Beller, pastor at a church in St.
25:40: Louis, Missouri. He wrote a book about St. Louis called The Soul of St. Louis about the revivals that had taken place there in the 19th century, early part of the 20th century.
25:50: And he also wrote a book called America in Crimson Red which is a history of the
25:58: Baptist movement in America beginning with John Clark. And it's kind of the dissenters history of early
26:07: American Christianity because there was no religious freedom in America until we had the
26:17: Bill of Rights except in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Well, Beller, he wrote a book about this and I wanted to pastor a church.
26:29: And I almost went to pay. He had a little, he called them little baby churches. He said,
26:34: I got this little baby church going over here in South St. Louis. And he said, why don't you come over here and be the pastor of it?
26:42: And so I ended up not going and doing that but he gave me a copy of his book,
26:48: Crimson Red which I read on my lunch hour at work. And in that book, it's not really kind to Calvinism but what it does is it shows that Calvinism is a part of the
27:05: Baptist identity. Yes. And he was back to the Philadelphia confession, John Gano, Shuval Sterns, Obadiah Holmes, Isaac Maccas.
27:16: By the way, I have been in the church. John Gano, or Gano, however you pronounce it, once pastored in Manhattan.
27:26: Yes, I ran an event there with my friend, Tony Costa, Dr. Tony Costa, who's the professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.
27:35: And he came out to New York. And - Is that T .T.
27:40: Schultz's office? Well, yes. Yes, he was involved in founding the seminary.
27:46: Yes. And by the way, I just want to recommend to you my favorite biography of all, a pastor in New York, The Life and Times of Spencer Cohn.
28:00: He was a successor of John Gano. Really?
28:06: At the First Baptist Church of New York City in Manhattan. Yeah, I think
28:12: I and Haldeman pastored that church later also. But we -
28:18: Go ahead, I'm sorry, you can finish your sentence, but we have to go to our first break. What were you saying? Oh, I was just going to say,
28:25: Haldeman was a big -time dispensationalist in the early part of the 20th century. Right. My dad's been there.
28:35: Well, we have to go to our first break right now. If you have a question that you'd like to ask Terry Basham.
28:41: And by the way, am I pronouncing your name correctly? Yeah, just like Basham in the nose.
28:47: Oh, so I was right. Okay. And if you have - That's a great analogy for a fighting fundamentalist to use.
28:57: But if anybody has a question, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least.
29:03: City and state and country of residence. Please don't go away. We'll be right back. Greetings.
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29:52: But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.
30:05: Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.
30:13: In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt
30:18: God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.
30:24: I sense that same God -given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.
30:32: That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a savior who died for sinners and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.
30:44: I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the
30:51: Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.
31:00: That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.
31:10: That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.
31:29: God bless you. I'm Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven, an
31:42: Orthodox Presbyterian church in Comac, Long Island. I hold the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program hosted by my longtime friend and brother,
31:52: Chris Arnson, in the highest esteem, and I'm thrilled that you're listening today. I'm also delighted that Iron Sharpens Iron is partnering with one of my favorite resources for reformed
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33:07: Oh, and make sure that you tell them that you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron radio.
33:13: Hello, I'm Phil Johnson, Executive Director of Grace to You with John MacArthur.
33:22: I've been a frequent guest on Iron Sharpens Iron radio, and I highly recommend this show.
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34:20: I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Lindbrook Baptist Church, a
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34:58: At Lindbrook Baptist Church, we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired word of God inerrant in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak.
35:15: We believe in salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This salvation is based upon the sovereign grace of God, was purchased by Christ on the cross and is received through faith alone, apart from any human merit, works or ritual.
35:31: Salvation in Christ also results in righteous living, good works and appropriate respect and concern to all who bear
35:40: God's image. If you live near Lindbrook, Long Island or if you're just passing through on the
35:45: Lord's Day, we'd love to have you come and join us in worship. For details, visit lindbrookbaptist .org
35:52: That's L -Y -N -BrookBaptist .org This is Pastor Keith Allen of Lindbrook Baptist Church reminding you that by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves.
36:04: It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast of the
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39:19: Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And we are now back with Pastor Terry Basham and we're talking about his journey as an independent fundamentalist
39:29: Baptist into the doctrines of sovereign grace. If you have a question, please submit it to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
39:36: chrisarnsen at gmail .com gives his first name at least, city and state and country of residence. And Pastor Terry, I don't know if there was anything further that you wanted to add on that thread or that train of thought that you were on.
39:50: So we could pick up where you left off if you'd like. Okay, that's fine. I do wanna make one statement is me and my dad, we have the exact same name,
40:02: Terry Basham. And it's caused him some controversy in the past.
40:08: So I just wanna just say that I'm Terry Basham the second. Terry Basham the first is not responsible for anything
40:16: I say. And it's, well, after I read
40:25: Jim Beller's book about Crimson Red, in the back of it, he talks about the separate
40:33: Baptists and stuff. And that I thought I was shocked that Calvinists were good people because that they had done anything good.
40:42: To be honest, I was just shocked. And my knowledge of church history was very narrow because I grew up in the funding world, and especially in college.
40:52: At college, they recommended we not read anybody who was not on our side of the fence.
40:59: I'll bet you, though, they thought a lot of people were on their side of the fence that weren't. Like Spurgeon, for instance.
41:08: Yeah, exactly. Well, I'll give you a great example is at the really large church I went to in the
41:13: Midwest. In their bookstore, I bought a book by R .A.
41:19: Torrey. It's called, How to Work for Christ, a Compendium of Effective Methods. And basically, it's just about street preaching, personal work, all kinds of stuff.
41:31: I'm reading the back of it, and he has tips for personal workers. And over and over again in the back, he was saying, if available, the revised version is preferred here.
41:47: And I was King James only, man. I mean, when I was on staff,
41:53: I was on staff in college at the church where we went. They sent me to a bus conference where I heard
41:58: Gail Ripplinger give a talk where she and Wally Beebe, Dr.
42:06: Wally Beebe, Mr. Bus, where both of them said that if you were not led to Christ from a
42:12: King James Bible, you were toast. You were not going to be saved.
42:18: And so I thought, well, so that's what they said. You know, these are the people.
42:25: So they must be right, you know, a pure word, that kind of stuff. So I was blown away in my big
42:31: King James only church to find this book that said the revised version is to be preferred.
42:38: R .A. Torrey, he had very high stature in that branch of churches.
42:45: So I asked the pastor at the church about it one time.
42:52: I said, you know, Torrey is saying the revised version can get him into the kingdom of heaven.
42:58: Is that true? And he said, well, yeah, because the revised version is mostly the same as the
43:03: King James. So as long as you got enough King James stuff. So, you know,
43:09: I was dumb. I just went along with what the powers that be were saying.
43:15: But I left that church to go down to Texas to be a pastor of a small church and just outside Austin, Texas.
43:29: And I was so thrilled to be a pastor. And now
43:35: I had to teach the Bible, Sunday school, Sunday morning,
43:40: Sunday night, Wednesday night. I had to put out a lot of material.
43:46: So it was there that I started reading more broadly.
43:53: And I was doing a series on Wednesday nights about,
43:59: I took a survey of other churches in the area and I started calling churches and just getting from the horse's mouth what that church believed.
44:09: And I called this little church called Burnet Bible Church in Burnet, Texas.
44:15: As far as I know, it's still there. I talked to a guy named Steve Hopkins and I said,
44:23: Steve, I would like to talk to you about what your church believes. And he said,
44:28: I don't have time to talk to you right now. So I'm kind of busy. He said, let's meet at McDonald's.
44:34: I said, okay. And he said, well, I'm gonna tell you right off the bat. He said, I'm a Calvinist. He said, five pointer, the whole nine yards.
44:43: And I thought, wow, I'm gonna get to, these people really exist. I'm gonna get to talk to one. So I made him at McDonald's.
44:51: And what I did was I went online and I downloaded a bunch of documents that would prove him wrong.
44:57: A bunch of gotcha verses and argumentation. So we got to McDonald's and I showed up with a file folder full of papers.
45:08: He showed up with a Bible and he said, we started talking. And I just recoiled at everything he said about the doctrines of grace.
45:19: And I said, look, man, it's up to us to get people saved. And he looked at me, it was lunchtime, small town in Texas, that McDonald's was packed out.
45:29: And he said, okay. He said, if it's up to you, how can you sit here with all these souls that are perishing and not get up and preach the gospel?
45:39: Go ahead. And I said, well, they're eating, man. He's like, it doesn't matter. These people go into hell and you gotta, if you don't do something, they're gone, man.
45:50: And he said, and then how can you sleep tonight? And how can you go fishing? He just went down the list.
45:57: He just ripped me up one side and down the other. And I began to realize, well, there's no way
46:04: I could do all that. There's no way. And he said, you gotta trust God, man. He said,
46:09: God's gonna get his people saved. And so we left.
46:16: And then I went back to my office and I ordered a
46:24: King James Bible that had no notes in it of any kind, just a plain text
46:29: Bible. And I worked my way through Romans and through Ephesians and Galatians.
46:37: And by the time I was done, I thought, you know what? Election is something that's in the
46:43: Bible. It looks like this Calvinism stuff is probably true. And then
46:48: I also got ahold of a 1689 London Confession. And the proof text for that kind of sold me on it.
46:55: I could see it right there in scripture. And so I had a very scary thing
47:04: I had to do. I had to tell my wife that I'd become a Calvinist because my wife, her brother and sister both graduated from Hiles School.
47:14: I think in our bedroom, I'm not sure if we still have her or not, but we have a picture of my wife with Jack Hiles when she was a little girl.
47:24: This was no light matter. And my wife was a personal worker, bus worker, you know, a personal evangelist.
47:34: Her father went to pastor school every year. Her brother did too. I mean, so I had to go home and tell her, dear,
47:41: I think Calvinism is true. And I remember we were laying in bed and I was laying there thinking about it.
47:47: I got to tell her, I got to tell her. And so I said,
47:53: Valerie, I think Calvinism is true. And just silence over there.
48:00: And she said, what? You know, and so round and round we went arguing about it.
48:06: And that's where I learned to be an apologist was right there was convincing my wife that the
48:14: Bible actually taught these things. And to be honest with you, Chris, once I convinced her that it was biblical, once I showed it to her from the
48:21: Bible, I've never met anybody who was as hard to convince as she was because she wasn't, it wasn't just tradition for her.
48:31: And she'd read the Bible through every year since she was 11 years old. I mean, she knew the scriptures well, but once you took off those,
48:41: I don't know if you want to call them Armenian glasses or free will glasses or big man glasses.
48:47: Once she saw a big God in the Bible, it changed, you know, she said,
48:53: I agree. So at the time she wrote, she wrote a series of blog posts about it and put it on her blog.
49:00: I think they're still out there. But the blog title was entitled what to do when your husband becomes a heretic.
49:08: Because initially she was convinced that we were going to have to get a divorce.
49:15: Wow. Because she said, how could I be married to an apostate? How can I be married to somebody who preached a false gospel?
49:22: So I didn't realize that was what was in her mind. But she said, that was my very first thought was my marriage is over.
49:30: Wow. Now in your circles of fundamentalism, would that have been condoned?
49:36: Because from what the fundamentalists that I know, the independent fundamentalist Baptist that I know, do not believe in divorce for any reason.
49:47: They would have given her a pass. Ah, really? It would be a big deal.
49:53: Now, the group that we were in was not as hardcore against divorce and remarriage as other groups are.
50:00: There's quite a diversity on that position. Because even the now deceased pastor in Pensacola, Florida, whose name escapes me.
50:13: Pete Ruckman. Yeah, he was married and divorced several times, wasn't he? Yeah, I think he was married three times.
50:20: His last marriage endured. It would just depend on your particular church that you went to.
50:29: But they would have all felt really sorry for her. It wouldn't have been a problem. People would have understood.
50:35: Because this was just not something that you could tolerate. But she loved me.
50:41: And she loved God's word. And so we just, luckily, the church
50:48: I pastored, they used the New Hampshire Confession of Faith at the church. I didn't have to resign my church.
50:55: And to be honest with you, I really drug my feet with making a lot of public changes about anything.
51:04: Because in the main, all I really changed was how I thought salvation worked, right?
51:10: I was still preaching justification by faith. But salvation works because of the
51:15: Doctrine and Covenants of that theological position. So I wasn't confessing anything openly different.
51:21: It was just how you get a person from unbelief to belief.
51:28: That process was now spirit -oriented, God -oriented, and not man -oriented.
51:36: And then I found myself, once I discovered the Doctrines of Grace, I thought, what else they've been lying to me about?
51:44: So then was eschatology, Bible translations. I found myself almost going too far the other direction.
51:54: And so, by the grace of God, I didn't talk.
52:02: I didn't get myself in trouble with my mouth. I thought about what I was thinking and reading more slowly.
52:09: So then I left Texas and went to Arkansas to pastor a church for five years.
52:18: And at that church, I had a member of the church who was, when the first time
52:24: I met him, he handed me his business card. And it said his name on it. And it said,
52:30: Senator Dort, 1689, and a bunch of other stuff. There was all
52:36: Calvinistic stuff, Belgian Confession. And I looked at him and I said, many people know what these things mean on your card?
52:43: And he grinned and said, not too many. And he had an
52:49: MDiv from a seminary in Arkansas, and he was a Calvinist. He was a Reformed Baptist.
52:54: And the only reason he was going to the church that I was pastoring was because his circumstances had changed, and he could no longer afford to drive to Texarkana, Texas to attend
53:08: Texarkana Reformed Baptist Church, which is still going. I just talked to a pastor there a couple weeks ago. In fact, could you pick up where you left off with this, brother?
53:16: Because we have to go to our midway break right now. Sure. And please use this time wisely.
53:23: Write down as much of the contact information as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you can, so that you can more frequently and successfully contact our advertisers.
53:33: Keep in mind, we cannot exist without the financial support of our advertisers, so please contact them as often as possible.
53:41: And send in your questions to Terry Basham about his journey into the doctrines of grace, to chrisarnson at gmail .com.
53:49: chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Don't go away.
53:55: We'll be right back. It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.
54:12: Here's Joe Reilly, a listener in Ireland, who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,
54:21: Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai, in County Kildare, Ireland, going back to 2005.
54:31: One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio,
54:38: Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia are largely to thank, since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.
54:47: Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.
54:53: Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards, and Dr.
54:59: Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight -volume commentary on the larger catechism. Heritage is a member of the
55:04: Hanover Presbytery, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, and tracing its roots and heritage back to the
55:14: Great Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers, scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone,
55:25: Christ alone, and God's glory alone. Their primary goal is the worship of the triune God that continues in eternity.
55:31: For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com.
55:38: That's HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com or call 678 -954 -7831.
55:45: That's 678 -954 -7831. If you visit, tell them
55:50: Joe O 'Reilly, an Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener, from a tie in County Kildare, Ireland, sent you.
56:04: When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the
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59:29: This is Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.
59:36: Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support
59:41: Iron Sharpens Iron Radio financially. Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in scripture through the person and work of our
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01:00:05: If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some
01:00:18: Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior. Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.
01:00:27: Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org. That's gracechurchatfranklin .org.
01:00:36: This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our
01:00:41: Sovereign Lord, God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ, today and always.
01:00:52: Hello, my name is Anthony Uvino, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York, and also the host of the reformrookie .com
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01:02:09: And finally, if you're looking to worship in a Reformed church that holds to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, please join us at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York.
01:02:19: Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Invinio, and thanks for listening. Greetings.
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01:03:10: But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.
01:03:23: Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.
01:03:31: In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt
01:03:36: God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.
01:03:42: I sense that same God -given pleasure when ministering the Word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.
01:03:50: That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a Savior who died for sinners, and that God forgives all who come to Him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.
01:04:02: I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the
01:04:09: Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.
01:04:18: That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.
01:04:28: That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's Word and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.
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01:05:50: Charles Hedens Spurgeon once said, give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read.
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01:07:16: And there are quite a number of other books in a Baptist vein, although I hope that not only
01:07:24: Baptists will purchase and read these books, I hope all of our brothers in Christ will get a hold of them.
01:07:31: Annals of the American Baptist Pulpit by William Sprague, or edited by William Sprague.
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01:08:36: Chris Orenson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Before I return to Pastor Terry Basham and our discussion on his journey into the
01:08:43: Doctrines of Sovereign Grace, I have some important announcements to make. If you really love this show, folks, and you don't want it to disappear, please go to ironsharpensironradio .com,
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01:10:30: Christ -honoring, biblically faithful, theologically sound, doctrinally solid church like Faith Baptist Church in Sheboygan, Michigan, well,
01:10:41: I have extensive lists of solid churches all over the world, and I've helped many people in our audience all over the planet earth find churches, sometimes even within just a couple of minutes from where they live, and that may be you too.
01:10:54: If you're without a church home, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line.
01:11:00: That's also the email address where you can send in a question for Terry Basham about his journey into the doctrines of sovereign grace.
01:11:08: chrisarnson at gmail .com gives the first name at least city and state and country of residence, and before the break,
01:11:13: Pastor Terry, you were talking about a member of your church who was a Reformed Baptist who was there providentially because the confessionally
01:11:23: Reformed Baptist church was too far away, and he, out of convenience, joined the church where you are.
01:11:31: Yep, that's exactly right, and he was both a great church member and a bad church member at the same time, if you can believe that.
01:11:44: He had an MDiv, and he was very learned. He had a great library.
01:11:50: He had been a pastor for a while, but had gotten disenchanted with pastoral ministry, and so he had a kind of, what do you call it when you're hardened?
01:12:03: He was a little bit skeptical about some stuff, a little bit of a cynic, is the word I'm looking for, but nonetheless, he heard what
01:12:12: I was trying to say in my sermons because I preached to Ephesians when I first went to that church, and he would go over to his house, and he played guitar.
01:12:23: I played the little guitar. We played guitar together, and then he would loan me books from his library, and the first time
01:12:31: I read a book that was on the Revelation that wasn't from a dispensational perspective was he gave me
01:12:38: George Alvin Ladd's commentary on Revelation. Oh yeah, post -millennialist, right? Yeah, he was
01:12:45: Ladd is post -Trib pre -Middle. Oh, okay. Historic pre -Middle kind of position.
01:12:53: Right. Anyway, that guy, he helped refine, I would say he helped me understand my doctrine better, and he encouraged me to read, and so he,
01:13:08: I don't know why he recommended this to me, but he said, why don't you get a copy of Charles Hodge and grind through it, and so that was good advice, but also
01:13:18: Hodge was really hard to read. It's very difficult to read, and because I didn't have classical education.
01:13:27: I'd been to Bible college, but I had very little theological foundation, so it was a little bit of a learning curve for me, but he really, it was really helpful to me.
01:13:38: Eventually, that guy, I recommended that this man was resigning his membership in our church because he was reformed to the second or third power.
01:13:50: It really irked him that we didn't have elders, that we didn't follow the regular principle and all that kind of stuff, and so finally
01:13:57: I said, you know, why don't you just resign your membership, and when he resigned his membership, he never missed a
01:14:04: Sunday after that. It was so funny, but while I was there at that church, the internet played a role here as well because there was this fairly new, this is 2000,
01:14:22: I went to that church in Arkansas 2008, a fairly new website called sermonaudio .com,
01:14:30: which somebody sent me a link to a Paris Readhead sermon called 10 Shekels and a
01:14:36: Shirt, and that sermon really changed my whole perspective of man because Readhead went as a missionary to Africa, and he said when he got there, he found out that the native people, they were just as wicked as the
01:14:54: Americans were, and they didn't want God any more than anybody else did. They were scammers and liars, just like the people who were in the
01:15:02: United States, so that really affected me deeply.
01:15:09: I started listening to Ian Paisley, the Free Presbyterian, and for a time,
01:15:15: I really considered becoming a Free Presbyterian because I couldn't find
01:15:21: Calvinists who were evangelistic, sad to say, and what
01:15:28: I mean by evangelistic, who were aggressively evangelistic, I didn't find any
01:15:33: Calvinistic soul winners who were out there knocking on doors trying to get the gospel to people, and the
01:15:42: Free Presbyterians seemed to represent that kind of evangelistic fervor, but ultimately,
01:15:50: I really couldn't figure out what they believed on infant baptism.
01:15:56: It looked like they didn't really take a hard position either way. Yeah, they actually permit both.
01:16:03: In fact, most of their pastors have a baptistic understanding of baptism. Yeah, I know a couple guys, and I think that what you just said is accurate, but although I love
01:16:16: Reformed theology, I never could embrace infant baptism.
01:16:22: I just felt like it's not in the Bible. If there was one verse that said they baptized the child,
01:16:30: I'd probably swap over in a heartbeat, but that was a hill too far for me.
01:16:35: I just didn't see it in Scripture. If I could see it, I would believe it, but I pastored that church in Arkansas, and then
01:16:43: I decided one day, I'm sick of pastoring a church that does not believe in the doctrines of grace, so through a sequence of events,
01:16:55: I wound up in Oklahoma pastoring a church that was a landmark sovereign grace church.
01:17:02: The pastor who had been there for a long time, 43 years, was a
01:17:08: Calvinist. He didn't like the term Calvinist because of the stigma that went with it.
01:17:18: He called himself a non -dispensational pre -tribulationist. He wrote a book about it, and he wrote a lot of books.
01:17:28: He wrote four books. He had that church in the landmark group.
01:17:36: I thought when I went into Calvinistic churches, there would be just real unity in doctrine, but once I got over in with the
01:17:46: Calvinistic churches, there was tons of other side issues over there.
01:17:53: One of the main issues was over the free offer of the gospel. I'm looking at my shelf right now.
01:18:00: I have a friend of mine send me this book. It's called Today's Gospel and Apostolic Exhortations by a guy named
01:18:09: Randalls. It's a high Calvinist book because they didn't believe in the free offer of the gospel.
01:18:18: This Randall says, when you finish your sermon, go ahead and tell people, well, leave it to the
01:18:24: Lord Jesus Christ, and you'll be saved, and see what happens. See if you get the response that Peter got at Pentecost.
01:18:31: He said you won't. He said that's because there was a different anointing of the
01:18:36: Spirit in those days. In our era, we don't preach as indiscriminately as they do.
01:18:45: I wound up getting right in the middle of that high Calvinist, hyper
01:18:50: Calvinist. High Calvinists don't like to be called hyper Calvinist. It's high
01:18:56: Calvinist. I have friends who I love who are high Calvinist, but they seem to focus too much on Calvinism itself and not on the gospel.
01:19:11: One of my friends, he said, you cannot say to people when you're preaching to believe in the
01:19:19: Lord Jesus Christ, and they'll be saved because you don't know if they can be saved. I said, well, I think I can say whatever the Bible says.
01:19:25: I'm just quoting the scripture to them. I'm saying what Jesus would say or Paul would say, and he would say, yeah, but you're telling them something that's not true because a non -elect person will hear that, and they'll want to believe, but they can't because they're not elect.
01:19:42: I said, well, it took me a while to really flesh that out and see what they were saying, because along with that comes preparationism.
01:19:50: You can only tell a person to believe on Christ if they have the particular Baptist of England.
01:19:56: They say if a person possesses the root of the matter, if they have that little spring of life, then you can say to them, believe in the
01:20:05: Lord Jesus Christ, and you'll be saved. I think that would have been more specifically the strict Baptist, because even
01:20:11: Spurgeon, who was not a hyper -Calvinist, would have called himself a particular
01:20:16: Baptist. Yes, that's true. Yeah, you're right, because usually that nomenclature goes together strict and particular.
01:20:24: Yeah, strict Baptists are particular Baptists, but not all particular Baptists are strict
01:20:29: Baptists. Right. See, it's such a fun game sometimes, all the words.
01:20:37: So, I preached when I was in Oklahoma. I was introduced to a whole new circle of the
01:20:46: Baptist world, and there were some Reformed Baptists there, but most of them were not
01:20:53: Reformed. They didn't believe in a Reformed kind of church polity, but there was a lot.
01:21:00: There was always a lot of dissension in there. They always kept trying to make the box smaller and smaller and smaller.
01:21:08: I invited a guy to come preach for me one time. I had a Bible conference at my church, and I invited a guy to come and preach for me from Tulsa, a very learned and gifted preacher.
01:21:22: He said, who else is preaching? I told him I was inviting another guy from Oklahoma City to come, who was also learned and a gifted preacher.
01:21:30: He said, I won't preach with him. I said, well, why not? He said, because he doesn't believe in the free offer.
01:21:38: I don't want anybody to think that I think that. I said, well, I don't think anybody's going to think that because it's just going to be a bunch of Calvinists down there.
01:21:47: He said, I'm not going to do it. Then there was an internal, in that fellowship of about 20 churches, an internal conflict over the eternal manhood of Christ.
01:22:02: Some of those guys got to believing that Jesus Christ had celestial flesh, which was an Anabaptist.
01:22:08: Really? I have never heard of that other than some kind of Mormon heresy.
01:22:14: I've never heard of that amongst Baptists. Yeah. If you ever get a copy of the
01:22:20: Martyrs and Mirror, have you ever seen that book? No. It's a record of the persecution of Anabaptists on the
01:22:30: European continent. It's published today by the Mennonites. One of their publishing houses prints it.
01:22:37: Some people call it the Baptist of Box's Book of Martyrs because it's all people who believe in believers baptism.
01:22:48: People tend to overcorrect. I have the pages marked in the front.
01:22:55: I could read you some excerpts from it, but that's probably not the thing to do. These people were being put to death by the
01:23:02: Catholic church. They were so against mereolatry that they wouldn't even confess that Jesus received anything from Mary, not his humanity, nothing, because they were overcorrecting against it.
01:23:17: It's a kooky little doctrine. I'd never heard of it until these guys had a fight about it.
01:23:25: I was sitting in a private house, me and a pastor for Northern Ireland.
01:23:33: Actually, he went to Toronto Seminary as a graduate of that school. We were sitting there with the seven other pastors, and they were debating this very topic.
01:23:45: I'm just sitting there being quiet because all those guys were on that side of the fence.
01:23:51: Me and my Irish friend, we're just sitting there listening. When we left, we were riding together.
01:23:57: He said, I disagree with him 100%. I said, me too.
01:24:03: But we were both preaching at their conference, and so we didn't feel like if we started to fight, we'd probably lose our preaching spots.
01:24:14: That's the integrity that we had, men of character. I really had to work out my views of sovereign grace in those days, because I was hearing new things and making it more complex than necessary,
01:24:40: I felt like. I started reading Josh Fryman.
01:24:46: He says that I love John Gill too much, because I really love
01:24:53: John. I love John Gill too. I started reading
01:24:58: Gill a lot. Then I had a really close friend who pastored in the
01:25:06: UK. He was a high Calvinist, just to the max.
01:25:14: He would call me all the time. He'd say, Terry, you're a Fullerite. I said, what does that mean?
01:25:22: He said, you're on Andrew Fuller's side of the fence. He said, you're a duty -faith guy, free -offer guy.
01:25:29: He said, you're a Fullerite, I'm a Gillite. Then I read
01:25:34: Andrew Fuller's Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, and I realized I am a
01:25:40: Fullerite. I'm exactly on that side of the fence. Just to let you know, Tom Nettles, who
01:25:46: I'm sure you've heard of Tom, who's one of the foremost Baptist historians alive, he defends
01:25:54: Gill as not being a hyper -Calvinist. I've heard him do that.
01:26:00: He preached at a conference in Oklahoma at a Southern Baptist church, and I actually had a chance to talk to him about some of that stuff.
01:26:10: I've heard his defense. I'm not sure. Who am I to disagree with Tom Nettles, though, right?
01:26:17: Even in men like Michael Hagen, who believes that John Gill was a hyper -Calvinist,
01:26:25: Michael Hagen still loves John Gill and promotes him, even though Michael Hagen is not a hyper -Calvinist.
01:26:33: Right. You're exactly right. That's my opinion.
01:26:39: I'm just a dude in Oklahoma, but I'm not in Oklahoma anymore.
01:26:47: I love John Gill, and I love his consistency, but I also believe in the free offer of the gospel.
01:26:54: I had a couple people tell me in that church that they didn't really like the fact that I went around knocking on doors and talking to folks about the gospel, because they felt like God's going to get them saved anyway.
01:27:14: I preached with primitive Baptists, and a couple of them
01:27:19: I came to really love, but they were not evangelistic.
01:27:26: I really got to look at the side of Calvinism that does not evangelize.
01:27:33: I know people who are anti -missionary. People should know, and I'm sure you would agree with this, even though that sect within Sovereign Grace Believing Baptists had a lot to do with your personal experience.
01:27:52: They are a tiny percentage amongst Sovereign Grace Believing Baptists nationwide and globally.
01:28:01: I agree. I agree with that. I think sometimes the overcorrection is what gets people, is because of the negative stigma of screen door evangelism, a .k
01:28:16: .a. Heilism, people tend to overreact the other way.
01:28:22: They're like, I'm not going to knock on doors, because that's what the bad people do.
01:28:27: That's what Heils would do. That's like saying, I'm not going to believe in the
01:28:32: Trinity, because Roman Catholics believe it, which is exactly what a lot of cults use in their rhetoric.
01:28:41: Exactly. The church I passed from Oklahoma was an anti -Christmas church, and so you didn't celebrate
01:28:48: Christmas there because of its connection to Catholicism. People tend to overcorrect.
01:28:55: While I was in Oklahoma and in Arkansas, some people who really helped me,
01:29:02: I hate to invoke his name, because I'm just teasing about that, but I listened to James White a lot on Sermon Audio when he was at PRVC.
01:29:15: I listened to his abiding line. He really helped me think better about theology, church history, and about the
01:29:31: Bible. Once I told people
01:29:39: I was a Calvinist, once my circle of people started fighting out about it, I used to get invited to preach at their conferences and their churches, but all those invitations dried up, because I was on the wrong side of the tracks.
01:29:52: The thing that really got me in a little bit of hot water, even with my family, was when
01:29:58: I stopped being King James only. You don't really realize how big of a deal that is until you say, hey,
01:30:08: I don't believe the King James Bible is the only right Bible. The heat that comes with that is incredible.
01:30:19: There's one particular situation where it caused me intense pain because of the damage to a relationship over that.
01:30:35: That's adding to the gospel just as much as a Roman Catholic adding works to the gospel, because you are requiring something for salvation that God does not require.
01:30:47: Yeah, you're exactly right. Exactly right. I talked to a pastor in Arkansas. He was a youth pastor at a church in Russellville, Arkansas, and he was a modalist.
01:30:57: I mean, I even thought maybe he just is misunderstanding what he's saying, but he was completely a modalist.
01:31:06: And so, I contacted his pastor and said, hey, your dude is a heretic.
01:31:12: We need to talk to him. This is a Baptist church. Yeah, independent, fundamental, prevalent, temperamental, sin -hating, devil -fighting
01:31:19: Baptist church. Right down the line. I contacted the pastor, and he said, brother, we use the
01:31:27: King James Bible here. We're protected from error. Ah, that's pretty crazy.
01:31:37: Yeah, and that's the kind of stuff— And, in fact, nearly every, if not every, single
01:31:43: American -born cult uses exclusively the King James Bible.
01:31:50: Yeah, you're exactly right. So, Kenneth Copeland's final authority and their final authority are exactly the same, the
01:31:57: King James Bible. And some of those doctrines can only be created from the King James Bible, which
01:32:03: I always think is kind of fun to talk about with people. So, I went to—I had a great time in Oklahoma pastoring my church, and I was around a lot of interesting people, a lot of interesting
01:32:19: Calvinistic people, and I really—what
01:32:26: I learned was that I didn't really fit in with being
01:32:35: Reformed. There's some stuff that goes along with the Reformed view of the local church
01:32:40: I really didn't agree with, and I never—I just couldn't go in with them.
01:32:46: I didn't really agree with the landmark perspectives because I didn't believe in the local church only.
01:32:52: They don't believe in the evangelical church. I didn't believe in Baptist Brideism, and I was evangelistic.
01:33:00: I wanted to reach people with the gospel, and I just got tired of being in the independent fundamental world because everything was a big deal.
01:33:10: And my wife never wore a pair of pants until she was 37 years old. I mean,
01:33:16: I never went to a movie theater until I was 37 years old. Me and my wife were the same age as her.
01:33:22: But everything—all these minors were a huge deal about everything.
01:33:30: So, I just started drifting away from that more and more and more.
01:33:37: Just out of curiosity, I don't want to sidetrack you too much, but what is it about a typical
01:33:44: Reformed Baptist understanding of the local church did you disagree with? I'm just trying to figure that out because in my experience, and even according to the
01:33:54: Confession, the 1689 London Baptist Confession, the view of the local church seems to be in harmony with most independent fundamentalists.
01:34:03: We believe in the autonomy of local congregations, and there is no hierarchy outside the local eldership other than Christ and His inerrant
01:34:14: Word. I think it has more to do—well, I don't think it does.
01:34:20: It has more to do with the Reformed church polity than anything else. Oh, the plurality of elders?
01:34:26: Yeah, I don't really—the way church government seems to work in Reformed churches, I'm a
01:34:32: Congregationalist, and I believe in—I agree with Adrian Rogers. I hope the channel doesn't melt down.
01:34:40: For our listeners who don't know this, Adrian Rogers hated Calvinism.
01:34:47: He knows better now, but there are still a lot of Reformed people who loved
01:34:53: Adrian Rogers nonetheless. Yeah, I respect him a lot. You know, that's the thing.
01:35:00: You can disagree with somebody without vilifying them. I mean, I just wish that people get this in their head, but Adrian Rogers said that a
01:35:08: Baptist church is pastor -led, deacon -assisted, and congregationally affirmed, and I think that that is true.
01:35:17: I think that, as a student of Baptist history, especially in America, is that the pastor -deacon model with the congregation is the best model.
01:35:34: I think that sometimes the elderships that I've been around, they seem to be too—it's more like elder -rule than elder -led.
01:35:47: You know what I'm saying between that distinction? Yes, and there are Reformed Baptists who do disagree with one another over that.
01:35:55: Yeah, and I hate to false -advertise myself. I love
01:36:01: Reformed theology. I really think the Reformed take on most things is the best perspective.
01:36:11: I mean, it's just delicious to your brain to read a Reformed theology and Reformed sermons.
01:36:18: Just on the local church, the plurality of elders, the congregation,
01:36:24: I think. Congregationalism doesn't seem to go along with that, and it may be my own overreaction against authoritarianism sometimes in the church.
01:36:36: Right, and Reformed Baptists have definitely been guilty of that, but not obviously all or even the majority have not, but that has existed without question.
01:36:48: You're right. Just like it's not right to broad -brush all independent fundamental
01:36:55: Premonial Baptists as being crazy. Right. Oh, I have some very dear friends to this day who are independent
01:37:01: Fundamentalist Baptists, and we have loved each other in spite of our serious differences. By the way, we have to go to our final break, so pick up where you left off there.
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01:48:39: that's hopereformedli .net or call 631 -696 -5711 that's 631 -696 -5711.
01:48:54: Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.
01:49:16: Chris Arnson here. I am forever grateful to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service for their generous financial support of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, but that's not the only reason
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01:50:58: Associates for just agreeing, in fact moments before this show began, to be a co -sponsor, once again, of our next
01:51:08: Iron Sharpens Iron Radio free pastor's luncheon. And if you are a man in ministry leadership, you are invited to the next
01:51:15: Iron Sharpens Iron Radio free pastor's luncheon, featuring for the very first time as our keynote speaker,
01:51:21: Dr. Joel Beakey, founder and president of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
01:51:28: And not only is admission free and your lunch free, every man who attends will get a free heavy sack of brand new books, personally selected by me, and donated by Christian publishers all over the
01:51:41: United States and United Kingdom, absolutely free of charge. So if you would like to attend this free pastor's luncheon on Thursday, June the 6th, 11 a .m.
01:51:50: to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,
01:51:57: chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line. And coming back to where you left off,
01:52:05: I just wanted to throw my two cents in there for a plurality and parity of elders, which is what the vast majority of Reformed Baptists believe as a part of their ecclesiology.
01:52:18: I believe that it's a God -breathed way, among other positive benefits, but to actually prevent a dictatorship in a church, which one -man rule has often created as well.
01:52:39: It hasn't been just plural elders in Reformed Baptist churches that have been heavy -handed in authoritarianism.
01:52:47: Very often, one man who is the leader of a church, it can go to his head, and when he doesn't have accountability, when he doesn't have the iron sharpening iron, for lack of a pun there—or should
01:53:03: I say, if you could pardon the pun—I think that it's a very beneficial, not only
01:53:11: God -breathed ecclesiology, but I think that is one of the benefits.
01:53:16: I don't know if you want to respond to that. You know, I have a lot of responses to that.
01:53:28: I don't want to hijack the last bit of the show to talk about that. I disagree with what you said in the main.
01:53:38: I disagree. I've thought a lot about that position of having elders.
01:53:49: I've argued for both before, because when you're trying to make up your mind, you kind of got to get on the other side and think through it.
01:53:57: I think there's some practical problems with the plurality of elders that I think are on display in front of us all the time in regards to the—I'm going to call them the brand name preachers that have plurality of elders in their churches—that are unavoidable, that are very obvious.
01:54:26: They're inconsistent with what they're saying about eldership. Oh yeah. Every time a
01:54:32: Christian adopts any position on anything, even if it's a correct biblical position, because we're all sinners, we don't perfectly live out those truths that we embrace.
01:54:45: I agree. I guess I'll say that when you've been in churches where you have the one -man dictator show, it looks like plurality is the solution to all those problems.
01:55:05: But just having plurality of elders is not the solution to all those problems. Oh, of course.
01:55:10: Because you have to think through, what is an elder? How does a person get to be an elder? My perspective on pastoral ministry is
01:55:18: I am called of God to be a pastor, and I'm going to be a pastor until I die, or I get disqualified because of some stupid thing
01:55:31: I might do, or churches just get tired of hearing my mouth. They may say, we don't want you anymore.
01:55:41: I'm God called. You know what I'm saying, when I use that kind of terminology? I'm called of God to do this.
01:55:47: I don't get the sense that if a church starts looking for elders in their congregation, you're getting somebody to be an elder who also shares the conviction that they're
01:55:58: God called. In churches that have plurality, you always have one primary preaching pastor, usually, from what
01:56:07: I can tell. Well, in my congregation, we have two. We have more than two elders, but two are primarily preaching.
01:56:17: Yeah, and then you have the function of the office is to be the teacher for the church.
01:56:28: Invariably, you have somebody who's a non -teaching elder. I think what gets people tripped up is
01:56:36: Presbyterianism has the ruling elder, teaching elder kind of model. And that, pragmatically, that seems to be a nice model, pragmatically.
01:56:48: I don't know that that's really scriptural. I don't know that it's really a
01:56:54: Baptist viewpoint. Most Reformed Baptists I know, their gifts will determine the emphasis of their role.
01:57:04: And all elders, as the Bible commands, must be able to teach. But that doesn't mean that they are necessarily doing that a lot formally in the church.
01:57:16: But we have to go in two minutes. I'd like you to quickly, in about 90 seconds, summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.
01:57:26: I want you to know why I love Sovereign Grace, why I love the Doctrines of Grace. I love the
01:57:31: Doctrines of Grace because my whole security for the fate of my soul does not rest upon my hands or anything connected to me.
01:57:39: It's all Christ. Christ is my Savior. He's done all the work. And I love Sovereign Grace because all of God's elect will be saved.
01:57:48: Amen. None of them will be lost, not one of them. So no matter how bad a sinner a person is, no matter what they're entangled in, the grace of God is truly powerful enough to deliver them from the bondage and dominion of sin.
01:58:06: And that's what I love about the grace of our God. Amen.
01:58:12: And I want to remind our listeners, if you want more information about Faith Baptist Church in Sheboygan, Michigan, you can go to faithbaptistupnorth .org,
01:58:27: faithbaptistupnorth .org. And I want to thank you for being such a wonderful guest,
01:58:37: Pastor Basham, and I look forward to your return to the show. I hope to have the opportunity at some point in God's sovereign providence to meet you face to face and share fellowship with you.
01:58:47: And please let me know if you're ever traveling through the South Central Pennsylvania area, because I'd love to grab a bite to eat with you on me.
01:58:56: And I'll let you know the same if I'm ever in the Sheboygan, Michigan area. And I want to remind our listeners once again, if you're a man in ministry leadership, you are invited to the next free
01:59:09: Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio pastors luncheon on Thursday, June 6th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the
01:59:15: Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, featuring guest speaker Dr. Joel Beeky.
01:59:22: And everything is free of charge, including the very heavy sack of free brand new books that you will be receiving if you attend.
01:59:28: Send me your registration, your free registration to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put pastors luncheon in the subject line.
01:59:36: Now, I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.