May 15, 2023 Show with Dr. Sam Andreades on “Made in God’s Image: Biblical Truth on Gender”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father, James Wilson,

19th century hymn writer, George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister, George Norcross, and sports

legend, Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning

issues facing the church and the world today.

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

another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to

have a view and conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener,

with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the

planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 15th day of

May, 2023.

I'm thrilled to have a first -time guest today, who's gonna be speaking on an

extremely vital issue, even made more vital in the day

and age of which we live, or in which we live, that seems to have

been dominated by gender confusion.

My guest today is Dr. Sam Andreadis, author and founder of Higher Ground, a New York

City ministry of Christian discipleship, serving men and women with

unwanted same -sex attractions, which he founded while he was

pastor for 10 1⁄2 years at the Village Church in Greenwich Village, New York City.

And today, we are going to be addressing the theme, Made in God's Image,

Biblical Truth on Gender, and we're also going to be announcing an upcoming conference on the same

theme at the Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania,

which has become the new home of my biannual Iron Sharpens Iron Radio

pastors luncheons.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Sam

Andreadis.

Hi, Chris, I'm really honored to be here.

Your show has been going on for a couple of decades, hasn't it?

Yeah, going back to 2005.

That's a great legacy.

Yes, and I praise God for it.

And I'd like for you to explain to our audience, first of all,

something about your life as a pastor and the

very unique challenges you faced in Greenwich Village, of all places,

and how you came to form Higher Ground.

Sure, well, should I begin with my testimony?

Well, let's do that, because as you likely know, we have a

tradition here in Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, whenever we have a first -time guest, that guest gives a summary of their salvation testimony.

So yes, please, give us your testimony.

Sure, sure, well, I was raised going to Roman Catholic Church.

My family was not a believing family.

My father was not religious.

For my mother, mass, Catholic mass, was kind of a cultural practice.

And for me, it began when I was 15 years old.

My aunt, who had just become one of these crazy born -again Christians, came over,

and we had a debate about whether smoking marijuana increased creativity.

And the upshot of that was that she felt so burdened for me that she went home and started to pray for me.

And two weeks later, for my 16th birthday, she sent me a Good News Bible with instructions

to read a chapter of Proverbs each morning, corresponding to the day of the month, and a chapter of the Book of

Acts at night.

And for some reason, Chris, I just obeyed what she said.

And it got to the end of the Book of Proverbs after a month, and I just started reading that again.

And after Acts, I went back and read the Gospels.

So I ended up, as a non -Christian, reading the Bible faithfully for a year.

And a year later, a strange musical group called Saved by Grace, who came out

of the Jesus Movement, came and played, they were playing up and down the Jersey Shore.

They came to play at my very public high school.

And by some fluke, they were allowed to play during school hours for a school assembly.

And so I wanted to get out of class, so I signed up to go to the school assembly, where I heard an evangelistic

presentation, which caused a big uproar in the community.

The group was never allowed back.

But that one day, they were there, I heard them, and I followed up with them.

I went up to the leader, Bert was his name, and I said to Bert, Bert, you said this thing happened to

you eight years ago.

Why are you still so excited about it?

And Bert said to, he laughed, he said, Christ doesn't wear off, he gets stronger.

And - Praise God.

Yeah, I was so impressed with that, that I went to see him play at a coffee house, a local

coffee house, and at a certain point, they said anyone who wanted to have their sins forgiven, I was

beginning to understand what that meant, raise their hands.

And I thought to myself, if they think I'm gonna raise my hands in this crowd of people, in front of all these

people, they're crazy.

But my hand started to go up.

I was saying, what are you doing, hand?

And then they said, if anybody wants to have their sins forgiven, and have us pray for them,

come up to the front.

And Chris, I said to myself, if they think I'm gonna walk in front of all these people for that, they have

to be insane.

But my feet started taking the steps, and I just felt propelled

forward at that moment in my life, as a young man.

You know, it's interesting, people argue sometimes about the sovereignty of God and salvation.

Well, I never argue about it, to me, it was absolutely clear, this was not me propelling me forwards.

And when Bert started praying for my sins to be forgiven, I felt a burden fall off my back, just like

in the Pilgrim, in Pilgrim's Progress.

And all I could do was giggle, very, very unbecoming for a young man.

I couldn't stop, because I realized what Christ had done for me.

And for that moment on, I was converted.

And what was it that made you believe the Lord had placed the call

upon your life to enter into pastoral ministry?

Oh, well, that came many years later.

I think that God had a lot of work to do in me before I could be even halfway useful to Him

as a pastor.

But I think through, when I was a young man in,

I guess, late 20s at that point, I had a young family, and

I had done some work in ministry in a church.

My friend suggested to me that this was something I should do,

and it was very impractical.

But my wife and I just knelt down at the kitchen table and said, Lord, if you want us to do

this, you need to provide a way.

And just within a matter of a month, He just opened a whole bunch of doors for me to go to seminary and

financially made it work.

And so that's what propelled me forward.

And I entered into, my first pastorate was, as you mentioned, in Greenwich Village in New York City.

And had you wind up there, that has to be one of the most important mission fields in the world,

one of the most left -leaning areas of the world, and very

populated by people who are homosexuals and homosexual activists.

In fact, I had, a few years ago, attended a conference

in the Greenwich Village area, and there were homosexual activists

who protested the activities that were

happening, just because it was a conservative evangelical church.

We weren't even specifically addressing homosexuality at the point.

And they contacted the hotel that the church was using

to house the speakers and people who were traveling out of town.

And they removed the discount that they were providing for

everybody staying there because of that.

Yeah, not surprising, not surprising.

Well, when I landed there in 2002, it was not all that

different.

It was, the rest of the country hadn't really been taken by storm in the way that it has now.

But Greenwich Village was sort of gender explorer and gender tearing down

central, if you could put it that way.

And immediately, I was pastor there for 12 years and was immediately confronted by

all sorts of different gender issues, whether it's men who were struggling with same -sex attraction, or women

who were struggling with some of the things the Bible said about women, or whether it's the people who really were

unsure about who they were at that point.

I used to call them gender explorers, and they would come down to the village at night and just

have a lot of different functions that they would be doing and going to.

And that's when we began our discipleship ministry for those who had same -sex attraction, but wanted

to follow Christ, which is still active.

Thank you for announcing that higher ground for those who would like help.

It even has a more of an online presence now with online meetings as well as in -person meetings there in

the city.

So that's what happened, and this just kind of just kept going for me.

When it came time to do my dissertation, I wanted to spend more time with these guys that I think are

really modern day heroes in the church who have some added burdens of

discipleship in the area of gender and still are faithful and following Christ.

So I did my dissertation on guys who had same -sex attraction or had a gay past, but nonetheless

ended up choosing to be in Christian marriages with women and had stable marriages of five years or

more.

And I just learned a whole lot from them in listening to them and doing this

study.

That resulted in an article for World Magazine that was in 2013.

My article was, What Ex -Gay Men Can Teach Us About Marriage.

And then that led to the books that followed.

By the way, I wanna announce the website for Higher Ground since it is still in

existence, higherground .nyc, higherground .nyc.

And what results did you witness over the years

through Higher Ground?

Did you see a considerable number of homosexuals repent of their

sin and come to Christ?

Oh, yes.

I think we have a marvelous, that's why I think of these guys, especially in our

cultural climate, as heroes.

We did see people come and say, yeah, I want something different for

my life.

And as we tried to support them, we saw a number of people, and this wasn't the goal of the

ministry.

The goal of ministry is discipleship in Christ, but certain things happen to some people

on that road, and they ended up getting married.

So we had a number of marriages, I think about half a dozen, if not more,

babies now born to alumni of that ministry.

Wow.

So the Lord blessed them with an attraction to the opposite sex, in addition to

just delivering them from practicing same -sex

relations.

Yes, I think, you know, you don't hear about it in the media but people who go this route,

the Spirit does work.

And when we do deny desires

that take us in the wrong direction that God doesn't want us to go in, we find that He makes

a way for us.

And under the right circumstances, people who have these kinds of desires,

they find there are other ways to be aroused.

And that doesn't mean that their temptations always go away like that, and

they're never tempted again.

But just like the rest of us who have sexual desires that go against God's marriage covenant,

God gives us victory over those and shows us what real contentment, real

joy, real peace is in going in His way with His marriage covenant.

Now, was your desire to found higher

ground simply by virtue of where you were ministering in Greenwich Village, which is

notorious for having a higher percentage of homosexual

activity taking place than your average city or town anywhere else?

Yeah, that was it.

I thought to be faithful to be a church in that

location, and to be a faithful church in that location, we really need to address the needs that were there.

And at the time, I called up the kind of national organization that people got

support from at that time was Exodus International.

And they had a very simple program that any church could just be listed with them, and then

people would know that would be a place they could go to maybe leave the lifestyle, to get truth

and love and acceptance in their lives.

And so I said, well, great, we'll become one of those churches.

I called them up and said, hey, we're in New York City.

And Chris, guess how many other churches in New York City at that time would associate with

this national organization?

Just take a guess.

One.

Actually, if you count us, that's the right answer.

That's what I meant.

Yeah, it was such a divisive topic that no, it seemed like churches didn't wanna touch

it.

And we thought, that's not faithfulness.

We wanna be faithful to be willing to be identified in that way as faithful to the biblical witness

about these things and where people can get help.

So that's how it started.

Amen.

Well, I want to give our listeners our email address.

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

gmail .com.

If you have a question for Dr. Sam Andreattis, and by the way, am I pronouncing your name correctly?

No, but that's all right.

Andreattis?

It's Greek, and an easy way to remember it is it's just the man's name, Andre, like the

man's name, Andre, and then the first two syllables of Odyssey.

Andreattis is the correct.

Oh, okay.

Andreattis.

Okay.

Hopefully I'll remember that for the rest of the program.

It's okay if you don't.

If you have a question for Dr. Andreattis, my email

address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

If your question involves a personal and private matter, let's say you are someone who is

battling with unwanted same -sex attractions, and you are not ready to

identify yourself because of that, we would invite you to feel free to remain

anonymous.

But if it's a general question on what the scriptures have to say about this issue,

a general question about Dr. Andreattis's ministry,

we would ask that you provide for us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your

country of residence.

And again, that's chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Well, the Imago Dei, the fact that

we are made in God's image is the main

title of our theme today with the subtitle Biblical Truth on Gender.

And if you could explain how those two things are

inseparably hinged together, being made in God's image and the biblical truth on gender,

which is that there are only two, and that only

two, one of each gender, are permitted to have sexual relations and

only under the confines of the marriage bed.

But tell us about that, God's image and the biblical truth on gender.

Yes, okay, well, thank you.

I, this is a presentation that I've come to develop.

I've gone around, spoken at different places.

And as you brought up earlier, I'm going to be at the Church of the Living Christ in

Loisville, which, for those of you in Pennsylvania, it's a great venue.

It's about a half hour, I'd say, northwest of Harrisburg.

And we're gonna be there next weekend at their apologetics conference.

Actually, this weekend.

Yeah, this coming weekend, that's right, thank you.

At their apologetics conference, laying this out.

And what I try to do is help people take a step

back, Chris, and look at all the different

kinds of issues that people could have about gender, because all the different things that

people might be asking today really have one question underlying them, whether we are

asking what makes a true woman or what makes a real man?

Is gender something that's real?

Does it matter in relationships?

Is the gender binary a means of oppression?

What does God think of it?

So many questions that people struggle with today that I hear over and over again.

Does the Bible tell me as a wife to submit to my husband in decision -making, even if I'm a better decision -maker?

How come in this culture I feel emasculated as a man?

Why would God deny true love to my same -sex attracted friend or in the

Old Testament, are men superior to women?

Should our church have a woman pastor?

How should I respond to my DEI department directives at work?

Or if I have a boy body and I feel like a girl, should I transition?

All these questions, including the one you mentioned, there's one question that underlies all of these,

and that is what is gender?

What does it mean?

So what I try to do is I help people go back to the scriptures and say, let's see what the Bible

says about it and really stay close to the scriptures.

It's sort of like, you know, you're familiar with the regulative principle for worship?

Well, you know, really, if we look at that, the best impulse of the regulative principle is a plea to stay close to the

scriptures in the area of worship.

And I think at its best, it expresses faith that we can determine our worship scripturally.

Well, I'm just saying the same thing about gender.

If we stick close to the scriptures and how we speak, we end up speaking like in

terms of the Imago Dei.

We end up talking about it in terms of calls and relationships.

And so I go through about seven, I come out with these seven biblical principles of gender.

And the first one, and we'll be going into these in the conference, the first one is that gender is a gift

of being made in the image of the triune God.

Long ago, John Calvin pointed out that you cannot know who you are

without knowing God.

Without the knowledge of God, he said, there's no knowledge of self.

And so if you look at the Imago Dei, again, coming from Genesis one, God created

us in his image and you look at it carefully and you say, what does that mean?

If you've ever wondered like how, what exactly constitutes the image of God in us,

you're not alone because throughout history, theologians have written and thought and

puzzled through this question over and over again.

And basically if I could condense it, they come up with three different answers.

And I love how the Westminster Shorter Catechism expresses this with beautiful

succinctness.

It says that God created man, male and female, after his own image in knowledge and righteousness and

holiness with dominion over the creatures.

And it gets actually all those three categories of answers that theologians have given.

One, it's we are God in God's image and that we share to some extent his attributes like knowledge,

righteousness, and holiness.

And we are also in his image and that we take dominion over the creatures.

It's kind of been what we might call the biblical theological answer.

But also the confession expresses how God created man, male and female

after his own image.

And that's staying very close to the scriptural, to the verses in Genesis one.

And when we put that together the way that Paul reads this, when he talks about gender, the way

he reads Moses' account of our creation, it helps us to understand this principle is true, that gender

comes out of being made in the image of the triune God.

In fact, let's pick up where you left off there because we have to go to our first commercial break.

All right.

And if anybody, again, wants to join us on the air with a question for Dr. Sam

Andreadis on Made in God's Image, Biblical Truth on Gender, our email address is chrisarnson

at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

Only remain anonymous if your question is personal and private.

We'll be right back after these messages, so don't go away.

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend, Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I

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That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I have been preaching, teaching,

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We're now back with Dr. Sam Andreadis, the founder of Higher Ground,

a New York City ministry of Christian discipleship serving men and women with unwanted same -sex

attractions.

We are addressing the theme Made in God's Image, Biblical Truth on Gender, which is also

the theme of a conference being held this weekend, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at Church

of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania.

That is, the exact dates will be the 19th, 20th,

and 21st of May, and we hope that you attend that conference and send

my greetings to Pastor Ethan Swartz.

I have grown to love him and his congregation, which is the new home of the Iron

Sharpens Iron Radio free pastor's luncheon that I have twice a year.

So we'll be reminding you of all the details you need to attend that conference.

Again, our email address, if you'd like to join us on the air with a question, it's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S

-A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

Only remain anonymous if your question is very personal and private.

Before we went to the break, Dr. Andreatis, you had been in the middle

of talking about how truth on gender actually comes from

the fact that we're made in God's image, and if you could continue.

Thank you.

Yes, and glad you mentioned Pastor Ethan over at the church

in Lloydsville.

He's a great guy.

Yes, he is.

Yeah, great to know him.

Well, yeah, so we wanna be able to address all these different types of questions that people have about gender.

And the way that Paul reads Moses' account of our creation helps us to do a kind of what

we could call ectypal theology, that is understanding that God reveals himself

in a limited way, not exhaustively, but truly, in our human experiences.

And gender's a big part of what it is to be human, even from the beginning.

And you know, Chris, I really wanna help parents and Christians who feel

ill -equipped to address what's going on in the culture and feel scared sometimes about their children.

That gets me upset.

I've been a pastor for about 20 years, and that riles me up when I see that

parents are feeling ill -equipped to address what's coming at them in the culture.

So this is a way to do that if we take some time and really think about it in biblical terms.

And so we've covered the first principle, which is that

gender is a gift of being made in the image of the triune God.

Sounds simple.

Very powerful, though, when it's combined with these other principles.

The second one I would say is that the persons of God, the divine persons of God, experience the archetype

of intimacy and fruitfulness.

And that is about how, even though God is incomprehensible, he condescends to reveal

his Trinitarian relations in human terms.

Herman Bavinck is great, for example, in his dogmatics, showing how God reveals himself in the

scriptures, not exhaustively, but truly, in terms of our human experience.

And that's true of the divine persons' relations also.

And then the third principle would be that in the Bible, gender matters in relationship.

That is how the Bible talks about gender.

We tend to think, we tend to talk differently about that.

We say, well, a man is a man, you know, if he goes to the hardware store.

A woman is a woman if she likes flowers.

But the Bible doesn't talk that way.

The Bible doesn't say, you know, you are this man.

Rather, the Bible says, man, you do this for her.

The Bible brings up gender when it's talking about what men need to do for the women in their life, the close women in their life, and

also what women do for the close men in their lives.

So gender is a gift for the other.

And it's given in our lives for others.

And if we marry for that one particular other as well, because it's about relationship.

Now, do you believe that there are some characteristics and

qualities that exude from the very

nature of somebody being either a male or a female, while other things

are just cultural expectations?

Like you mentioned, the man that goes to the hardware store.

Well, I know that there are countless number of wives that want him to do that so that he returns and

finishes a project that he promised to finish 10 years ago.

But those things aren't what God

has essentially designed as being innate to being a man, or

flower -loving, being innate to being a woman.

You could have a man who is very virile and masculine, and a perfect, as

perfect as a human being can be, while on this sinful planet, a perfect

husband and father, and yet he's a florist.

And you could have a woman who has taught herself how to fix things around the

house.

She might be divorced or widowed, or her husband may just work such long hours that he can't do

these things, so she's taught herself how to remodel the house in certain ways, and she may be

the one going to the Ace hardware store.

So those things are not innate, but there are things that should be if somebody

is a biblical, God -fearing man or woman.

I can think of one is that if a man is a true man of God, he is going to be a

protector of his wife and children, and he's not going to cower in fear

to their detriment, and seek to protect himself while they

are in harm's way.

And you can pick up the ball where I left off there.

Yeah, very good, Chris.

I appreciate your thoughts there, and I like the way you just expressed that, because if you'll notice, you expressed

manliness in one particular quality in relationship to

the wife, if it turns out to be a husband.

And that's really important, because there might be certain qualities that we say, well, they

tend to be more on the masculine side, but they're always overlapping distributions.

The way that God creates us, he seems to really like variety.

And we really find out what it is to be a man in taking that

responsibility for the women in our lives.

And so let me tell you a story, I think that illustrates this well.

I was at a party, I think it was last year, and it was out in the woods.

It was some holiday that we were celebrating, and there were a lot of men and women around.

And because the people hosting the party lived out in the woods, there were a lot of trees

around, and he had a gun collection.

And so we were just having fun.

Some of the guys in the party, we went out and cut a tree down.

He brought out one of his guns.

We had target practice, very safely conducted.

And after that, I went and sat down with a group of women, and one of the women said to

me, wow, Sam, you just cut a tree down, and you just

went and shot a gun.

Do you feel like a man?

Are you a woman?

And I looked at her and I said, absolutely not, because these are not the things that make

for manhood.

And then I turned to the hostess of the party, and I said to her, does it

make you feel more secure that your husband can handle himself with a gun?

In your context, in your particular situation here, does that make you feel more secure?

And she said, oh, yes, it does.

And I said to her, that's because he's a real man.

He's a real man.

And she said, I know.

But what happened there, if you see that conversation, is these things come out of men, and men have

different gifts, and some of them various, but if they come out in serving the close

women in their lives, then, yeah, that's masculinity.

And we have to be careful not to unnecessarily and cruelly

scar children mentally when they are doing things

that goes against a particular culture or family's idea of masculinity or

femininity, but it has nothing to do with a biblical mandate on those things.

Like, for instance, you may have a son, a nephew,

a grandson, who loves to cook.

Now, it's interesting that most of the world's most famous and highly exalted

chefs globally are men, not all of them, but it is odd that

that has become associated with, in many cases, not all, many cases has been associated with

that.

That is woman's work.

Yeah, right.

And the same thing goes with a girl

who is doing something that may be not considered a masculine

hobby or job, but it is not something that the Bible prohibits

because of her female gender.

Don't we have to be careful not to say to young people, you really gotta knock that off.

You're acting like a sissy.

People are gonna think you're queer if you keep doing that when it's not anything that is

offensive to God when a male does it and vice versa.

Yeah, that's a very good point.

And I'm often counseling parents who get worried, especially in these days, that, oh my gosh,

my son is not like baseball, and maybe the father really is into baseball, and they

get worried.

It's like, he's not a real man.

I'm like, no, God gave us the children that he gave us in order to stretch us as

well for us to keep growing.

And our job as parents is to enter into the world of our children.

And I've had parents who've had children who really

took like a boy who just loved pink and he loved different girls' clothings.

And I was like, you know, there's something of value there in a guy who grows up to be able to

relate to girls, not identify with girls, but relate to girls.

And these parents did an excellent job of just entering into his world with him and starting to teach him

about what real masculinity is.

And today, I really admire him.

He's a great young man.

And that's important because gender is moral.

We tend to be surprised as parents when our kids need to be taught moral things like, don't

lie, you know, we're always shocked as Christian parents.

It's like, our kid comes out and starts lying.

Why is he lying?

He's supposed to be a Christian kid.

Well, because we have to teach him about honesty and some of our children more than others, we have to

instruct them.

We have to discipline them about understanding morality in terms of the things,

and for example, things like honesty.

Well, the same is true of gender.

Gender is something moral.

We need to teach our children, you know, why we do certain things.

And so if we come in on our kid, and which is natural for many kids to try to explore gender at a

young age, and we come in and our child may be dressed in the opposite gender,

and we shouldn't freak out at that time, we should take the child, sit the child down on our

knees and say, you know, let me just instruct you that we don't cross

-dress.

The Bible tells us not to cross -dress, and that's because you're actually a boy, and I have

great confidence that you're gonna become a great man, but we do these things.

What your boyness consists of is how you treat other boys and other girls in

your life.

And along these lines, I mean, I'm kind of summarizing here, but these are the kinds of things we need to do as

parents, so you're absolutely right.

Now what, do you have any ideas, any guesses

from what you have witnessed in the culture?

Why it seems so bizarrely and frighteningly

dominant in the world, not just here in the United States and not in a certain state of the United

States or a city of a certain state, this global phenomenon where

not everybody, I'm not even saying the majority of people, but a disturbingly high

percentage of people are just falling into lockstep

with the satanic ideology of the left

which tells them if your child is doing something that is considered

a girlish or womanly thing for a boy to do, and a

boyish or manly thing for a girl to do, oh, that means that they are

transgendered and they should be immediately taken to a doctor to change their

gender, as if anyone could actually do that, that's an impossibility.

But do you have any theories as to why this has become a rampant thing globally?

And I'll have you answer that question when we return because we have to go to our midway break right now.

So don't forget about that.

And if anybody else has any questions, please submit them to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

We do have several people waiting to have their questions asked and answered by our guest,

Sam Andreadis, and we will have him do so as soon as possible when we return from the break.

Please keep in mind, folks, this is the longer than normal break in the middle of the show because Grace Life Radio 90 .1

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It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners.

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Here's Joe Riley, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show

he really loves hearing interviewed, Dr. Joe Moorcraft.

I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland,

going back to 2005.

One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft.

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Before I return to my guest, Dr. Sam Andreadis on Made in God's Image, Biblical Truth

on Gender, we just have a couple of very important announcements to make.

First of all, folks, if you love this show and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, please go to ironsharpensironradio

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That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Dr. Sam Andreadis on made in

God's image, biblical truth on gender.

And it's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And before I go to some of the questions that have come in, Dr. Andreadis, before the break, I

asked you for your opinion on why you believe a possible reason

that the globe has become captivated by the left's satanic agenda

to make gender a fluid thing, to convince parents that the best thing

for the best interest of your children is if they are even prepubescent and they happen to

say one day, mommy, I think I'm a girl and that's a little boy saying that, or your daughter's saying, mommy, I think I'm a

boy, that immediately we should go to a doctor and get that child pumped with medication and have surgery

performed on it, which to me, anybody who does that, a doctor or parent, should be spending a very long

time in prison.

But how did the world become so captivated by that

in a favorable way, where it seems to even go against the instincts

of the unregenerate?

In fact, it has been something that the majority of unregenerate people

for centuries would have recoiled in horror at such an idea, even

though they don't have the benefit of the Holy Spirit indwelling them.

So what are your ideas on that?

Yeah, thank you.

By the way, Chris, that's a great word about tithing.

I really appreciate your attitude there.

You're expressing in terms of when you're making your pitch to have folks give and

really reminding them of where their responsibilities first lie.

So I just wanna thank you for that.

I appreciate that, thank you.

Yeah, well, that's a great question.

If I may, let me recommend two resources where people can explore

this further.

If I may?

Oh, sure.

The first is my website.

It's called affirminggender .com.

That's one word, affirminggender .com.

And the point there is to actually affirm gender rather than tear it down.

And folks can find answers to these types of questions there.

Another one that people, your listeners might be interested in is a book that I just finished writing.

We're readying for publication right now.

It's called Across the Kitchen Table.

And the subtitle is Talking with Your Teen About Trans.

And it's for parents who really want a biblical response to what is overtaking the teens in

our culture now.

And it's really to help the parents talk to the teen in a kind of reasonable manner

from the Bible about what is going on here, how to understand this from a Christian point of view.

Or to help a teen help her friends or help his friends with it.

So that's a book that's coming out.

And if you go to the website, you can actually put down your email address if you wanna be notified when the book becomes available.

So those are some resources.

But the question, the big question that you're asking, which I appreciate,

is one that I deal with on a website in different ways.

You can look at this from different perspectives.

And on different levels as to why this is all happening now.

But just maybe in a simple way, I could say it flows from the

rejection of the biblical principles of gender.

You know, the culture began a few decades ago minimizing gender in marriage and

denigrating gender.

And I'm sorry to say in recent years, the church has participated in the culture's denigration of gender.

And the way it's come about is by emphasizing something that is true, which is women and

men's equality.

That's an important principle, which is one of the seven biblical principles of gender.

But while you're emphasizing, while the culture was emphasizing the important truth of the equality of women and men, the

culture lost the other important truth that God decreed asymmetry between his image bearers.

And if there's no difference between men and women in relationship, then why

would you need one or the other in intimate unions?

And so gender minimization in marriage leads to gayness invariably.

But that's not where gender deconstruction stops.

And the current transgender movement and growing widespread gender dysphoria that you're

referring to were entirely predictable.

In fact, I did predict it.

Because when people don't know who they are in relationship, they start to lose what it is to be a man or

a woman.

Then they buy into superficial cultural stereotypes and all the while they're sensing that these are not the real

thing.

Then they decide they don't fit into these.

And then gender dysphoria sets in.

And gender dysphoria is going to continue to increase for this simple reason.

When you lose gender in relationship, you lose gender.

And so that's what's happening in the culture.

And that's why it has overtaken people is they're losing gender in relationship.

So they're losing what it is to be a man or when they start to ask, am I really a man?

Am I really a woman?

And it's overtaking our schools, unfortunately, because in the younger grades, there's a

curriculum now where they kind of teach these gender stereotypes.

They teach that if you are a girl and you don't like pink, then you're gender non -conforming.

Or if you're a boy and you like art class and more than sports,

then you're gender non -conforming.

And they set up this understanding so that then in the next phase, kids realize, well, I don't

fit into these.

And so gender binary must be a means of oppression.

And they throw out gender entirely when these are not even, we wouldn't even

agree with these gender stereotypes.

They're certainly not biblical.

Well, isn't it interesting that for decades, the liberals probably

emphasized the fallacy of that more than anybody.

I can remember time after time on network television growing up,

All in the Family, which was a brilliantly funny show, but it was

created by a leftist by the name of Norman Lear.

And shows like that and others, we would be hammered

away on these programs with the mindset,

how dare you think your son is gay because he likes art

class over sports?

How dare you think your daughter is a lesbian because she

likes to play sports and she's handy with a hammer?

The liberals used to talk about that more than us.

And now it seems that as the liberals have really become leftists, which there is a difference,

the leftists seem to have dug up these ideas that were thought of as

the property of wrong -thinking conservatives.

It's really mind -boggling.

Yeah, well, and what's really sad these days is that parents are scared.

The parents that I talk to in counsel, oftentimes they're told that if your child

is at all kind of uncomfortable in their body, then you have to immediately move to these practices

of chemicals or cuttings to imitate the opposite gender or else they'll commit suicide.

When actually there is no good evidence that going through these procedures

actually diminishes the chances of suicide.

There's no good study on that.

But that's what the line that parents are given and they're scared to death.

They don't want a dead child.

You don't want their child to die.

So they submit to these things.

And unfortunately, the ideology

ends up being prevalent and forced through social

media on people who are very vulnerable going through life changes like

adolescence or people who are pre -adolescence and they're wondering about their bodies and they have

difficulties with their body.

I mean, what teenage girl is kind of comfortable with her body?

And then they're told that, oh, this means that you are really a boy.

If left without this kind of suggestion between 80 and 90

of cases of this kind of gender dysphoria just resolve themselves with

a reconciliation with the gender and the body that God gave them.

I mean, also to throw this into the mix, something somewhat controversial,

you and I are theologically reformed and reformed people tend to unfortunately

shy away from discussions on the demonic.

You will very rarely hear a sermon on the demonic, at least in my experience,

from the pulpits of reformed churches.

You will hardly ever hear things about the supernatural realm that would be

involving satanic and demonic influence.

We tend to perhaps overemphasize that man's

depravity on its own is enough to get a human being to

rebel against God.

But of course, if we look into the scriptures, even Judas needed to

have the devil enter him before he betrayed Christ.

So do you think there is some kind of an unusual

demonic activity going on that would deceive people globally all at the same time

that this is a valid option to sexually mutilate your child just because a child is saying

something when every other category in life, when a child says something, their

childish thoughts and statements are viewed, typically,

when they seem fantastical, they're viewed with suspicion.

They're viewed with, oh, come on, honey, that's silly talk, you know, that kind of thing.

But oh, now we've got to take them to a physician and these satanic physicians who would actually dare help

to mutilate the child sexually, they are available out there.

And it just strikes me as something beyond the norm in satanic influence.

I don't know what your thoughts are on that.

Well, it's true that, you know, if you want to, like I said before, if you want to answer this question about why

all this is happening, you can talk about it on a number of levels.

You can talk about it from a sociological perspective and the philosophical

traditions that have given rise to this.

And there've been some great offerings recently, Nancy Piercy or Carl Truman, who kind of

try to explain these things in terms of philosophical movements, which are really helpful.

Or you can talk about it in terms of, like you just mentioned, our sinfulness and the way in which

our sin kind of works together with

other sinful patterns.

It's like codependent sinfulness, like there's a movement in people

to say, I want to find a different way to understand myself.

And on the other side, you know, trans is a $2 billion industry, which promises to double in the next eight

to 10 years.

So there's different motivations there that are in question.

But if you want to go all the way to the top or second from the top, I would say,

yeah, you could find Satan because what's really happening overall is the destruction

of the very image of God.

And so I actually bring up a case in this book across the kitchen table that's about to come out.

I bring up a case where there was a man who came to me and as he described his strange

history to me, and he asked for my help, he made no bones about himself

understanding that actually this involved a demonic possession.

And he could tell that there was evil that lay behind his man denying

behavior.

And it began, however, with a sexual molestation at six years old by a very evil grandfather.

And in his case, you know, I tend to not rush into these things.

He hadn't been to church in about 25 years, but he did understand his guilt and his shame and his

need for reinterpretation in Christ.

And so after further discussion and much prayer and enacting appropriate safeguards, I

did an exorcism.

And that was the beginning of this man's life as a changed man.

He used to talk about himself before this as he went to prison at one point, he got out of prison.

He said, I'm still in prison and he's not in prison anymore.

Well, praise God.

And you are one of the very few theologically reformed Christians I've ever

spoken with that has performed an exorcism.

So I find that quite fascinating.

All right, let's go to some of our listener questions.

We have an anonymous listener who says, I have a huge

problem with the way that homosexuality and the transgender movement

are often addressed in the congregation where I am a member.

That is why I'm remaining anonymous.

I do not want to identify myself and get into an unnecessarily

awful conflict where I am.

But even though I understand full well that all sin is an

offense to God and that all sin will send an individual to

hell if he is not covered with the blood of Christ and does not have the imputed

righteousness of Christ as a blessing to make him

acceptable to heaven.

I do believe there are differences between the sins of heterosexuality and homosexuality.

I believe that a heterosexual sin is an abuse of a gift from God because

same sex attraction is a gift.

But we can never say that about homosexuality and the Bible refers to it as being unnatural.

Isn't it all too often said very flippantly at times that

homosexual activity is no different than heterosexual fornication

and other things that involve heterosexuality.

And please, I do not mean to lessen the seriousness of sin of heterosexuals.

I just think it's dangerous to equate homosexual activity with

heterosexual activity.

I think the listener has some very valid points there.

What do you have to say?

Okay, well, it sounds like there are a few questions in there or at least two I'm hearing.

Is it about how to address this in our preaching or is it about

specifically whether heterosexual sin and the relationship of that to homosexual sin?

Well, like for instance, as the listener has said, I have heard

numerous times when homosexuals are being evangelized.

They'll say, yes, I know that you are guilty of the sin of homosexuality,

but that's no different than any other sin that you may have.

It may be the sin of pride.

It may be the sin of lusting after your neighbor's wife and you could go on and on.

But there is something innately more of an abomination it seems from

the scriptures that are innately a part

of something that is unnatural as homosexuality.

And to my knowledge, God never destroyed an entire city over the

sins that heterosexuals were primarily committing.

There seems to be something unique about homosexuality and its depth of evil

where even Paul says with surprise that even the women

are exchanging the natural desire for a man for a woman and so

on.

So it's almost shocking to the very core of Paul's being to even say that,

but if you could pick up, maybe you think that the listener and I are overreaching here,

but I have a lot of sympathy with what he's saying or she.

Well, I think that each sin, all sin, of course,

is heinous before God, but as the confession reminds us there are some sins that are more

heinous than others because of their effects.

And each sin is distinct in the way in which it is in different

characteristics that it has about itself.

So that's true.

I can just tell you in my experience in helping people to overcome, I've helped a lot of

young men just in my pastorate as in the last 20 years and specifically

concentrating on gender ministry, ministry with gender problems.

I can just tell you there are a lot of similarities in the way in which people

come to repentance and need to repent about their desires.

And I do think we have to acknowledge that any desire that takes us

away from the marriage covenant as God defines it between one man and

one woman lifelong, any desire that takes us away from that is wrong and

heinous before God.

A lot of things are called an abomination in the Bible, different kinds of sins, including business

fraud, for example.

So we do have to acknowledge that even if we, we're not sort of in like a more

privileged category to say, well, you know, I lust after women who are not my wife, therefore

I'm kind of better off than if I had same sex attraction.

Both of them take me away from what God intends and his perfect

way of having a marriage covenant with one woman.

And it's just helpful.

It's helpful for anybody who's in any kind of position struggling with these

desires to understand that, that it's not a special category of repentance that's

required.

There's the same kind of repentance and trust and faith and a same way in which the Holy Spirit

actually can work to convince us, one, of the sinfulness of our

desires, but two, to change us to actually be different people in Christ and have a new

identity in Christ.

So it's just been, in my experience, there are similarities there as well

as differences that we have to acknowledge and the similarities become very helpful when you're helping

people to actually overcome aberrant desires.

I don't know if that makes sense.

Yes, it makes sense and I don't think the listener indicated that there aren't similarities.

He said, all sin sends us to hell if we're not covered with the blood of Christ or recipients

of the imputed righteousness of Christ.

And the differences though today especially can be

rather stark because there is a unique evil occurring in

our day in regard to political power and influence

where you have movements who actually have, as

in regard to homosexuals, their own flag and they

are tirelessly committed to changing the opinion

of everyone in every sphere of life whether they are government leaders,

teachers, parents, whereas there is no movement

of heterosexual fornicators that would be in any way similar or

close to its power.

There's no flag for heterosexual adulterers and fornicators.

There's no, there is no move to change people's opinion on that in

any significant way.

And you don't have, even those that are lost

very often and if not most of the time view the cheating on one's

spouse as something that is wrong, whether they think it's wrong enough to stop doing it

is one thing, but there is even a universal recognition somehow

that that's a wrong thing, the cheat on your spouse.

But we are supposed to be celebrating homosexuality, not even tolerating, but.

Well, yeah, I think there's, I can see what you're saying there.

I would say though that unfortunately that ethic of

even in marriage, a kind of inter -gendered marriage that that's going to be

the norm for people who are non -believers, that is true, that also is following away.

I read these editorials now in the New York Times talking about how,

what we should have is more partners in marriage and that's what's natural.

And that's becoming something that's becoming accepted, I see, which is awful and it's

going to lead to a lot of destruction in people's lives.

But it seems like that's getting discarded also to me.

Well, we have to go to our final break.

And by the way, Anonymous, if you are a first -time questioner, you've won a free New American Standard Bible.

So let me know your full name.

Woo, congratulations.

Let me know your full name and mailing address if indeed you are a first -time questioner.

We're going to our final break.

And if you have a question and you want to get in line behind the others who are still waiting, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail

.com.

Don't go away, we'll be right back.

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend, Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I

are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the G3 National Conference.

That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I've been preaching, teaching,

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Getting a driver's license, running a cash register,.

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Hello, my name is Anthony Uvinio, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York, and

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Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Ovinio and thanks for listening.

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

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We have another anonymous listener with a question.

Is there any study showing any issues with brain development

with trans people?

For instance, serial murderers, he intended to say,

and psychopaths have shown the part of the brain that has remorse or

emotions typically is underdeveloped or smaller, not that they are similar in nature,

but has there been any studies of this, any development of the brain when it comes

to someone confused about their gender identity?

Do you know of anything like that?

Sure, yeah, that's a great question.

And it's a reasonable question to ask, Chris.

So I thank that caller.

Actually, there have been studies done, but they're fraught with problems.

The Endocrine Society in 2017, they put out their statement.

You can go to the Endocrine Society's website and why they believe there is some kind of basis for

gender identity.

And they go into brain studies, neurological studies.

The problem is that in some post -mortem brains that were analyzed,

there did seem to be some features of that brain that were

more, you would say, more identifiable as feminine features than as masculine

features of these guys who were trans.

But the problem is that these folks have been taking hormones and the

hormones actually affect our brains.

Our brains don't remain static throughout our lives.

Our brains, right?

Our brains are somewhat plastic and they do change based on

chemicals that we take in, but also on our behavior.

We can actually change features of our brain by our behavior.

So it's kind of hard to say, oh yeah, they were born this way.

I don't think there's good evidence for that in the brain studies that have been done.

And that is not a license to sin anyway.

For instance, it's been a theory, it's been a theory that things like alcoholism are passed down

generationally.

I was a unrepentant drunkard for a while, very serious level of

drunkenness.

And all's I know is that my mother's father, my maternal

grandfather was a serious drunk which led him to an early death.

But even if somebody who's a scientist can prove something that

is passed on generationally through some kind of a defect,

that does not give a license to sin.

There have been studies that men who are violent have higher levels of

testosterone very often.

So is that supposed to mean that we've got to give them a break for being violent and a murderer?

No.

That's right.

That's good.

It's similar to the question of, is there a genetic cause for homosexuality?

And there has never been found a genetic cause for homosexuality.

And it ain't for lack of trying.

There's been a huge amount of money poured into research to try to prove that.

And it has been completely inconclusive.

And so the way that I put it is that there might be, there might always be physical

propensities towards certain temptations that we have.

We all have weaknesses and we all have certain kinds of personalities.

We all have certain kinds of bodies.

And sometimes we might have a physical part of ourselves

that makes us more prone to a certain kind of temptation.

But as you say, Chris, that's not an excuse where we are willing to submit ourselves to the Lord

Jesus Christ.

There's always a transformative power of his spirit to work in us

towards righteousness.

And that's the way it works in people I've seen.

In fact, I remember in the 80s, seeing on Phil

Donahue and other places where homosexual rights activists hated the

idea that this was the result of some kind of a birth defect.

They were boldly saying it was their choice to enjoy sex in this

way.

And it's interesting how it's radically shifted.

And even transgendered people are calling themselves persons with gender

dysphoria.

Now that seems a very odd admission to me because you're saying there's something wrong here, but

their solution is to surgically remove genitals as a result of this

gender dysphoria, not any other kind of therapy or what have you.

In fact, to even suggest therapy of any kind is anathema to them.

So it's a very bizarre world we're living in.

It's very sad because some of these are irreversible, some

of these measures that are being taken up.

And fortunately, England has reversed course on this and some of the European countries, but

America soldiers on in this.

Well, I just wanna remind everyone that if you want to attend this conference this Friday,

Saturday, and Sunday, that's the 19th, 20th, and 21st of May at Church of

the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, the Apologetics Conference, hosted

by my guest today, Sam Andreatis.

Well done on the name, Chris.

You can go to churchofthelivingchrist .cc, churchofthelivingchrist .cc

and find out more information.

And can you repeat, Dr. Andreatis, your own website again?

Yes, it's affirminggender .com. One word, affirminggender

.com.

That's it.

Well, I already know that I want to have you back not only soon, but frequently on the show.

And I hope that you are just as eager to do that as I am to have you back.

Yeah, it's been great.

Can I leave a final word here with the folks?

Yes.

Yeah, I just want, because I do sense in some of these questions just a fear or worry about

what's going on.

And we need to remember, especially as reformed folks, that God is still in complete control of

this.

He's got this.

And so we're talking about different reasons this is going on.

At the top level of cause, we have to understand and acknowledge God is allowing this in

order, I think, to test his church.

He's asking the church, are you going to be faithful?

And are you going to derive your beliefs about gender from the scriptures?

And it causes us, one of the things about what's going on, which is actually good, is that it puts gender under

a microscope.

And it helps all of us to say, am I really getting what I believe about gender from the Bible, or is it some

cultural thing?

And so God is doing his work in the midst of this also.

I want people to be encouraged with that.

Well, thank you very much.

I want to thank you so much for being an excellent guest.

I want to thank all of our listeners for listening, and especially those who submitted questions.

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.

Amen.