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 chapter 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 in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you the listener with your own questions.

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

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 15th day of May 2023.

I'm thrilled to have a first -time guest today who's going to 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 ten and a half 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 at 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,

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.

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, he laughed, he said,

Christ doesn't wear off, he gets stronger. 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.

It was absolutely clear, this was not me propelling me forward. 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?

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, 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 are 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.

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, you know, tearing down central, if you could put it that way.

And 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, you know, 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 want to 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 what 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. It was, 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, you know, I called up, you know, 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 guess,

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 want to touch it, and we thought, this is, that's not faithfulness.

We want to 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 ChrisArnzen 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 Andreatis. And by the way, am I pronouncing your name correctly?

No, but that's all right. Andreatis? 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. Andreatis.

Oh, okay. Andreatis. 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. Andreatis, my email address is

ChrisArnzen 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.

Andreatis' 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 ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen 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.

This is a presentation that I've come to develop. I've gone around, spoken in different places, and as you 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 it's a great venue.

It's about a half hour, I'd say, northwest of Harrisburg, and we're going to 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've, 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 are, have one question underlying them, whether we're 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 love, 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 in 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 1, God created us in His image.

And you look at it carefully, and you say, what does that mean? If you've ever wondered 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, in that we share, to some extent, His attributes, like knowledge, righteousness, and holiness.

And we are also in His image, in 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 Scriptures, to the verses in Genesis 1. 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

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That's royaldiadem .com. Make sure you mention Chris Orensen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with Dr.

Sam Andreatis, 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 Pastors 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 chrisorensen 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.

Yes, and great. Glad you mentioned Pastor Ethan over at the church in Loisville.

He's a great guy. Yes, he is. Yeah, great to know him. Well, yeah, so we want to be able to address all these different types of questions that people have about gender, and the way that Paul reads

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

Chris, I really want to 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, as 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 Bavink 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 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, and 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? 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, You know, 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. 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 got to knock that off, you're you're acting like a sissy, you know, people are going to 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, you know, I'm often counseling parents who get worried, especially in these days, that, oh my gosh, you know, 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, you know, 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, 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 things, for example, things like honesty.

Well, the same is true of gender. Genderism 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 going to 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, 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 is a 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 Andreatis, 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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Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is

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Sam Andreadis on Made in God's Image, Biblical Truth on Gender, and it's chrisarnsen 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 satanic agenda to make gender a fluid thing, to convince parents that the best thing for the best interests 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 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 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 want to 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 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 want to 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 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 nonconforming.

Or if you're a boy, and you don't like and you like art class, then and more than sports, then you're you're gender nonconforming.

And they set 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 they throw out gender entirely when these are not even that we wouldn't even agree with these gender stereotypes.

They're certainly not biblical. Wasn't it interesting that for decades, the liberals probably emphasize 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 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 your daughter is a lesbian because she likes to play sports and she's handy with a hammer?

You know, the liberals used to talk about that more than us. And now it seems that as the liberals have really become leftists, which is 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, what's really sad these days is that parents are are scared.

The parents that I talk to and counsel oftentimes they're told that if you're 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 of parents are given. And they're they're scared to death.

They don't want a dead child, you know, their child to die. So they they submit to these things.

And unfortunately, they the idea of the ideology ends up being prevalent and and forced through through social media on 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 is kind of comfortable with her body. And then they're told that, oh, this means that you are really a boy when if left without this kind of suggestion, between 80 and 90 percent of cases of this kind of gender dysphoria just resolve themselves with a reconciliation with their with the gender and the body that God gave them.

I mean, also to throw into 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 have been some great offerings recently, Nancy Piercy or Karl 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 a 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 two billion dollar industry, which promises to double in the next eight to ten 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 am 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, and 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 know, 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, you know, that even the women are exchanging the natural desire 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, you know, 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 could just tell you in my experience in helping people to overcome,

I've helped a lot of young men just in my pastorate 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'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, to have a new identity in Christ.

So it's just that 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, 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 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 as one thing, but there is a 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.

Well, yeah, I can see what you're saying there. I would say, though, that unfortunately that ethic of, you know, even in marriage, a kind of intergendered marriage, that that's going to be the norm for people who are non -believers, 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. 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 chrisarnsen 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

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Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Avino and thanks for listening. As host of Iron Sharpens 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, 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 that things like alcoholism are passed down generationally.

I was an unrepentant drunkard for a while, a very serious level of drunkenness, and all

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 got to give them a break for being violent and a murderer? No. 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 always be physical propensities toward 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 you know, fortunately, England has reversed course on this and some of the European countries, but America soldiers on.

Well, I just want to 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 right. 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 are 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.