February 20, 2019 Show with David W. Virtue on “The Episcopal Church: Has It Sunk Too Deeply Into Darkness to Be Rescued?”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon

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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.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 20th day of February 2019.

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And I am so delighted to have for the very first time ever on my program today,

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David W. Virtue. David actually, even though he is an

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Anglican, he was a high recommendation, an enthusiastic recommendation for a guest by my very first pastor,

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Mike Gaydosh. Mike Gaydosh is the founder of Solid Dash GroundDashBooks .com

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and Mike sent me a copy of David's book, The Episcotape Letters, which is a takeoff on the

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C .S. Lewis classic, The Screwtape Letters, and he said you really should get this guy on your program,

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Chris. So I did a little investigation. I spoke to the publisher, Jim Brewster, and Jim put me in contact with David Virtue, and providentially now we have this program underway right now live.

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And David W. Virtue is founder of an Episcopalian and Anglican online news service for Orthodox Anglicans worldwide, reaching nearly 4 million readers in 204 countries called

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VirtueOnline .org. He's the author of four books, including A Flame for Justice, A Vision of Hope, Homosexuality, Good and the

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Right in the Eyes of God?, The Wedding of Truth to Compassion and Reason to Revolution, and The Episcotape Letters, which

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I just mentioned before, a series of satirical essays on the state of the

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Episcopal Church and their implications for the wider Anglican Communion. Today we are going to be addressing the theme,

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The Episcopal Church, has it sunk too deeply into darkness to be rescued? And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time as our guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, David W.

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Virtue. Well, thank you for that very kind introduction. And it was such a pleasure meeting you face to face at the last

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio pastor's luncheon that I held here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania several months ago, back in December actually.

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And it was a joy to meet you in person. And it was such a providential occurrence that a bishop in a conservative

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Anglican congregation, who I had never met or heard from before, showed up at the luncheon.

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And when I told him, did you know that David W. Virtue is here? He lit up like a Christmas tree and wanted to meet you immediately.

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We met. Yeah, well I'm glad that you did. And I'm gonna right off the bat give our email address for anybody who wants to join us on the air with a question of your own about Episcopalianism, about Anglicanism.

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Our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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

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USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question is involving a personal and private matter.

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Perhaps you are Episcopalian yourself and you have some criticisms that you want to raise about the very denomination that you're in or the congregation that you're in and you don't feel comfortable identifying yourself publicly.

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Well that's obvious that you might want to remain anonymous. So we would allow that.

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Perhaps you are an Episcopal minister or priest and you yourself are starting to question whether you should remain in that denomination or communion or perhaps you vehemently disagree with our guest today.

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Whatever the reason is that you want to remain anonymous we will grant that if it is about a personal and private matter.

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But please if it's a general question on theology, on doctrine of Episcopalianism, on Anglicanism, please at least give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. That's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. David, one thing that we typically do on Iron Trip and Zion Radio when we have a first -time guest is we have that guest give us a summary of how they came to vitality and vibrant discipleship in Christianity and how they became born again, how they became followers of Christ and declarers of the

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Scriptures. We'd like to know something about your upbringing, what kind of religious atmosphere if any you were raised in, and what providential circumstances were raised up in your life by our sovereign

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God to draw you to himself to the point where you are today. It's a good question.

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I'll give you a short answer. I was born in Wellington, New Zealand, more years ago than I can remember.

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I was raised among the Plymouth brethren, a group that most of you here probably have never heard of, but they were very small, non -denominational, though they were steeped by New Zealand standards, and I heard the gospel at a very early age.

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I accepted Christ as my Savior when I was really a child. My history is more like Timothy.

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I've known the Scriptures all my life, and I've been made wise under salvation.

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I've never had a sort of rags -to -riches sort of conversion. I've never been down on drugs and rock and roll the whole nine hours of that experience.

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My upbringing was solidly Christian. I accepted Christ. I was baptized in the

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Plymouth brethren, and then I went off to England to study theology at London Bible College or London University back in the 60s.

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I went on to do graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago. I then graduated from Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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I became the religion editor of the Vancouver province. I was awarded a Doctor of Divinity degree by Lord Seminary for my writing, and I've been writing, and I really,

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I was very influenced when I was in London by John Stott. They're all souls laying in place, and I also had read the books of J .I.

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Packer, C .S. Lewis, The Inklings, and then I came under the really, quite the influence of Michael Green and his books, who was probably the most vibrant evangelical or, in my view,

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Anglican evangelist of the 20th century. He just died a few weeks ago at the age of 89.

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He was really, he'd written about 50 books, and his books have really become the standard text for many, many evangelicals of all denominations.

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And just as John Stott became a hero to a lot of people, including, I might add,

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Dr. Rick Warren, who, as you know, the purpose -driven church, purpose -driven life, went to see

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John Stott before he died and wrote to me and said, you know, no man has influenced me more in the

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Gospel and through the expository preaching than John Stott. And I think the cumulative effect of all that is that I came back to the

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Episcopal Church about 30 years ago, and I watched even that church go down the drain over homosexuality, and a few years back

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I became an Anglican. I joined the Anglican Church of North America, joined my local diocese,

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Kena, which is connected both to Nigeria and to ACTA, the Anglican Church of North America.

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My bishop is Julia Dobbs. We started a small congregation in Germantown, Pennsylvania, not far from here.

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We have about 25 faithful souls. We're small, we don't pretend to be big, we're trying to make inroads into a new community.

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I don't know how successful we're going to be, but that's the short version. Bruce, if you have any additional questions, fire away.

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Well, there are, as you know, a wide spectrum of beliefs and ideologies of worship and so on that go under the umbrella of both

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Episcopalianism and Anglicanism. First of all, some might think that the only difference between Episcopalianism and Anglicanism is that Anglicanism, after or during the

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Revolutionary War here in the United States in the 18th century, many of the

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Anglican churches changed their names to Episcopalian because they didn't want to be identified with England during that war, and they might think that there is no difference at all.

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Before we get into the left -wing, right - What's the difference, in your opinion, between an

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Episcopalian and an Anglican? Well, truthfully, there is none at some levels.

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The Episcopal Church is the American branch of Anglicanism here, just as the

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Anglican Church of Canada is the Anglican branch of the Anglican Communion in Canada, just as the

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Church of Brazil is part of the Anglican Church in Canada. We have 40 provinces that are part of the

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Anglican Church Communion, the Anglican Communion, and what has happened now, there's been a split in America over homosexuality and the ordination of a gay bishop, and you have two branches.

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You have the Anglican Church in North America and the Episcopal Church. They function side by side. So in a sense, all of them use the same

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Book of Common Prayer. There's some variations on that. Some use the 29th Prayer Book of some 15th century, but basically, in terms of worship style, there is not probably much between them.

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It's what they believe separates the two groups from each other. But basically, the

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Anglican Church in North America is not recognized by Canterbury at this point in time, but they are recognized by the

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Global South, something called GAFCON, the Global Anglican Fellowship of Conservative Christians, and we can talk about that at some length.

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But right now, what we have is two jurisdictions in North America.

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And as far as the left versus right distinctions,

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I mean, you do have, as I already mentioned, a wide spectrum there, because even on the right side of the divide amongst

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Anglicans and Episcopalians, you have those that are high church

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Oxford movement Anglo -Catholics, which, in my opinion, having been raised a

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Roman Catholic and having come to saving faith and abandoned and repented of what

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I believe is an idolatrous religion with the false gospel, I have great problems with the

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Anglo -Catholic Communion. I don't know if you are thinking that I'm too severe on that, but you also have solid, thoroughly reformed, even very

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Calvinistic Anglicans that embrace the 39 Articles. When I have read the 39

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Articles on a number of times, I consider myself to be more Anglican than many

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Episcopalians and Anglicans that I've met. So where do you land in that spectrum?

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Well, I land very much in the evangelical reform camp, there's no question about it. Let me say,

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I do love my Anglo -Catholic brothers and sisters. They have readers of mine, they have friends of mine, there are bishops there that I love very much,

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I can think of several, and I don't force corn on them. I disagree with some of their ecclesiology, but they have the same doctrine of salvation that I do.

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They believe mightily in the Church and what it stands for. I just do not identify with Anglo -Catholics,

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I do identify with the evangelical wing, which still predominates in the

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Church of England. If you go to England, the vast number of bishops and priests, which still call themselves evangelical, they come out of the

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Lambeth tradition, Canterbury tradition, and George Carey was an evangelical, one of the

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Archbishops of Canterbury, the Breton Archbishop of Canterbury calls himself evangelical, but there have been Anglo -Catholic

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Archbishops, Rowan Williams was an affirming Catholic Archbishop, Ramsey, Michael Ramsey was an old

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Anglo -Catholic. So there is this joint tradition that goes on, and also, of course, many like Newman, who started out as Anglo -Catholic and wound up going to Rome.

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I've often challenged my Anglo -Catholic friends to say, well, why don't you sort of go the last mile and become

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Roman Catholics? And they don't like that at all. They say, we have prayer books, Anglicans, there are things about Rome we don't like, so we

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Anglo -Catholics still have some serious issues. They do talk about the maps, and I have a problem with that.

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I'm more Cranmerian in my approach to the Eucharist, but they're not the enemy,

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Chris. They are just another branch of Anglicanism, which, while I don't share their views, they are very legitimate and talk about solid

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Anglican tradition. Yes, and I'm assuming that you have to be careful, though, about treating the issue in a broad -brushing way, either with an accepting view or a critical view.

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You have to be careful about lumping everybody into the same basket, because of their label, perhaps.

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But I take very seriously the Gospel of the Reformation, which I believe is the

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Gospel of Jesus Christ, and I am somewhat, perhaps, more leery than you are about the

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Anglo -Catholics, but I'm willing to have a conversation with them anytime they're willing to sit down with me.

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Yes, the real enemy of our souls are the revisionists and progressives and liberals in the

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Church. They are the ones that have distorted the Gospel. The Anglo -Catholics have not distorted it, they just hold some, what

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I call, Romish trappings that I simply do not share. But they are our brothers in Christ, and while I'm not part of that,

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I am in the evangelical wing, they're not the enemy. As far as your book, let's hear something about the

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Episcopal letters. Well, what happened about ten years ago,

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I began to realize that the only way to deal with the liberals was to mock them, because the things they were doing was so utterly absurd, so utterly stupid, and just absolutely defiant of all common sense, that I began to re -read

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C .F. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, and I realized that that would be a great model to use to write what

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I call the Episcopate Letters, using the same kind of modality and style of Lewis, but not nearly as good, of course, as the knockoff of Lewis, and it took off.

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People like reading this stuff, and while I don't think Americans generally like satire, I think they like a different kind of humor.

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My letters began to accumulate, and someone said to me about a year ago, why don't you put them in book form, and sell it, or give it away, or give it to your client, and, you know, help raise a few funds for your work.

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So I did, and Jim Brewster heard about it, he read it, and said, I want to publish this book statement.

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So I published it, we've sold a few thousand copies. Not a lot, but I think the reality is that this is one way to get at heresy, by simply mocking it, and showing it to be utterly absurd, and utterly defying the gospel itself.

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And Lewis is the model, and if he can do it, then so can I. Well, you know, we actually already have a question submitted by your publisher, that you just mentioned,

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Jim Brewster. I'll read it for you now. In fact, I have to enlarge it, because I'm just turned 57, and I'm going blind here, and the font that normally comes in on my computer is very tiny.

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So while I enlarge Jim Brewster's email, I'm going to repeat our email address for any of you that want to join us on the air.

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

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Please give us, as always, your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

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USA, and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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Okay, we're gonna be getting to Jim's email in just a second. Okay, my parents, 50 years, and I, K through 10.

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I'm not really sure what that means. My parents, 50 years, I guess they've been married 50 years? I'm not really sure.

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My parents, 50 years, and I, K through 10, worshiped at the Cathedral of All Saints in the

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Diocese of Albany, New York. I have heard that the bishops there have been involved in both sides of the

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Church's dive into homosexual inclusion. Can you comment on that, please?

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The Diocese of Albany has not. They have taken a strong stance against the innovations in the

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Episcopal Church. In fact, Bishop William Love, who is currently the bishop there, has been partially inhibited because he refused, at the last general convention of the

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Episcopal Church, he refused to go along with a resolution called B012, which mandated that all priests be allowed to marry homosexuals in the church.

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If you didn't like it, you could ask another bishop to come in and support you. He would not allow that.

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He said, this is my diocese, I will not allow any homosexual marriages. It goes against God's Word, it is allowing

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Satan to get a foot in the door, I will not allow it. And the result was that all parishes appealed to the presiding bishop,

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Michael Curry, and said this was in defiance of a general resolution, a general convention resolution, and so Michael Curry partially inhibited him, he's allowed to still function as a bishop, but he cannot stop any priest who wants to conduct a homosexual marriage in his diocese.

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And he is the only bishop, the only bishop in the Episcopal Church, and there are other conservatives who went along with it, by the way, they call them communion partner bishops.

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He is the only bishop that stood up to the Episcopal Church and said, I will not allow it. It is defiance of tradition, defiance of reasons, a defiance of history, and a defiance of the

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Gospel, and a defiance of Scripture. And he has steadfastly refused to do it.

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He is, I would describe Bishop Love as an evangelical Catholic. Evangelical because he believes in the

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Gospel, and Catholic because he believes in the universality of the Church. So he is somewhat different from other

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Anglo -Catholics because he allows women priests in his diocese, but he's a very solid evangelical brother, and I love him, and we've been friends for over 25 years, and I embrace him and adore what he's done, and I've stood by him,

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I've written stories about him that had thousands of hits, and hopefully we've saved him from the worst wrath that he has appealed to, by the way, and we don't know what that means, but right now he's in violation of the

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Church's teaching on marriage and sexuality. And by the way,

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Jim Brewster, I finally figured out what you meant by those numbers. Obviously you meant that your parents worshipped at the

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Cathedral of All Saints in Albany for 50 years, and you did from kindergarten through the 10th grade.

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Now I understand what you meant. The Cathedral has gone through some changes. They did have a guy there who wasn't particularly orthodox.

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They now have a guy there now who's very orthodox. He came from a seminary, a evangelical seminary out in Ambridge, and he's a solid brother, and I think the

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Cathedral is growing again. But it went through a difficult time, but like everything else, when the gay marriage thing came along, people said, if you don't go for it, we'll leave, and I think some people did leave over that.

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But I think it's steady now, and it's starting to grow again. Well, obviously the issue on homosexuality, not only the adoption of that unbiblical, unnatural, and depraved and wicked behavior, damnable behavior, the acceptance of this didn't just fall out of a tree or pop out of nowhere.

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This obviously has come from an abandonment by great numbers of authorities in the

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Episcopal Church, and perhaps even Anglicans, who no longer believed that the words of Scripture are

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God -breathed. They no longer believed in the inerrancy of Scripture. They viewed the

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Scripture as something like somebody views a buffet in a cafeteria, or a salad bar, where you just walk past it and pick anything that you like and abandon the rest, or overlook and leave behind the rest.

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And this is really at the root of this whole problem, that the homosexual issue is just the fruit of apostasy, isn't it?

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Yes, it did not begin in the Episcopal Church with homosexuality.

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Going back to the late, early 90s, they passed a resolution saying, more or less, that fornication was acceptable, because there were people living outside of the norm of marriage, which we had to encourage into the

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Church, which was code for, it doesn't matter whether you're married or not, you're free to become an

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Episcopalian. So they started to downgrade the marriage canon, going back at that point.

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From there, it was a slippery slope to coming to the point of saying, there are people who have other sexual orientations, that we must be an inclusive

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Church for everybody. And so that began the long and steady march towards homosexual inclusion, and then from there it went to LGBTQ, the whole range of sexualities, and from there it became apparent that the marriage canon, the marriage of homosexuals would be allowed, and they would change the canon to the

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Church, and they would change the language of the prayer book from man and wife to two people, and that's been the slippery slope, and that's where we're at today, just to give you a nutshell of how we got to where we are.

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So it started with fornication, and it ended up with homosexual marriage, and really it's an abandonment, totally, of Scripture, which is very clear, that either celibacy or marriage between, or sex in marriage between a man and a woman.

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So that's the position that C .S. Lewis took, that the Bible took, John Stark took, and all the great theologians like Billy Graham you can talk about,

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Martin Luther, Calvin, there hasn't been anybody until the late 20th century that held a view other than what the

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Church has always preached and taught, that is, that either one is celibate or one has sex within the confines of a marriage between a man and a woman.

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So these are innovations that are really destroying the Church. Now would you say that the

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German higher critics and so on in the 19th century even predated what eventually began to erupt in a more openly and clearly recognizable perverse form in the late 20th century?

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Well I think that the higher critics, the higher critics began to question the authority of Scripture, that's what they did, and once you question the authority of Scripture, the inerrancy and so forth, it's a slippery slope to other things.

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You can say, well if the Bible is not clear about the historicity of the Resurrection, the

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Bible can't be trusted about sex. Well we have to go to our first break right now, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own again, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com

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chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Please as always give us your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA, and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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Don't go away, we will be right back after these messages with more of David Virtue.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arntzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours, with about 90 minutes to go, is

35:45

David W. Virtue, who is founder of VirtueOnline .org,

35:50

which is an online news service for Orthodox Anglicans worldwide, reaching nearly 4 million readers in 204 countries.

36:00

If you'd like to join us on the air with your own question about our theme, the Episcopal Church, has it sunk too deeply into darkness to be rescued?

36:09

Our email address is ChrisArntzen at gmail .com. ChrisArntzen at gmail .com. And as always, give us your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

36:20

USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

36:28

David, you have already addressed this, but perhaps you may want to add to it. We have a first -time questioner from Powder Springs, Georgia, in the

36:39

Atlanta area, and this is Bruce, and he says, when and how was it clear that the

36:46

Episcopal Church was going off the Christian track? What exactly are their heresies?

36:53

That might take more than the 90 minutes we have left. Well, it probably goes back to more recent times to John Shelby, so it goes back before him to Bishop James Pike, back in the 70s and 80s, who went off the rails as the

37:14

Bishop of California and actually wound up dying in the Judean Desert. His son committed suicide, and he tried to get in touch with him, involving spooks and stuff like that.

37:25

He questioned the resurrection, he questioned the miracles. Now, when you said involving spooks, you took him at seances?

37:32

Yeah, yeah, seances. I'm sorry, I should have said that. Seances, and tried to get in touch with his son, and the result of all that is he really abandoned the faith, and the

37:41

Bishops of California had no stomach to put him on trial. Later on, John Shelby's son came along, and he went right off the deep end and had his 12 theses, which denied every single doctrine we know.

37:53

He called the cross a child abuse. He denied the resurrection, the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

38:00

He denied the virgin birth, the second coming. He became, in effect, a

38:05

Unitarian. And the real problem is that the House of Bishops had no gut to put these guys on trial, and make them heretics, and declare them as heretics.

38:20

So the reality is that the Episcopal Church went right off the tracks, and it's been going off the tracks progressively ever since.

38:28

But it really, most of the presiding bishops have really been, from probably

38:35

Bishop Ed Browning onwards, including Frank Wisel, and Michael Currie, and Jeffery Shorey, have all been basically heretical bishops, and they no longer accept the authority of Scripture.

38:50

They think the General Convention Resolution trumps Scripture. And that's where the crunch came for the

38:55

Bishop of Albany over gay marriage. He said, no, it doesn't. Scripture trumps anything a

39:01

General Resolution says, General Convention Resolution says. And so the heresies have been getting progressively worse, going back to James Pike, and then progressively on to, well, there was the

39:13

Bishop of New York, who had two marriages, had been involved homosexually for one man for 25 years.

39:23

He was known as a limousine liberal, and he ordained women illegally, and then they became legal.

39:29

So the heresies have been steady and ongoing for probably about 35 to 40 years.

39:37

Well, thank you, Bruce. Please give us your full mailing address in Powder Springs, Georgia, because you have just won a free copy of the

39:47

Episcopate Letters. Compliments of our guests today, and please get that to us as soon as you can.

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And CVBBS .com, CVBBS .com, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

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They will ship that out to you at no charge to you or to Orange, Sharp, and Zion Radio. And we'd also like to give another plug to J2B Publishing, who published the

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Episcopate Letters. And the, let's see here, we have another listener.

40:19

We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, and she says,

41:08

That's a very good question. In fact, yeah, I mean, a lot of the times, and of course not everybody uses the same rhetoric or apologetic, but you have liberals who ordain homosexuals who will say, well, the prohibitions in the

41:23

Bible and the Old Testament and even in the New Testament by the Apostle Paul, these are cultural things that gave rise to these prohibitions.

41:32

It has nothing to do with the loving monogamous relationships we have in the 21st century. You'll have things like that, and the same kind of hermeneutic is very often used by those who believe in the ordination of women.

41:43

So if you want to respond to that, David. Well, we call it the slippery slope theory.

41:50

Women were ordained illegally first, then it was legalized later on, and there would seem to be a slippery slope between the ordination of women and, sooner or later, the ordination of homosexuals and lesbians.

42:05

We have a lesbian bishop now as well. And I think that's been pretty well established, though not everybody would agree that because we have women priests that, therefore, we have homosexual priests.

42:17

There are some godly women priests. I happen to think that it's ontologically impossible, theologically impossible, to have a woman serving

42:28

Eucharistically. I think that's the place of a priest. I believe there can be deacons in the church, women deacons.

42:37

I do not believe that you can have women priests. Now, I realize that my position is very much a minority position now.

42:44

Even in conservative Anglicanism? Yes, even in conservative Anglicans, there are very divided views on this.

42:52

There are conservative Anglicans that believe in women's ordination, and they don't believe in homosexuality. But mostly,

43:00

I would say, certainly Anglo -Catholics do not believe in women's ordination, and I would say most evangelical

43:05

Anglicans do not believe in it, but some do. We have to recognize that in some diocese there are women priests, but not many.

43:17

I mean, right now, this is something that the

43:23

Anglican Church in North America is wrestling with. They have a commission to study it, and they have what, right now, we call two integrities, those who do and those who do not.

43:34

No diocese is obliged to ordain women, and no diocese can be told that they cannot ordain a woman if that bishop decides to do so.

43:43

Now, we haven't seen much of that take place. There might be a total of five or six women priests, but there are not many.

43:51

But there is that sense of dual integrity over the issue, and I'm not sure it's something, a sword that you'd want to pull on right now.

44:00

Certainly homosexuality is a sin that can test your salvation. The ordination of women does not.

44:07

Divorce does not. But I think you have to say that this does.

44:13

Now, to further clarify, when you say that you're in the minority, it seemed that you were just saying in your explanation, when it went on further, that the view of the ordination of women amongst conservative evangelicals, perhaps even more precise, if you will,

44:34

Calvinistic 39 Articles Anglicans, the ordination of women, the allowance for that would be a minority view.

44:41

Oh, very much a minority view. Okay. Yes, the number of women, as I said, who would be solidly evangelical and women would be a handful, a very, very small group, and they will never influence

44:54

Anglican Church in North America. My parish, for example, we have a woman deacon, and she does pretty near everything that a priest will do.

45:03

She preaches, she assists in the Eucharist, but she does not pronounce the words over the

45:10

Eucharist that only a man can do, but she does just about everything else. She prays the

45:15

Order, she preaches now and then, and she doesn't see this as a really threatening thing at all, as she gets on famously with our priest, and so it's become a women's rights issue that's become a church rights issue.

45:32

That's where it's at. It hasn't so much been a theological one. Women have said, we have a right to this, we have a right to that, we have a right to our proper own bodies, we have a right to equal pay, therefore we have a right to run the church.

45:45

Well, that dog won't hunt, because it's the issue of complementarity that's at stake here, and that issue of complementarity means that you do not and cannot have a woman in a position of priestly oversight.

46:00

There was no women priests of the Old Testament, there were prophetesses, but all of the

46:06

Leviarites, all the Levi, the type of Levi who served in the tabernacles, were all male.

46:12

And you have that carried over into the Roman Catholic Church, and into basically for centuries anyway, into the

46:19

Protestant Church. I don't think Martin Luther ever saw women, you know, he married, he came out of the church, but he never saw them playing any significant role that they have claimed for themselves today.

46:33

And the odd thing is, they have not done any better, you know, in making churches grow, than the men have.

46:41

And they've bought into all the heresies, the apostasies of the

46:47

Episcopal Church, and they've not advanced the cause of Christ. That's the real thing that bothers me, is that what have they done about the gospel?

46:55

And the answer is nothing. So, the fact that they're women is irrelevant at this point.

47:02

They haven't made churches grow, they're not planting new churches, so what?

47:09

Well, thank you, Susan Margaret. You have won a free copy, as well, of the Episcotape letters by our guest today,

47:17

David W. Virtue, and please give us your full mailing address in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, so that CVBBS .com,

47:24

our sponsors, can ship that out to you at no charge to you, or to Orange Herpins Iron Radio.

47:30

We have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says, you have repeated the use of the term priest.

47:40

I'm hoping that you use it in a different sense than the Church of Rome does, where they actually are involved, in their minds anyway, in the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the literal body and blood of Christ.

47:54

You do not believe in a sacrifice of the mass, and hence use the term priest because of that, do you?

48:04

I think that's a misunderstanding. I do not believe in transubstantiation. No, I do not.

48:09

I agree with the man who gave his thing. I do not believe in that. I believe in the real presence of Christ in the

48:17

Eucharist, in the sense that Cranmer did, but I don't believe in transubstantiation or the mass. I don't like the word the mass.

48:23

I like Eucharist. I like the Lord's Supper. Those are words that I'm more comfortable with.

48:30

That doesn't mean that a priest can't perform those functions. Being a priest isn't somebody who only believes in the mass.

48:39

There are Eastern Orthodox priests, and they have a slightly different view of the

48:46

Eucharist than Rome does. So the fact that one is a priest is not really relevant.

48:51

What is relevant is, do you believe in the mass as transubstantiation?

48:57

My answer is, I do not. I am very Reformed in my view, and so therefore I would stand with Cranmer rather than with Rome.

49:06

Now, the Reformed Baptists such as myself and many other conservative evangelicals, perhaps especially those that are

49:14

Calvinistic like myself, outside of Anglicanism, object to the word priest because we see the only priest in the

49:22

New Testament as the priesthood of believers. But you're using it, and to my understanding, the

49:28

Anglicans that use the term are using it because of a Greek term, Presbyteros, and I may be mispronouncing that.

49:38

Presbyteros. Yeah, there you go. So am I right on that? Is that why you use that term?

49:44

Yeah, I would prefer the word pastor rather than priest. I think you can use the church interchangeably.

49:52

A priest is really a pastor. That is what his function is. He's not lording it over the church.

49:58

He's to come alongside the church. He isn't, I think John Scott was right about this.

50:04

Priests really are, in the Anglican world, more like pastors than anything else. We do have this hierarchical model that we've accepted from Rome, but it doesn't mean that they're behaving in some sort of hierarchical fashion.

50:22

Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. Recently, a Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church was laicized because of sexual abuse.

50:30

He went from Cardinal down to laicization. I objected to that because it made it sound like the laity were at the bottom of the heap, and there were nobodies, because he was a great

50:39

Cardinal. Well, so what? There were no Cardinals in the Bible either. But the reality of the matter is that the laity are often seen as the bottom of the heap.

50:50

But I might point out, without the laity, you don't have a church. And so I see my priest as a pastor.

50:57

I don't call him that, but I mind if I was the group say, pastor Jim or pastor Richard or pastor

51:04

Bo. So I'm more comfortable with the term pastor, but I don't think the priest in and of itself is wrong.

51:13

It's just, I think the word presbyteroid can be translated priest or pastor.

51:20

Presbyterian, of course, or a Baptist, then of course you'll never use the word priest, and you'll always be a pastor.

51:26

And that's okay. Again, it's not something I'm going to pour all my thought about. Well, we are going to our midway break right now.

51:35

The midway break on Ion Sharpens Ion Radio is the longer -than -normal break, because Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida, who airs this program daily, they air their own commercials connected to Lake City, Florida, to localize

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And that email address again for questions for David Virtue is

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ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be back after this break with more of David Virtue and our discussion on the

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Has the Episcopal Church Sunk Too Deeply Into Darkness to be Rescued? David W.

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which is an Episcopal Anglican online news service for Orthodox Anglicans worldwide, reaching nearly 4 million readers and 204 countries.

01:09:45

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:09:52

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

01:09:58

USA. This is just a note. I keep getting emails today from people who are not giving us their city and state of residence or country of residence.

01:10:09

Please do that unless you're remaining anonymous, and if you're remaining anonymous, you've got to put that in the subject line so I know not to mention your name when

01:10:16

I start reading your email. But if you're if you're not remaining anonymous, please give us your city and state and country of residence.

01:10:24

I am getting a number of emails today that only have somebody's name. Before we return to David W.

01:10:32

Virtue, I just have some important announcements to make. First of all,

01:10:37

I am going to be attending, God willing, the East Coast Ministers Conference being held by the

01:10:43

Banner of Truth. That's going to be held this May 28th through the 30th in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.

01:10:54

And the theme is, I Believe in the Holy Spirit. These speakers include

01:11:00

Jeff Kingswood, Terry Johnson, David Vaughn, who is a Reformed Baptist missionary in France, Stephen J.

01:11:08

Nichols, who is the president of Reformation Bible College, the college founded by the late R .C.

01:11:13

Sproul and Ligonier Ministries, Michael Morales, and Chad Vegas. If you would like to attend with me to the

01:11:21

East Coast Ministers Conference of the Banner of Truth, go to banneroftruth .org,

01:11:28

banneroftruth .org, and then click on events. They are also having a West Coast Ministers Conference, and I know that we have many listeners in the

01:11:36

Iron Trip and Zion audience in California and other areas of the West Coast, so if you're closer to that one, click on West Coast Ministers Conference.

01:11:44

But we hope to see you, or I hope to see you, at the East Coast Ministers Conference, which is the one

01:11:49

I am attending. So if you can make it to that one, please register at banneroftruth .org,

01:11:54

banneroftruth .org, and then click on events. And that's on the theme, I believe in the

01:12:00

Holy Spirit. And also, coming up after that, in fact several months after that, this

01:12:10

December, the Foundations Conference is being held in Manhattan. And I'm also looking forward to going to the

01:12:18

Foundations Conference, which is a conference of sermon audio. I hope that you attend that.

01:12:25

And the Foundations Conference is a small conference. The building that they use can only hold about 200 people at the most.

01:12:37

So if you intend to register, I would urge you to please do so quickly.

01:12:45

And I am looking forward to being there again myself. In fact, I have to get back to you with the information on that, because for some reason all of the information on the

01:12:57

Foundations Conference that I had in front of me has disappeared. So I'm going to get back to you with that information as soon as I can.

01:13:08

Also, this is something that I have to do every day that I don't really like doing, but I have to do it because we really are in urgent need of your financial support here at Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

01:13:24

If you love this show, if you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, if you take advantage of and enjoy sharing the free downloadable mp3s of this program with your friends, family, and loved ones, if you enjoy the topics and guests that you rarely, if ever, hear anywhere else, sometimes you never hear some of the guests and topics that we have anywhere else other than this program, well please go to ironsharponsionradio .com,

01:13:53

click support, then click click to donate now. Then you could donate instantly with a debit or credit card, and that will be of great help to us as we have some urgent bills that we need to pay that we cannot pay right now, including our

01:14:12

March rent, a very large electric bill, and other things that we need from our listeners.

01:14:21

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01:14:42

Never, ever, ever siphon money away from your regular giving to your local church in order to support

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Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Never put your family in financial jeopardy by giving to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

01:14:53

Those two things are commands of God providing for your church and home. Providing for my show is not a command of God, obviously, but if you love the show and you are financially blessed above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands, then please go to ironsharponsionradio .com,

01:15:11

click support, and then click click to donate now. Also, if you are not a member of a local

01:15:19

Bible -believing church, please send me an email because I can help you find a local

01:15:28

Bible -believing church. I have found many churches for listeners who have written me in their area, so please, if you are not a part of a local church, if you're not a member of a local church and you're not peripherally seeking for one, you are living in disobedience to God.

01:15:49

So please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church home or something similar in the subject line and I will look at my vast resources.

01:16:01

I have many lists of churches globally that are faithful to the Scriptures and I have helped people globally find churches.

01:16:07

So send that email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church home in the subject line.

01:16:13

And now I have the information for the Foundations Conference, which is a conference that is run by Sermon Audio and I'm very excited about this,

01:16:24

December 19th through the 20th in Manhattan. The speakers this

01:16:32

December include Dr. Stephen J. Lawson. You have heard Dr. Lawson every day on my show promoting

01:16:38

New Covenant Church NYC, who is a sponsor of Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio. Reverend Jeff Thomas, in fact, just like my guest today,

01:16:51

David W. Virtue, who actually, no I'm sorry, David W. Virtue is from New Zealand, I think, not

01:16:56

Wales, I'm sorry. But Reverend Jeff Thomas is from Wales. He's a retired pastor and one of the most profound preachers

01:17:05

I've ever heard. I strongly urge you, no matter where you live, to get to hear

01:17:10

Jeff Thomas whenever you hear him speaking and preaching. Richard Caldwell Jr.,

01:17:15

Reverend Armin Tomasian, what a powerful, powerful preacher of the gospel he is.

01:17:20

I met him two years ago at the Foundations Conference and I have interviewed him several times. I look forward to having him back on the show.

01:17:28

And Andrew Quigley, they are the guest speakers. If you want to register for the Foundations Conference in Manhattan this

01:17:34

December, go to thefoundationsconference .com, thefoundationsconference .com.

01:17:39

Do so quickly as there is very limited seating. Now we are back with our guest today,

01:17:45

David W. Virtue. If you have a question that you'd like to ask, please submit it to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:17:53

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And please give us, as always, your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

01:18:05

USA. And we do have a listener in Cork, Ireland. We have

01:18:11

Mary in Cork, Ireland, who asks, where and when do you draw the line when tradition contradicts scripture?

01:18:21

That's obviously for you, David. That's actually quite an easy one.

01:18:27

Scripture always prompts tradition, always. Tradition has value, but it has no supreme value, and scripture is always numero uno.

01:18:39

It always prompts tradition in any way, shape, or form.

01:18:45

All our traditions are human and man -made. Scripture is inspired and God breathed, and that's the big difference between the two.

01:18:58

And of course, as she phrased it about traditions that contradict scripture, we have no use for them.

01:19:08

We must... That's called heresy. Yes, right. We have to obliterate and abandon and repent of those.

01:19:15

But every... it's funny because there are churches, there are pastors, there are Christians who act as if they have no traditions, and that's a very dangerous place to be in if you naively think that you have no extra biblical traditions that you have imported into your faith.

01:19:34

And there's nothing wrong with traditions that do not contradict scripture. Yes, correct. We all come with our cultural package.

01:19:42

We come with our own traditions. Even those churches that are not liturgical have a sort of liturgy of their own.

01:19:50

You know, the way they do things, every Sunday, it becomes a sort of liturgy.

01:19:56

I'm not saying it's right or wrong, it just is, and there are good traditions. Yes, very good traditions.

01:20:02

There are bad traditions. The traditions should never ever trump scripture when it comes to the teaching of God's Word or the fact that you can't put your own personal tradition over and above the authority of scripture.

01:20:21

And by the way, Mary in Cork, Ireland, we don't mail books overseas or to anywhere outside of the 50

01:20:32

United States, but we understand that you are going to be visiting the United States, so we are going to get this free copy of the

01:20:41

Episcopate Letters to someone here in the States who you will be spending time with when you come here.

01:20:47

Thank you for the excellent question. We have Bradley in Brandywine, Maryland, who has a question, and that's another question that I have to enlarge because it is microscopic in the font size, and while I do so, our email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:21:07

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

01:21:14

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question is a personal and private matter. The Church's turn towards homosexuality sounds like a planned, orchestrated plot.

01:21:26

Is this how it has been happening in the Episcopal Church? To the degree that it started out as recognizing sex outside of marriage in terms of fornication, it devolved into homosexuality from that.

01:21:45

Once you accept that there are alternate lifestyles, and that you never said these lifestyles were in and of themselves bad or sinful, and you accepted those lifestyles, homosexuality was inevitable.

01:21:57

And then on top of that, bisexuality, lesbian, trans, gay, as it's called. So you've now got a plethora of sexualities that began with fornication, then homosexuality.

01:22:08

The only sexuality that is still considered inviolate is adultery, which is sort of art, really.

01:22:17

Gene Robinson was married to a woman, got divorced, went to church and undivorced himself, or divorced himself from her.

01:22:25

Then he got married to a man, got divorced from him, and now he's really alone.

01:22:31

So divorce is not considered wrong, but adultery is. That seems to be the final frontier.

01:22:39

And if a bishop is caught having an affair outside of his marriage, he will get stoned out of the

01:22:45

Church. I've seen that happen two or three times. And of course you mean that figuratively. Yeah, figuratively.

01:22:52

But if on the other hand, that same bishop wakes up one morning after 40 years of marriage, as Bishop Otis Charles did, and said, oh, by the way,

01:22:59

I'm really gay, and I'm going to divorce my wife and go off and marry Philippe, that's okay.

01:23:05

You can do that. But if you have an affair with a woman, even though you're married to a woman, that is still a no -no.

01:23:12

Adultery is still a no -no. But changing your sexual preference is okay. It's crazy, and that's how the

01:23:18

Episcopal Church has worked. That is quite bizarre, and quite incredibly tragic, and heretical, and abominable.

01:23:28

But Bradley in Brandywine, Maryland, if you give us your full mailing address, you have also received a free copy, or you will receive a free copy, of the

01:23:39

Episcopal Tape Letters, compliments of our guest David W. Virtue, and also compliments of our friends at cvbbs .com,

01:23:47

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. Let's see here, we have

01:23:54

Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, since most of the

01:24:02

Episcopalian churches in the United States are very liberal, and in fact

01:24:08

I would call them apostate, would you say that a true Christian should ever be a member of such a congregation?

01:24:17

Well, I was for a while, then I left, and I am now saying to people who call themselves

01:24:22

Christians, you can't stay there any longer. And their argument is this.

01:24:28

They have two arguments. One is, my priest is a good priest, and so long as he remains a good priest,

01:24:33

I'm going to stay here. The second argument is, there's nowhere to go, and I was born in this church, my daddy was buried in a mummy,

01:24:41

I was buried in the columbarium, I'm going to stay in this church till I die. No one's going to kick me out.

01:24:46

And so a lot of people have just good history with their own churches, and they want to live and die in the parish that that mummy and daddy went to, and they're going to live and die there.

01:24:56

And what they have to do, not in my house, you know, whatever goes on out there in New York or California or, you know, in the

01:25:04

National Church or the gay church, that doesn't affect me here in my little church here in Podunkville, Iowa.

01:25:11

You know, I'm going to stay here because this is where I belong. That's all I understand. I'm never going to leave.

01:25:16

So that's the real issue for most Episcopalians, that they're just waiting out there their last few years of their lives, and then get buried in the columbarium, that's it.

01:25:26

They're not going to leave. Well, we are going to our final break right now.

01:25:32

And by the way, Arnie, give us your full mailing address in Perry County, Pennsylvania. You've also won a free copy of the

01:25:37

Episcopal Letters by our guest David W. Virtue. If you would like to join us on the air with a question during our last half hour, which is actually more like 25 minutes or so,

01:25:50

I would do so now because we're rapidly running out of time. Please send in your email to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

01:25:56

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Please, as always, give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

01:26:03

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away.

01:26:09

We will be right back with David W. Virtue right after these messages from our sponsors.

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What was I to do? Could I just say God bless you and walk away? The situation of the children set heavily upon me.

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I serve as professor of preaching and oversee the doctor of ministry program at the Master's Seminary in Los Angeles.

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I would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students, Andy Woodard, serves as the pastor.

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You can find their service times and location on their website, which is www .ncc .nyc.

01:31:23

They believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

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If you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching, which is simply biblical preaching, in New York City, I'd like to recommend that you visit

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New Covenant Church, NYC. Again, their information can be found at www .ncc

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.nyc. Have a great day. You need not fear listening 24 hours a day to firstloveradio .org.

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Spread the word about firstloveradio .org. Welcome back.

01:33:17

This is the final segment of today's interview with David W. Virtue. He is founder of an

01:33:23

Episcopal Anglican online news service for Orthodox Anglicans worldwide, reaching nearly 4 million readers in 204 countries called

01:33:33

VirtueOnline .org. We are addressing the theme, the Episcopal Church, has it sunk too deeply into darkness to be rescued?

01:33:41

And our email address, if you'd like to join us on the air is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

01:33:47

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please, as always, give us your first name, city, and state and country of residence.

01:33:54

If you live outside the USA, only remain anonymous if your question is personal and private. We have

01:34:00

Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who says, we understand that you would be very opposed to the liberal and apostate wing of Episcopalianism and Anglicanism, but what are the problems that you have seen, perhaps recently, that divide even conservative

01:34:20

Anglicans who profess to be faithful to the scriptures? That's an interesting question.

01:34:28

I would think possibly the ordination of women to the priesthood would be the single most fractious issue.

01:34:39

The Anglican Church in North America has adopted a two -integrity policy about that, and they're letting it basically, diocese by diocese, make up their mind.

01:34:51

I would think that 95 % of the diocese do not ordain women to the priesthood.

01:34:57

Maybe 5 % do. It's not a big issue, but it is an issue, and it probably will be resolved in time.

01:35:05

But it is possibly the phoniest issue. I don't think there's another real issue other than that issue.

01:35:16

The issue of sexuality is resolved. There is either celibacy or marriage or sex within marriage between a man and a woman.

01:35:23

That is not an issue. I don't foresee any other real major issue.

01:35:31

The issue is at a bigger level about the relationship of the

01:35:38

Anglican Church in North America to the Anglican Communion. That's a bigger issue, and there is something called

01:35:44

GAFCON, which now the ACNA is a part of, which is an amalgam of about 27 provinces worldwide that are part of the

01:35:54

Anglican Communion, but are also part of the Global Anglican Fellowship of Concerned Christians, who have banded together against the whole homosexual thrust of the

01:36:05

Church of England and the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church in Canada. So there is a bigger divide at a higher level in the

01:36:12

Anglican Communion. But as far as the Anglican Church in North America is concerned, I would say the only real issue is the marriage issue.

01:36:21

There's nothing much else that really would divide them. There's always the struggles about power.

01:36:27

There's always priests that go off the rails and morals. I mean, that's the standard that every church, whether Southern Baptist or Roman Catholic, you've got those issues.

01:36:37

But by and large, the Anglicans are united on the

01:36:43

Gospel and Scripture and tradition and history and liturgy. We have

01:36:50

RJ in White Plains, New York, who asks, are you familiar with the denomination called the

01:36:56

Charismatic Episcopal Church? And what are your thoughts on them, if you have indeed heard of them?

01:37:04

Oh, yes, I've heard of them. Yes, there's a gazillion of these churches, the

01:37:10

Reformed Episcopal Church, the Charismatic Episcopal Church, the Charismatic Evangelical Episcopal Church, the

01:37:16

EEC. These are all good churches. They are what we call the

01:37:21

Episcopoi Vigante. They're outside the mainstream of Anglicanism, but they're still,

01:37:27

I would argue, they're still legitimate Anglicans. They're not recognized by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

01:37:34

They are not recognized by the Anglican Church in North America. They have chosen, basically, not to join any other group.

01:37:42

There is the continuing church groups that have four major groups,

01:37:48

APA, ACA, and two others. But the Charismatic stands alone, as many of these groups do.

01:37:56

They have a few priests, they have a half a dozen or so parishes, maybe more, they sometimes have an archbishop, there's the

01:38:04

Orthodox Anglican Church, for example. There are a lot of these smaller

01:38:09

Anglican groups that draw a small following, and some of them are so small they meet in their garages sometimes.

01:38:20

But I have no beef with them at all. They're good people, they're godly people, they care about the gospel, and I'm not opposed to them at all.

01:38:31

I wish they could come under the umbrella of the Anglican Church in North America, but they probably won't until the issue of women's ordination is resolved.

01:38:40

That remains. There's also the Episcopal Missionary Church, EMC. There's a lot of these small groups out there,

01:38:46

Chris, that are legitimately Anglican. They are faithful to the prayer book and to Scripture and to the gospel.

01:38:54

They just are not willing to come under a broader authority, if I can put it like that.

01:39:02

Now, let's say a congregation or the entire denomination of the charismatic

01:39:09

Episcopal Church wanted to come under the umbrella of Cana, would they have to abandon their understanding of the sign gifts, especially, we're talking about tongues, obviously, and some would even go as far as extra -biblical revelation and extra -biblical divine revelation and things like that.

01:39:31

Would they have to set that aside, or is that acceptable within your denomination? Well, first of all, you said

01:39:38

Cana. I think you meant Acta. Cana is a diocese of the

01:39:45

Anglican Church in North America. No, and the ACNA does have a group of bishops that would look at the belief system of the

01:39:57

CEC. I don't think that the Pentecostal thing or the Charismatic was any of the problem, because the leading charismatic

01:40:05

Church in the Episcopal Church was in Darien, Connecticut, for many years was a leading charismatic

01:40:12

Episcopal Church. The guy whose name alludes to me right now died a few years ago, so there was a long charismatic tradition in the

01:40:22

Episcopal Church, and there are charismatics in the Anglican Church. As far as the particular beliefs of the

01:40:29

CEC is concerned, they would have to sit down with a group of bishops in the

01:40:35

ACNA, and they would look very carefully at what they believe. But being a charismatic is not a red flag to Anglicans.

01:40:44

There are many charismatics. The Archbishop of Canterbury claims that he can speak in tongues when he gets up in bed in the morning at 5 o 'clock to say his devotions, so he would call himself charismatic.

01:40:53

So there is a very distinct charismatic wing. It is recognized, it is legitimate. So I would say to your friend that, yes, there would be a real case for the

01:41:05

CEC becoming a member of the ACNA. They would have to, you know, jump through some hoops, I suspect.

01:41:10

But being a charismatic is not a deterrent to being an Anglican. No. We have

01:41:17

Ronald in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, who asks, if a minister in a historic

01:41:24

Episcopal church is faithful to the scriptures and faithful to his flock in feeding them nothing but biblical truth and the genuine ordinances or sacraments of the church, would that minister be obligated, in your opinion, from scripture to leave the

01:41:45

Episcopal church, meaning the main denomination in the United States, and become either independent or join a similar group to yours?

01:41:54

I would say at this point in time, yes. I may not have said that a few years ago, and I think the

01:42:00

Episcopal church is so far down the brain theologically that you cannot really stay in it and be a faithful Christian in any sense of the term, because you have to go along with what the

01:42:12

Episcopal church now believes about gay marriage and so forth and so on. And if you can't, and if you end up not agreeing with it, you end up like the

01:42:21

Bishop of Albany. You get chucked out of the church, or you get impaired, or you partially, you know, impaired communion.

01:42:29

So sometimes these guys stay under the radar of the bishop, and simply ignore the bishop.

01:42:37

The bishop comes around once every three years, he does a little razzle -dazzle, he takes a check and goes home, and that's the end of it.

01:42:43

And often these guys stay under the radar screen of their very liberal bishop.

01:42:50

In some cases, the bishop decides he's Orthodox, decides to die for South Carolina, and they leave, and the whole diocese leaves, as they have in Fort Worth, as they did in Peoria, as they did in San Joaquin, and so that happens too.

01:43:04

But I would say that if you're really faithful to the gospel, you're going to have a hard time staying, because sooner or later, what

01:43:12

I call the Episcopal Gestapo will get you. And when the Episcopal Gestapo get a hold of you, you're done.

01:43:19

And they will find ways to get rid of you, they'll have trumped up cases of sexual stuff, they'll say that you weren't nice to Mrs.

01:43:29

Jones, you've got anger issues, or you've got sexual issues, they'll report you to the bishop, and sooner or later, the bishop will toss you out, which is the excuse he's looking for.

01:43:40

And often they'll use any kind of excuse to get rid of these priests. And sooner or later, it'll be impossible for anybody who's remotely

01:43:49

Orthodox or Evangelical to stay in the Episcopal Church. It's impossible. You have to go along with the whole sexual thing, the whole sexual nightmare, and in which case, you've really compromised yourself.

01:44:01

That may not have been the case 20 years ago, but it is now, and I just don't think you can stay.

01:44:07

And increasingly, if you do stay, you've only got to get one person to complain in the church, well, my priest is homophobic.

01:44:16

He affirmed Resolution 110 of the Lambent, he's a homophobe. Well, that's the excuse that a bishop would need to get rid of the priest.

01:44:24

So either way, you're screwed. Well, I guess then, the question, the

01:44:31

Episcopal Church, has it sunk too deeply into darkness to be rescued? Your answer is absolutely yes.

01:44:38

Absolutely. It's gone. It's done. They would never repent, because they don't think you need to repent.

01:44:45

Their attitude is, we believe in a gospel of inclusion and diversity. We believe in good disagreement.

01:44:51

No, you can't do that. Scripture is abundantly clear, and if you don't believe in the authority of Scripture, you're not going to believe what

01:44:58

I believe. You're going to say, well, God has changed his mind. Really? When did God change his mind?

01:45:04

And they can't tell you that. But their attitude is, or their other attitude is, we have changed

01:45:09

God's mind for him. Really? Since when have you changed God's mind? You're going to tell

01:45:15

God he's wrong about sex, or St. Paul didn't understand about homosexual marriage in the first century, and that people were basically straight, but they were just having homosexual relationships because they had a good time out on Saturday night?

01:45:28

No, no, no, no. That's not going to work. The Greek word porneia and authenticatory means, quite simply, you cannot engage in anal sex and say that that is a

01:45:39

God -given way to behave. It's not. Scripture is very, very clear that porneia is pornography.

01:45:45

It is not permitted. And if you do it, then don't call yourself a Christian and don't believe that God has changed his mind.

01:45:51

He hasn't. And that's the real issue for these people. They think that a general convention resolution can change

01:45:57

God's mind for him. He has not changed his mind, never going to happen, not now, not ever.

01:46:04

Now, I happen to know at least a handful of ministers, rectors of churches, congregations within the main

01:46:18

Episcopal Church denomination, who are biblically faithful and have not yet been forced to teach or do anything that's an abomination or heretical or against their consciences.

01:46:32

And some of these men are rectors in areas where the church has been in existence for a hundred or more years, perhaps 200 or more years, and they don't want to leave because they have confidence, perhaps they have a post -millennial hope or something, that one day that God will bring renewal and genuine transformation and purge out the apostates in that denomination.

01:47:01

Would you say that these men are absolutely wrong in hanging in there, even if they are not forced to compromise at this point?

01:47:11

The word is delusional. It is utterly delusional.

01:47:18

99 % of all dioceses in America, except for Albany, have rolled over on the gay issue.

01:47:25

And sooner or later, if the bishop isn't in trouble of that diocese, then his priest will be in trouble.

01:47:31

They can stay under the radar screen until they get their pensions, and most of them are playing it out for their pensions. Let's be real.

01:47:37

They're not going to have their pensions upset unless they really worry about it. But the reality is, they can be left alone, and if the bishop doesn't worry them and he doesn't get all up in their faces, they can probably hang in there.

01:47:50

But the reality is the mainstream Episcopalian has rolled over.

01:47:58

Most of them are what I call pray, pay, and obey Episcopalians. They go along for the show, the ride, they like the weekly liturgy, they like doing it right, and their argument is, not in my house.

01:48:10

And as long as the bishop doesn't come around preaching homosexuality, most of them actually don't, because they know it's a hot -button issue, they'll say, well, the

01:48:18

General Convention passed these resolutions, but you know, whatever you do in your parish will mind their own business. But these guys can't stay under the radar screen until someone in the church accuses them of being homophobic or something like that.

01:48:31

Then the whole ballgame changes, and that's what they've got to worry about. So long as they can keep everybody, you know, and they never talk about it, that's the other issue.

01:48:39

Just never discuss it. Talk about the family, talk about, you know, how important children are, and talk about, you know,

01:48:46

God's love for absolutely everybody, and talk about, you know, social justice issues and all that stuff.

01:48:53

Then you just don't touch that, then you can probably get away with it for five years. But what goes on at the national level is where all the heresies go on.

01:49:02

And it filters down sooner or later. It filters down into the seminaries, and the seminaries filter down into the priests, and then it filters down into the pews, and then the parishioners get lost.

01:49:11

And that's what happened. That's the trajectory. So these guys are playing an endgame, like chess. And the endgame is, once they're gone, they will be replaced by liberals, and the church won't even know the difference.

01:49:26

Let's see, we have, let's see, we have

01:49:33

Christian in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks, I have heard very good things from the

01:49:41

Sydney Australian Anglicans. In fact, I have heard some interviews with at least one wonderful minister in that denomination on Iron Radio that Chris Arnson interviewed.

01:49:53

I was wondering what your guest's opinion is of the Sydney Australian Anglicans. Yep. Solid. Very solid.

01:49:59

The Jensen brothers run that whole operation. There's Peter Jensen, his brother. There'd be an archbishop from Sydney.

01:50:07

They've got, the seminary there is solid. It is the most solid orthodox evangelical diocese, and the largest diocese in the whole of Australia.

01:50:17

So they're on board. I think Melbourne is also orthodox, and I think Adelaide might be as well, I'm not sure. But the

01:50:23

Sydney people are 100 % on board with the gospel. They're as clear as the bell about it, and they're the biggest show in town.

01:50:30

Go figure. You know, this is not brain surgery to figure out that if you preach the gospel and people will come and hear it, you're going to grow.

01:50:41

If you're going to preach sexual inclusion and blah, blah, blah, you will die. You know, that's just inevitable. Sydney is good.

01:50:49

Nothing wrong with Sydney at all. Good people. Let's see, we have

01:50:56

Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York.

01:51:03

And Christopher says, one thing that troubles me about even conservative

01:51:09

Anglicans and Episcopalians is they appear to be more prone to believe in things like an old earth and theistic evolution.

01:51:20

I find these teachings very dangerous. What does your guest have to say about that? I have not heard that.

01:51:26

Frankly, I've never heard that argument ever. Really? No, there may be privately held views, but I've never heard those views publicly expressed anywhere at any time.

01:51:40

The flat earth, the soft earth, whatever it is. He didn't say flat earth, he said old earth. That's a big difference.

01:51:47

Sorry about that. My apologies. It's never been on my radar screen, put it like that, and I really don't know anybody that would hold those views.

01:52:00

Perhaps they do, perhaps they don't, but it's never been a major issue that I've ever seen written about or talked about.

01:52:06

It's just not there. It might be one or two priests, but it's never been an issue that I've heard about, no.

01:52:14

Well, I'd like you to now, and if we have any time after, we will take one or two more questions from listeners.

01:52:21

But right now, I want to make sure you have somewhere in the neighborhood of five minutes uninterrupted to really summarize the most important things that you want etched on the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

01:52:34

I would like etched into their hearts and minds is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is first and foremost a gospel of changed lives.

01:52:44

We are called to be ministers of truth and love and peace. We're called about the story of redemption and reconciliation with God through Jesus.

01:52:54

It's the most important story ever told. And I was talking with Layton Ford the other day, and he's the brother -in -law of Billy Graham.

01:53:03

He remembers fondly he was raised in an Anglican church in Canada. And I would say to people, the gospel first.

01:53:12

And then, if you like the tradition of liturgy and the prayer book and the creed, then

01:53:20

I would ask you to consider Anglicanism. That doesn't mean we go back to the second century, not just to Henry VIII.

01:53:25

That's a silly argument. But we claim to have a good history. We go back to the second century.

01:53:33

But the gospel has always got to be center stage and change lives.

01:53:38

So you'll find evangelical Anglicans in the forefront of a crusade, charismatic renewal, whatever it might be, because they simply believe that without Jesus, you don't have a message.

01:53:52

Without the gospel, you don't have anything. So I would say to people, if you've come out of a

01:53:57

Roman Catholic tradition and feel like it was just dead and it didn't offer you anything, have a hard look at good

01:54:05

Anglican congregations. By the way, Vice President Pence is an evangelical Anglican.

01:54:10

He goes to Falls Church in Northern Virginia when he gets time, so he's one of ours. The governor of Ohio, his name alludes to me right now.

01:54:21

He's also an evangelical Anglican. And some of these people, if you were a former Episcopalian or a former

01:54:27

Catholic, Mike Pence came out of the Catholic Church and he felt he needed the liturgy still.

01:54:34

He found that the evangelical Anglican tradition to his liking. And there are evangelicals all over the country like that moving into interesting places.

01:54:46

They want to be evangelical. They want to be Anglican. They want the liturgy.

01:54:52

They want the Book of Common Prayer. And this thing doesn't go away.

01:54:57

You know, if you've been raised in the Book of Common Prayer and Scripture...by the way, the Book of Common Prayer is 90 %

01:55:02

Scripture. Just to make that point that it's not some extraneous little book, it's not like the

01:55:07

Book of Mormon. It's a thoroughgoing... So it is 90 %

01:55:16

Scripture. You get Psalms, you can read the Daily Office and get

01:55:21

Old New Testament readings, Psalms, and then you get the liturgy, you get the creed, you get about as much theology in 15 minutes reading the

01:55:29

Daily Prayer, the Daily Office, as you'll get anywhere in the world. So I'm giving a plug for my group,

01:55:35

True. But I say to people who seriously want to think about the Gospel in a liturgical tradition, think about who we are, and maybe give us a look if you can find a church.

01:55:46

Go to the website ACNA and maybe look it up and check out where you live. You may find a local church near you.

01:55:53

We're planting churches. We have about a thousand congregations, about 130 ,000 people.

01:56:00

So it's small, but we're growing, and we're growing because Jesus is the core and center of our faith.

01:56:08

Yeah, I believe one of my former guests that I've had on the program at least once,

01:56:14

John Yates, I believe he's the rector of that church you mentioned, the Forrest Church. He's about to retire, and there's another man,

01:56:23

Sam, coming on, a young guy in his early 40s. He's a terrific guy, working on his

01:56:28

PhD. By the way, he's working on his PhD on sexuality. But Sam is going to take over there, and there's a lot of good friends of mine that go there.

01:56:39

Dr. R. Guinness goes to that church. It has a lot of high flyers, and Mike Pence goes there now and then.

01:56:50

So I think that evangelical Anglicanism is going to come into its own in America, because at the core is the

01:56:58

Gospel, and then for many people who have been Lutherans or Presbyterians or Roman Catholics or Exorcist Italians who still yearn for more than just the happy -clappy kind of Baptist approach to things, they will find this,

01:57:13

I think, a very comfortable way of staying in the faith at the same time being

01:57:19

Gospel -centered. I have to obviously do a little caveat here.

01:57:25

Not all Baptists are happy -clappy. I happen to be a Reformed Baptist. I wasn't.

01:57:32

I apologize. In fact,

01:57:38

Reformed Baptists could use a little more happy -clappy in them, I think. I retract my remark.

01:57:46

I apologize to all the happy -clappy people out there. No, I was once in the

01:57:54

Baptist church, and I understand that. It was a very liberal Baptist denomination. I won't mention names, but even

01:58:03

Baptist churches have their own liturgy, their own way. Your prayer, a hymn, a prayer, a reading from Scripture, the sermon, the communion, maybe.

01:58:12

They have their own kind of style of liturgy. They don't call it that, but it's not as spontaneous as one would believe.

01:58:23

Presbyterians have their liturgy as well. I just think that we've got something special, and I hope people will give us a look in.

01:58:33

You may find that it offers a good sense of community. Our little church started a couple years back.

01:58:41

We're 25 now, and we have lunch together every Sunday. We're small, so we all got to know each other.

01:58:49

We're paying the bills, and we've got a part -time priest, and we can't afford a bull's -eye. He used to get his job part -time.

01:58:55

We are something what I call the Benedict option—small, faithful, and growing.

01:59:05

It's like we're all starting again, following the total breakdown of the mainline denomination.

01:59:12

Well, we are out of time. If you want to find out more information about our guest, David W.

01:59:18

Virtue, go to VirtueOnline .org. That's VirtueOnline .org.

01:59:25

If you want to order his book, The Episcopate Letters, you can go to J2BLLC .com.

01:59:33

That's J2, B as in boy, LLC .com. You can also go to CVBBS .com

01:59:40

and order it by name, The Episcopate Letters. I want to thank you so much, David, for being my guest. I look forward to your return to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

01:59:47

I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write. I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater