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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 Tuesday on this 26th day of March, 2024.
I am thrilled to have a first-time guest today whose introduction to me was an obvious work of God's providence at the last G3 conference when I was manning my exhibitor's booth there in Atlanta, Georgia, and a man was walking around handing out a book, and that book happened to be the topic of our discussion today, Dangerous God, Wrath, Vengeance, Recompense, and Terror by Jim Albright.
And as renowned Christian author Donald Whitney has said about this book, it is a book of good news, terrifyingly good news. And my guest, Jim Albright, is not only the author of this book, but he's one of the pastors of Grace Baptist Church of Scott, Arkansas, and founder of Dangerous God Ministries.
It's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron for the very first time ever. Jim Albright.
Hey, Chris, it's great to be with you.
It's great to have you in the program. Well, first of all, tell our listeners something about Grace Baptist Church of Scott, Arkansas.
Only been there a couple of years. My wife and I, I don't know if you know this history. We were in Italy for right at 19 years. I was the pastor of an international church there, English-speaking church in Milan, Italy.
Had a great ministry. We loved every minute of it. COVID created a little bit of a problem. No internationals were coming to Milan anymore. And ultimately, the Lord led us to repatriate in 2022, and a good friend of mine was pastoring the church in Scott, which is just outside of Little Rock, and he invited me to come on board.
He is also the co-founder of Dangerous God Ministries. He's quite the Greek scholar. Once his dissertation is published, you should have him on your program. It's going to be quite amazing. So yeah, I'm at Grace, a small rural church outside of Little Rock.
It's a church that, it used to be your average Southern Baptist church. And then my friend Brad, he was called as pastor and immediately set some things in motion. One being church discipline, and he lost about a third of his people on that one.
And subsequently, he arrived at the Doctrines of Grace, and he lost another third on the Doctrines of Grace. So he's been through some difficult times down there, but we've got a good core group, and they love the Word of God, and they love the hard parts and the soft parts.
And so they're open to hearing all that God has to say.
Great. And when you mentioned Little Rock, immediately what came to mind is, I know that for years our mutual friend Jim Eliff, who is now in Kansas City, Missouri, but for years he was pastoring in either Little Rock or North Little Rock, I can't remember right now, but it was definitely there in that area in Arkansas.
Yeah, he was in North Little Rock. I think when I was converted, I immediately was exposed to Jim Eliff, and of course, again, I was raised in a weak Southern Baptist church, didn't know anything. And he started throwing me books.
I think the first book he threw me was Chosen by God by Sproul, and so my whole world began to change.
Amen. Well, since you are a first-time guest on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, we have a tradition here, whenever we have a first-time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which you were raised, and what kind of providential circumstances our Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to Himself and saved you.
So I'd love to hear your story.
Well, I had wonderful parents. You know, you get to a certain age, and you look back and you realize what an unspeakable blessing it is to have parents who point you to Christ. I did not appreciate that for the first 28 years of my life, but we were at church Sunday, early Sunday night and Wednesday night, and my dad was a deacon and my mom was a Sunday school teacher.
So I did what every good Southern Baptist child would do at the age of eight, which is to make a profession of faith. I dutifully did that. There was really no pressure, not from my parents anyway or from the pastor, but there's just this cumulative kind of understanding that around eight you should probably make a profession of faith.
I did. It didn't mean anything to me. I was baptized. I was thinking today about it after you mentioned that you wanted me to share a bit. I still vividly remember cursing a man out when I was in university for witnessing to me.
It meant nothing to me. I didn't presume to be a Christian. I know a lot of folks who are nominal think they are. I never presumed to be one. It just meant nothing to me. It was a cultural habit and something my family did.
So I got married, had a couple of kids, still going to church because it pleased my parents. And I was sitting in my mother's Sunday school class and some guy read a text. And I was immediately struck by the realization that it was one of those hard texts, you know, Jesus has a habit of saying hard things.
And I realized if that's a Christian, I'm not one. And as best I can recall, that is the first point of life in my dead soul. And I began to read the Word of God and ended up in a thing called Bible Study Fellowship.
I don't know if you know about it. And, yeah, started studying the Bible. The first study I was in was Genesis and I just loved, you know, I was just so enamored with this love affair between Abraham and God and how God was just, you know, God would sovereignly come to him and reveal himself.
And it was just fascinating to me. And I loved every minute of it. So that would be my conversion. It was just the Word of God. Somebody reading the Word of God in a Bible study. And so I ultimately made a profession of faith, a genuine profession of faith, and I was subsequently baptized as a true believer.
And I was in business, I was a CPA, ultimately felt called to go to seminary. So that's where the Lord took me ultimately. I'm not quite sure where to stop here, but I'll stop right there and we can go forward or however you want to proceed.
Well, I think you already hinted at the fact, because I wanted to find out how you came to discover and fall in love with the doctrines of Sovereign Grace, and I believe you hinted at the fact that it may have had something to do with our mutual friend Jim Eliff handing you a book by R .C. Sproul, if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah, I still have the same Bible, believe it or not, that I had when I first got converted. It's my most treasured possession. There's so many notes in the margin. I can still see the parentheses in the margin of Romans 9, the page that Romans 9 appears on where I had written, God's strange dealings in the lives of men.
I had no idea what Romans 9 meant. I had no idea. Of course, Sproul's book helped me a lot, and I still remember I was playing golf with a mutual friend of Eliff and mine. We teed off, and he starts talking to me about Romans 9 and about what's really being said there, and by the time we put it out, I was a Calvinist, although I don't use that term very often because it's widely misunderstood, as I suspect you are aware.
Yes. In our international ministry, we almost never use the term. I think our international ministry, one of our great joys was to hold up a great sovereign God and watch the light come on for very many people who had simply been churched in, shall we say, nominal churches.
That was the most fun part, is to preach a high, sovereign, holy, unapproachable, consuming-fired God, get Him up as high as is humanly possible, and watch the light bulb come on in folks' minds. You can see it in their eyes, you can hear it in their voice.
Praise God. And so today we are talking about something, something that is very rarely heard from pulpits these days or in the media, Christian media, whether it be Christian radio, television, internet.
In fact, if you were to sit down with a church growth expert in our day and age, and he asked you, so, tell me about this new book I hear you're writing. Oh, it's called Dangerous God, Wrath, Vengeance, Recompense, and Terror.
Are you kidding me? Don't you want your church to grow? You just want to chase people away? What about this parachurch ministry you were on? Oh, that's called Dangerous God Ministries. What? Are you out of your mind?
But just because a church growth expert might react that way, doesn't mean it's not the right thing to publicly declare in a day and age when that kind of thing, that aspect of God is almost never heard.
Even from the ministries of people who agree with us very closely theologically, I can even remember years ago when I was in advertising an airtime salesman for a major Salem radio affiliate in New York, and a client of mine wanted to buy advertising, and I took an excerpt of a really powerful sermon that this pastor preached on hell, and I used it in the ad, and the pastor said to me, are you sure you want to use that clip in the ad?
I said, oh, definitely, because it's something that you hardly ever hear anybody saying. And even though the phones were ringing off the hook at that church, people wanting to find out more about that church, because just as I said, you hardly ever heard people preaching with such passion and warning with such urgency about the threat of hell, even though that was occurring.
He wanted me to stop airing that ad because he thought that people would think that's all he was about and all that kind of thing. So I was very disappointed, and I told him it was a mistake, and sure enough, when they did change the ad, the response from listeners was not nearly as great.
So in fact, there was a person, I'm not sure if it was a pastor or not, but he apparently has the same or similar convictions that you and I have theologically, and he posted in social media in response to my publicity for Dangerous God, he said, by the cover illustration alone, I will not listen to your program.
And my head was really ready to explode because of the amazement of the shallowness or the fear people have of men rather than God. But tell us about what initially led you to the point where you said, you know, I've got to write this book with this provocative title and this provocative theme, and I've got to get this book into the hands of as many Christians as possible.
What was the compelling factor?
Well, I became a Piper fan right before I went to seminary, and I read his book Desiring God, and I began my trek into the beauty of God, and of course, he's channeling Jonathan Edwards for us all, he's helping us understand Edwards, and I just became wholly enamored with the person of God, and so I just look at God.
I'd written another book before this one, it was just about looking at God as the Creator, and it radically changed me. I mean, I spent two years just looking at God as Creator, and also bringing in the science as well as the pseudoscience, critiquing the pseudoscience that surrounds that topic, and I just was radically changed, and everything I look at in nature now, it's a point of worship.
I get jacked up over a good banana, and I do. I mean, the packing's ingenious, and the packaging's ingenious, and then you have the taste on a perfect banana, or a perfect watermelon, a perfect raspberry, I mean, all of these things, you know, just taste buds, right?
You get jacked up, you just can't believe that God gives us taste buds, and you know, just his goodness, and his thoroughness, and his benevolence, and his kindness, and you know, the goodness of God is over all of his works.
So I thought, you know, I've always had this deep sense of awe about Yahweh since my conversion, and I thought, I'm gonna write a book about awe, and so I googled it, went out on Amazon, and of course, is it David Paul Tripp, or Paul David Tripp, I always get that by accident.
Paul David Tripp. Paul David Tripp. He wrote a book entitled Awe, which irritated me, but you know what, it was a pretty good book, I read it, and his baseline point in it is excellent, and really enjoyed it, and I thought, well, what, where can I go, and the Lord, really, Chris, it was just the leading of God, I started thinking about this book, and I was looking for books on hell, for judgment, for wrath, and vengeance, of course, there's very little, if anything, out there currently, or that's in a modern sense, and I just, I was sitting on the runway at the Atlanta airport returning to Milan, Italy, and he gave me all the chapters, I mean, I just, if you've read the book, you know anything about the book, I'm just going through the Bible, there's right at 600 biblical references in the book, it's just almost all Bible, and the chapters fell in place in my mind, and I thought, you know, I think I'll try to do this, and I don't know if you've ever written a book, but when I do, you never know if you can finish it, you don't even know if you can get it started, you don't know what it's going to look like in the middle, and you have no idea, can I even finish this, is this going to be of any value at all, you just go to work, and you know, takes you about a year or so, and Dangerous God came from a quote by Michael Horton, he said it's a dangerous thing to, I don't recall the exact quote, but it's something to the effect that it's a dangerous thing to ignore all that Yahweh said about Himself, and that was, that planted the seed for the title, and then I thought what I would do is get four biblical words as the subtitle, I really wanted to put five on there, but it threw off the symmetry, the fifth word was horror, if you've read your Bible, you realize that God uses the word horror in relation to His judgment multiple times, I think 20-something times, but I wanted, I thought Dangerous God was a great title, again, I give Michael Horton, he planted the seed in my mind for that, give him credit for that, and then these four biblical words that almost everybody recoils from, obviously the unbeliever, nominal Christian, they recoil from it, but even the born-again man or woman, there's not much out there to help illuminate what God is revealing about Himself, and I just felt like, you know, this would be a great opportunity to do this, and obviously at this point in time in our culture, I think we all understand that we're in a Romans 1 situation, and judgment is happening now, and will continue, and maybe even the pace will accelerate, it's time to start saying that God is angry with the wicked every day, and it's time to start talking about His wrath, we know biblically, we know how He dealt with Israel and Judah as they turned away from Him, and it was not pretty, those of us who have read the prophets, it was, yeah, the things God says through the prophets are just, your average churchgoer has no idea, and I think even in some sound churches, maybe even in Reformed churches, the average person sitting in the pew who has not really become a student of the Bible has no idea that God talks like this, and He's unapologetic, and He says, by this you will know I am the Lord, and He says this over and over and over again, the other thing He says many, many times in the prophets is, this is your evil, this is your abomination, you have brought this upon yourself, so I think those are two important issues that need to be brought out, I think there's, this is a good time, America 2024, this is a good time to talk about all that God is, and not the, you know, the dumbed-down version that we're so used to.
The only thing that baffles me about the book is, where is your endorsement from Joel Osteen?
I'm just kidding. Yeah, yeah, you know, interestingly enough, in Milan, we had about a thousand, over 19 years, we had about a thousand people come through from about a hundred different nationalities, and we had very many people come through who were Osteen fans, and I think, by God's grace, I was able to help them, you know, wean them off of that disaster.
Amen. So, but you know, Whitney was one of my seminary professors, I never thought, honestly, didn't know that he would ever endorse anything I wrote, he's endorsed everything I've written, and I'm just so thankful.
I think his name helps a lot, and I think it gives the book some credibility, at least among regenerate people, and so I think it's, again, 600, right at 600 Bible verses, I think it's worth a read. I do want to say this, and I had not, I have not told you this, Chris, I did want to mention it.
My publisher wanted me to write a devotional version, so there's a devotional version out there on Amazon, it's called Worship or Flee, and it's 31 days of, it's dangerous God distilled into 31 days, you know, what, 400 words a day, or whatever, 300 words a day, whatever it is.
I did want to mention that, because Worship or Flee might be more to the taste of some folks, some listeners, other than 150 pages of theology.
Well, if you want more information about Worship or Flee, you can go to dangerousgod .org, dangerousgod .org, in fact, you could go there for all the information you'll need on the writings of my guest today.
And we are going to our first commercial break right now. Let me just end this segment with a quote, a commendation from our mutual friend Jim Elliffe, founder of Christian Communicators Worldwide. Euphemistic thinking about God is not truthful thinking about God.
This book, as shocking as it might be, is a needed corrective. And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, send it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.
As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence. If you live outside the USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.
Perhaps you are having difficulties, having disagreements with your own church where you're a member, with your own pastors, and you obviously do not care at this point to identify yourself publicly. Or perhaps you are the pastor, you disagree with your own elders, you disagree with your own denomination over something we are addressing today, and you don't want to identify yourself publicly at this point either.
Well, whatever the case may be, if it's a personal and private matter, we would be more than happy to grant your request to remain anonymous when you submit a question. But if it's a general question, please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.
Don't go away. We're going to be right back with Jim Albright and our discussion of his book, Dangerous God, Wrath, Vengeance, Recompense, and Terror. Don't go away.
Greetings. This is Brian McLaughlin, President of the SecureComm Group and supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Shopping Zion radio program. SecureComm provides the highest level of security systems for residential buildings, municipalities, churches, commercial properties, and much more.
We can be reached at securecommgroup .com. That's securecommgroup .com. But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church.
On Long Island. Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur. In the film, Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt God's pleasure when he ran.
He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God. I sensed that same God-given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God. That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a savior who died for sinners, and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.
I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.
That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672. That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word, and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.
God bless you.
I'm Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven, an Orthodox Presbyterian church in Comac, Long Island. I hold the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program hosted by my longtime friend and brother, Chris Arnson, in the highest esteem, and I'm thrilled that you're listening today.
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So please go to royaldiadem .com today and mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with Jim Albright. We are discussing his book Dangerous God, Wrath, Vengeance, Recompense, and Terror. And I want to read a question.
I usually don't read questions from listeners this quickly, but I want to read a listener question from Kitty in Cheney, Washington. And Kitty says, Do you think that some of the reason why we have such soft, squishy, sugar-coated sermons and messages from pastors today is that they are overcompensating the sins of the past, perhaps the kind of atmosphere in which these pastors were raised, where the strict fundamentalist approach to proclaiming the gospel may have been devoid of love and compassion and mercy and grace, and may have focused almost entirely on the wrath of God and other terrifying aspects to the error of hardly ever proclaiming the grace of Jesus Christ?
Jim, are you there? I am here. Obviously, one-dimensional preaching is always wrong. It's just always wrong. And if that's true, if her assertion is true, that in bygone days there was a one-dimensional kind of exposition, which I'm not sure that's very widely true, but if that was, then that's an error.
You can't present God as one-dimensional. He's multifaceted. Just like you and I, we have multiple dimensions in our personalities and character as well. So, yes, He is love, and yes, He's many, many, many other things.
He's revealed about Himself. I think the thing that's maybe startling and stunning, and I think has to be a stench in His nostrils, that we categorically ignore all the ink He's given to His wrath and His judgment, His recompense, and His terror, and I'll include the word horror.
I just looked it up during the break. Twenty-nine times in the NASB, God attaches the word horror to His description of His judgment upon His rebellious creatures. So, it's always wrong. One-dimensional presentation is always wrong.
But, of course, that's where we are right now, a one-dimensional presentation, by and large, in evangelicalism. And it's a false presentation. It's a pseudo-Christ. We don't hear about the angry lamb.
It's just, you know, it's a surrender to pragmatism and the perpetuation of the organization. You know, it's been my sense, and obviously, it can be an error, but it seems like in many, many places that there's a preoccupation with organizational preservation, over and above proclaiming the absolute sovereignty and glory of an inexpressibly great God.
To me, as a preacher, my first job is to hold Him up. Whether it's me and my wife, Karen, in the church and no one else, then I'm happy to hold up God as desirable and beautiful and compelling in all of His attributes.
And I'm not into organizational preservation. Yeah, obviously, I want as many people to come to Christ as possible, but I think it's, again, a stench in His nostrils to downgrade Christ in order to do that.
In order to do that. And so, you know, I just, as God makes no apology, I make no apology. And in the book, you get to chapter, is it nine? I don't know. Let me look. Chapter nine, we see God's remedy for the wrath that rightly befalls a rebellious people.
Pardon me, it is chapter nine. It's called Six Hours. And Jesus Christ has taken care of the wrath problem for all who would receive Him by faith. So there's the end of the book, or towards the end of the book, we see this amazing thing God has done where Jesus lays down His life for His people, taking on the fullness of the wrath of God.
So I'll stop there for a moment. Well, I just want to thank Kitty for the excellent question. And guess what, Kitty, you have won a free copy of Dangerous God by my guest today, Jim Albright. So please make sure that you send us your full mailing address in Cheney, Washington, so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, can ship that out to you at no cost to you or to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.
And we want to thank the Desiring, I'm sorry, DangerousGod .com for supplying us with a limited—. Hey, I used to do that all the time. Thanks for supplying us with these books. I'm going to read one more listener question right now, because it is pertinent to what we're talking about.
I'm hoping that all the questions will be, but it's kind of another good question to set the stage. Lou from Sharpsburg, Georgia. Good afternoon, brothers. Do you think it's significant that it's the fear of the Lord and not the love of the Lord that is the beginning of knowledge?
Yeah. I think there might be something there. I really do. Especially since it's God-breathed. I think the guy's onto something here. I do have an appendix, and it's entitled Fearing God. It's about six or ten pages, and I talk about this, but I've always loved what Piper says about the fear of God.
He says, this is not the opposite of joy in the Lord, it is the depth and seriousness of it. And I just think that's a perfect quote. That's in his book Providence, which, by the way, I'll do a short commercial.
Providence is 711 pages long, written by John Piper. I've read it twice, and then I did a Bible study through it once. I would say it's non-negotiable reading for your genuine Christian. And I know that's a lot of pages, but you read a couple of chapters a week, it doesn't take you very long to get through it.
And I'll shut up about that, but the book is excellent. The book is, in my view, excellent.
Great. Well, thank you, Lou, and you've also won a free copy of Dangerous God, so make sure we have your full mailing address in Sharpsburg, Georgia. I'm going to go through each of these elements of your book that you have contained within its pages—wrath, vengeance, recompense, and terror—but I wanted to also help set the stage on this.
Isn't it true that unless we understand the danger of God, we will never appreciate the grace and mercy and forgiveness of God? Otherwise, grace is not amazing, and the gospel is a yawn, like, okay. In fact, our language in modern evangelicalism is so comforting and filled with adjectives and synonyms that involve love that you very often may be leaving the unrepentant rebel in a state of false comfort.
Well, you know, if Jesus loves me so much, and if Jesus paid the price for my sin, which obviously you and I, who believe in definite atonement and particular redemption, don't believe that he paid the price for every single human being, that we don't know who the elect are—we have to evangelize everyone—but we may be leaving these people in the state of mind, and I'm sure we often do, where they're saying to themselves, Jesus loves me and died for my sin.
Thanks a lot for letting me know. I guess I'm good to go. Exactly. So, but isn't this aspect of truth, the bad news—don't we need the bad news before we.
Can really appreciate how good the good news is? Yes. Short answer, of course. I think, well, in the book, chapter 9, it talks about—actually, I say something like, let me see if I can find it. Actually, that was in one of the—yeah, that's in just a moment.
It's right here in one of the appendices. Well, while you're looking, I'm going to give our email.
Address out again, if anybody wants to do that. Sure, I've got it right here. I've got it right.
Here. Some have asked a question about the book concerning, where's the balance? And I say, while the cross, chapter 9, is balanced enough, I wonder why do we always seem to feel the need to moderate or soften what God has revealed about himself with respect to his judgment and wrath?
Yeah. So, yes, what's being said there is absolutely right. If we discount this massive amount of ink that God has given to the fact that he is a consuming, fire, holy, righteous, no-nonsense God, and he means what he says, he says what he means, and he backs it up, and he judges people.
You know, you get to the New Testament. You know, you always hear these silly things said about, well, the Old Testament God, the New Testament God. You get to the New Testament, and Jesus starts talking about eternal conscious punishment.
Now, we only have vague allusions to that in the Old Testament. You get to the New Testament, and the Son of God starts telling us bluntly about eternal conscious punishment. So, yeah, New Testament God.
Then you get into the Revelation, and here's the angry lamb. It's just astonishing, really. Again, I go back to what I said earlier. It's this denominational formula of pragmatism, trying to draw as many people as you can.
That's not the point. You know, Jesus would have five, he would have thousands of people following him, and he would turn around and say something absolutely objectionable to the flesh, and he would lose them.
They would walk away. John 6. Absolutely. And, of course, there's this great testimony to God's sovereignty right there.
And, by the way, the thing that he mentioned that finally made his followers turn away was a point of doctrine uniquely toined by we who are theologically Reformed, that no one can come to me unless it is given to him by the Father, granted to him.
You know, I think some of it's well-intentioned, but I think most of it is, I think for your average pastor in your average church, we have to have organizational success. And the way organizational success is quantified is by numbers and budget.
And I think this, again, I think this is offensive to Yahweh. I personally think it is. I'm happy to preach to four people, but I could never, you know, it's the whole, and I know you've heard this a million times, but it's true.
Man, you've got to find the preacher who has an audience of one. That's the guy you want. You want that guy, because he trembles before God. He's not overly concerned about how you like the sermon. He's principally concerned about what his God thinks of it, and that's the guy you need in pulpits.
And in this era that we find ourselves in,.
Most folks will not tolerate that. Amen. Well, we have another listener question that is excellent in Aquabog, Long Island, New York. Jill, and Jill says, don't you think the problem of the fact that so many churches are filled with false professing Christians who are making lives a living hell for those in leadership is the direct result of comforting the goats with a false message that is not the whole truth, and that's why they are streaming into places like that?
Yes. Again, it's organizational preservation over and above everything else. And, you know, I told you I was raised in a weak, liberal Southern Baptist church, and I was a deacon there for a while, and then the Lord started lighting me up with truth.
But shame on the pastors. I would rather go sell used cars or do road maintenance, whatever, and I'm not diminishing the value of a used car salesman or men who work on the roads or whatever, but I would do that before I would ever stand in a pulpit and dumb God down.
I mean, yeah, I'm going to have to give an account. And so shame on any pastor who moderates the message. Absolutely shame on him. Get out of the pulpit. You're damaging yourself and your eternity. Get out of the pulpit.
You're a pied piper. You're misleading your flock, and they deserve better. And, you know, again, I'll say it again, I would rather preach to 10 people than 10 ,000, because if I have to moderate this blunt message of God, then, you know, if I'm not man enough, you know, I remember one of the first newsletters I ever wrote for our ministry.
I'll just read you a couple of excerpts. It says, to quote a guy named Baxter, preach the word is never sure to preach again as a dying man to dying men. Though you cannot see my face and live, God has called us to act like men, to be strong, to be courageous, to stand firm in the faith, and to be very zealous for the Lord.
Ultimately, as I mentioned earlier, we have an audience of one. So we preach him glorious. We preach him holy. We preach him righteous. We preach him dreadfully provoked, and we dare not omit a word. So that's my message.
That's my message to the pastors. Hey, if you can't stand the heat, get out. And, you know, I think as we move on through this time of judgment in our country, these kinds of churches, these kinds of ministers will fall by the wayside.
Well, we would hope so. And thank you, Jill. Please give us your full mailing address in Aquabog, Long Island, because you've also won a free copy of Dangerous God by my guest today. You know, we understand it when a liberal and apostate false Christian churches, churches that are not truly Christian at all, we understand it when their messages to the public and to their own congregations are devoid of these concepts.
But the baffling part is when those who claim to believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, who believe every word is God-breathed, who truly have a concern for not only the eternal souls of dying men, but also have a deep concern for honoring and glorifying God and not dishonoring Him and not disobeying Him, that's the baffling part, was when they will read a text like Hebrews 10 .31.
It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God, knowing that that was God-breathed and that it's in the Scripture and intended for the reading and hearing of all. They think it's wiser not to let that be publicly known?
They think they're wiser than God? Totally baffling. But I'll let you pick up on that when we return. We have to go to our midway break right now, and if anybody has a question, please submit it to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
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Reilly, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland. Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia are largely to thank, since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.
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That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Going back to my question, or my statement really, before the break, I'm assuming it baffles you just as much as it does me, that those that claim the inerrancy of Scripture and that every word is God's Word, and yet those folks very often still say, well, God may have said it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God, as it does in Hebrews 10 .31, but that's not for public consumption.
Doesn't that baffle you?
Yeah, it's almost, it's like a, I guess it's almost like a private crusade for me. I simply, I simply have a hard time tolerating it. I don't understand it. I don't understand how man can be indwelt by the Holy Spirit and consciously, what shall we say, redact or censor God by omission.
I'm stunned by it. I'm shocked by it. I think it's dreadful. I think some of these guys are incurring great judgment upon themselves. I was listening to Paul Washer some years ago. I'll never forget this.
There was some panel he was sitting on, and the question came, what is the greatest threat to the church today? Immediately, he said, pastors. And I think he's mostly right. I mean, if the guy can't get in there and magnify the message, I mean, magnify the God of the message and get him up high, so high that we get hell.
We get it. We understand it. You know, as one theologian said, if hell were not revealed in Scripture, we would have to deduce it because of the character and holiness and righteousness of God. And so, yeah, it's a, I guess it shows in my writing of the book, but I just, I think there's something wicked here, and there's something wrong in what is called your average, shall we say, Protestant church.
And we know that many of those who would claim to be Protestants are wayward. They're off the Bible. They're into pragmatism, and it's difficult. You know, I think Washer's statement, it stings, but I think it's true.
Yes, I don't think I've ever heard a sermon by Paul Washer that didn't sting.
That's his M .O., yeah.
I even told him that when I was interviewing him, I said, I hope you're not offended by this, but I don't recall ever hearing one of your sermons that left me walking away feeling better about myself.
Well, you know, and Paul Washer certainly doesn't fit this category, but you have men who are more concerned with offending their hearers than offending their God, and I simply can't, I just can't understand that kind of thinking.
It's not even what's best for your hearers.
No, if you love them, you give all of it to them. Just like a parent. If you simply love your job, and your paycheck, and your comfort, and your security, and your ease, then you tend to knock off the edges and sand it down a little bit.
But, you know, if you actually love people, you warn them. And, you know, what if, let's just ask the question, what if God, what if the Son of God is actually telling the truth, that eternal conscious punishment is a real thing?
It's almost to me, Chris, how can that not be an emphasis maybe once a quarter? If the Son of God is true, if he's telling us the truth, and of course we know that he is, how can we, you know, how can we sidestep this issue?
I mean, again, it's just unloving. It's unconscionable.
Amen. Well, can you provide a comparison and a distinction between wrath and God's chastisement?
Well, I think his chastisement, if I understand the term in the way that you're using it, would be as he disciplines his children. Okay, certainly there's, well, there's every difference in the world.
He's disciplining his children from love. I mean, what is the great purpose of God in the life of his elect, which is to what? To bring them in conformity with his Son. You know, there's that great Malachi verse about the refiner sitting over the silver, and it's in the fire, and he's watching it, and of course he's going to bring it out just at the right time, which is when he sees his face in it, but he loves his people.
He is going to bring them in conformity because in conformity is a greater depth of joy and delight in who he is, so he's faithful to do that, and we praise God for it. You know, wrath falls on the rebel, and it's an infinite and eternal wrath.
It's unrelenting. There is no escape. There is no release. There is no relief. Yeah, you just read the words of Jesus when he talks about hell, and I like how Jim Eliph says, he says something to the effect that, you know, the metaphors and analogies and some of the symbolism used that Jesus uses there, Jim says these are signposts to something worse, and Jim says it's beyond human description.
It can only be experienced. It can't be described, and I think, man, we have got to talk about this. You know, again, men want to be liked. They want the accolades. Many do, and we know that many walk away from these kinds of messages, but again, I think love compels us.
Amen, and the next word I'd like you to highlight in your subtitle, vengeance. Even non-Christians who have never read the Bible have likely heard an off-quoted verse, vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.
Tell us about vengeance.
Well, it's just another word that God has chosen to use. In my book, I note that it appears 37 times in relation to God and his judgment. I actually have a little definition in the front of the book where I unpack the title, and the proper definition of vengeance is the act or motive of punishing another in payment for a wrong or injury he has committed.
It's retribution, and there's also noted there in that proper dictionary definition, with great violence or fury. So, this is perfect for the vengeance that God talks about. He is punishing those who are in rank rebellion.
You know, one thing we talked about a few moments ago that I wanted to possibly expand upon was this thing about hell, and what value is there in talking about the judgment of God, and what is the value of the doctrine of hell.
I have a paragraph in my book, it's headed An Indispensable Doctrine. The doctrine of wrath and hell is indispensable because of three things, at least three things, or maybe more. But without it, we never get a deep sense of his unapproachable holiness.
You know, we have some vague sense of it, but if we take on board what Jesus says about eternal conscious punishment, you start to get a deeper sense of exactly how infinitely above us he is. You know, one of my seminary professors said, oh, yeah, your average, again, I went to a Baptist seminary, said, yeah, your average Baptist thinks God's a big guy.
You know, this is a huge problem. He's infinitely above the biggest guy we can even begin to imagine, and he's infinitely holy. And that white lie takes you to hell forever because he's infinitely holy.
The second point is, you never understand how monstrous your sin is until you look at what the right punishment is. This is what righteousness demands, eternal conscious punishment. You get some sense of how monstrous your sin is.
And then lastly, you know, as you alluded to earlier or mentioned earlier, we never begin to plumb the unfathomable depths of the finished work of Jesus on the cross and all that he took upon himself to save us.
Amen. We have Claudio, or Claudio, in Silver City, New Mexico, who says, do you have any counsel as to how we can balance in our minds. On one end, knowing that God intends to comfort us by letting us know that he will take vengeance upon those who have severely hurt us, harmed us, persecuted us, who have not repented, while at the same time not wanting what is worst for our enemies and praying for what is best for them, which is, of course,.
Receiving the gift of repentance and faith? Well, that's the hard call, isn't it? Loving our enemies. I know it's easy to talk about, but this is the call. You know, this is the call, and so I think that takes hard work.
I think that takes much prayer. I think we have to work that. I think it's a constant. If we're serious about it, it permeates our prayers, and it permeates our speech, because we have to work at this.
This does not come natural, at least for most of us. So, yeah, praying for our enemies, loving them enough to share the gospel. That's our call. Was there a second part? I can't remember what the other part of the question was.
Well, he was basically comparing the two seemingly opposing concepts, which are not really opposing, but the fact that the Bible does seem to indicate that we are to take comfort in the fact that God will take vengeance upon those.
Yeah, it's his, it's not ours, yeah. He will take vengeance upon those eventually, even if it never appears that way on this earth. You know, there may have been victims of the Holocaust who never saw justice come to their Nazi persecutors, but at the same time, we know that that will happen to those that never repent on this earth, who remain in their sin and wickedness.
And aren't we to take comfort in that, and satisfaction, and knowing that God is indeed going to exact vengeance upon them? I think that, yes, because—but.
I look at it maybe a little differently. I look at it from, maybe, a God-centric perspective. You know, I heard MacArthur—I'll never forget this. I'm driving to work back in the early 90s, I guess—and he says something like this.
He says, we will wholly agree with the perfect righteousness of God as he casts our family members into hell. And that was a big thing for me to chew on for a while. But I think what we delight in is his holiness and his righteousness, and we love this about him.
And we love this about him more than the temporal relationships, even familial relationships on this planet. I mean, the born-again soul is so hopelessly in love with this beautiful God, and we concur.
We heartily concur with all that he does. You know, I think that's—I have a sermon that I like to preach. It's Psalm 117. I think that's the middle chapter of the Bible, and the psalmist exhorts us in two verses to praise God.
He exhorts us three times in two verses to praise God, and I think this is the vocation of the true believer. You know, we're so wrapped up in praising and looking at God and delighting in God that we're happy to leave all of the particulars to him.
You know what I'm saying, Chris? We're happy to leave the adjudications that he will bring upon whether they're family members or enemies. We trust him with all of these adjudications, and we delight in his adjudications.
Because he is who he is, you know? It's just—I was thinking about—I'm sure you know the name John Gershner. I was thinking about it the other day. You know, R .C. Sproul's mentor, I think.
So I'm preaching a number of occasions.
I'll never forget what I heard Gershner say. He said, you know, your average Christian, your average churchgoer, he actually gets around to reading his Bible, and he realizes he doesn't like God at all.
And this is—I'm just trying to make a dichotomy here. We're either all in with who he is. You know, God says, I love those middle chapters of Isaiah. He says, I'm God, nobody else's God. I'm God, you're not, and there's no one like me, right?
Those middle chapters of Isaiah, he just exalts himself, and I love that. I love that so much. So I think that we love him for who he is, or we're unconsciously, maybe consciously, trying to mold him into some God we might feel more comfortable with.
And I think this is always a danger. I think, again, why did I write the book? Because I wanted to look at him like this. I wanted to see him like this, and I wanted to love him more coming out on the other end.
And that's exactly what happened, you know, because you look at this unapproachable holy God, and then, how can I get to him? I can't, but he has come for me. And it just, yeah, it makes the thinking person—you connect about three or four dots here, and you're weeping on.
Your face. Amen. We have an anonymous listener in Morel, Arkansas. I don't know if I'm pronouncing.
That wrong or incorrect. That is right. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's about 10 minutes from here.
Oh, wow. Okay, well, I hope this person, if they don't have a church home that's solid, will visit the Grace Baptist Church of Scott, Arkansas. The anonymous listener says, how do you respond to the danger of focusing on the dangers of God when sometimes the audience hearing the message has had a tyrannical and abusive father?
They may get the wrong impression that their Father on earth is no different than the Father in heaven, except that the Father in.
Heaven has infinitely more power. Well, I always love what John Lennox says about, in relation to something, a question comparable to this, I always love what he said. You know, Jesus, God has actually entered into the suffering of man.
So there's this distinction. Yes, he is infinitely above us. Yes, he's holy and righteous and unapproachable. He's a consuming fire, but he has entered into our suffering, and he has bled out to save his people.
Now, you know, both of these things are true. So, you know, I don't remember who said, I think it was maybe I heard Piper say it, but all of God does all that God does, right? I mean, he's all of these things in perfect symmetry.
He's like a symphony, and you don't get to pick one and leave the other out. And yes, I understand if you've had an abusive father, I can understand maybe some of the confusion there, but my counsel would be you have to fight through that, through Scripture, and through prayer, and through communion with the Spirit.
I mean, we know that God is infinitely more than a harsh, demanding authoritarian. He's way more than that. He's revealed himself to be that, and again, the believer, the born-again believer, this is a real thing in his heart.
He relates to this. It resonates, right? It resonates. My God's like this. So that would maybe be an inadequate response,.
But my response. Yes, and of course, this also goes back to a pastor, or even a Christian, an average Christian who's evangelizing somebody. They have to come from a standpoint or a viewpoint where they are declaring the whole counsel of God, and you don't only stick on to the wrathfulness of God and everything you say about God.
And don't you think one of the problems here about even the reason for your writing this book, and the fact that this kind of thing is absent so often from pulpits, from best-selling Christian books, from the public ministries on radio and television by evangelists, is that they very often behave and speak in such a way that they're assuming everybody listening is regenerate, is already born again.
And they are offering to them a God where all of the benefits from God that are exclusively promised to the believers, to true believers, are being presented to the general public in a broad-brushing fashion.
So that people are receiving false comfort. Yeah, it's just malpractice. Yeah, it's just malpractice. I mean, every preacher with any experience knows, you know, the church is a mission field, and as Jesus said, there are very many who claim His name, but Jesus says, I don't know who you are.
So we know that the church is a huge mission field, and we have to be prudent and careful and circumspect with our language, and not to give false assurance to anyone. This is one of the most heinous things we can do, is to give false assurance.
You know, people would ask me over the years, I've been doing this for about 30 years, I guess, maybe 40, I'm trying to remember now, I guess it's more like 30 as far as being in the pastorate, and people would ask me, Jim, do you think I'm a Christian?
You're asking the wrong person. I can make a guess based on what I see in your life, but you need to ask God, are you a Christian? I mean, you need to go to Him. You need to wrestle this out with Him.
So I take nothing at face value. Well, everybody thought Judas was real, didn't they? Yes. Everybody thought Judas was a Christian, a true follower of Jesus. Everybody thought Joshua Harris was a true follower of Jesus.
I mean, you can be a mega.
Pastor and walk away. Many people thought that a very famous hip-hop artist, whose name escaped me, was a genuine believer, who just recently denounced Christ, and I wish I could remember his name, but a very famous person, and I just can't remember his name right now.
So we just have to be, you know, as pastors, ministers, conscientious, mature believers, we have to be very careful with our language, and we have to send people back to the text, back to the prayer closet, back to the Holy Spirit.
You know, I still remember when I was still quite young, I was just a Sunday school teacher, and a woman called me, and she said, Jim, my husband, they were both in my Sunday school class, and she calls me, she said, Jim, if you'll come over right now, I think my husband will receive Christ.
And I said, you know what, why don't we do this? I knew he'd heard the gospel. I knew he knew the truth. I said, why don't we leave him with the Holy Spirit? Why don't we do that? And I know that sounds maybe radical and uncaring, but to me it's not.
People have to work these issues out. They have to work these issues out in their heart and soul before God. I am not going to give false assurance, and I'm not going to say, pray this prayer, and you're in.
I am not going to say that. I've been.
Down this road. I was that guy. And you're not going to do it, because nobody in the Bible did.
It. Exactly. This is not how it works biblically. You're exactly right, Chris. This is not how it works. This is a miracle. It's supernatural. Only God can do this. So let's continue to point him and all of those who hear us as we witness to the miracle-working God who circumcises hearts.
And by the way, Claudio in Silver City, New Mexico, and also our anonymous listener, if you care to send in your full mailing addresses, you have also each won a copy of Dangerous God. We'll need, obviously, the full name of the anonymous listener, but that will not be mentioned on the air, obviously.
And we are going to our final commercial break right now, so don't go away.
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Support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com. I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and.
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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. I strongly recommend a church I've been recommending as far back as the 1980s, Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn. Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshiped and how he shall be represented in the world.
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On Long Island. Doug McMasters here, former Director of Pastoral Correspondence at Grace to Radio Ministry of John MacArthur. In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt God's pleasure when he ran.
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Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight-volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the Westminster Larger Catechism, titled Authentic Christianity, by Dr. Joseph Morecraft.
It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology. Dr. Morecraft is pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.
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That's CVBBS .com, enriching minds and maintaining the theologically reformed influence of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio through their financial support. Now shipping worldwide. Welcome back. I think we should move on now, Jim, to one of the elements in your book, which is the word recompense,.
If you could define that, please. Recompense. Well, just because I'm a former CPA, I like to be very precise. I'll just read it from the front of my book. To make return for amends made for something as damage or loss, payment in return for something given or done.
So in the context we're talking about, these are our wages, right? Judgment is the wage of the rebel. And so God brings recompense. God will meet out perfect recompense for our God indifference.
And our rebellion against him and his word. Amen. And now, finally, terror, if you could explain, obviously everybody knows what terror means, but in context of a dangerous God.
Well, again, I just borrow from your average dictionary, and I believe this is true. You know, eight guys saw him. We have recorded in scripture. You know what every one of those eight men did? What did they do?
Well, they hit their face or they cried out in despair. So the definition of terror is intense, overpowering fear, something as a terrifying object or occurrence that instills intense fear. And I think this is what's missing even in the average evangelical church, this fear of the Lord, which again, as you said rightly, is the beginning of wisdom.
And as Piper said, is the place we need to go to enjoy and experience the deep joy of who God is. So I think we're running out of time. Is that correct? Am I correct? Yes. Okay. I did want to say there is a study guide for dangerous God.
I commend it to you. It might be good for small groups. And I would encourage your listeners, if their pastor doesn't have a copy of the book, to buy them one, the book Dangerous God. If they can't afford to buy them one, send me the address.
I'll send it to him. I think we've been able to put about 1 ,500 books in pastors' hands. You know, we're trying to impact the pulpits.
Amen. And they can find out more how to do that at dangerousgod .org. Dangerousgod .org. And we do have enough time to, I think, make sure that people don't leave this program with any misconceptions.
Just like we were talking before about how often preachers will treat everybody in their audience, whether it's the audience in their own congregation or whether it is their audience through TV, radio, or the Internet, or through the books they write.
They're treating everybody as if they were born again. There is an element—it's likely today a minority, but it still exists—of pastors who verbally beat up on their hearers and fill them with the same kind of terror that only a rebel against God should be experiencing.
I'll give you an example. I conducted an interview—in fact, I mentioned this interview yesterday. I conducted an interview in November of 2023 with Ginger Duggar Volo on Becoming Free Indeed, my story of distangling faith from fear.
She was raised in a home rooted in the Bill Gothard theology, which would basically instill terror upon even Christians, where there was a hanging threat over their heads, a hovering threat of God killing you at any moment because you've been disobedient in some way.
And sometimes these ways are comparatively minor in the grand scheme of things, but, you know, you do something wrong and, you know, God may kill you on the way home from church in your car and that kind of thing.
And that kind of drumbeat where the regenerate are treated in no different way than those who are rebels, this is equally wrong, isn't it?
Oh, yeah, I certainly agree. Yeah. Again, we just have to have integrity with the text, and we get a balanced view of God. We never want to obviously diminish his anger at sin, and we know there are moments in the Bible where he does strike people down.
I think he sends that, you know, Ananias and Sapphira. That's one of the first lessons of an early church, right? Yes. Nobody plays games with me. But obviously, this unfathomable love of God expressed through the birth and life and death and resurrection and promised coming of Christ.
I mean, you know, it's like we just have to have, again, integrity with the text and be.
Balanced in our understanding of Scripture. Amen, and we're out of time, and I want to repeat your websites. First of all, the website for Grace Baptist Church of Scott, Arkansas is gracebaptistchurchscott .org, gracebaptistchurchscott .org.
And the website for Dangerous God Ministries is dangerousgod .org, dangerousgod .org. I also want to remind you folks that if you're a man in ministry leadership, you're invited to the free Iron Shepherd and Zion Radio Pastors Luncheon, featuring guest speaker Joel Beeky of Puritan Reform Theological Seminary.
And this is Thursday, June 6th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. in Perry County, Pennsylvania, absolutely free of charge, and everybody who attends is going to receive a very heavy sack of free brand new books personally selected by me and donated by Christian publishers all over the United States and the United Kingdom.
Everybody attending will walk home with a heavy sack of books for free. If you want to register, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line.
I want to thank you so much, Jim, for being such a superb guest. I want to thank everybody for listening. 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.