April 8, 2022 Show with Dr. Joe Morecraft on “An Assessment of the Church in the 20th & 21st Century”

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

Carwile, Pennsylvania, 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 a 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 Friday on this eighth day of April 2022 and I am still shouting praises to the

Lord Jesus Christ for the wonderful event that he enabled me to pull off yesterday and that is the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio biannual pastor's luncheon. It was just such an enormous success with nearly a hundred men there and it was so much of a blessing to see so many of the

Christian book publishers come through as they normally do and provide a hundred copies of each title

I selected from them so there were thousands of books there that the men received for free in addition to having a wonderful lunch providing provided by Perry County Cafe and Dan Buttafuoco Daniel P.

Buttafuoco to be more formal attorney at law and founder and president of the

Historical Bible Society was my speaker and he just blew me away.

I have seen him do many presentations before never have gotten bored by any of them even though I have seen them many times but he actually spoke with a different focus yesterday on the need, the power and the benefit of apologetic evangelism and it was just such an extraordinary event.

One man after another after another kept approaching me after it was over with a big beaming smile saying how amazing they thought

Dan's presentation was and thanking me for inviting them and so many of them of the men present have already signed up for my

September 22nd Iron Sherpins Iron Radio Pastor's Luncheon which God willing will feature

Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries so if you are listening and you are a man in ministry leadership please email me at chrisarnson at gmail .com

if you would like to put on the registration list for this free event which will once again be held at the

Church of the Living Christ in Loisville Pennsylvania which is in Perry County Pennsylvania pastored by Doran Ray and I have to thank again

Pastor Doran Ray not only for allowing me to use his extremely large spacious and beautiful facilities for free but he also provided members of his congregation who are volunteers waiting and busing on tables and serving food and drink and it was just an extraordinary blessing.

They were the ones blessing me and the men and yet they were profusely and repeatedly thanking me for allowing them to be the venue of this event and I will keep you updated on when the recording the audio and video of this event was recorded and I will hopefully have that available to the public soon it might even be available today for all

I know I know the Church of the Living Christ said that they were going to post it on their YouTube page but I will keep you all updated as I receive updates.

Thanks again to all of you who made yesterday's event possible I'm afraid of starting to list those who helped to make it possible in fear

I'm going to forget someone so I think I better just be safe and say thank you to all of you who made the event possible

I could never have done it without you and you know who you are so praise God he is so good.

Today we have on the program someone who has been on my show so frequently somebody actually recommended

I change the name of my program to Iron Sharpens Dr. Joseph C. Moorecraft III I have him on this program so frequently because I love him and he's one of my favorite guests he's a brilliant man who has far deeper insights than I do into all things theological doctrinal and historical and he is the pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia.

Today we are going to be addressing an assessment of the church in the 20th and 21st century and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Dr.

Joseph C. Moorcraft III. It's always enjoyable Chris I love it. Why don't you explain or describe for our listeners who have not yet heard you tell us something about Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia.

Well Cumming, Georgia is a bedroom county just north of Atlanta and Heritage Presbyterian Church is a small church we started about seven years ago we're members of the

Reformed Presbyterian Church and Over Presbytery and our particular congregation has grown since the last time

I've talked to you so we have a growing congregation always have new people there from various kinds of backgrounds and it is a delight being the pastor there we're committed to the original

Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms we are dedicated to the

Great Commission and to the Historic Reformed Faith and we have a congregation of people that come from a variety of backgrounds and God is using them in so many ways in so many areas of life and so it's a privilege to be their pastor.

Amen well I'm sure they view it as a great privilege and honor to be sitting beneath your teaching preaching and shepherding and for those of you who want more information about this church whether you live near Cumming, Georgia or passing through there or have friends family and loved ones in or near there the website is

HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com

and I know that one of your elders Tim Renshaw operates a website could you tell us about that as well?

It is called ComprehensiveChristianity .com and he has suspended all of his other employment activities to spend his time scanning, editing, publishing all of my papers and manuscripts that I have in box after box in my basement and they are on Kindle, they're paperback he has already several up and some of these are free so let me encourage you to go to ComprehensiveChristianity .com

and in addition to that I know that you have a multi -volume commentary on the

Westminster Larger Catechism, tell us about that as well. The Westminster Standards in my opinion are

Biblical Christianity in their purest human expression we see a very similar system of theology and ethics in the 1689 edition of the

London Confession they represent the best of Christianity and there are all kinds of good commentaries on the

Westminster Confession of Faith there's loads of great commentaries on the Shorter Catechism but there have been only a few commentaries on the

Larger Catechism since the 1600s and it is my favorite of all it's more exhaustive, it's more practical, it's more detailed in its exposition of reformed doctrine and reformed ethics and so I decided to preach a series of sermons on it that took me several years to preach and since I had all these notes

I decided I might as well publish them into book form and so we've sold several sets there are eight volumes of this set and they're beautifully published

I'm thrilled with the way they were published and it is not just for pastors and for seminary students but it's for anybody that wants to seriously study the scriptures

I know of fathers right now that are in the evening they read a portion of my commentary for their family worship to their family and it is a great blessing to me to read and reread not my commentary but the

Westminster Larger Catechism and Catechism means that it is teaching us

Biblical truth in forms of questions and answers that a question is asked and then the answer is given and it is a great tool it's a great basis for church unity it's a great instrument in evangelism it's a great tool for Christian education and for a family education so go to westminstercommentary .com

or comprehensivechristianity .com and see it for yourself I just want to read

Dr. Joseph A. Peipus endorsement of this he is president of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylors South Carolina he's also been a guest on this program and has written a wonderful endorsement for Iron Trip and Zion Radio as well but Dr.

Peipus is about the 8 volume commentary on the Larger Catechism by my guest

Dr. Moorcraft which is titled Authentic Christianity Dr.

Peipus says every Christian who is serious about the reformed faith and the

Westminster standards should have and use this set 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 and that is quite a high bit of praise from someone of the very high caliber of Dr.

Joseph A. Peipus. That is true I appreciate it for what he said. Well today we are going to be addressing an assessment of the church in the 20th and 21st century.

It's hard to believe when I think about it that we are nearly a quarter of the way through the 21st century.

I'm just amazed by that because I can remember thinking with awe that when it was

New Year's Eve 1999 that we were entering into a new century the year 2000 and it's already 2022 just three years away from being a quarter of the 21st century.

It is hard to believe. But well I will sit back relax and listen as you begin your assessment of the church in the 20th and 21st century obviously beginning with the 20th.

What were the highlights of the church and also the very low points of the church that you care to bring up as a part of our discussion?

Yes sir. What we've been doing these eight or nine times we were together is look at the great heroes of the faith throughout the history of the church from the first century on up to date.

And the last time we were together we talked about some great heroes of the faith in the 19th century particularly at Princeton Seminary.

In the early 19th century the reformed church in this country was strong.

It had strong seminaries in the north and the south. It was weak in the

New England states that had been overrun earlier by Unitarianism.

But there were many great preachers, many great commentators, many great authors, many great seminarians like Charles Hodge, J.

A. Hodge. And then in the Princeton of the south Columbia Theological Seminary and Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, there were some great men like Robert L.

Dabney and William Henry, Henley Thornwell, Plummer, and Gerardau, and Robert Webb, and Benjamin Morgan Palmer.

These were preachers and seminarians and all these authors.

And I just wish we had time to spend about all of these. In fact, I think Robert L. Dabney was probably the greatest reformed theologian produced in the

United States up to that time. By the way, I still give away, whenever the timing is appropriate,

Pastor Thornwell's superb book, Refuting the

Authenticity of Roman Catholic Baptism. I don't know if you agree with Pastor Thornwell on that, but I sure do, obviously.

And it's something that is a very rarely believed teaching amongst

Presbyterians these days. Most Presbyterians accept Roman Catholic Baptism, but I don't know where you stand.

It was basically the position of the old Southern Presbyterian Church in the 19th century.

He wasn't saying anything new at the time. Everybody ought to have things by him.

They ought to have the one book of sermons by Benjamin Morgan Palmer. When I read his sermons, and even though he preached for decades, there's only one book of sermons of his.

And every time I read any of his sermons, I want to tear up all mine and never preach again.

Because he was such a faithful and powerful and invigorating and courageous preacher of the gospel.

Everybody also ought to have Dabney. Dabney wrote a great and helpful systematic theology.

It's helpful in that it not only talks about how the various doctrines in the Bible are woven together, but he gives a lot of exegesis.

And he sets the doctrines of the Reformed faith up before other systems. It's a very useful thing.

He has a great historical book that I love, and I've given away copies of this.

I don't have any copies now. It is Discussions. There are five volumes of, by Dabney, called

Discussions. And this is Volume 4. And it deals largely with history, particularly

American history. And his article in there, The New South, is almost prophetic, even though it was written back in the 19th century.

So these men were great men. Robert Webb is one of my favorite theologians. He was

Gerardot's son -in -law. It's hard to find books by him, but particularly his book on salvation.

And it's very useful. Gerardot was quite a man. Gerardot pastored a church in Columbia, South Carolina that was packed every

Sunday morning. And the attendees were all black people. And when

I read Gerardot's sermons, many of them are so philosophical, they're over my head.

Now, I'm used to reading a lot of books on theology. I want you to notice who attended his church.

Hundreds and hundreds of black people in Columbia, South Carolina would miss these sermons that are over the head of most

Calvinists today. That gives us a view of the mentality of the

Southern black person that we normally don't think of. And so, but when the

Reformed Church entered the 20th century, it entered crippled and compromised.

Large sections of it were despondent and discouraged because of the lack of knowledge and war between the states and Reconstruction that took place after that.

Also, throughout that whole century and before, there were

European philosophical transplants that to one degree or another had weakened the

Reformed Church. For instance, I've already mentioned Unitarianism. We've talked about that a lot in our times together.

That it entered into New England in the late 18th century.

And by 1830, it had eaten up the

New England states. There was also Transcendentalism, Romanticism, Darwinianism, and the various other rationalism existentialism, subjectivism, and all these various European transplants that many of our colleges and seminaries imbibed in the late 19th century.

And so, the Church was greatly weakened in the 20th.

As someone said one time, you can't get the mud out of the stream unless you get the hogs out of the spring.

And so, if your seminaries and colleges are going to be filled with these hogs, with these men who are to one degree or another betraying the historic

Reformed faith, you can't but expect for their influence to filter down through the whole denomination.

There were a lot of influences that weakened the Church as it came into the 20th century.

When it came into the 20th century, it left behind three of its great emphases that it had emphasized not only in this country, but all the way back to the

Protestant Reformation. And it laid them aside. One was the sovereignty of God's grace.

Two was the victory orientation of the kingdom of God in history.

And three was the abiding authority of the law of God in both testaments.

The Church had always believed that. But the time it came into the 20th century, those things you heard less and less and you read less and less of.

There was the influence of German liberalism. And there was the influence of rationalism.

In the early 20th century, there was the influence of Karl Barth, who we call

Neo -Orthodoxy, that tried to reinterpret Christianity in terms of existentialism.

And so, his words sound like us. But when you read them honestly, the way he intended for them to be read, you'll see that he's saying something completely different than he told the

Church. The evangelicals in the early 20th century bought what he was selling. They thought he was great.

They were very critical of people who were critical of him. And they might have made some minor criticisms of him, but they adored

Karl Barth so that in 1941, when Cornelius Van Till came out with his nuclear bomb, called his book called

Christianity and Barthianism, separating

Christianity and Barthianism completely. I mean, that did hit like a bomb.

You know, it's interesting. I'm fairly certain you're aware of this, but there seems to be a move among some men who appear to be theologically sound and confessional and Reformed, who are trying to rescue the reputation of Barth that's going on these days.

Have you noticed that? Yes, I have noticed that. And it has a lot to do with,

I don't want to get into this too complicated, with the new perspective on Paul, with a modern approach toward inspiration, federal vision.

All of those groups have quoted Karl Barth positively. And I think that's true.

And yet he's one of the most poisonous influences on the

Reformed and Christian church in the 20th century. Now, obviously, as a theonomist and Christian reconstructionist, you are able to say, because there is a slander that the entire movement of theonomy is also allied with Christian reconstructionism and theonomy, because that the whole movement of theonomy is allied with federal vision,

I mean. And because there are many, in fact, it might have even been the majority of those who launched the federal vision movement that were theonomists.

But it is certainly not something that should identify the entire movement of men that would go under the umbrella of that label of theonomy.

Well, I'm a theonomist and I'm telling you, Karl Barth is a poisonous influence upon the

Christian church. And that you did have some of these men in the early days start to quote

Barth because they were reacting against what they saw as the

Hellenism and the rationalism of the Westminster Confession of Faith and of historic

Calvinism. So they saw Barth as something that's fresher, though they quit quoting him very quickly.

And that was only a handful. And they quoted Barth only after they said they were no longer theonomists.

So anyway, so Barthianism and German theologies had a great influence on the church as the end of the 20th century, and then also fundamentalism.

The same time that sections of the church in this country were becoming depressed emotionally in the last part of the 19th century, there was a new theology and eschatology that was spreading once again from Europe, that was spreading from England to the shores of this country.

And it was the view we call today Dispensationalism that says in so many words that that history is divided into seven dispensations.

And it all depends upon what dispensation you're in, as to what part of the

Bible applies to you, and as to how God deals with you. And it continued to emphasize the fact that this world is getting worse and worse, and there's no hope for any cultural change, that the only thing we have to wait for is the rapture of the church, and then there's a great tribulation.

And there was no, and therefore cultural activity and engagement is a waste of time.

To use their words, it's like polishing brass on the Titanic. The cultures of this world are sinking like the

Titanic, and God wants it to sink, that he has no intentions of changing anything about culture, that we're just to try to save people and wait for the rapture.

As a result, people didn't realize that that was because of the influence of Neoplatonism, and Neoplatonism was the old

Greek philosophy, pagan Greek philosophy by a man named Plotinus, that said that the only thing that's good and wholesome is the intellectual and spiritual, that material, physical, earthly things are evil, and therefore we ought not to get involved in those things that led to the monastery movement of the

Middle Ages, where the monks wanted to separate themselves from this world and all of the activities of this particular physical world in which we live, and so they can just be spiritual and think about heaven.

That didn't work. And in Fundamentalism, you have this same view of the monks in the

Middle Ages, and that is that Christians are not to get involved in politics, economics, this world, the various enjoyments and activities and institutions of this world, that we are only to think about our souls and about going to heaven, that's all that's good, the spiritual and the heavenly.

And so as a result, Christians in the early 20th century pulled out of the battle and left a big void there, and that void was filled by liberalism.

One of the ways you see that is in the whole understanding of race and civil rights, and because that was worldly and that wasn't spiritual, many of the good men pulled out of that battle because they weren't supposed to get involved in it or preach on politics or anything like that from the pulpit.

And so who stepped in the void? Modern liberals. And so we see where that has taken us.

So there was in the late 19th century a new view of the church that was spreading called the spirituality of the church.

The people that spread that pretended that it was old, but it was new. In fact, can you pick up on the spirituality of the church, the movement known as that, right after our first break, because we have to go to our first break right now.

Sure. And if anybody wants to join us with a question for Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail dot com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

U .S .A. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Invinio, and thanks for listening. Welcome back. If you just tuned us in, our guest today is

Joseph C. Moorcraft III, pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia.

He's also an author and has written an eight -volume commentary on the

Westminster larger catechism. And we are discussing an assessment of the church in the 20th and 21st century.

Our e -mail address is chrisarnsett at gmail .com. If you have a question, please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

USA. And right before the break, Dr. Moorcraft, you were beginning to describe a spirituality of the church movement,

I think is the way you phrased it, and if you could tell us about when this arrived on the scene historically in the 20th century.

Yes, sir, but I don't want your hearers to think that the whole two hours is going to be pessimistic. How could it be?

You're a post -millennialist. There were some great things that happened in the 20th century and the 21st, and I want to get to those, but I've got to set the stage for them.

So as a result of Martianism that tried to redefine

Christianity in terms of existentialism, and because of various other philosophies under the influence of Neoplatonism that said the political, physical aspects of life are not for the

Christian, they're just spiritual and heavenly, this view developed called the

Spirituality of the Church that said that the church is not to get engaged in its preaching culturally.

It is to only quote in their words, preach the gospel. Well, the

Bible is divinely authoritative in everything about which it speaks, and it speaks about everything. And the gospel is rooted in the historical life, death, and resurrection of the

Lord Jesus Christ, and the implication of that gospel goes all over the world.

So we are to preach about in the pulpit and take a stand as Christians on every issue of life about which the

Bible speaks and not confine ourselves just to quote spiritual things, whatever that means.

I had a good friend who I respected very much who held that view, and I had him speak for me at a preacher's conference.

I gave him my subject because I knew he'd say the wrong thing if I didn't tell him what

I wanted him to speak on. And so I gave him the subject of Samuel Davies, who was a great colonial preacher in America.

And they published it, so I thought he could do a good job of that. So he gave a good job at explaining, because he was a great preacher.

Patrick Henry said under his preaching. And then he said this, he said,

What made Samuel Davies' preaching so great is that he never referred to politics or any current events.

Well, I just smiled. I didn't want to, he's an old friend of mine, so I wasn't going to say anything, except during the question and answer time.

And I said, Brother so -and -so, I love those three volumes by Samuel Davies. Do you have them?

He said, Yes, I have the original. I said, So do I. I said, Those first two volumes full of evangelistic messages will set a fire in your heart, won't they?

He said, Yes, they do. And I said, And that third volume full of political sermons on current events, that also will set a fire in your heart.

And he just sort of smiled. That just reminded me of a joke that I will quickly tell.

There was a minister's conference where ministers of different denominations were speaking, and one of the ministers was in the

Church of Christ, which believes that immersion in water is required for the remission of sins.

And so the men formulating the conference said to the Church of Christ minister, You cannot preach on baptism, so what we're going to do is we're going to give you a subject to preach so that we will likely be in agreement with you for the most part.

So I want you to preach on, or we want you to preach on Genesis 1 .1.

So the Church of Christ minister got up to the podium when it was his turn. He said,

I've been assigned to preach on Genesis 1 .1, which reads, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

And the earth, by the way, is about 80 percent water, which brings me to my next subject. I've known people like that.

That's pretty good. Sorry for interrupting you, though. You might call Christianity, as it came to the 20th century, a democratized version of Christianity.

The emphasis in politics was on human rights, human autonomy, human decision, and that crept into the once great

Calvinism of American churches. So now the emphasis was on man's decision, man's initiative in salvation.

And so Calvinism grew and faded along with its various other historical emphasis, except for some few great men like William Charles Robinson.

William Charles Robinson, I have to mention, in the 20th century, he was my professor at Columbia Seminary when all the other professors were liberal.

And that's in South Carolina? No, that was when it started. It was in Decatur, Georgia at that time.

So William Charles Robinson was getting old and they were putting him out to pasture.

I knew about him, so I wanted to sit under him. And he studied under Warfield.

He was in Warfield's last class. And I have the New Testament, Greek New Testament, that William Charles Robinson used in Benjamin Warfield's class.

In fact, this is the only one of its kind in the world. And if anybody wants to come and see me and see that Greek New Testament, it will get you 20 ,000 years off purgatory.

Because in the front of this Greek New Testament are two names and two dates.

The first name is William Charles Robinson. And the date is 1921.

That was the year he studied at Princeton under Warfield. The second date was

William Charles Robinson, Jr. His son, who was a theological liberal, and the date is 1941.

And 1941 was when the son studied under Karl Barth in Basel, Switzerland.

So there you see pretty much the history of theology in those two names and those two dates.

But William Charles Robinson stood for the faith. Stood firm. In fact, in the 40s when the fundamentalists wanted to quit fighting and defending

Calvinism and the Reformed faith and narrow it down to four or five or six doctrines because the liberals had become so strong,

William Charles Robinson stood up at the General Assembly. He wasn't an outstanding speaker, but he stood up at the

General Assembly and pled with the General Assembly, meaning the fundamentalists and the liberals, not to give up on not just four or five doctrines, but the whole system of doctrine of the

Westminster Confession of Faith. And single -handedly, he changed the direction of the whole

General Assembly that year. So Banner of Truth has come out with a biography of William Charles Robinson and some of his sermons.

So I would encourage people because most people don't know anything about him. And he was such a great man.

And one time there was a theological liberal speaking at Columbia, which was liberal itself, and he would intersperse among his comments blasphemous statements.

Just blaspheme. And, of course, the students loved it.

And at the question and answer time, I said to this theological liberal, it would be more helpful if you didn't blaspheme when you give your lecture.

It would be more helpful if you didn't take God's name in vain. And he said, well,

God is unknowable and it's impossible to take his name in vain. And I said, well, how do you know he's unknowable?

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Yeah, that's good. I'm glad you said that. So the church continued to go downhill.

There weren't many good preachers in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s.

There were some good theologians, but people didn't want to hear the Reformed faith. Now can

I just interrupt you and ask you, obviously you're not an infallible prophet or anything, but do you have any idea or opinion as to what made the church at large such fertile ground to adopt such heresy at this stage from the late 19th century to the early 20th century?

It was all these influences. There was emotional pessimism that led to theological pessimism.

There was this philosophical influence on America in general.

That was a mixture of existentialism and subjectivism that downplayed the physical for the intellectual.

There was a retreat of the church from its colleges and from its seminaries.

And so the theological liberals and humanists replaced that. And then where churches had to go to get their preachers was to these seminaries, these colleges, and they had been brainwashed themselves.

Columbia Theological Seminary founded in Columbia, South Carolina in the 19th century was a great, great seminary.

William Henley Thornwell taught there. But by the time I got there in 1966, it was liberal.

It was a mixture of Bardianism, Paul Tillich, critical view of Scripture, and on and on.

And they wouldn't tell people they were changed because the people that would support them were older conservative

Presbyterians, and they needed their money. So there was a lot of deception involved as well.

And so it just kept going downhill. Now, I think it would be wise for me to interject here before we go to our midway break.

There are dispensationalists and even,

I would say, pessimistic amillennialists. I happen to be an amillennialist, but I'm an optimistic amillennialist, although I don't rule out being convinced of postmillennialism.

But there are, as I said, dispensationalists and pessimistic amillennialists and pessimistic historic premillennialists who will say,

I don't understand this guy Moorcraft. He claims to be a postmillennialist, and we're saying right now amen and amen and amen about the slide downward of theology in the church at large.

How can he possibly claim to be a postmillennialist?

And I'm assuming that you would agree with me. It's because they don't even understand postmillennialism because they have a caricature of it.

They think that folks in your theological or eschatological camp believe it's going to be just a progressively upward arrow as far as history is concerned and going into the future.

There will be no dips into the depths of depravity and tyranny as far as history goes.

It's just a straight upward -leaning arrow or upward -directed arrow. But that's not what postmillennialists believe for the most part, is it?

No, I'm glad you brought that up because it's on an upward slope, but it's up and down.

And it's not triumphalism. That is, some people say that postmillennialism believes that we're just going to float to heaven on fiery beds of ease, and we believe everything's going to be wonderful, and we're just going to have one victory after another, no setbacks.

Well, I don't know anybody that believes that. And it's not because of what we see, it's because of what we read in the

Bible. And so I'm going to show you that what we've seen in our culture in the 20th century is

God's judgment, and we have more judgment to come, and yet we see some bright lights of reformation and revival in American culture that we haven't seen in a long time.

In fact, we're going to have you pick up right there when we come back from our midway break, which we have to enter into now.

And folks, please be patient because the midway break is longer than the other breaks because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, which airs this program, in fact, twice daily in a prerecorded format, in both morning drive and in the evening, they are required by the

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FCC. While they do that, we air our globally heard commercials. So please use this time wisely.

Not only write down questions for Dr. Moorcraft and send them to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, but also write down as much of the information as you can, provided by as many of our advertisers as you can, so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to our advertisers.

And when you cannot purchase their products or use their services or visit their churches or financially support their para -church organizations, when you cannot do that, and we hope that you do do that as much as you can, but when you cannot do that, at the very least, will you please just respond to our advertisers and thank them for sponsoring

Iron Trump and Zion Radio. If indeed you love the show and you are grateful that there are some people and some companies and ministries and churches that value this show so much that they want to support it financially to keep it in existence, if you're really grateful for that because you love the show, please thank our advertisers.

We could not exist without them. And so thank them by using the contact information they provide and also send in your questions to Dr.

Moorcraft at chrisarnson at gmail .com. We'll be right back after these messages. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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Joseph C. Moorcraft III if you have a question send it to chrisorenson at gmail .com chrisorenson at gmail .com

and give us your first name at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence Dr. Moorcraft right before the midway break we were discussing how these downward slides in the church regarding its faithfulness throughout history even when you go back further in the dark ages and so on when you have the church of Rome wielding its sword and the streets flowing red with rivers of blood through the torture and execution of faithful Christians by Rome this does not in any way refute or negate or disprove post -millennialism right?

as a matter of fact things got continued to get worse until the 50s 1950s and then beginning in the 1960s things rapidly started to change because of some things

God did so that by today since the 1960s by today

I believe there are more pastors faithfully preaching the historic

Reformed faith than there have been in the past hundred years yeah in fact that would have been about the time when the resurgence of Reformed Baptist belief arised on the scene and churches that may have been historically rooted in Calvinism but had abandoned those views for decades if not over a century were returning to the

Baptist roots of Calvinism and so that would have been about the same time that is exactly correct and the instruments that God used to do that to awaken

Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians were people that some of these people you've never heard of one was a mailman he delivered the mail in Bass Field, Mississippi his name was

George Calhoun he was a friend of mine wow

George Calhoun created Mount Olive Tape Library he decided oh

I had spoke to George Calhoun and I'll tell you about that in a minute go ahead he was a dear friend of mine and so he decided to start collecting tapes of historic

Reformed preachers to spread the Reformed faith so he developed a library of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Reformed preachers and he would rent them out to you you could rent them from him for 25 cents for two weeks and so even though nobody knows him he was used of God to lead who knows how many people

I'm one of them into a better understanding of Biblical Christianity yeah in fact when

I the funny thing that George Calhoun said to me years ago decades ago when he asked me in his very deep voice

I think he was living in Mississippi at the time he said to me when he found out

I was from New York at the time he said you people in New York got it easy all you got to do is get people saved we got to get them lost then get them saved that sounds like George Calhoun he had

I've seen his library of tapes tens upon tens of thousands

Al Martin one of the in my opinion the greatest most gifted preacher of the late 20th century

Cornelius Mantel Martin Lloyd -Jones

John Murray preacher after preacher thousands you could rent them for 25 cents for two weeks and God used

George Calhoun to spread the Reformed faith far and wide along with a man named

Jay Green oh yeah Jay Green had discount book services he would radically discount and publish

Reformed books he got in some trouble at the end of his life but nevertheless you could buy some of the reprints of the great

Reformers of the past for nothing from Jay Green and I still have books in my library that I bought from him back in the 60's those two men though unheard of were

God's instruments to bring a revival of the historic Christian Reformed faith also the original

Reformed seminary in Jackson, Mississippi Reformed seminary now

I cannot recommend but the original Reformed seminary that Morton Smith founded had some great professors and produced some very sound preachers both

Reformed Baptists and Presbyterian and was used in the 60's and 70's particularly and then also there was in those days a man by the name of R .J.

Rushdooney oh yeah in fact Dr. Rushdooney was a client of mine on WMCA radio he sponsored a portion of the

Voice of Sovereign Grace for a while, that was a program that I developed where every night of the week

Monday through Friday a different pastor had his sermon broadcast and R .J.

Rushdooney sponsored one of those nights and instead of a sermon he was interviewed on various subjects on the program so I remember

Brother Rushdooney well and I'm glad you brought him up I believe he was one of the most important men in the 20th century

I can remember first starting reading him when he had a report every month called the

Chalcedon Report and it was mimeographed and I still have a collection of all those mimeographed

I subscribe to that, that's no longer in existence? Not, the mimeographs are gone but from that he's published 30, 40, 50 books on subjects that everything from law to gospel to sanctification to education to philosophy to politics and on and on and on he has been the man that has taught the church in the 20th, 21st century how to apply the

Johnson tittles of the word of God to the details of life in our culture today.

You know I used to mail him books that I enjoyed reading and he did a positive book review in the

Chalcedon Report on almost every single book I ever mailed him I mean it's unbelievable what this man read he has footnotes in his books but I'll bet you nobody else has footnoted

I mean he's read books on various subjects but I doubt if hardly anybody else has read he has an exhaustive understanding of the 20th century, he died in around the year 2000 but I wish

I could impress people, it's not devotional literature, if you're just used to reading devotional literature like Spurgeon Morning and Evening which

Becky and I read here if you're just used to reading that kind of literature this is going to be hard going for a while because you have to think and Christians aren't used to thinking they want to feel not think yeah there's a time and a place for those different approaches to oh that's true

I know that you're not downgrading or insulting Spurgeon for his

Morning and Evening in any way shape or form I love Spurgeon but I will say if all a person does is read a devotional verse out of the

Bible every day or by Spurgeon, he's not going to leave much of an impact or escape much of the seductions of the modern world, he's got to read the

Bible seriously not just to get a good feeling but he's got to read the

Bible seriously to try to understand how to live life and we read the

Bible to understand how to be saved but we read the Bible to understand how to be saved from hell when we die but we read the

Bible to understand how we can be saved from sinning so much in this life either as individual or as families or as nations he was the father of the homeschool movement

I can remember when he wrote his book The Messianic Character of American Education that book put a flame under Christians, they started building

Christian schools they started homeschooling and Rush Diddy would travel around the country being an expert witness in various homeschool trials when homeschooling was not legal in states, causing homeschooling to be legal and so it's that rise in Christian education

Christian schools and homeschools that God used

Rush Diddy to accelerate that's one of the greatest causes of the advance and acceleration of the reformed faith in the 20th and 21st centuries he wrote books on politics and he showed you don't have to just be conservative you've got to be distinctively

Christian and Trinitarian in your understanding of politics yeah if you're just so -called conservative there are many people who claim to be fiscally and politically conservative on Fox News for instance who are open homosexuals but now

Fox News has a transgender person and so he wrote books on the family he wrote

I think his greatest book every Christian should read called the

Institutes of Biblical Law in one volume there were several volumes but it's the first volume that's the important thing showing going through the scriptures

I use it all the time you go to the index in the back of the book and if you want to preach all the text or you want to know what a text is don't preach on that text until you see what

Rush Dooney said about it and like I tell young preachers all the time if you're expositing a passage of scripture and you're just making personal spiritual application you're not through yet you're not through with your text until you make cultural applications and no writer, no preacher is infallible of course not even

Rush Dooney but his strength his strength is was he knew how to speak reform theology into culture effectively so that it's not just some kind of abstract thing that is the most relevant thing in the world and so somebody asked me one time where are the

Rush Dooneys and the Bonsons as if to say what's happened to the Christian Reconstruction movement and my answer to that is

Christian Reconstruction is just a new term for an old thing that it is for the reformation of society by the word of God which

Calvinists have always been for and even though we don't have many famous people there are still some famous heroes like George Grant and Gary DeMar and we had a hero die a couple weeks ago

Gary North but those that are trying to apply biblical principles to every area of life are flying under the radar there are all kinds of new churches new publishing houses new periodicals new radio stations like yours all over the world literally there's more actual reformation of society taking place now than there was in the 20th century we learned how to do it in the 20th century and now in the first quarter of the 21st century it's actually being done right now and of course people are going to always characterize and make people look extreme who believe things they don't agree with but there's nothing extreme there's nothing new about it it's simply the old reformed faith applied to the cultures of the modern world and that's where Rush Dooney was a great hero if you've never read

Rush Dooney before start with his paperback book Law and Liberty it's not hard reading it's delightful reading and then don't stop there continue to read him and you have authors that are famous now following in his footsteps like Gary DeMar and American Vision Gary DeMar is very effective in writing and preaching on the historical emphases of the reformed faith particularly in the whole subject of the end times and the world views and then one of the most famous people today responsible for spreading the reformed faith is

George Grant George Grant speaks all over the place he's written countless numbers of books and God has used him greatly you reminded me that I've got to get

George Grant back on my show he's been a guest here and he's written a wonderful endorsement for my program and I've got to get him back yes sir you do so my heroes since we've been for about 9 or 10 weeks we've been talking about heroes for Christians there are a lot of heroes today that I have that nobody knows about they're not famous when people ask me who are your favorite preachers they think

I'm going to say some famous guy like Martin Lloyd Jones but I tell them you're not going to know them they're just hard working faithful reformed preachers in small churches that expound the word of God faithfully week after week not many noble not many mighty

God has chosen the base and the weak to confound and confuse the high and the mighty and so there are signs of a great movement now

God's continuing to judge America I expect him to judge America even more severely in the next few years to come but that's to make the light brighter so that people can see how dark the darkness is and how bright the light is and the bright light of the reformed faith is shining all over not just America but all over the world there are people that are spreading the reformed faith like I say more than there were in the middle and early part of the 20th century now let me just interrupt you for a moment so I can take at least a couple of the listener questions before we continue with your words of wisdom on history and the church we have

Ronald in eastern Suffolk County Long Island and Ronald says

I know that there was a rift for quite a long time between R .J.

Rushdoony and his son -in -law Gary North was this a theological rift or was it over personal matters well that did happen

I hate to bring it up it was I know about it from both sides and it was a theological expository issue that caused great pain between them and before Rushdoony died they were reconciled oh praise

God because I didn't even know that I did know that Gary North wrote

Rush a letter in so many words apologizing no praise

God Rushdoony was dying he couldn't write a letter but he did tell somebody to tell

Gary glad he wrote the letter oh that is great because I do know in fact I think it was the

Calcedon report or it may have even been your magazine the Council of Calcedon I can't remember which one it was but I read a glowing obituary by Gary North for his father -in -law yeah

I was at Gary's funeral about two weeks ago and he was a great man he was

Rush's son -in -law he was a man that took the word of God into economics and wrote

I don't know how many books he wrote 26 ,000 articles in his life on economics and politics and education he put like you say in the south he put the potter where the cattle can reach it and God used him on a very common and practical level to influence countless numbers of people especially businessmen businessmen like to read

Gary North because he taught them if you obey the law of God in economics you're going to make money and he followed his own advice so that is an old difference that people still bring up to this day that they've heard one way or another but it's it was healed well praise

God for that we have another listener we have

Christopher in Amityville Long Island New York is where I was born and raised where I lived before I moved to Pennsylvania Christopher asks

I have heard some very stern rebukes towards those that favor the theology of Gordon Clark these rebukes have typically come from those who favor

Cornelius Van Till what was that dispute over and would you still recommend

Gordon Clark in spite of any differences you may have had with him well even good guys who love each other and share the same basic theology can disagree with each other on things and Gordon Clark was a

Calvinist himself but he disagreed with mainstream Calvinism on several things he disagreed in eschatology disagreed in apologetics there are books that he's written that I would recommend commentary on the

Westminster Confession of Faith there are books I wouldn't recommend he wasn't a heretic but he like Van Till loved the

Reformed Faith but they disagreed seriously with each other on some theological details that were not trivial they were important well we're going to go to our final break it's going to be a lot more brief than the other breaks and we'll have

Dr. Moorecraft continue with his assessment of the church in the 20th and 21st century

I have a feeling this is going to be another one that goes into multiple parts but if you have a question send it in now because we're rapidly running out of time send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com don't go away we'll be right back Why can't we see

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that's lindbrookbaptist .org. Dr. Moorecraft if you could pick up where you left off and give us some of the highlights whether they are positive or negative from the assessment of the church in the 20th and 21st century.

There was another great instrument of God in bringing a revival of the reformed faith and that was the formation of the

Presbyterian Church in America in 1973. The Southern Presbyterian Church or the

Presbyterian Church in the United States had become so liberal and so anti -christian that solid

Christians could not stay in it any longer and so in 1973 some 40 ,000 of us created the

Presbyterian Church in America and 40 ,000 of us left the old

Southern Presbyterian Church that was so great in the 19th century. In leaving many of us like I did, many of us lost our church property.

State courts took them away from us and we had to meet in funeral homes and community centers and things like that.

But the conservatives, not everybody that formed the PCA, were strictly

Calvinistic. They were all evangelical. There were two things that held all these 40 ,000 people together.

One was they believed in the infallibility of the Bible and secondly they didn't like theological liberals.

Beyond that there was everything and so when the PCA was formed we knew then in its formation that it wasn't going to be historically reformed though we prayed and wanted for it to be.

But nevertheless we got away from liberals. Now we could spend our time carrying out the Great Commission that those who were reformed genuinely got to know each other.

It wasn't as big a denomination as the Southern Presbyterian Church. We got to know each other. And so there was a real revival of reformed preaching through the formation of the

PCA even though much of the leadership in the PCA was hostile to the historic reformed faith.

And as time went on those that were thoroughly reformed were people who were losing more influence in the denomination and those that were more evangelical than reformed started moving in places of leadership and making sure that the denomination did not move in a strictly reformed perspective.

So as a result the PCA grew weaker and weaker and more and more compromises took place until over the years several groups of people within the

PCA left the PCA and started new little micro denominations and those have been powerful.

There's several of them all over the country and they are strictly reformed.

They have their own little distinctions they may disagree about but they are distinctively and historically reformed and as these and I don't want to just say it's the

Presbyterians but the Reformed Baptists are getting to know each other and are realizing that the historic

Baptist institutions in this country are not that reliable anymore and so these clusters of people,

Reformed Baptists and of Reformed Presbyterians are forming new

Presbyterians, new associations, more churches, more mission work, and it is amazing how much money they're spending and how much manpower that they're doing.

So the creation of the PCA was a great instrument of God in bringing a revival of the

Reformed faith. Not because the PCA was reformed but because now the

Reformed people could get to know each other they would not have to worry about being persecuted by liberals but as time went on and the

PCA became more and more liberal itself in the doctrines of creation, homosexuality, ethics, all those things that these micro denominations have formed and new little seminaries have formed, not just seminaries but pastors like I do mentor young men prepared for the ministry so they don't have to spend their time going to an institution although Greenville Theological Seminary also started by Morton Smith is a very good seminary in Greenville, South Carolina and a lot of good guys are trained there.

That's where Dr. Piper is? Yeah, that's where Jerry Piper is and it is the one seminary

I can recommend. One of my pastors actually even though he's a Reformed Baptist, John Miller, had a part of his seminary education there and in fact when he was there he was the only

Baptist in the student body. Well that's great and I mentor young men in the ministry in various places in the country too to make sure that they can pass a

Presbyterian exam. People are publishing more and more literature in foreign languages.

There's this man named Frank Brito in Brazil who's right now the most influential

Calvinist in Brazil. Yeah, I've interviewed him. Your recommendation? Yes sir and he is translating my books into Portuguese as well as some other people and so there are things like that happening all over the place.

There is a young Reformed Baptist preacher in England, Pouyan Massahi, who is translating several of my sermons into Persian, Farsi, to be preached in Iran.

Praise God. So things like this are happening all over the world and I know without a shadow of doubt that someday the knowledge of the will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

Amen. I want to throw in somebody who has become a hero of mine because of the direct effect some something that he established had on my life personally.

As you may remember, due to my falling into, or should

I say, diving face forward into the sin of drunkenness years ago, over a decade ago, after having been sober for 18 years,

I admitted myself into a Christian rehabilitation and recovery ministry in Boone, North Carolina called

Hebron Colony Ministries. I know it, it's good. Yes, and that was founded by the

Reverend E. A. Dillard, who was a Southern Presbyterian pastor in Charlotte, North Carolina, and when the liberalism had gotten so bad, he urged his congregation to leave the

Southern Presbyterian Church with him so that they could start a new congregation and the vast majority refused to follow him.

So that is the reason, this is where you have Romans 828 coming into play, where something horrible like that happened.

The good thing is that he moved to Boone, North Carolina, and he, as he witnessed

American G .I .s returning home from World War II, drunkards, he is the one that established

Hebron Colony Ministries in Boone. And I thank God for that ministry because it is

God using that ministry that I think I'm alive right now. Amen. And one other thing while we have time, another great influence in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s was

J. Adams. Oh yeah, I interviewed him too. Yeah, J. Adams was a

Presbyterian preacher, lived to be up in his 90s, and was the greatest teacher of biblical counseling and psychology in the

United States in the last half of the 20th century. It's called

New Thetic Counseling, N -O -E -T -H -E -T -I -C, New Thetic Counseling, and it means counseling that is done from beginning to end in terms of the

Word of God. It's not like most Christian, in quotes, counseling today that's baptized humanism.

They sprinkle a few Bible verses onto some already presupposed pagan psychology, and as a result a lot of the compromised

Christian, in quotes, counselors tried to make him look to be like a fool, but I practiced his what he preached for 50 years.

Amen. And God used it. I would recommend to parents, it's not just for scholars, parents to get his book,

Competent to Counsel, in which he shows how all forms of counseling and Christian counseling are unbiblical compared to an exclusively biblical form, and then once you've gotten the

Competent to Counsel, get his book, A Christian Counselor's Manual. It's great for parents, it's great for preachers, where he goes through everything he possibly can, problems and challenges and sins and temptations that we face in the world today, and shows how the

Bible explicitly applies to each of those situations. We have a friend of yours,

Gary Wagner, who is the pastor of Reformed Heritage Church in Los Gatos, California, who has a question.

I would like to ask you what he thinks about Two Kingdom Theology and how it has affected the

Reformed Church. Two Kingdom Theology.

Oh, oh, oh, Two Kingdom, oh yeah, that is terrible. It is, Westminster Seminary used to be a great seminary, started by J.

Gresham Machen, I didn't even get to mention Machen, one of my old -time heroes in the 30s, but it, like a lot of the years, in an effort to escape the law of God, that they don't have to talk about the law of God.

And Two Kingdom Theology says that the church is one kingdom that's governed by the

Bible, the state is another kingdom that's governed by reason and natural law.

Now that's deadly. That is the law that allowed the church to support

Adolf Hitler. It says that God's law is confined only to the church, and so the state does not have to obey

God's law in the Bible, it just has to obey reason and natural law.

And hence, many of its supporters, which are famous Calvinists, many of its supporters do not believe that the state should outlaw homosexual marriages.

They themselves are against it in their own church, but since the state does not have to obey the law of God contained in the scriptures, then it has no obligation to outlaw homosexual marriages.

So it is a terrible view, two kingdom view, one kingdom is the church, it is to be governed by the

Bible, the other kingdom is the state, and is to be governed by natural law and reason, which means it can do about anything it wants.

Well thank you Gary, and I want to give Gary's website for his church, which as I said before is

Reformed Heritage Church in Los Gatos, California. It's reformedheritage .org,

reformedheritage .org. Well we are out of time, Dr. Moorcraft, and I would like to enter into part two of your assessment on the 20th and 21st century next time, and in fact we left out, due to lack of time

I'm sure, J. Gresham Machen and the foundation of the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church and Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and other things.

But if I could, I would like to announce to you folks again the website for Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia.

It's Heritage PresbyterianChurch .com, Heritage Presbyterian Church .com, and also look for Tim Renshaw's website, who is an elder of Heritage Presbyterian Church, comprehensivechristianity .com,

comprehensivechristianity .com, and let's not forget westminstercommentary .com,

westminstercommentary .com. I want to thank you so much Dr. Moorcraft for, as always, doing such a superb job as my guest today.

I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write. Sorry about those who we did not have time to read your questions on the air.

Perhaps when Dr. Moorcraft returns we can have your questions read. I hope you all have a very safe, happy, healthy, and joyful, and Christ -honoring weekend and Lord's Day, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater