January 23, 2024 Show with Paul Jehle on “A Critique of Bill O’Reilly’s Book ‘Killing the Witches'”

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 23rd day of January 2024.

And once again, the continued prayers of my listeners is greatly appreciated as I continue to struggle with Bell's Palsy, and I even mispronounced that because of the

Bell's Palsy. I feel like I should be ringing the bells at Notre Dame with my voice and my slurred speech and my partial paralysis in my face, but it is a far cry from having a stroke, which was what

I originally feared, and I thank God that the doctors through the CAT scan on Saturday night confirmed that it was not a stroke and that it is likely nothing more serious than Bell's Palsy, which is most of the time not permanent.

So I just ask of you to pray that these symptoms disappear quickly, and I hope to give you a good report on that soon, but I am thrilled to have a first -time guest today.

He came to me at the very highest recommendation of two men of God that I love and appreciate enormously, one being

Dr. Joseph C. Moorcraft III, pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, who is actually my guest tomorrow on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and also

Christian historian Bill Potter. They both told me when I asked them who would be the best candidate for an interview to respond to Bill O 'Reilly's book,

Killing the Witches, and they both immediately said, well, you've got to get

Paul J. Lee on the show, and thankfully, after I contacted

Dr. J. Lee, he enthusiastically accepted my invitation, and he is with us today to critique this book,

Killing the Witches, the Horror of Salem, Massachusetts, by world -renowned author and commentator

Bill O 'Reilly, formerly of Fox News. This is going to be,

I believe, an exciting program that should edify all of us and correct errors in our thinking about the

Puritans. Dr. Paul J. Lee is a historian, expert on the Salem witch trials, senior pastor of the

New Testament Church of Cedarville in Plymouth, Massachusetts, founding principal of the

New Testament Christian School, and the executive director of the Plymouth Rock Foundation, and our theme is a critique of Bill O 'Reilly's book,

Killing the Witches, separating fact from fiction, included in Mr.

O 'Reilly's book, which perpetuates many myths, half -truths, stereotypes, and slanderous accusations against Puritan New England.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Dr. Paul J.

Lee. Well, great to be with you, Chris, and I think it's awesome to be able to share with your audience, because anytime we critique anything, we learn a lot, because truth is best refined in under -conflict.

Yes, and at the outset, I want to tell our listeners, I don't dislike everything about Bill O 'Reilly.

I find him to be quite knowledgeable on areas of politics.

I don't always agree with him on those areas either, but I find him informative on occasion and entertaining, and he's a bright man, but whenever it comes to anything involving

Christianity, he should keep his mouth shut, and he should keep his fingers off of his keypad, because this is an area where he has always been way off base and misreported things and slandered

Bible -believing Christians, and he is not a source to be trusted when it comes to the

Christian faith, and it's not only in regard to this book that we are addressing today, but even his book on killing

Jesus was a very flawed book to be avoided at all costs.

But before we get into that topic, Dr. Jaley, let our listeners know something about the

New Testament Church of Cedarville in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where you are the senior pastor.

Sure. Well, this church that I am serving now as senior pastor was started in 1901.

Wow. It was started as a result of a revival among Native Americans in this area, and the people in the community and the village wanted to get a church started, and so we believe we were given years ago an authentic Revere bell that is dated

July 4, 1901, for the year that the church was founded. We believe that then the first building eventually was built in 1910, and that building is right now, it burned in the 1960s.

So the building that I'm in now was started in 1961 and 62, and we added an addition onto it in 1999.

So I've been here since 1975. I came with my wife after we were newly married, and I became the youth pastor and began to be part of the leadership team.

So I've been in the same church for a long time, and I got converted while I was in college.

Before we move on to your salvation testimony, which is something that we always have our guests do when it's their first time on the program, tell us something a little bit more about your church.

I understand that you have an unusual combination of being both theologically Reformed and charismatic.

Tell us about that. Yes, and we have, the church was initially a

Baptist church back in the 60s and 70s, early 70s, then an Assembly of God preacher came here, very, very well, a good teacher of the

Scriptures. We were very scripturally, the other church never became assemblies, but they had the experience of the baptism of the

Holy Spirit and whatnot. And then when I came and I began to teach here, I began to bring more of the

Reformed faith and the sovereignty of God, the Sola Scriptura that we need to go by Scripture and Scripture alone and all those kinds of things.

And of course, that combination, which is quite popular in the United States and has grown at many churches.

We try to steer clear of what we consider to be the extremes and we believe in covenant theology.

So we don't believe that the gifts ceased, but we do believe that the Scripture is the final authority.

And we believe the focus of the Scripture is on character and fruit and that gifts are part of that, but they're not the final answer.

And so therefore, we have built that blend and continue to operate in that way.

Yes, when I was first saved in the 1980s, you could hardly find anywhere a charismatic or Pentecostal who is also a believer in the doctrines of sovereign grace, a .k

.a. Reformed theology and Calvinism. But today it is quite a lot more common.

And I have a number of friends who espouse that combination.

I am not charismatic or Pentecostal, but I believe that these are areas where we can have loving disagreement and still have fellowship in many areas of our

Christian life. If anybody has an interest to find out more about the

New Testament Church of Cedarville, which is in Plymouth, Massachusetts, you can go to tntchurch .net.

TNT, just like the explosive, church .net, tntchurch .net. Now tell us about the

Plymouth Rock Foundation, please. Well, the Plymouth Rock Foundation was started in 1970 here in Plymouth at the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the pilgrims.

And John Talcott Jr. was the founder of that. He had been converted at a

Billy Graham crusade in 1950, and he came and started to research the primary sources of the pilgrims and formed a library in his estate in Plymouth.

And in 1970, he incorporated the Plymouth Rock Foundation because he was concerned that American history and the heritage, even beginning with the pilgrims here in New England, was beginning to leave out

God and leave out the ultimate source which brought the pilgrims from Europe over here to the

New World. And because of that, things were getting secularized, meaning that the root of those things were being removed.

So as a primary source historian, he became president of the Pilgrim Society. He became very involved in, he was the chairman of the 350th anniversary and honoring the pilgrims coming.

I met him when I came here in 1976, 75 and 76. He opened his library to me.

I had been newly converted and I had never had any interest in history. I thought history was the boring, most boring things like most people.

They just was filled with dates and confusing personalities and they had no rhyme or reason.

And yet he opened to me what would change my life. Because as I began to read primary sources close to where the events took place,

I began to see the purpose for which God had brought me there. And one of the executive directors,

Russ Walton of the Plymouth Rock Foundation, a man who was reformed in his faith, but also a brilliant theologian in the scriptures, mentored me over many years.

And that's how I got involved in the Plymouth Rock Foundation. And by 1988, I was its educational director where I helped form committees of correspondence across America as I traveled.

And then also I was traveling for many reasons in planting Christian schools in the United States and Central and South America.

And then also began to get involved historically in joining the various clubs there in historic clubs in Plymouth at his direction.

And so John Talcott's direction and of course working with Russ Walton. I then became the executive director of the foundation in 2006 and now is president of the foundation.

So I am involved in that and it's basically to keep primary source documents in print. And our goal is to make sure that the pilgrim's faith is known and everything that sprung from it throughout our history.

And that's one of the things that we feel is very, very missing today. People do not mean understand how to connect cause and effect.

They don't understand that the Liberty we had came from a ultimate cause the

Liberty in Christ. And when you remove the cause you're not going to get the same fruit and therefore we are very much involved in doing that.

And of course the man one of the men you mentioned Bill Potter is on the board of the Plymouth Rock Foundation. Praise God.

So we are very involved in that that that endeavor to try to preserve that history and for more details on the

Plymouth Rock Foundation. You can go to P -L -Y -M rock .org

P as in Plymouth L -Y -M as in Michael rock .org

and God willing will be repeating that later on in the program. Well, as I already mentioned when we ever whenever we have a first -time guest on Iron Trap and Zion Radio, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include the kind of religious atmosphere if any in which the guest was raised and what kind of providential circumstances are

Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that led them to himself and save them and I would love to hear a summary of your story.

Yes, I was raised with a very good solid moral home. My father was

World War II veteran. He served in Annapolis. He was an engineer and he was also in one of the early

Glee Club members as a tremendous singer. And so he raised us in a very patriotic home.

However, he was very disillusioned after World War II wondering how humanity could be so evil in relation to all that they were fighting in that regard.

So he began to react he wondered and he became going went into the ministry and he became a congregational minister, but he had no experience knowing the

Lord. In fact, he was not born again and not saved. He took us into the occult trying to look to find for for some kind of life.

And so I was in several meetings where we had a medium some of the mediums were directly under very famous ones in America in the 1960s.

And so I saw some things see supernaturally on the demonic side that turned the hairs on the back of my neck up and had people prophesy over me with halos and all kinds of dreams and all that kind of stuff.

And my father was so into it. He taped it. We had to listen to it again during the week. So our

Sunday nights were filled with these kinds of things. I played with the Ouija board when I was eight years old and it worked and I was not working it that again shocked me.

But providentially you see God works in our life in such a way that our experiences even not experiences that are of God the true

God those experiences will help us in the future. I've often said and preached this that God just because of the way

God designed things as the book of Isaiah says the book of Luke's that tells us that God uses even the waste in our life as fertilizer and manure for planting his seeds and bringing it up because he works all things out for good and he's sovereign and therefore this happened in my life as well.

When I was a senior in high school and I began to recognize my father my father just a few years before that has was dramatically saved born again.

He was preaching sermons about being good and everyone can get to the top and it doesn't matter how you get there to all of a sudden one

Sunday. He preached. There's only one way and that's Jesus Christ. Well, it did it produce people were screaming.

Some people left the church some people and the deacons called an emergency meeting and they didn't know if they wanted to keep him.

So long story short. He had to resign and leave. I began to become a real searcher because of what happened with my father and eventually my basketball coach in my freshman year at college led me to Christ.

I went through deliverance renounced all my involvement in the occult. I became very interested in studying why

I had been trapped in that. So I began to teach I taught a lot on exposing the occult and the occult arts.

So long story short, you know, I became a disciple my basketball coach discipled me in college and then a local

Methodist pastor had near the campus began to root me in some very very good sources of Christianity that laid a very good foundation for me.

And then beyond that once I came here to the New Testament Church in 1975 and with my wife we began to be involved.

I was now studying what it was. I produced a biblical concordance on the mind out of my research from college on how the mind operates since I had been so sucked into the occult and emptying my mind and like a blank slate, which is never proper to do.

So therefore I began to become a Bible teacher and that's when John Talcott introduced me to historical truth and I recognized that the two were going to go together.

And so from that time on I began to be a Bible teacher a youth pastor and began to research it and then

I began to become a tour guide. And so these things all began to work together for good. That's the way

God designed it. But also I began to understand the discernment to warn young people about the involvement of the occult.

I knew it was real because I experienced it and therefore when my wife showed me years ago,

I was intrigued as the 300th anniversary of the Salem witch trials began to come on the scene in 1992 because of my background and my understanding.

I really wanted to understand what happened early on in my research. I found out that 10 of the 20 people that were eventually put to death for witchcraft were the leading

Christians in Salem. I found out that three of the women that were hung as witches were the three leading intercessors praying for a backslidden

Salem pastor and church to come back to Christ. Wow, and I recognized immediately.

Wait a minute. Something went really wrong here. This is not proper.

And so I spent two to three years in the archives up at Salem and I read everything.

I read the entire trial transcripts and I read biographies as much as I could find on all 20 of the individuals that had been put to death.

And because when I began to read those things, many things come back into my mind because I experienced some of the things that those girls were experiencing in Salem and I could see through a lot of the things that were done improperly.

And so therefore that was a peak interest of mine. And so very recently, actually, we were going through a store, my wife and I, and my wife saw the book,

Killing the Witches by Bill O 'Reilly. And I had read several of the O 'Reilly series, killing series.

I have not read the Killing Jesus one, but I had read some of the other ones and I liked some of the things that were said.

I thought, wow, there was some creativity here in historical narratives.

That's good. People are hungering for history. We know that here in Plymouth, as I do tours here in Plymouth on the side, that's not my main job, of course.

By doing that, I know that people are hungry for the truth and for what happened in history and how we were formed as a nation.

And so my wife is the one that brought my attention to it, knowing that my background and also my years of research and of doing tours in Salem would peak my interest.

And so therefore, just after she got that book for me, you contacted me. Huh. God's providence.

Of course, I've read it and outlined the book now and I'm prepared and have done a book review and things like that.

So at any rate, we are. So that's a providential story of how I came into what

I'm doing now. Well, after we return from our first commercial break, I would like you to begin by giving a summary of what actually happened.

And then I would like you to follow that with anything that Bill O 'Reilly got right.

And then the remainder of the show will have it will have you reveal the egregious errors in his book.

And if any and if anybody has any questions, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least city and state and country of residence.

Only remain anonymous. If your question involves a personal and private matter, let's say you are involved in the occult or something and you're beginning to question whether you should be involved in that satanic activity and ideology or something like that, you know, there may be many reasons why you are compelled to remain anonymous, but please if it's just a general question, give us your first name at least city and state and country of residence.

And by the way, before I move on, I have to introduce you at some point to my dear friend,

Jen Nisa. She is a former occult practitioner and former a medium and she was saved by the sovereign grace of God and is a member of the church.

I was formerly a member of before moving to Pennsylvania grace reform Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York and her website is xpsychicsaved .com

xpsychicsaved .com and also I want to plug a banner of truth book the life of Arthur W Pink by Ian Murray.

A lot of reformed folks may not be aware of the fact that a

W Pink was also involved in the occult before he was saved and in fact really believed that the experiences that he was witness to were not parlor tricks.

They were not the the manifestations of trickery and charlatanism.

He believes that many of the things he witnessed were actual demonic supernatural manifestations.

So you could order that biography at cvbbs .com Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service and ask for the life of Arthur W Pink by Ian Murray published by Banner of Truth and don't go away.

We are going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors send in your emails to chrisarnson at gmail .com

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Go to royaldiadem .com and mention Iron Trepans Iron Radio. We are now back with Dr.

Paul Jaley who is the senior pastor of the New Testament Church of Cedarville in Plymouth, Massachusetts and also founder of the

Plymouth Rock Foundation. And he is providing a critique of Bill O 'Reilly's book,

Killing the Witches. If you have a question, please submit it to chrisarensen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

As I said before, Dr. Jaley, I'd like you to start off now by giving a summary of what actually occurred in Salem which has become known as the

Salem Witch Trials. And then, either before the middle break or after we return, we'll have you start off with providing the information that Bill O 'Reilly got right and then move on for the remainder of the show with revealing his egregious errors.

So, if you could, what actually happened there? Sure. Well, you know, when we look at an event like the

Salem Witch Trials which are so unique. For nine months, the Puritans themselves abandoned their own law and abandoned the very common law that they were carrying and did not follow that.

We have to ask ourselves, why? What would cause Salem to do this? And we have to go back to its beginning because I think in any place, and this is instructive for believers today, no matter how bad the culture looks today, no matter how wicked it appears and how off the rails it is going, we have to recognize that we need to go back to the beginning.

God gives us a call in Him and every town, because God has providentially mapped the entire earth,

He knows how He's going to bring forth His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. I've studied towns like this in Massachusetts and in New England and around the country.

And when you go back to the founding of Salem, you have to go all the way back to the Puritan minister, John White, who was the rector of the church in Dorchester, England, a phenomenal individual.

In fact, he was one of the participants in writing the Westminster Confession of Faith. He was a man steeped in Reformed theology.

And when he was giving a defense as to why he was going to plant a colony in New England, people said, why would you do that?

Why would you plant a colony in the wilderness when there are so many problems in England itself?

You see, this is where the missionary movement was being birthed out of the Reformation. And they were wanting to send people to the wilderness and to areas to be a witness for Christ, to see individuals saved.

And he said these words when he was talking about planting a colony, and that colony would be

Salem. He said it will be a service unto the church of great consequence to carry the gospel into those parts of the world and raise up a bulwark against the kingdom of Antichrist.

Now, this is kind of interesting. Here he says this. Now the rest of his quote talks about a contrast between the

Jesuits, who he was calling the kingdom of Antichrist, in other words, individuals who claimed to be

Christians but utilized methods that were not Christian. Their conversion was by force.

It was by only form and ritual without the regeneration of the Holy Spirit in the heart of an individual.

And because of that and the methods that were used, he called them out. And he said, listen, this is a demonic inspiration.

Not every individual was demonic, but he was using that contrast. So if we're going to send missionaries into the wilderness, we want them to bring forth the kingdom of God.

We're not looking for them to simply have a few people get born again. We want to see the kingdom of God come forth right from there.

So this was a declaration of war against the kingdom of Antichrist in the wilderness.

Now, we have to recognize that because God in the scriptures always, when he calls us, and we have the illustrations, we see

Joseph, you know, in the Old Testament when we recognize that God intended for Joseph to do a mighty work in Egypt, and therefore he said what the enemy meant for evil,

God is going to turn to good, just as it was with the apostle Paul. He said, look, a thorn in the flesh was allowed by the enemy to attack me in warfare to keep me humble.

See, we have to recognize this is a city called. Salem was called. It wasn't called Salem back then.

In fact, when the first people came, Roger Conant, a dear Christian believer who really believed in walking in peace among individuals, wanted peace with the natives, he followed

John White's recipe for a peaceful settlement. And you see, this is what happened, that Salem ended up being its call because one of the ministers who came,

Francis Higginson, was on his knees in prayer and with Skelton, his assistant there, and,

I mean, both working as pastors of the church, and they were in prayer reading Psalm 72 and were reading it about Salem, and they named the town prophetically out of Scripture to be a town of peace.

Now this is interesting because this is long before the Salem witch trials, but you could even say it this way.

You could say, gee, that God had this call upon John White to plant this kind of a village.

Wow, the enemy never forgot that and was going to do everything he could to come against it, and the enemy will always come against whatever the call

God has on your life. He'll discourage you from using the gifts he's given you. He will try to stop you in any way he can so that the kingdom won't fall.

Of course he's going to be a failure. He's going to be a loser in time, but we need to recognize this from Salem.

It's important that we realize long before 1692, which now you're going to get into the second generation almost of believers that come into New England.

Cotton Mather began to write it. Increase Mather began to write that people were concerned.

After the first generation had come and were passionate about Christ, the pilgrims came, and the pilgrims had an internal to external government of electing their leaders and government by consent.

The Puritans, when they came over, became passionate. At first they were very upset with the separatists who came, and then they began to come over finding they couldn't reform the

Church of England the way they had desired it to take place. When they came, that first and second generation, the second generation was not as passionate.

It's always harder to pass the torch to the second generation and especially the third generation from those pioneers who are first passionate about Christ, their calling, and good theology.

Demonic manifestations began to appear all over New England, in Connecticut, and in various parts of New England long before 1692.

There were aspects of it with John Winthrop as governor in Boston. Tremendous, where houses would shake, where a stench and an odor would be so phenomenally strong that they would have to resist that.

This was not because they were associating it all with the natives or individuals who were not practicing

Christianity. This was among themselves, their own backslidden individuals and people who had turned to the occult and were experiencing the occult arts.

Some of them were bringing them from Europe. So this was being experienced by people.

Some of the pastors who are alive at when the Salem Witch Trials, a concentrated attack that was tremendous, over 100 people accused of witchcraft, many of whom were not witches, and with false accusations and whatnot.

Dealing with this, wow, this built up over time. What you need to realize also is there was a feud that was taking place between the

Porter clan and the Putnam clan in Salem before 1692.

In other words, we need to see the conditions of what produced a colony of individuals going to church every

Sunday and being in there. Why would they become so carnal, so fleshly, that they would be so easily succumbed and deceived?

Why would this take place in Salem? See, these are the questions we need to ask. We need to go back to the roots of these things, and this is how it took place.

You see, parents would talk to their children around the table about how angry they were with this clan.

These were land feuds of individuals, and we should have gotten that land.

They shouldn't have sold this to this family clan. And because parents, in disobedience to Scripture, were gossiping around the dinner table to their children, there's this anger that's built up between the two clans in Salem.

And this is beginning to spill over. They wouldn't sit together in church. They would be very upset at one another.

And this is the kind of atmosphere that was coming. But not only that, the church itself in Salem could not stand good preaching.

The pastors that preceded Samuel Parris, who was pastor during the Salem witch trials, were pastors who preached the truth of God, who did not want to cater to the clans that were in the church.

And yet they were turned out of those churches. The church in Salem didn't want to hear them.

They left, and some of them were shipwrecked because they couldn't handle the warfare themselves. And yet some of those individuals, by the time that Samuel Parris comes in, we'll talk just a moment about him.

Here's a pastor who's more concerned with his salary than preaching faithfully the Word of God. He points out people in the church that are talking about him during his sermons publicly before the

Bible's clear. You go privately to someone. You try to win them. You follow the Lord's Word in how to handle disputes.

See, there's greater consequences for us in the church of Jesus Christ in America that as the walls come down in our nation, not just literally on our borders, but as the walls come down and God allows us to experience a lot of the warfare other countries and other believers would experience around the world because of these protections, it's going to be clear that our protection is going to come by adhering to the written

Word of God, which does not fail. And this was the problem with Samuel Parris. I have a book on his sermons.

We know what he was preaching prior to the witchcraft trials. He was calling people out as devils in his congregation.

What a false move. What a foolish thing to do. And this was preparing it. Now think of the macro for just a minute.

In 1684 and 1686, after the Glorious Revolution, the

Glorious Revolution was about to take place, and King Charles II is brought back to the throne after Oliver Cromwell has died, and this is coming back.

The old tyranny in England is coming back. And there was a demand to Massachusetts to turn over their charter or it would be abrogated because they were operating in self -government.

They were operating according to biblical principles of law. And when

Massachusetts refused, led by Cotton Mather, Increase Mather, and the pastors, their charter was removed in 1686.

Think of that. Only six years before the witchcraft trials. So there's no overseeing government.

And now the towns that are not equipped to govern themselves completely are now the chaos increase.

And what village would that be above all others just north of Boston that is in chaos already internally?

It's Salem. It's the Salem church, and now that goes even further. So we see these preceding elements for every time

I've been. Listen, my involvement in the occult was preceded by walls coming down.

My father was not a Christian. I did not have individuals who were leading me in the proper way. I was drawn to those things.

So it is with everyone else. The devil just doesn't jump on someone's head and beat them up. The devil doesn't have that kind of authority.

He has to submit to God's authority. He's got to play by his rules. He's got to play by the kingdom rules. God allows him to attack, but he's under the authority of God.

He's not under his own authority. He doesn't have complete authority. He has displaced authority when we give it to him.

And that's what happened in Salem. And so then what ended up happening is you had individuals who were judges on a bench, and those judges began to rule.

Think of this. Demonically depraved girls whose fathers had not properly led their families, who had not disciplined their children, all girls who were not in submission to their own fathers, in the pastor's own basement, begin playing with the dark arts of the occult.

And this is where the demonic manifestations begin to come in. The girls were manifesting demonically in ways that there's no possible way it could be tricks.

Look, when I read those trials and exactly with the illustrations of what was happening to their physical bodies,

I've seen those things. And I know that this was true. This was real. This real occult warfare was there.

But instead of dealing with it, with spiritual warfare in the church through prayer, now there were some groups that did prayer and fasting to talk about some of the pastors who were giving that advice.

The key pastors involved, like Samuel Parris, though he did do some of this and taking place, he did not handle this situation spiritually.

And think of it. There are seven judges who are sitting on a bench, judging a spiritual matter that first belonged in the church.

So we already have a jurisdictional issue here that isn't accurate. Secondly, individuals on the bench began to rule from the bench.

In fact, we have nine months of what it would be like to have judicial supremacy where judges rule from the bench, make up their own laws, change things, and no longer go by being innocent until proven guilty.

Now you're guilty until you prove your innocence. Not only that, you begin to have spectral evidence, dreams and visions entered into court as evidence, as a witness that violates the due process of biblical law.

Secondly, you can't put someone to death even for a capital crime that was on their books. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live as the fear of God would be put in it.

But if you study the scriptures and you look at the due process of what it would take to take someone to trial, witchcraft is an invisible crime.

You're not going to get a visible witness. So you take a dream or somebody's dream or accusation as evidence.

These judges are changing the rules on the bench, and this is a travesty.

Now you're going to have individuals called to the witness stand. You have individuals called to the witness stand that are leading intercessors.

These are powerful individuals who are on their knees praying for Salem to come back to Christ. And you have them drawn in as a witch.

They raise their hands when they're there and start to pray the Lord's Prayer. And when they do that, the children completely go berserk in manifesting it.

The children were the problem. Those fathers and those mothers in the homes were the problem.

The pastor was the root problem here in dealing with this. And this allowed – this flesh area and carnality allowed demonic exposure and demonic manifestations longer than was necessary.

So to complete the quick summary overview of this, because of this travesty, in spite of the pastors who were saying, look, you can't use spectral evidence.

This is wrong. Cotton Mather, Increase Mather, they're trying to say they didn't dare intervene directly into the court because of the jurisdiction and the jurisdictional separation of church and state, where they recognized, gee, we can't command them to stop.

We can't deal with this. And yet they were going to be – have great concerns. And so it went on longer than necessary.

But, you know, this is how God always deals with things. It's a travesty when we don't follow the law of God.

It's a travesty when we don't follow the Spirit of God. It's a travesty when we don't deal with sin in its infancy and we let it grow to maturity.

It's a travesty when pastors no longer counsel and pastor, and they try to correct people from the pulpit without dealing with it individually.

It's a travesty. People get hurt. And in this case, people died. And we see the situation take place where now these girls are in control.

Whoever they accuse of witchcraft gets dragged into the court in spite of the fact they have excellent character, in spite of the fact they've had nothing, no blot against their name.

Now, not all of them. Some of them were involved in the occult. None of them, to my knowledge in studying this, were actual witches that were trying to put spells on people.

But you had individuals, maybe one or two could have been, but they're not the ones that were really the center stage of this.

And then you have people being put to death. And then all of a sudden people begin to adopt the old superstition rules to find out whether demons are available, whether they can say the

Lord's Prayer perfectly or whether they can do something with dipping them in water.

And they're leaving their biblical common law that they brought. They're not following it.

And then as we always see, sin always defeats itself. Evil will always turn in upon itself.

And therefore people begin to be accused. And then people who are high up in government begin to be accused.

You know how it always is. We can let a license in government go until it touches our own home.

We can let things go until we get in trouble. And that's when Governor Phipps, the new governor that comes after the

Glorious Revolution, this is chaos on steroids now in 1692.

And when his wife is accused, you can believe these trials were shut down in short order. And they were.

They should have been shut down a lot sooner. And then the cleanup begins because then the judges begin to be convicted.

Judge Samuel Sewell, what a powerful story. He's reading devotions to his own son and the

Holy Spirit cuts him to the quick. He's so devastated by being on there and having accused people who were innocent of being witches that he stands up in church with Pastor Willard at the

Old South Churches, confesses his sin on the day of fasting and prayer called by the legislature.

They should have called it. They were right in calling a day of fasting and repentance because they were at fault for letting these magistrates do what they did.

And now you recognize that people are starting to repent. And I have to tell you the final stories of Ann Putnam, the one who – 12 -year -old girl.

And, in fact, could you pick up – And they accused all of the Porter clan. Dr. Jaley, could you pick up on this point when we return from the midway break?

Yes, I can. Yes, I will. And then we get to this point and she repents.

Okay. And the church forgives her. Yes. I want to pick up on this afterwards because this tells you what really happened and the real providence of God in this whole event.

Amen. And please be patient with us, folks, but we will be back, so don't go away. Puritan Reformed is a

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Before I return to my guest today, Dr. Paul Jaley, and our discussion of the

Salem Witch Trials and our response to Bill O 'Reilly's book,

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Paul Jaley on the Salem Witch Trials and even more specifically on Bill O 'Reilly's book,

Killing the Witches. And the email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Dr. Jaley, if you could pick up where you left off about the conversion of one of the key figures in this story of the

Salem Witch Trials. Well, basically, even just before during the trials,

Cotton Mather had taken one of the girls outside and gotten her away from Salem, took into his home, and this is before the trials actually began, another individual, and had demonstrated that prayer, fasting, and spiritual warfare, and repentance from sin cures someone from this.

And so there was this call to do this with spiritual weapons. In other words, we were basically trying to use laws in order to cast out demon spirits.

And really that's not the method that God had intended. Law is to drive us to Christ.

Law is to definitely has a positive venue. But the point is that we are – it's not powerful to save.

It's not going to deliver us. So I think with this taking place, when the judge,

Samuel Sewell, who was already a Christian, a well -known Christian, realized how deceived he had become, he was one of the first and most famous individuals that stood up in church and repented for what he had done.

Then one of the girls, just to give you an example, because time would not allow us to go through all the examples,

Ann Putnam, who had been accusing most everyone she accused was a Porter clan.

You could see the animosity that had come from hearing of all these things that were taking place in her home and the animosity that her parents had toward others.

She had accused more people than any other teenager. And she repented and she stood before the very

Salem church who had lost husbands, wives, children, grandparents. And she's now 26 years of age, a frustrated and broken woman, unmarried.

She stands up and repents and said she deserves to lie and die in the dust, meaning you can go ahead and I deserve capital punishment.

I deserve this because of what I've done to your relatives. And summarizing her statement, and then the church forgave her and enacted mercy, just as God allows in his law of mercy of the victims can extend mercy and not cast the first stone.

And you have this situation, and I believe I've been able to document fairly soundly, though not as completely as I'd like yet, that that prayer meeting in 1706 is the real seed of the

Great Awakening. And that repentance and prayer meeting of the church in Salem, admitting her back to the communion table and after her repentance was very clear.

We see Jonathan Edwards come soon right after that. We see Ben Franklin born as a young child and we see the revivals begin to take place.

Now, I would just say that that's a key summary of what really happened at the spiritual level.

But we have to realize this. I think with Bill O 'Reilly's book, Killing the Witches, we have a lot of things that are accurate externally, meaning he gets many of the shingles right.

He gets many of the windows correct. And where some of the doors were on the external house of the

Salem witch trials. There are facts that are very accurate. It was a horror in Salem for those nine months.

There was no question that the burning of individuals for opposite religious views in England was cruel and unusual punishment.

It was not correct. And the burning didn't occur in America. That's correct.

And so the point is, and no one was burned in New England. In fact, the laws were totally different.

They were very, very different and distinct from Europe. But there are certain things that are painted factually.

But you remember, it takes a worldview to interpret the facts. You can get facts correct, but the worldview wrong.

And what ends up happening here is he brush strokes the pilgrims and puritans together, though he does mention them both, but both as puritans.

And it is true that to keep along your theme there of some of the things that are correct.

It is true that the puritans were intolerant toward practicing sin. That's true.

Now, there are several things that were there. Now, there'll be a lot of argument as to whether that was proper or not.

And those civil laws were certainly that way. And there's no question that in retrospect, you can go from one extreme to the other in both attitude and action.

And he identifies some of those extremes and some of those mistakes that I would agree with and say, gee, the puritans were not always perfect.

They didn't always do that correctly. I think there's correction in the area when he brings forth increase in cotton mather.

He really beats up on those two leaders as complete hypocrites. And I think that the case is he's accurate in this respect, that increase in cotton mather were so jealous to have a holy commonwealth in New England.

Were so upset with what had happened with the spiritual warfare in New England that they attempted to control it through the churches.

They wanted to build a hierarchy of churches that would control the state. You know, we often when we see in history, we go from one extreme to the other.

See, when individuals immigrated or left England, were kicked out of England out of persecution to come to America, they were fleeing from a state church where the king was the head of the church.

There was no jurisdictional separation of church and state. And I always say jurisdictional because it's not the phrase that's used today, which is a complete misnomer.

But the idea is there were Puritan commonwealths and Puritan preachers that went to the other extreme of the church controlling the state on the other hand.

And the book does outline some of those extremes that were wrong and some trends that were definitely there.

And the idea though, he doesn't use the phrase, the idea of the supremacy of the judges just making up rules and not even using the laws that were on the books.

I think those things are legitimate concerns. In fact, we need to keep in mind that even

Cotton Mather's own son after his father dies writes an apology for both his father and grandfather's desire to build a hierarchy of churches, much like they had fled from the

Catholic church in England and the Anglican church. They didn't like that government and said, look, this was not the – but that was not the true spirit of increase in Cotton Mather.

That was not what their passion was about. But I think those things are identified. I might say that there was some positive notion and I divide the book into four sections, by the way, chapters one through three, which lay the

Pilgrim and Puritan Foundation, then chapters four to 17, the actual witch trials, which he kind of lays at the feet of both increase in Cotton Mather completely, which

I think is not accurate. But then chapters 18 to 26, he deals with the seeds of constitutional freedom in our country.

And I think he gets a couple of things right here too, because there's no question that a Ben Franklin and even individuals like Patrick Henry and others did not want to repeat the tyrannical church control over society, knowing that people were going to get injured and they wanted to have a freedom.

And I think that that is accurate. There are a lot of things I wish were included in the book that I think would balance it out.

And then, of course, his conclusion, the final chapter is 27 to 32, which I knew from the beginning of the book, having not read the end of the book.

I knew that he was setting the stage for the witch hunts that he often put on his radio and television program, which are accurate because today there are people who are guilty till proven innocent.

You don't get a fair trial when some of the things that you do wrong do not go along with the popular culture and the popular idea here.

But now to look at some of the, you were saying, Krista, now highlight some of the things that I think were imbalanced, that were not included.

First of all, the pilgrims and Puritans came with the common law. The common law, of course, it starts in Scripture.

The law of the land that God has built and the law of the sea and the law of creation is embedded in everything

God has created. And therefore, common law has its roots right in the Scripture. And then we know that St.

Patrick had the Liberex Legae Moisi, that book of the Ten Commandments and the law of God, which he scattered all throughout

Ireland and Scotland. And we know that King Alfred put them into what is called his dome book.

And we know that became the root of the common law of England, meant common to the leader and the people.

This was built on biblical law. And this was, and surely they didn't get everything correct.

They didn't parse it. It's going to take years to fine -tune how you apply biblical law to civil law and which one just as the

Westminster Confession articulates to know which ones were only for Israel, which ones are for modern society.

But the basic idea of the due process, that everyone who serves as a civil magistrate does so at the behest of God.

They are to be ministers of God's justice. Secondarily, the common law always deals with freedom of conscience.

That if you are, you recognize that, that if you do not wish to participate, you have the freedom not to under God.

And also the idea that you're going to be in a society where if you're commanded to do something against God, then you have to say no.

And listen, for Rebecca Nurse, this older 73 -year -old woman who gets hung for witchcraft and is the lead intercessor, who is not only a

Christian, probably one of the most saintly, godly individuals in Salem at the time.

She refused to do what they were asking her to do, to admit she was a witch so she could get off.

She would not do that. She followed her conscience. She paid a price for it, but it's a lesson to be learned in the future.

So those things are not brought out in the book at all. The fact that it is given the impression that the

Puritans and the pilgrims simply did religious law, take what they do in church and force that on a community.

And nothing could be further from the truth. There's a lot of factual errors in the book too. As a pilgrim historian, I mean, it's not

Captain Jones that decided to anchor the Mayflower in Plymouth. That was the congregation that decided to do that.

Plymouth Rock, the idea of the stone that has absolutely no evidence whatsoever. That's not true.

There are eyewitnesses that grew up with that, though there wasn't anything written at the time, that somehow the whole colony was governed by religious law.

That's not correct. What is it about the rock that was incorrect?

Plymouth Rock, he just simply mentions that Plymouth Rock, which is the rock the pilgrims stepped on when they first came to Plymouth, is a total myth.

Now a lot of people believe that, but that rock was identified by someone who knew William Bradford, though the pilgrims didn't write about it.

They are eyewitnesses of individuals who did know those people and knew them directly.

So you could deal with a secondary source. So there is some evidence to exactly what that was.

These are brushstrokes in the book, which builds an attitude against all the pilgrims and Puritans as if they were individuals who were

Bible thumpers who forced other people to do it. And to say that William Bradford never worked but simply sat at home reading his

Bible, it's a mockery of his faith, those things, and that moral punishments of civil law was an invention of the

Puritans. That's not true. I mean obviously that was embedded in common law long before the pilgrims.

And I think the most dangerous part about this with the book is that it implies this premise that you could see the book building toward this, that individuals and Christianity in particular is one of the main sources of tyranny throughout history.

And therefore if we could separate Christianity from civil law, Christianity from the civil government, we would have liberty for all people.

This is where the assumption is that Ben Franklin did that and Patrick Henry did that, and of course that's really not true.

And not only not true, it's clear that it's the clergy in the colonies and their preaching that actually inspired the

Declaration of Independence. In fact, this is an interesting little thought here that of course is not brought on in the book, but directly related to Cotton Mather, one of Cotton Mather's own contemporaries,

John Wise, who was pastor of the Ipswich Church here, who disagreed with Cotton Mather, not on theology, not on the

Westminster Confession, not on those areas. He disagreed with Cotton Mather's desire to build a hierarchy over the churches.

And because of that, though the motive was to keep out sin, John Wise wisely did this.

And when John Wise wrote a rebuke of Cotton Mather's design of the church hierarchy, it was

Cotton Mather's son who wrote an apology and actually agreed with Wise. And you know that Wise's books in 1710 and 1717 that he wrote as a rebuttal were reprinted by Samuel Adams in 1772 and were the inspiration for the

Declaration of Independence. We can trace all the five major points of John Wise to exactly what

Thomas Jefferson put in there. Jefferson was asked, where'd you come up with these ideas in the Declaration? He said, it's part of the

American mind. It's simply what we all learned in church, listening to the preachers. You see, we have to recognize that this cause and effect is one of the biggest things that are not in the book, but that we do not get.

And the idea of that increase in Cotton Mather were all for taking in spectral evidence is not true.

In fact, they wrote against that. In fact, I find it ironic that in a sense, the authors of this book here would want

Cotton Mather to act as tyrants. And many people say they should have to shut down the trials.

And yet they were the ones that were trying to respect the jurisdictional separation of church and state and probably let those trials go on too long.

But they did get pastors to write about them and whatnot to deal with that. So I think they're inaccurate in the way they portray

Cotton Mather and Increase Mather. Even the Witch Museum in Salem today, if you go on their website, you will see that they say it's wrong to blame the trials on Increase and Cotton Mather.

They were not the ones that involved. So this is not something that you have to go very far in research to find out.

And also, of course, I think what's left out of the book, although it's mentioned that the legislature did set a day of fasting and repentance in 1697, and that Ann Putnam, the 12 -year -old, did own up to it, it's left out that this whole idea of repenting for sin is the real solution.

I find it very concerning that the book offers really no solution, even to the author's things today.

For instance, let me read you from the book here in his culminating.

He said, okay, today there is a new kind of witch hunt. Accusations, mead, and guilt. This is

O 'Reilly now in the book. The press drives that every day. No one is executed, but lives are ruined in terrible ways.

True. And there is no forgiveness for actual transgressions. The cancel culture makes sure of that.

Demonization has cast a terrible fear across the land. Due process is often ignored in the court of public opinion, and denials never deter destroyers.

Now, he's accurate in this. This does describe our view today. Now, here's the way I would characterize it.

In every society, there are two or three things, which we call hysterias, that people can be accused of, and you'll never get a fair trial.

It'll be a miracle to get one. And there's always two or three things that are, and back in this day, it was witchcraft.

It was gossiping about someone that you're looking at the dark arts and all those kinds of things, and then you became guilty until proven innocent.

But what's the real root of this whole thing? He says the following in his book as well. Fear has returned.

It is a mirror of Salem. Many good people turn away from the cancel culture corruption rather than criticizing it.

There is an act of evil in our country. It is present for all to witness. There are now thousands of cases of shattered lives with more emerging every day.

Something is generating all this, something. Now, I applaud the book for demonstrating the fact that there is a parallel between the

Salem witch trials of making someone guilty till proven innocent, of taking in evidence that should never be allowed in court, like spectral evidence, attitudes, and things like that, and then dealing with that.

That's good. There's a good parallel for that horror in Salem and the horror of today. The problem is the true root of Salem's horror.

What produces a culture that will throw away the actual due process that comes from the

Bible? No culture in society automatically comes up on their own with innocent till proven guilty.

They need revelation for that. That won't just come by natural law. You're going to need revealed law for that to be able to be seen.

Therefore, there's an aspect of this. What's the true way we get back now?

See, no solution is given because sin is the root problem. Sin, the idea of being a rebel against God, not wanting

God, is clear. I want to read something else, if I may. If you need to go a break, just stop me, and I can do it after the break.

You can read, but I just want to make one insertion here. Sure, go ahead.

Basically, what you are saying, unlike Bill O 'Reilly's faulty assumptions and presumptions, the failure in Salem that made it a horror was not because Puritans acted like Puritans were supposed to act.

They were defying the way Puritans were supposed to act. They were ignoring, they were abandoning

Puritan belief and worldview, and that's what brought about the calamity.

That's correct. And in the same way today, when Bill O 'Reilly is drawing the parallel to our modern day of witch hunting, you need to borrow from a

Christian worldview in order to bring that to an end. That's right. Because in a

Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest, we just do whatever we can to survive and be on top, no matter what happens to our fellow man.

And to think otherwise, you have to incorporate into your worldview Christian ideology, or at least

Judeo -Christian ideology. That's correct. And I would add that one of the key truths in history is that God holds

Christians to a higher standard. Yes. And you can take every period in American history, you can take it, and when the church abandons its own revelation, the scripture, when it abandons the source of truth that we have, society suffers.

As one person would say it this way, when the church coughs, a culture gets a cold.

In other words, we have to recognize that it was not the Puritans in the sense of what

I would say in the book. The book kind of gives a veiled charge against Christianity. And that's what

I'll read. And after your break, I can read from a secular author who observes this in our misinterpretation of history.

Because you see, the real problem was for nine months, I write in my book review here, for nine months, a form of judicial supremacy reigned in Salem, where people were guilty until proven innocent.

Spectral evidence was taken as legitimate in a court of law. This was not the norm for Puritan practice.

It was the exception. The repentance for the travesty, the reparations made to victims were all just.

The liberty declared in our declaration, protected in our constitution, was the result of what was preached in the pulpits of colonial

America 150 years prior to the ratification of these documents. In other words, the key is as you were stating, when

Christians misapplied, people died. And this is huge for Christians today.

And we're never going to be perfect. This is not an issue of perfection. I don't agree with everything the

Puritans did and applied, but I have the advantage of 300 years of looking back. And we don't have that advantage of who's going to come 300 years after us to do that.

We need to be careful that Christians actually apply their faith, live out their

Christian faith with character, so that even a non -Christian will tell the difference.

And give you a thankful. I tell churches, if the non -Christian community begins to compliment you by the way you treat them, and the way you treat people in spite of what people do, you know that, okay, then you're truly being salt in life.

And you're not going to get everybody to applaud you. But the idea is character does begin to make an impact.

God will bring us, and we will be able to sit at a table with our enemies, as Psalm 23 says.

We'll be able to do that because of how we live. This is the huge lesson of Salem.

It's not the lesson that if Christians ever got in office, and I'll, after your break, I'll tell you what

I, what I wrote in 16, I mean, 1992, when I first read, put my research together.

It's not the matter that Christianity is the enemy. And then we need to remove Christianity.

Because if we could just remove Christianity, then we'd have all rights being there.

We'd have true equality. We would have Liberty and all those things. No, that's a misnomer.

Because when you remove Christianity, you wouldn't have anything. Right. And evil would be so much further down the road than it is even today.

People would be shocked. And in fact, O 'Reilly, from what I have heard from his interviews, even promoting this book,

O 'Reilly is just as vehemently opposed to LGBT, LGBTQ tyranny.

He's not necessarily opposed to the activity, but he's opposed to the tyranny of this group and the transgender insanity and the, the elevate, the elevation of pedophilia to being something as, as tame as minor attracted persons.

He's, he's against that, but he has no basis to oppose it. If he's not using a biblical worldview.

Right. You have to go back to the root cause. Right. Why would anything be considered wrong? Right. What basis do we say that it's wrong?

If it's a basis just because we don't like it. Yes. People are injured. Yeah. Well, people are injured in all kinds of things.

And what makes it right? This is why we see it on the college campuses today. What, you know, that's why people will, will demonstrate for Hamas.

Because they don't realize that there is a justice that is beyond what is taking place and that you have to go back to the cause and be able to articulate that.

So I think you're coming up to a break, aren't you? Yes. And maybe, okay, why don't you go ahead with that break?

And then I'm going to summarize where we can go from here. Maybe, but because we do have about four minutes before the break, if you could, if you could respond to Ted in Moundville, Alabama, who wanted you to be more specific and detailed in regard to the manifestations of these, these girls that led to the

Salem witch trials, what was actually happening that you said were beyond any kind of parlor tricks and charlatanry.

Sure. Okay. And that's a very good question. And just so you all know, these were the, what the accusers in Salem, Abigail Williams, 11 years old,

Betty Paris, nine years old. That was the, she was the daughter of the pastor of the church.

And then Susanna, 18, Elizabeth, 18, Mary 17, Elizabeth Hubbard, 17,

Mary Warren, 20, Sarah 20, and then Mercy Lewis. And so, and Ann Putnam at 12.

So all these girls are in their teens, in their homes. And the, the kinds of manifestations that would take place is their arms and their legs would be twisted in such a way that no one would be able to physically put their arms and feet in those positions.

It was almost impossible to untangle them until they were either knocked out.

I mean, in other words, not knocked out by somebody else, but they went in just, they just went sub unconscious or something so far.

So it was part of their manifestations physically. They also were turning around, looking at things in the room, could see things flying around, would recognize when something was about to happen in, in ways.

And this mesmerized people in the, I think about the whole church is filled with this trial going on.

And these individuals would point things out that, and then they would, they would happen.

And another key manifestation was certain things on their arms and legs, like a, a witch's foot, an occult symbol would appear on the skin.

Right in front of the judges, you would have, they do that. And this is witnesses. Now you have two or three witnesses writing this in court.

And then it would, it would come on and they would say, oh my gosh, this is there. It appeared right in front of them.

We're not talking about going home and getting sick and then coming back three days later. And then, oh, someone put an iron on, you know what

I mean? And, and just great. This is done right in the courtroom. And some of these things, and I've seen people fly right across rooms and I've, I've seen this kind of thing happen.

And this is the kinds of things that were taking place, physical manifestations that when

I read them and they're being described in some cases, people try to draw pictures of what happens.

I, I can tell you that this is real. This is one of the key things that we have to recognize because one of the ways in which this, and the book deals with this, it's almost as if all the occult is just a bunch of charlatans and there are charlatans, no question about it.

And all the occult and stuff is just a bunch of people making it up. There really is no devil.

There really are no demons and there really is no danger of the occult. And that's what kind of gets brushstroke, which

I think is another travesty in the book. In Bill O 'Reilly's book. Okay. And we are going to our final break.

And once again, if you have a question, send it immediately to Chris Arnson at gmail .com. And we may be able to read your questions.

I don't know if we'll have time, but we'll give it a shot. Don't go away. We'll be right back. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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Going back to 2005. One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is

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Welcome back, folks. I just want to remind you, you've been hearing ads every day for years for the Historical Bible Society on this show.

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and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line. We're now back with Dr. David, I'm sorry,

Dr. Paul Jaley. And before you go on to complete what you were saying, we have a listener named

David. That's why I made that mistake. David in Ada, Ohio, who says, was there a house servant that taught the girls how to read an egg yolk?

And how did that open the door into the occult? Harris, who had a titiba, which was a house servant that had come into their home and, and taught them dark arts.

She was from another country. And of course she came in with that. And they were doing it in the basement.

And here's the idea. And they taught him about the yolk. And she taught him about the occult symbols and what could happen.

And these girls began to get enamored with it and pass it on to other girls. And so this is how the occult began to spread.

But remember that the problem with all of this is that whoever you have in your home as parents, as a father and mother, you need to know what your children are doing and what you're allowing today.

It's on the internet today. It's on iPhones today. And I'm amazed as a pastor and a

Christian educator, how many parents have no idea what their children are doing right under their noses in their room.

And so therefore a lesson comes out, but that is accurate. That's how the children got introduced to the occult directly.

Okay, great. Now pick up where you want it to leave. Well, I think the critical thing in 1992, when

I first wrote about the trials, I said there were three presuppositions that were normally how people were dealing with the trials.

The first one was that it was a remembrance of the intolerance of Puritans who did not, who would persecute anyone who disagreed with them.

The other presupposition that was very common at the time is that this commemorates the fact that there was our past as Americans is a hysterical past of superstition, where in the past people actually believed there was a devil and that there was an occult and witches that were actually real.

And a third presupposition was the fact that this is what I saw in 1992, that the witch trials were a chance to show what it would be like if Christians or the religious right ever got power in the

United States. And if they were ever had power, they would act just like this and be hanging and killing everybody that they disagree with or that isn't living according to their standard.

And I think that the critical thing is I see some of these presuppositions in the book we're talking about.

And that concerns me because it's a rehashing of these things. And yet, as you have said,

Chris, O 'Reilly understands much of what the problem is in America.

And I have no axe to grind against him. I have a situation where I think it just seems to be clear.

And I want to give a little bit of a quote here. This is from Eric Nelson.

He's an author of the book, The Hebrew Republic, a very interesting book.

He's not a Christian to my knowledge, and he doesn't have any affinity toward religion in that sense.

But he was as an historian, he's become very alarmed by the way history is being interpreted.

And I think if people listen, this is the underlying issue of how we get events like the

Salem witch trials, I think, out of context. One of the key points in history is we have to interpret history in the context of the time in which it was given.

Same thing with new pastors. If I'm taking a new young person that I want to train to preach, I want them to interpret the

Bible in its original context of what it meant to the original hearers. And that is a standard proof.

And I want to just read excerpts of his introduction, and I think you'll follow me. He says the following, it has become commonplace to attribute the rise of modern political thought in the

West to a process of secularization. He goes on. He says the philosophies of the period no longer now today recognize religious claims as authoritative.

And given the horrors of the wars of religions, he's talking about the 17th century now, they came to regard them instead as inherently dangerous to civil peace.

So in other words, initially religion was considered to be the root of society.

And then it became that no, secularization is going to be the very good thing.

And he said the following, the result has been an upheaval called the great separation by which is meant the epoch making exclusion of religious arguments from the sphere of political discourse.

And he says this, he says that he goes on to say the following. I think this is well said.

It is this separation we are told that is responsible for producing distinctive features of modern

European political thought, including individual rights. It's a count of the state.

Embrace of religious toleration. These innovations could not appear on the scene. This is the secular version until religion has been officially sequestered from political science.

But then he says the following, but my book begins with the conviction that the traditional story

I've just sketched is exactly backwards. And he said this historically in the 17th century, in the full fervor of the reformation, the political theology reentered the mainstream of European political intellectual life.

In other words, what he says is it was the Jewish and Christian interpretation of the old

Testament law and Christianity that actually produced individual rights, true equality and toleration of other people.

Without that, you would have total evil and there would be no tolerance for anyone under any circumstances.

And this is what people need to realize today. What we see today and everything coming apart at the seams and globalism coming center stage and all the evils that we see tolerated in our society.

It's because we have thrown God out and Christians have thrown his law out.

And because of this, we have no rudder and no foundation from which to operate and apply our theology with true character to our neighbors, our neighborhoods, our cities would to God that we have a true reformation.

Once again, repent of our sins come to Jesus Christ and allow him to reform our lives in such a way that we live out

Christianity. And then we are going to see a true reformation. Amen. And let me remind you of the two websites for my guest, tntchurch .net,

tntchurch .net, and also plymrock .org,

p -l -y -m -rock .org. Thank you so much, Dr. J. Lee, for being such an exquisite guest.

I look forward to your return. 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.