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 on 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 Sharpens Iron 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 Jaley on the show, and thankfully, after I contacted Dr. Jaley, 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 Jaley 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 Jaley.

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 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.

The History and Mission of the New Testament Church of Cedarville

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 there.

The 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 was 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.

The Plymouth Rock Foundation and Preserving the Pilgrims’ Primary Sources

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, 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 most boring things. Like most people, they just were 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, 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'm 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 understand how to connect cause and effect. They don't understand that the liberty we have 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 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, we'll be repeating that later on in the program.

A Salvation Testimony Involving the Occult, Deliverance, and Conversion

Well, as I already mentioned, 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 our sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that led them to himself and saved 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 a 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 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 and find 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 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 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, just a few years before that, 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 until all of a sudden, one Sunday, he preached there's only one way, and that's Jesus Christ.

Did it produce, people were screaming, some people left the church, some people in 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 of 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, I became a disciple. My basketball coach discipled me in college.

And then a local Methodist pastor 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 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.

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'd 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, 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 you reveal the egregious errors in his book.

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. 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 Niza. She is a former occult practitioner and former 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 manifestations of trickery and charlatanism. He believes that many of the things he witnessed were actual demonic supernatural manifestations. So you can 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, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Lindbrook Baptist Church, a Christ-centered, gospel-driven church looking to spread the gospel in the southwest portion of Long Island, New York and play our role in fulfilling the Great Commission, supporting and sending for the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth.

We're delighted to be a part of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio advertising family. At Lindbrook Baptist Church, we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired Word of God, inherent in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak.

We believe in salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This salvation is based upon the sovereign grace of God, was purchased by Christ on the cross, and is received through faith alone, apart from any human merit, works, or ritual.

Salvation in Christ also results in righteous living, good works, and appropriate respect and concern for all who bear God's image. If you live near Lindbrook, Long Island, or if you're just passing through on the Lord's Day, we'd love to have you come and join us in worship.

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It is the gift of God, not a result of works,.

So that no one may boast of the Lord's blessing.

And the knowledge of himself.

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Salem, Puritan America, and the Roots of the Witch Trials

We are now back with Dr. Paul Jaly 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 ChrisArnsen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. As I said before, Dr. Jaly, 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, 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.

When I went, 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, they 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.

And 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.

And 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.

And 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.