June 22, 2015 ISI Radio Show with Pastor Jason Wallace on “Defending the Faith in Troubled Times”

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Pastor Jason Wallace of Christ OPC Salt Lake City on “Defending the Faith in Troubled Times”!!

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown
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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,
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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
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Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon,
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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity on the planet earth. This is
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Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 22nd day of June 2015.
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I had to get my calendar out to remember what date it was. For those of you who tuned in expecting to hear
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Kareem Shamsi Basha, a former Muslim who converted to Christianity by the grace and mercy of God, we had to reschedule
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Kareem because of a photography shoot that he had to do today. He is a professional photographer and we had to reschedule due to that, so we were very happy to get a last -minute confirmation from Jason Wallace that he agreed to be on our program today.
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Jason Wallace, who is the pastor of Christ Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, Utah, and it's our great honor and privilege to have you as a guest for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor Wallace.
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Are you there, Pastor Wallace? Yes, for some reason we're having troubles with Pastor Wallace.
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I'm not sure why. Hold on. In fact, we're going to go to a station break and try to figure this out, so don't go away.
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We'll be right back after these messages. I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries.
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It's about God and His glory and the gospel is about... I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries.
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NASB is widely embraced and trusted as a literal and readable Bible translation. The NASB offers clarity and readability while maintaining high accuracy to the original languages which the
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That's nasbible .com. Tired of box store Christianity?
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Of doing church in a warehouse with all the trappings of a rock concert? Do you long for a more traditional and reverent style of worship?
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And how about the preaching? Perhaps you've begun to think that in -depth biblical exposition has vanished from Long Island.
06:44
Well, there's good news. Wedding River Baptist Church exists to provide believers with a meaningful and reverent worship experience featuring the systematic exposition of God's Word.
06:54
And this loving congregation looks forward to meeting you. Call them at 631 -929 -3512 for service times.
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631 -929 -3512. Or check out their website at wrbc .us.
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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.
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I think we may have figured out the problem. Pastor Waller, are you there? Yes, can you hear me? Yes. In fact,
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I just have to turn up your volume a bit. And if you could give our listeners your greetings again.
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Well, it's good to be with you. Yes. I apologize for this mishap, but I'm a one -man host slash engineer.
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And for some reason, we had problems today that we have not had before. As I was saying, you are a pastor of the
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Christ Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, Utah. And you are having an upcoming
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Bible conference or an apologetics conference, which is absolutely free of charge from July 1st to the 5th, featuring our mutual friend,
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Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. And if you could let our listeners know first something about Christ Presbyterian Church and the denomination that you're in, and then follow up with a description of the upcoming free apologetics conference with Dr.
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James R. White. Sure. Thank you, Chris. We're a congregation of the
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Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We're a Bible believing remnant of Presbyterianism.
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It's been around for nearly 80 years now. Can you hear me?
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Yes, I'm here, brother. That was just some technical stuff here going on, that's all.
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Okay, no problem. Just checking. But anyway, we are in our 18th year here.
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We started as a church plant back in 1998. And our 17th anniversary was back in May.
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And we have a sister church now in Ogden, Maria Presbyterian Church. And we're small, but we have been plugging away at trying to do debates.
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James has done numerous debates for us over the years. We've done hundreds of book tables. We've had the privilege of doing a television program here live
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Wednesday nights on a Christian UHF station for the last seven and a half years.
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Unfortunately, the station has been sold now, and so that's going away. But yeah,
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James has been actually coming to Salt Lake long before we were here. And we tried to help him, and he was very gracious to help us.
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And then back in February, I had critiqued an evangelical leader who was denying the
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Trinity and attacking the Bible and doing all kinds of other strange things. Oh yeah, I saw that, actually. The former
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Mormon, I believe he is? Yes. Yeah, and honestly, he was a big fish in a little pond here.
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I mean, Protestants in Salt Lake County, from the most liberal, you know, across the
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Protestant membership, is about four and a half percent in this county.
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You go down to the next county south, there's 550 ,000 people down there.
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The Protestant population is between one half and three quarters of one percent.
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So he was a big fish in a little pond, and he at first was just preaching a lot of cheap grace kind of stuff.
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But then he started just making war with institutional
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Christianity and kind of went from there and kind of went down the rabbit hole, attacking the
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Trinity. He became a full preterist. He said the Second Coming was 70 AD. So there was no physical reality to Christianity.
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And when I criticized that as Gnostic, he got very upset.
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And long story short, he had me on his show, and it was a circus, but I tried to speak truth.
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And James saw it and took pity on us, and he wrote me a very kind email and said, what's your congregation doing
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July 1st through 5th? And like myself, James has knowledge of southern culture.
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I said adding some water to the grits and showing you some southern hospitality if you're up to it. He knows we're a small, struggling congregation.
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And he wrote back and said he's preparing for some races.
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He said, how about I come out and I train during the day and I make some of my most popular presentations at night.
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He said, how does that sound to you? And I said in the words of Lawrence, well, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.
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So yeah, we're doing this conference starting July 1st and going through the 5th.
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Yes. And for details, you can go to gospelutah .org, correct?
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Correct. And is it the abbreviation of Utah or the whole word? Whole word. And if you go to resources, there's a drop -down menu that has
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Apologetics Conference. Great. GospelUtah, that's the entire word for Utah, gospelutah .org.
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And this is a free conference. If anybody listening can fly out to Utah, or if you already live in Utah, or if you have friends, family, and loved ones in Utah, as I do.
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In fact, I have a dear couple that I've known since childhood that now live in Salt Lake City that I've contacted about this.
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So I'm hoping that many of you attend, or at the very least, please pray for God's blessings upon this conference, and that many in the area who need to hear what
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Dr. White has to say the most, including Mormons, show up for this conference.
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Now, the theme of the conference, if you could give that again? Yeah, the title is
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Defending the Faith in Troubled Times. Yes, Defending the Faith in Troubled Times. I can't think of a more appropriate theme for a
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Bible conference or an Apologetics Conference in this day and age in which we live. Obviously, the two major themes that are thrust into our eyes and ears nearly every single day, in fact, not even nearly every day, every day, are the issues of Islam and the issue of homosexuality.
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What are some of the other pressing issues facing the church at large that need to be addressed apologetically, and where Christians, even the average
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Christian, needs to be better prepared to defend their faith, either in the public square near where they live, in the workplace where they're employed, and during those times of day when employees are able to interact without robbing their employee of time, and even around the dinner table with the holidays coming up, the
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Fourth of July barbecues and so on. What are the issues, other than the two that I just mentioned, that you believe are most pressing for the average
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Christian to know what they're saying and doing in defending the faith? Well, we have both of those touched on in this conference.
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We have a bit of a unique situation here. I mean, it's not totally unique, but the
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Bible is attacked from so many directions here. I mean, the Mormon church claims to believe the
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Bible insofar as it's been correctly translated, which means wherever it agrees with them. Anywhere it disagrees with them, they assume that it's been mistranslated.
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You have the mainline churches. I did a debate back in April with the pastor of the largest mainline
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Presbyterian church here, and they're very upfront. They just reject the authority of the
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Bible. We've got John McCraney now attacking the Bible. We've got everyone under the sun attacking the
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Bible. So the first night, we're dealing with the authority of the Bible.
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The New Testament text, are they reliable? Bart Ehrman is very popular in Utah.
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The next night, we're going to be dealing with the Trinity, which has been under assault for a lot of things. Hopefully, we're not able to cover everything, but it touches on something that I think is vital in our day, is that we've lost our reverence for God, our fear of God.
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Our religion has become, even within a lot of more conservative churches, it seems to have become a personal pietism rather than a confidence in a sovereign, holy
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God. I don't see many people trembling at God's word anymore.
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I mean, either they reject it outright, or they seem to have reduced
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God into a Mr. Rogers, who just wants to be our neighbor.
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The idea of a God who drowns the whole world, a God who sends people to hell, is becoming more and more foreign to the evangelicals with whom
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I speak. When we did our debate back in April, I reached out to 100 plus churches.
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I got one response. I reached out to the Christian campus ministries and either didn't get a response.
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The one response I did get, somewhat because I pestered them a little bit, one of the most historic conservative evangelical campus ministries, the director writes me back and says, we will not be promoting this to our students because we don't believe that it would be profitable for them to hear two
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Christians arguing over this question of whether homosexuality is consistent with Christianity.
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Wow. In fact, I'm going to repeat our email address if any of you listening have a question regarding defending the faith in troubled times.
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My email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N. We are not going to be taking any more station breaks since we basically played every commercial that we have in the beginning when we were running into technical issues.
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So there we have an open field for you to email us questions. That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
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In fact, since you are speaking on the Mormon, you did mention
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Mormonism, we have a listener in Copenhagen, Denmark.
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Armin, who asks, I would assume that there needs to be some groundwork done before proclaiming the gospel to Mormons since they have a different view of God, sin, hell, heaven, grace, etc.
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And that is more of a statement than a question, but I guess he wants your confirmation on that and for you to expound upon that.
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I've heard it said that the Mormons very often have the same vocabulary, but a different dictionary.
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So I think that that relates to what our listener in Copenhagen, Denmark has to say.
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If you could expand on that. Yeah, I could not agree more. It is frustrating that many times people try to treat the symptoms of error in Mormonism like it's works righteousness or things like this and never really deal with the fundamental issue.
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There is nothing Christian about Mormonism. The more deeply you press into it, the more radically different it becomes.
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Whatever cracks there are at the surface become chasms as you go deeper. The fundamental problem of Mormonism is their
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God is Thor. Their God is Superman. He is an exalted man.
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He is like the Canaanite fertility God Baal or Zeus.
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He is not the infinite eternal creator of all things. He is an exalted powerful man who may be mightier than a locomotive and faster than a speeding bullet, but he's not
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God. He's not holy. Sin is no big deal.
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Honestly, I mean, as far as the fall, the fall is a good thing in Mormon theology.
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Their whole idea of exaltation is not even distantly similar to reconciliation with the holy
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God. It is he has blazed a path before us. Here are the rules of the universe to which
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God is subject. If you do these things, then you will be exalted and become a
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God like him. Mormons have been inoculated against theology.
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They've been inoculated against a whole host of things. It's difficult. My recommendation is they're a story based culture.
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They're drenched in the stories of the Book of Mormon, pioneers, missionaries.
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They're very narrative oriented. When you try to deal with them rationally, it's very difficult.
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Give them the stories from the Bible. Tell them the story about a God for whom the fall is not one of the greatest blessings ever given to man, as Bruce McConkie described it, but it's a fall that leads to the flood where God drowns every man, woman, baby, kitty, cat, puppy, dog on the planet except for those on the ark.
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Tell them about the God who, when Nadab and Abihu offer worship that was not what he had prescribed, he doesn't say, well,
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I really appreciate your ingenuity and your creativity. I really would prefer the way
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I said, no, part of the work goes out and consumes them. I'm from the
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South, so sometimes I'll put on my Southern accent a little thicker, which makes people think
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I'm more stupid than I am. Not that I'm all that smart to begin with, but Mormons claim to have the erotic priesthood, so I'll show them the story of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram who want to be erotic priests.
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They're Levites. They're of the right tribe, but they're not sons of Aaron. God has the earth open up and swallow them and their families.
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They're 250 followers. The fire of the Lord goes out and consumes them. Literally about that point,
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I've had numerous Mormons point at the Bible and say, that's not my God. I tell them that's the problem.
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Yours is a fiction. It is a total counterfeit.
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If you don't go back to the fundamental problem of idolatry, I think that you're never going to be building on solid ground in terms of helping them understand the real gospel.
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I'm going to repeat our email address again. It's ChrisOrenson at gmail .com.
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If you have any questions for our guest, Jason Wallace, who's the pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church, which is an
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Orthodox Presbyterian congregation in Salt Lake City, Utah. We are discussing the need to defend the faith in troubled times.
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This is in order to help promote a conference on apologetics from July 1st through the 5th at the
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Christ Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, which is being conducted by Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries.
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Even something that we've heard recently, like this horrific shooting in Charleston, North Carolina, where a number of worshipers were murdered by a madman, it seems.
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You also have this breathtaking public display of humility where forgiveness is being offered to this murder suspect.
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It's just mind -boggling when we see people who have been touched literally by such a tragedy respond in such a fashion.
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Even in the circumstances like that, we need to know how to defend the faith because obviously the issue of why this occurred why this individual committed these murders, how these people responded to it, these
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Christians in this church, how they responded to this tragedy, all of this involves apologetics in the long run because people are going to be, when we're sitting around the barbecue or the picnic table on 4th of July, people are going to be bringing up matters like this and we need to give a
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Christian response, don't we? Definitely. I was really, really pleased to see the response that I saw coming out of South Carolina.
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Honestly, you have two worldviews there and so many of the most local people are of the same essential worldview as the shooter.
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It's about power. It's about politics.
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They're functioning from a Darwinian worldview and in the midst of that you have a stark contrast in that here are these people who have seen these horrific things and they're not responding as the media expected them.
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They're confronting him with the seriousness of what he's done and yet they tell him to come to Christ.
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There's a wonderful flip side story from years ago. It's out on the internet.
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Francis Nigel Lee wrote an article many years ago about the,
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I think it's called, the sovereignty of God and the salvation of my father's killer.
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Dr. Lee, his father in South Africa, was murdered by a black man.
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You know some of the tensions there. I believe he was a white farmer and Dr. Lee went to him in prison and witnessed to him and long story short, he came to faith and he did not know what to do.
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Here's a man who's filled with hate. If I'm remembering the story correctly now maybe it's been...
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I'm at the age where details are getting a little fuzzy in my memory but I believe he was basically a communist sympathizer filled with rage and the son of the man he murders comes to him and deals with the seriousness of his crime and yet leaves with him to turn to Christ and ultimately he does.
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In the time where we're being bombarded with Bruce Jenner and his stuff and everything else to see this response, first time
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I've seen the news in the last couple months where it seemed like there was good news. Yeah it seems like a total 180 degree contrast from what had been happening in Baltimore, Maryland and Ferguson, Missouri and other inner cities where after the accidental death of some individuals by the police where there was zero tolerance or forgiveness or evangelism being done, nothing but hatred really being demonstrated and of course
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I don't mean the broad brush but that was what the media chose to highlight.
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This is quite a contrast isn't it? Almost definitely. I grew up about 100 miles from Charleston, South Carolina and it was a great blessing to see the response that they gave.
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Now was this in South Carolina or North Carolina? South Carolina. Oh okay for some reason I keep hearing
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North Carolina and I know that... The guy, the shooter was from North Carolina.
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Okay I see. But he drove south and went to Charleston. Okay and once again our email address here if you have a question is chrisarnson at gmail .com
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chrisarnson at gmail .com. I do have an anonymous listener with a question who wants to know can the church be too focused on doctrine and theological differences amongst professing believers and forget about the core elements that are supposed to reflect one's faith that being love, humility, kindness, compassion, benevolence.
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And if you could if you could follow up on that and obviously I believe that that can be the case but it seems to me that the church is in desperate need of both theological grounding and a love, compassion, and benevolence don't you think?
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Yeah I mean I understand the question. Part of me wants to say no you can't because if your theology is actually correct you're not going to be unbalanced.
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If your love is correct you're going to long to know more about God and you know
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I think that theology can become a hit game in the same way that you know emotionalism in the church can become a game where we hide from these things but if we love
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God we want to know him more. The more we know the more we want to express that love. I don't know the context of the person who's writing in but I mean as a pastor
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I have to deal with people who are very unbalanced. I saw a wonderful thing from my old pastor talking about Christian Mr.
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Potato Heads where everything's out of you know they take one thing and they make it out of proportion to everything else.
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You've got the little arms the little legs and you got a giant head and you know for some people it's election, for some people it's adoption, for some people it's you know they make one part of the gospel the whole thing.
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I've dealt with you know one lady that visits our church for quite a while. She writes me you know when
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I'm trying to get her to to come more regularly and talk about membership she writes me a letter and said she can never be a member of our church because we hold to the free home for the gospel which is just Arminianism repackaged and it's like can
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I you know it's like you're in error. Can we please speak about this?
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No. Well is the issue theology or is it the heart? I think it's I mean
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I'm not a judge of hearts but I've seen theology used as excuses way too many times.
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We had a fellow that he comes to reform convictions and like unfortunately so many other people he goes out on the internet to find out what else haven't they taught me.
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So they get into head coverings which I think is a Romans 14 kind of thing. I it's a
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Christian liberty thing. I'm not going to stop him but he can't be prescribing it for everybody. Then he becomes exclusive psalmody which
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I have some sympathies in that direction but I'm not convinced of it. We don't practice it.
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We sing a lot of psalms but then he becomes convinced that the only churches in the world with objective ecclesiastical authority are the 29 congregations in Scotland plus a few others and the 1 ,200 members of the
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Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Now is that theology?
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Is that a hard issue manifesting as theology? God knows. But I've warned him.
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This is ungodly to splinter the church over these things.
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You know conversely James White is a devout
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Baptist and I'm a devout former Baptist now paedo -baptist.
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I used to be credo -baptist. Before one of our debates we had a thunderstorm come up and there was a beautiful rainbow right up against the mountains up at the
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University of Utah. So I went inside, grabbed James and drank him out. I said dude check it out.
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He said yeah what about it? I said sign of the covenant. He said yeah. I said would you rather have been one of the ones sprinkled or one of the ones immersed?
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He rolled his eyes and went back inside. The reality is...
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I've never heard that one. That's pretty funny and I'm a reformed Baptist by the way. I understand. You found it a whole lot funnier than he did.
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Is there anybody listening who this is going over their head or passed them by? They don't understand it. He's referring to Noah's Ark and obviously during the global flood you would have much rather have been sprinkled than immersed.
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There's a whole biblical theological theme there that I won't run with, but long story short,
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I mean the fact that we define our differences, we define what we believe, yes we define some differences including baptism and church government, and a whole lot of reformed
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Baptists who kind of wish they could see Presbyterian government from experience.
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But long story short, even though we define our differences in terms of who is
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God, who is man, what is sin, who is Jesus Christ, what is salvation, what is the Christian life, because we define these things, yes we see where our differences are, but we have confidence in one another.
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And so James, I mean we've seen better days.
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We've had struggles periodically and we're in the midst of one right now. We're going to, by God's grace, persevere.
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But James isn't coming here to a Baptist church. He's coming free of charge.
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And I mean we would, I want to take him out to eat, but I mean we're stretched.
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But he's doing this gratis because he knows that we're trying to be faithful.
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We're trying to preach the Word. We're trying to preach the whole counsel of God.
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And that means that we're going to be teaching paedo -baptism in the context of everything else in Scripture.
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And so, I mean I'm sympathetic that I see people play games, but honestly
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I don't think you can really be orthodox without orthopraxy. And I don't think you can have orthopraxy without orthodoxy.
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If you could define that, I know that it just means orthodox means straight and so on, but a lot of people, whenever they hear that, they are in the realm of religion.
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They are immediately going to the Greek or Russian Orthodox or Ether Orthodox. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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I mean orthodoxy is just right belief, correct. It's a biblical truth.
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And orthopraxy is biblical right practice. And you can't have one without the other.
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My family has a lot of Pentecostal roots. My grandparents on my mother's side know
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Pentecostals. And love the
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Lord. But I've seen the devastation of not having a depth of knowledge.
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Conversely, I've seen people who were able to rattle off wonderful, wonderful expositions of the
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Bible who didn't live it at all. And time tells.
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I think we're all in the process of becoming more and more what we are. Those who love the Lord want to know
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Him more. Those who know Him want to follow Him. And the people who play emotional games or head games, they tend to fall away.
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And so obviously, a lot of this involves making mountains out of molehills or, as Jesus Christ was rebuking the
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Pharisees for, straining out gnats and swallowing camels. You have people who exalt things that are of comparative less importance.
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And I say comparative because practice and the ordinances and teaching and so on in the
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Church of the Living God is never a totally unimportant issue.
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But when you compare them with some other things in the realm of the faith, both how we operate inside the
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Church and outside the walls of the Church and what we proclaim to the world, there are differences.
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And of course, it is not always the easiest thing to determine what is more important, what is less vital.
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And some things are more obvious than others, but it isn't always an easy road, is it?
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No, no. And honestly, I think that when you give people time, it becomes more obvious whether they tremble at God's word or they don't.
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One of my best friends among pastors here is a freewill
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Baptist pastor that in love, I thought he was goofy on some things and he's told me the same thing.
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But we each have confidence that we're trembling at God's word and we're trying to be faithful to it.
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And the funny thing is that the differences, the deeper you go, become less. I'm closer to a lot of Baptists and Pentecostals than I am to a lot of self -professed
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Reformed people, because they tremble at God's word. And we may not understand it the same, we may not agree on everything, but the
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Holy Spirit is going to conform us more and more to the image of Christ. And so we're going to become more a child of God or more a child of hell as we go on.
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And so I think that I'm Reformed and so I see the fundamental issue in our day as the fundamental issue throughout history.
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It's idolatry. When you know who God is, everything else falls in place. Mormonism makes perfect sense if your
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God is an exalted man and one among a multitude of gods. Because God's not that holy, sin's not that bad, man's not that lost, and so grace makes no sense.
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But when you, word's righteousness makes perfect sense in that scenario. But when your God is the infinite eternal holy
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God, when Jesus is the one described in Isaiah 6 and then John 12, that the holy angels are covering their faces in his presence and crying, holy, holy, holy, the whole earth is filled with his glory, then sin is shown for what it is.
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When you see the cross, you can't trivialize sin. When you see that man is dead in his trespasses, you see that grace is the only hope we have.
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But it all goes back to who is God. And I've met a lot of Pentecostals that I would disagree on a number of things with, but they understood that.
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Whereas a lot of other people that can write off catechism answers from the
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Westminster Shorter Catechism don't seem to really in their heart understand who is God. And of course there is a time and a place where even if you love and respect your elders and the congregation of the church where you are a member, if you have convictions like overexclusive psalmody or strictly acapella singing and worship and things like that, if they become really a burden to your heart and you feel that you are violating your conscience by worshiping in a way that you believe is to be a strict biblical pattern, then there is nothing wrong with, as long as it is done in a correct, loving, and humble way, there is nothing wrong with departing that place with explanation and meeting with the elders and moving on to a different congregation that more clearly reflects what you believe.
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Isn't that the case? That that is not always a bad thing to do, to leave the congregation? I think that that's better than some of the options sometimes.
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I mean, my advice to people is recognize that we're a bunch of foolish, weak sinners and the devil often uses these things to splinter us.
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And the church is not new. You know, we've been at this for a long time and we need to, instead of trying to reinvent the church and create all these various hyphenated churches out there, we need to reform the churches that are there.
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You know, we came here because there was nothing remotely trying to do the things that we were trying to emphasize in terms of being a historic confessionally reformed church.
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There was a PCA church in the valley that was doing headbanging rock and roll video clips, interpretive dance.
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They called themselves the Flock that Rocks. The pastor and assistant pastors' faces were on the bodies of Beavis and Butthead on the church website.
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And that was as close as, you know, other than a few independent Baptists that had some Calvinistic leanings, that was as close as,
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I mean, there was... I won't go through it all, but basically we came here.
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We have Baptists who are members of our congregation and because they recognize they agree with us on most everything.
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And if a reformed Baptist church started in the area and they wanted to depart there, all we would ask of them is, let's sit down and be good
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Bereans. Let us bring you the Word of God, show you why we hold to what we hold to. But if you want to leave and go over there, we can part amicably, if you'll hear us out.
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But I have certain leanings, but I'm not going to pursue them in my lifetime because I think that the unity of the church has been so lost.
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Our ecclesiology, our doctrine of the church, has been lost in this consumerist mentality.
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I mean, there are some churches that quit preaching the Word and you need to leave them.
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You know, they've crossed the line. There are other churches that don't want to reform. You try to pursue reform within them.
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You know, there was a fellow who came from a local evangelical church and he was frustrated with unbiblical practices.
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I said, the first thing you need to do is go memorize Galatians 6 .1. And then you're a member there.
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You've taken vows there. It was a Baptist church where there were not a lot of avenues for reform.
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But in humility, you need to call them to be faithful to God's Word. If they won't be and you exhaust your avenues, then you have,
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I believe, an obligation to go seek a more faithful community. But I'm very hardcore.
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I can reach any amount of how nasty and narrow I am, according to some people. And yet at the same time, this is the church that God purchased with His own blood.
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And its splintered state should be a scandal to us. Every church out there that I find that has any sympathy towards what we're doing,
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I try to reach out to them. And I say, I want to be an encouragement to you.
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And yet at the same time, I hope I'm a little bit of a pain to you. Because we both tell the Mormons that the
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Bible is clear and sufficient, and we're splintered. And in a fallen world,
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I don't expect perfection, and I don't know that these breaches can be healed. But we need to try.
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We need to challenge one another, because we're not both right. There are things that have splintered in the church.
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And of course, your answer to that is not, knowing a bit about where you're coming from, theologically and in practice, your answer is not peace at any price, which is the answer that much of modern evangelicalism has.
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They not only want to unite with anybody that professes the name of Christ regarding of their theology within evangelicalism, but they want to embrace our friends who are
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Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. They want to embrace them as brothers in Christ.
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And because they see a greater army defending truth against the immorality and the liberalism and the leftism that is plaguing our society, they see that we would make more of an impact if all of us who are conservative, quote, quote, and who believe in the
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Judeo -Christian morals and ethics that are in the Old and New Testaments, if we all were to get together and really focus on those issues, that would be an improvement for the church and the world.
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But that is not really the answer, is it? No, no, not at all. And what I mean by this is,
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I mean, James is coming here. James is a Reformed Baptist. He's going to preach for us. There's no problem on that at all.
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He's not going to preach on baptism in the Presbyterian church. I'm not going to go and preach paedo -baptism in a
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Reformed Baptist church. We should seek what unity... I mean, we're going to have differences regardless, but we need to seek what unity we can have.
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But it has to be based on truth. Here in Utah, there is a very strong movement to promote evangelical unity, but it's a lowest common denominator kind of unity.
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And by the time they've gotten through ignoring all of the things that would divide them, they don't have much left to stand on.
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And we have to do both. The devil never fights on one front.
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He's just as happy with us being a Pharisee as a Sadducee. He's just as happy with us being a
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Mormon as a Jehovah's Witness, or a Roman Catholic, or a nominal
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Orthodox Presbyterian whose heart is unconverted. You know, unbelief comes in a whole host of different flavors.
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And the church, we're not allowed to deny doctrine and deny the truth and go out and just seek unity with unbelievers because they sound nice.
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Roman Catholicism will send you to hell. We have to take a firm stand on that, but we can't then go, you know, swing the pendulum to the opposite extreme and become a bunch of schismatic nuts that if you don't dot every
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I and cross every T in exactly the same way, then you're not really a Christian.
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There's a balance, and I think we have historic precedent that I rejoice in the unity that I have with a whole host of Reformed Baptists.
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At the same time, there's a Calvinistic Baptist in this state that I dare not step out in front of his car.
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Because I think he did the gas rather than the brakes. Because of your paedo -baptism, oh, he's, we had some people, we had some issues in the church, and without ever talking to me, he basically invites them over and describes us as calls of Judaizers.
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We're denying the gospel altogether. Wow. Well, I'm not sure how he fits into the realm of Calvinism then, but the issue that we face is, as I said, it's not easy because there is a fine line sometimes that we cross an error on one side or the other, but we are to be biblical ecumenists and to recognize that some differences do not affect the gospel, and we are to cooperate with such brethren when those denominational differences do not violate our consciences in regard to the gospel.
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But when something is clearly a denial of the gospel, of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, that's where we have to jam on the brakes, don't we?
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Because some of my listeners may be puzzled as to why you said Roman Catholicism teaches damning teachings.
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Now, obviously not all of them are. We share in common a view of the deity of Christ, the
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Trinity, the necessity of Christ, death on Calvary. But people forget, I remind my
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Catholic friends who get mad at me when I tell them I'm not an ecumenist in a modern sense, the
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Council of Trent, which is binding as dogma with Roman Catholic Church, they still have you and I, Pastor Jason, on the anathema list.
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Not by name, obviously, since it was declared as dogma 500 years ago or so, but those who believe the things that are peculiar to evangelical
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Christianity regarding salvation. You are accursed as a result of believing those, and that still stands no matter how liberal a face the
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Catholic Church gives today. Is that not true? Definitely. I mean, here in Utah, we see the exact same thing where the public relations department of the
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LDS Church has basically convinced Mormons to say, we never speak against other churches, and yet their missionaries are going out all over the world telling people the first vision that Joseph Smith was told by God not to join any of the churches because they were all wrong.
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All their professors were corrupt. All their creeds were an abomination. Presbyterians are actually singled out.
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He tells his mother, I've learned from myself that Presbyterianism is not true, and when we say, well, we hold to the exact same creed
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Presbyterians did in 1823 when this supposedly took place, could you please show us where that's an abomination?
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All of a sudden, they don't want to talk anymore because they can't deny their history without denying any claim of truth.
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And yet, they want to play like they're just being nice. It's like, is this true or not?
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Is there truth in the world? We live in this age where everybody wants to hymnal about anything being objectively true.
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We have an anonymous listener that wants to know your opinion on churches that are forming and which already exist predominantly when there is a uniting of Reformed Baptist and Presbyterian believers who form local congregations, independent, autonomous congregations that allow individuals to have their babies sprinkled in a baptismal ceremony, and also if those who believe in strict credo
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Baptist positions, such as the Baptist, they can refuse baptism to their children and be immersed or wait for their children to be immersed when they can make professions of faith and repentance.
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Do you agree with this model is the question? Not as I've seen it practiced in a lot of places.
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I mean, we have Baptists who have joined our congregation. They're under no obligation to baptize their children, but this smorgasbord,
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I don't think it's fair to anybody. Most importantly, it's not trembling at God's Word, because I can deal a whole lot easier with a
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Reformed Baptist who says, no, this is what I believe the Bible clearly teaches. And we can sit down, we can talk about it, and we may end up still disagreeing, but there's this kind of squishy
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Presbyterianism that, hey, you want to come here and get your baby baptized or dedicated or whatever you want, we'll do it for you.
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You're speaking of people from the community who might not even profess faith or not even reflect genuine faith, but they want to have the ceremony for the baby.
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Yeah, I mean, in some PCA churches, they do baby dedication because they're trying to offer what people want, and I don't think that's wise.
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I'm happy to hear there's some Baptist churches that are not requiring
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Presbyterians who are looking for the most faithful church in the area to make a new profession of faith and be rebaptized if they've already been baptized and made a public profession of faith.
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I think that's a good thing, but it's like, let's keep talking. Well, Pastor Jason, we've run out of time, and I know that your website is gospelutah .org,