October 9, 2018 Show with Phil Johnson on “The Charge to Shepherds to Guard the Flock” PLUS Michael A. Gaydosh on “The Fear of the Unknown: Michael A. Gaydosh’s Recent Health Trials & an Update on His Recovery”

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

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, 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.

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.

Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth.

We're 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 ninth day of October 2018.

I had such a blessed time at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on Sunday night.

I was only able to attend the final session of their conference, the

Reformation Conference, with Mike Abendroth on the theme, Why the Reformation Still Matters, and providentially when

I just picked a pew at random to sit in and began speaking to my friend

Joe Ignacio, who happens to be one of the sons of the woman who led me to Christ. And by the way, pray for Joe, he is not yet a born -again believer, so he has been attending church with me every

Sunday with his own children and has been showing signs of being drawn. But Joe and I sat next to each other in the pew and we began speaking to each other before the service and a man turns around and told me he recognized my voice, said,

I love your show, Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and it is because of your interview with Phil Johnson a year ago that I discovered this church and joined it.

And I am so delighted to hear things like that from time to time.

I happen to hear about it by God's grace fairly often and was just glad to be providentially sitting behind this brother and his wife and new baby to hear that wonderful report.

But today we happen to have the aforementioned Phil Johnson back on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

He's on for the first hour. Phil Johnson is the Executive Director of John MacArthur's Media Ministry.

Grace to you. And during the first hour we will discuss the charge to shepherds to guard the flock.

And the second hour we are going to be joined by Mike Gaydosh, the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books.

We're going to be discussing the fear of the unknown, Michael A. Gaydosh's recent health trials and an update on his recovery.

We're going to be talking about his trial facing very serious life -threatening and very delicate and complicated heart surgery that he successfully underwent and is now recovering.

And we're going to get an update on his recovery and what lessons God has taught him throughout this trial and continues to teach him.

So that will be, I'm sure, a very valuable portion of today's show during the second hour.

But it is my honor and privilege to welcome you back for the first hour, Phil Johnson. Good to be back.

Thanks for having me. And just briefly for those of our listeners who may be unfamiliar with Grace to You, because we do have those who are new

Christians, those who are outside of the Christian faith, we have even folks who are Muslim and atheists and agnostics, and we have

Roman Catholics and others listening to this program. So why don't you tell our listeners about Grace to You. Grace to You is the media ministry of John MacArthur.

He is a pastor who has pastored the same church in Southern California for 50 years now.

Actually, his 50th anniversary is coming up in February. And he has taught systematically, verse by verse, through the entire

New Testament over the 50 -year span. He's not one of these pastors who constantly re -preaches old sermons, but he has worked his way systematically and meticulously through the entire

New Testament and written a whole series of commentaries on it and all that. And the

Lord has greatly used him worldwide, and what we do at Grace to You is take recordings of his sermons, and that's the basis for everything we do.

Started out as a cassette tape ministry, and we don't even produce many cassette tapes anymore.

I don't know if we do any, actually. But of course, we distribute mp3 files. All of John's more than 3 ,000 sermons are available on the internet at gty .org

for free. You can download as many sermons as you want and listen to them, and there's all kinds of other resources there,

Bible questions and answers and whatnot. And so we're on the radio and various internet outlets worldwide.

There's never a moment at any time, day or night, when someone somewhere is not listening to John MacArthur teach.

Praise God. And by the way, I know somebody who still listens to John MacArthur's cassette tapes.

My friend Reverend Buzz Taylor, who has been in the past a frequent co -host with me.

He has been on hiatus from co -hosting. He's working on a book on eschatology and hopes to rejoin me more frequently in the future.

But Buzz worked for a radio station, and he got to keep whatever cassettes they played years ago of John MacArthur, and he's got a whole archived library of cassettes of John MacArthur.

Yes, there are still a few people who do that. I kept a lot of cassette tapes when it sort of went out of style until I realized, you know,

I can easily download any sermon onto my iPhone and listen to it anytime

I want. And so I got rid of all the cassettes, and now I listen to, it's actually a better sort of digital sound now.

You might find this humorous, I don't know what station this was that Buzz got some of these cassettes from, but some of them were handwritten with a label,

Do Not Air, and they had to do with John's more overtly Calvinist messages.

Yeah, well we get some of that sometimes. You know, and it's funny, talking about the demise of cassette tapes,

I have this vivid recollection of a management retreat that we had in 1995.

The management team at Grace TU spent a weekend away from here where we were planning and talking about the future.

In 1995, I had just gotten on the internet and started my webpage, which became the

Spurgeon Archive. And so that was brand new at the time, but I was noticing the internet and how quickly it was going to be taking over.

I could just foresee what was going to happen. And John was at this management retreat, and I made the comment sort of offhandedly, it's very possible that within 20 years we won't even be producing cassette tapes anymore.

Not realizing then, you know, how prescient that was. But John stopped the meeting at that point, and he said, don't say that.

That's the backbone of our whole ministry. So, but now even if he listens on his cell phone, he can review the broadcast or see what's on today or, you know, listen to other preachers preach or whatever he wants to do on his iPhone as he's, you know, sort of driving around.

You know, it's frightening when I first started in the Christian radio industry when

I was working for a Salem affiliate, WMCA 570

AM and also WWDJ in New Jersey that was purchased by Salem.

When I first started with Salem in 1991, when

I was editing ads or actually more importantly, when I had a client that purchased a full -length program, whether it be a half hour, an hour, or longer, and I had to do editing on it,

I was actually using reel -to -reel and a razor blade and tape. Yeah, we did that. We did that for years, too.

I, you know, you have those little things that you put the tape in and make a diagonal cut and piece it together, and we did that for years.

Well, you wanted to discuss, oh by the way, let me quick remind my new friend that I met at Grace Bible Fellowship Church.

His name is Josh Tyson. Josh Tyson, if you're listening,

Josh, please send me your email address so I can send you a recording of today's show afterwards so you'll be able to hear me recount the providential meeting that we had at Grace Bible Fellowship Church.

And I also want to thank the pastor there, Josh Miller, Grace Bible Fellowship Church, for orchestrating that event with Mike Abendroth, and also the event a year ago with all of the pastors from the

Bible Fellowship Church denomination that featured Phil Johnson. That was a great time.

Phil, you did a masterful job as always, and it was a great time fellowshipping with you as well.

Yeah, it was. Josh Miller is a great guy and a good pastor, and I've known him since he was a seminary student.

In fact, he married my secretary. Oh wow, I did not know that. Yeah, his wife used to be my secretary.

Wow, there's my Johnny Carson imitation. I did not know that. But we are talking about the charge to shepherds to guard the flock.

You just recently, or perhaps you're still in the process of preaching through a series on that subject.

What led you specifically to that subject? Wow, you know,

I don't remember what actually triggered the thought in my mind, but I thought, you know, it'd be good. I pastor a group of 400 or so people.

It's actually an adult Sunday school class. It's not a standalone church, but a subset of people at Grace Church.

And on a typical Sunday, we have four or five hundred people there. And it's a subject that just concerns me as I read what's going on in the evangelical world and see what's on the

Internet. I'm very troubled about the state of discernment among evangelical

Christians today. And on two fronts, really. There are those who hate the very idea of discernment, who think there's something unspiritual or uncharitable or unkind about any kind of polemical critique of someone else's teaching or doctrine or whatever.

And that, I think, is the predominant feeling. That we just shouldn't do that. We shouldn't criticize other

Christians and what they teach. And as a result, nowadays, anybody can teach anything.

They can make any claim they want, and it's supposed to be hands -off for any kind of criticism.

On the other front, though, there's a small group of people, a much smaller group of people, but they're noisy, who seem to think that the only thing they should ever do is criticize.

And they just look for little things to criticize about and try to write people off.

And that says undiscerning as refusing to be discerning at all. To blow every mistake into a, you know, a large -size heresy, so that anything they disagree with you on is sufficient grounds to write them off.

And usually, I find, people like that who are just addicted to criticism, typically they don't even belong to a church, because they can't find one perfect enough for them.

Yeah. So, dangers on both sides. People who are too enthralled with a bad idea of discernment, and other people who resist the idea of discernment altogether because they think there's something unkind and uncharitable.

They feed each other, too, by the way. The people who hate discernment always point to the hypercritical critics and say, see, that's what's wrong with discernment.

That's why I don't like the idea of it. Yeah, and those that are opposed to any kind of discernment are obviously being inconsistent and illogical and hypocritical, because they are criticizing those that they feel are excessive in their criticism.

That's right. That's right, I have a collection of tweets from people who rebuke me, saying you should never publicly rebuke another

Christian leader. And they publicly rebuke me. But what concerns me is that this is not a small issue in the

New Testament. I think there may be only one of the New Testament epistles that doesn't, at one point or another, confront some false doctrine, criticize some false teacher, or otherwise urge us to be discerning and careful.

The only one that doesn't mention that, I think, is Philemon and all the other epistles, and of course the book of Revelation, and Christ's letters to the churches in Revelation, and Christ's words to his own disciples in the

Gospels themselves. And the book of Acts models it as well. So every book in the New Testament, really, every substantial book in the

New Testament is either written to urge people to discern or to expose some fault that needed to be exposed in the early church.

And it's interesting, too, isn't it, that in the early church, in the apostolic church, before the New Testament canon was even complete, every church we have a record of had some battle with false teachers, false doctrine, things that needed to be critiqued and expelled from the church.

So if they had that big of a problem with it in the embryonic days of the church, then certainly in our day, when so many conflicting ideas and unbiblical notions are being peddled from the pulpits of evangelical churches, certainly there's a need today for discerning voices who will stand up and point out why that's wrong, why it's unbiblical, and deal with the error.

But that's really not tolerated in many congregations today. In fact, out of a fear of this,

I think a lot of pastors, and especially preachers who are concerned more with attendance figures than they are with what they're preaching, you'll never hear any doctrine at all out of them, because they realize that just to teach biblical doctrine in and of itself is going to divide people in the congregation based on, you know, where their prejudices are, what they tend to believe, false ideas that they've imbibed.

So people think doctrine is inherently divisive, and there's a sense in which that's true.

But every command in the New Testament to church leaders tells them to guard the truth, proclaim the truth, and pass it on to the next generation.

Paul's final words to the Ephesian elders in the book of Acts are sort of a classic example.

He comes near to Ephesus on his way back to Jerusalem, and after his,

I think it's third missionary journey it was, and rather than going to Ephesus, he has the elders of that church meet him at a nearby port, and he gives them a final sort of farewell message in which he says, you're probably never going to see me again, but keep this in mind.

And what he says is, keep a close eye on the church, on its doctrine, and then he tells them prophetically, even from among yourselves there are going to arise those who twist the truth and seek the preeminence.

And sure enough, the Ephesian church soon had troubles with false teachers, and apparently some of them arose from within the group of elders who led that church.

So it's always been a problem in the church, and there's so much in the New Testament that urges us to be discerning and careful and even critical.

I just don't see how Christians today can have the sort of blithe attitude towards false teaching that they have.

Yeah, if you could, let's start with the half, or in your opinion much more than half, of Christendom that is really overly ecumenical, they're overly forgiving of serious matters, they are more prone to gloss over or be unconcerned about matters that are serious, even matters that have salvific importance to them.

And then after that, we could go over some of the primary ways you believe people are becoming

Pharisaic, or they are becoming discernment warriors, and they are pulling splinters out of their brethren's eyes while they still have logs in their own.

Yeah. Let's start with the weaker side of the discernment area first, those who are overlooking things.

And I'm talking about within the framework of conservative evangelicals, we don't even need to waste time with the mainline liberal

Protestants or liberal Catholics or anything like that. Yeah, well it's easy to understand why people think the way they do, because let's face it, conflict is not pleasant for anybody.

Nobody loves a fight except somebody who's crazy, and in fact somebody who does love a fight, we would call him pugnacious.

And Scripture says if a person's pugnacious, he doesn't even qualify to be an elder in the first place.

So we're not to be pugnacious, we're not to be looking for fights all the time. And fights, fighting, arguing, disagreeing over doctrine, there is something about it that's unpleasant, and in that sense distasteful.

And let's face it, those conflicts arise from our fallen nature.

We're too prone to believe wrong things or to imbibe bad ideas, and if humanity weren't fallen in the first place, we wouldn't have conflict.

So we tend to see, because conflicts are the fruit of the fall and the fruit of our sin, then maybe it'd be best if we just avoid them altogether.

And people who think in a very shallow way think, then they conclude that there's something unsavory, not just unsavory, but unspiritual about contradicting, disagreeing, arguing over points of biblical truth.

And in the era in which we live, the postmodern era, one of the cardinal doctrines of postmodernism is that there is no objective truth that's knowable.

So what we all believe is either a socially constructed thing that we all agree on, or it's just your opinion.

There's no such thing as demonstrable, provable, objective fact.

So the cardinal sin is to tell somebody else that what they believe is wrong.

You're entitled to your truth, and I have my truth, and that's how people today tend to think. And too much of that worldly value system has crept into the church, where there are a lot of people in the church who likewise think that there's just something unspiritual and uncharitable and unkind about telling someone else that what they believe and what they teach is wrong.

And you know, it's true that we're supposed to, insofar as it's possible, we are supposed to correct errors in a loving and patient way, and not deliberately stir hostilities.

And there are people who breach that commandment, and it's an easy thing to do. But there are also false teachers who need to be rebuked sharply, and Paul did that at times.

And he instructed Timothy to do that, and Titus. So there are times when it's even fitting to have a sharp disagreement and a harsh rebuke might be called for.

And people in the church today generally see that as such a foreign concept, that they just sort of...

I have this suspicion that a lot of mainstream evangelicals today would actually cringe at the teaching style of Jesus, because you read

John 6, for example. He chased a whole crowd of admiring followers away by purposely teaching something that he knew would be too hard for them to receive.

And then he turns to his innermost disciples and says to them, you want to go too?

Go ahead. Yeah, in fact, I have heard people, I've even heard professing

Calvinists say, oh, we shouldn't even teach the doctrines of sovereign grace or Calvinism to unbelievers or new believers, we should just preach the gospel to them and hope they get saved.

Well, the very thing that you just mentioned, Jesus is turning many in the crowds away.

He had a habit, as you just said, to put it another way, of thinning out the herd when it got too big.

Right. Intentionally. And the very thing that turned the crowd away was, especially when we're talking about the area when he's talking about the

Lord's Supper, it wasn't the Lord's Supper itself, it was that those could not, no one could come to him unless it is given to them by the

Father. That was the final straw that broke the camel's back, and that goes hand -in -hand with the doctrines of sovereign grace.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I think we have to start by realizing that mainstream evangelicalism today is just badly out of sync with the biblical principles of charity and truth and what it means to speak the truth in love.

We don't really seem to have a biblical notion of that, and it's the fruit of a couple of generations now of church leaders and church growth gurus telling us that we need to be seeker -sensitive, we need to find out what people are looking for and give it to them, we need to avoid any kind of offense to anyone who might hear, and yet the

New Testament is full of statements saying that the gospel itself is offensive. If you preach it correctly, it is going to offend people.

And Paul says at one point that, look, that the Jews require a sign and the

Greeks want wisdom, but he says we preach Christ crucified, which to the

Greeks it sounds like foolishness, and to the Jews it's a stumbling block.

So the Jews want a sign, we give them a stumbling block. The Greeks want wisdom, we give them foolishness.

He's actually saying that the gospel is the very opposite of what people are demanding to hear, but it is also the very thing they need to hear, and true charity tells people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.

And in fact, Paul warns Timothy that a time would come when people wouldn't tolerate sound doctrine, but they'd demand preachers who would give them what they wanted.

That's exactly the era in which we live, and it's not a good thing. But it is the dominant attitude among evangelicals today that if you offend somebody, you've done something wrong.

Yeah, there seems to be, at its root, and this comes to,

I think, both sides, to both opposite ends of the spectrum, those that refuse to discern and rebuke, even in a loving and gentle way, those that disagree, and those that go overboard in rebuking and chastising and condemning everyone that doesn't agree with them lockstep, there seems to be a lack of discernment over what is salvific and what is not.

You have that on both ends, where you have people who are rock -solid

Christians and even brilliant scholars on occasion, on the one hand, who seem to overlook the very serious issues that belong within the chasm that separates

Rome from the Reformation. For instance, I will never understand

J .I. Packer, who has been used of God to lead countless thousands of people, not only to salvation, but to deeper theological truth, the doctrines of grace, and so on.

A man who can articulate it clearly well, knows what he's talking about, and yet who is passive and really indifferent, it seems, on occasion, over the issues that separate

Rome and the Reformation. Then you have others who will condemn you as being a heretic or being lost if you do not openly declare that Arminians are lost.

Even if you're a Calvinist yourself, they will say, well, this guy who professes to be a believer in the doctrines of grace, he really doesn't believe them because he believes that Arminians are his brothers, and he has even had ecumenical fellowship with Arminians, so therefore not only do

I believe that Arminians are damned, I believe that that individual is damned as well. There seems to be, as I said, a lack of understanding of what is salvific and what is not.

Yeah, no question about it. In fact, I would say that was really what made the

Reformation so powerful. You study Reformation history, you're going to find that virtually all the leading reformers were severely flawed men.

Some of them had a tendency to fight over the wrong things, etc. Luther had a foul mouth and a bad temper, and you know, some of that comes through in Table Talk, which is kind of unfair to Luther because Table Talk was other people's recordings of things he said at the table.

It wasn't stuff he wrote for publication, but all that aside, it comes through clearly that he was a pretty deeply flawed individual.

But what made the Reformation so powerful were not the men who led it, but the fact that what they highlighted and what they agreed together on was the gospel, the heart of the gospel, the doctrine of justification by faith, and it drew such a clear line of demarcation between law and gospel, between truth and falsehood, between real

Christianity and the sort of inflated religion that Rome had become.

And because it was so clear and so simple that even the simple agrarian people could understand it and grasp it, that it really forced people on one side or another either to affirm the gospel or not.

And I think that line of demarcation has been systematically and deliberately clouded just in our generation by so many ecumenical efforts to, you know, build a bridge back to Rome.

I mean, you mentioned Packer, and he's been kind of a leader in this, and like you, I appreciate a lot of what he's written,

I've learned a lot from him, but he's an Anglican, and as an Anglican, he believes in apostolic succession.

That's the one unique thing about Anglicanism, that it's sort of half -reformed.

The Anglicans didn't embrace the Reformation with a whole heart, and they are the only denomination, as far as I know, that Rome would say, the only

Protestant denomination that Rome would say, yes, they have a legitimate claim to apostolic succession.

They can trace an unbroken line of their bishops all the way back to Peter, just like Rome. And so, because they hang on to that as their definition of the

Church, when someone like Packer, an Anglican, looks at the Protestant Reformation, what he sees is a breach that he believes must ultimately be healed.

When, you know, a more Protestant person like you or me, a

Baptist or even Presbyterian, Reformed Presbyterians, look at the Reformation, what we see is a revival, the emergence of a remnant of believing people who came out of the monstrosity that the

Catholic Church had become, and we don't see that, at least most of us. Historically, Protestants have not seen that as a breach that needs to be healed, but as I said, the emergence of a believing remnant.

But more and more evangelicals in our generation have embraced the idea that pretty much everybody who says he's a

Christian, who gives testimony to some kind of loyalty to Christ, we all need to get together on the same page.

And if that means compromising doctrinally, then let's do it. Because Jesus said, the mark of the true believer is our love for one another.

That's how the world will know that we are who we say we are, not because of the soundness of our doctrines. So let's just throw out any concern for sound doctrine, and all unite around our profession of loyalty to Christ.

And what that does is kill discernment. That ecumenical thrust that has really sort of taken off just in the past 30 years among evangelicals.

There was an ecumenical movement earlier in the 20th century that was far more liberal, but sort of evangelical ecumenism took off about 30 years or so ago.

And it's killed discernment, because the idea is that love is more important than sound doctrine, and in fact love demands that we compromise on our doctrinal principles.

We have to shed some of our dearest convictions, because those are the things that, for example, the heart of the

Gospel, the doctrine of justification by faith, is the key thing that divides

Protestants from Roman Catholics. So we have to give up our insistence on that doctrine, and that's fatal to the

Gospel ultimately. That's why you and I would oppose that. Yeah, we have to go to our first break right now.

If you have a question for Phil Johnson, please send us an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

Hi, Phil Johnson here. I'm Executive Director of John MacArthur's Media Ministry, Grace to You, and I'm also an occasional guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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I accepted this call to teach at the seminary because I'm firmly convinced that the people of God in the churches of our

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G for group, dot org forward slash podcast. Welcome back, this is

Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the first hour is

Phil Johnson, the executive director of Grace To You, the media ministry of John MacArthur, and we are discussing the charge to shepherds to guard the flock.

If you'd like to join us on the air for the question, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

and please give us, as always, your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

USA, and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And we would also remind you that the second hour of the program, we have

Mike Gadosz returning as a guest after his open heart surgery.

This is the first time Mike has been on since that very frightening, very delicate, dangerous, and life -threatening surgery that he had, and we are going to be hearing about lessons that he learned from that terrifying trial.

If you'd like to join us for that as well with a question, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. You know, Phil, there are those that say that to err on the side of condemning people who are actually, in reality, your true brethren in Christ is a much safer way than ignoring errors.

But when you look at the extremes of both sides, aren't they both equally dangerous? Yeah, they are, and in fact,

I would say that the hypercritical folks are potentially more dangerous because they are just so perniciously divisive, and they hate the

Church. What they're doing reflects a contempt for the

Church that Christ died for, and if there were more of them, I think I'd be raising a greater concern about them.

But at the moment, I think the dominant attitude is the former people who just don't like the idea of discernment at all, and in fact, that attitude has been fed by the fact that some of the noisiest voices of criticism...

I won't say discernment, but these people call themselves discernment ministries a lot of times.

They think of themselves as being discerning, but they refuse to make any kind of differentiation between a major error and a minor one.

They can't tell any difference between the gnats and the camels, if you get what

I mean. Jesus said of the Pharisees, they strain at gnats and swallow camels, and he was saying to them, you choke on the small things, but you swallow the big things, and that's exactly the problem with the hyper -discernment crowd.

They love to pick out little things and choke on them, and refuse to see any difference.

I've actually had people tell me that they don't see any ground in Scripture for making any kind of differentiation between major issues and minor ones.

They say a truth is truth, and if you deny any point of truth, then it's a damnable heresy, which effectively means if you disagree with them on any point, they're going to excommunicate you completely.

And since nobody agrees with anybody a hundred percent of the time, always, they even see disagreements between the

Apostles when they're dealing with, you know, issues that where they're not writing inspired

Scripture, where they're saying something infallible or teaching something infallible, they have their disagreements. But these hyper -critical people will anathematize you and separate from you if you disagree on even the most minor point of truth or doctrine, because they believe that all truth is of equal import, and there's no such thing as secondary matters.

And so what they end up doing is isolating themselves from all other believers.

You can't have fellowship with other Christians if that's your attitude, and in fact, you watch some of the noisiest hyper -critics on Twitter and hanging around the

Internet, and ask them, where do you go to church? To whom are you accountable? To whose teaching do you sit under and appreciate?

They'll typically have a hard time coming up with any name, and usually it's someone they've only seen, if they name anybody, it'll only be somebody they've seen from afar.

They don't belong to churches. They don't rub shoulders with other Christians. They become bitter and angry and critical all the time, and they think that's the mark of spirituality.

Right. We have an anonymous listener who says, earlier in the show,

Chris Arnzen mentioned that Jesus spoke something that was a clear

Calvinist teaching that drove many of his disciples away. Where is that in the Scripture? Oh, I was citing from John chapter 6 verse 65, when

Jesus said, this is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the

Father has enabled them. And from that time, many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

So I was saying that in relationship to those who are either Arminian, and even sometimes

Calvinists, who don't think that it's all that primary of a deal, who say, oh, you should never be teaching the unbeliever or the new disciple the doctrines of Calvinism.

And my response is, why? Jesus Christ did. And wouldn't you agree that that verse is clearly something that it seems uniquely taught by Calvinists, that that God has to enable people?

Yeah, that's right. And in fact, you quoted, what was it, verse 65? Yeah. Where he said, this is why

I told you, and you go back, where did he tell him that? He told him that in verse 40 -something, 40, let me look it up here.

And while you're looking it up, we'll repeat our email address, it's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

Verse 44, he says, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I'll raise him up on the last day.

So he's very clear there in teaching the sovereignty of God in drawing unbelievers.

And of course, what that ought to do is make us respond by pleading for grace from God, that he would intervene and draw us to Christ and all that.

But the typical unbeliever hears that and just gets angry. Oh, you mean God doesn't treat everybody equally?

He's not fair? And so it sparks anger, as if God owes his grace to everybody equally, but the truth is,

God doesn't owe grace to any of us. That would nullify grace itself. That's right, it wouldn't be grace if he owed it to us.

So it's just a bad way of thinking about those key doctrinal concepts, grace and the sovereignty of God and all that.

The truth is, though, I think multitudes begin the Christian life with a sort of simple faith where they haven't thought through those.

Those are very difficult issues. I'll acknowledge that. It takes a while for some people to come to grips with that, but as you pointed out, there are a lot of hypercritics out there, and particularly those that lean to kind of hyper -Calvinism, a view of Calvinism that nullifies human responsibility and says, well, if God is sovereign, then you're not even responsible for your own unbelief.

You're just helplessly in the hands of a mechanical kind of fate, and they turn

God into that sort of fatalistic idea, when in fact

Scripture affirms human responsibility right alongside divine sovereignty and says, no, it is your responsibility to respond in faith.

The problem is you can't do that, so you have to seek God's grace. And the hypercritic who says, no, if you don't understand

Calvinism, you're not a believer. People like that generally tend to hyper -Calvinism, and they become more and more extreme.

Their arguments go things like, they'll say things like this, well, an Arminian doesn't really have the right view of the atonement, and because the atoning work of Christ is at the heart of the gospel, and they twist the atonement, then that's a different gospel, and therefore they're under the curse of Galatians 1.

It's a very simplistic view, and that logic might sound reasonable if you don't think deeply enough, but that's a simplistic understanding of what

Paul was saying in Galatians 1. He wasn't saying that if you make any error whatsoever with regard to the atonement, then you're damned.

What would be a problem is if you change the nature of the atonement, like those who deny substitutionary atonement or the penal aspect of Christ's suffering on our behalf, people who take the death of Christ and turn it into an example for us to follow, rather than a substitution on our behalf.

That's a different gospel. But the Arminian is simply guilty of being inconsistent, if he's an evangelical

Arminian. He believes Christ died in his place and in his stead, he just hasn't thought carefully through the ramifications of all that and let it affect other things in his doctrine.

So I'm with you. I can embrace an Arminian, an evangelical Arminian, as my brother in Christ, gladly.

Yeah, let's see, we have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who I think has something to say relevant to what you just said.

He says, don't you think that the errors of the fundamentalists have a lot to learn from?

They are decreasing in number almost to the point of disappearing from the planet Earth because of not only their open hostility to those outside of their borders, not for issues that are salvific, but issues that are even secondary and tertiary, and also the fact that in their fight against certain peripheral issues, like how people dress and what music is played in the church, not that those are unimportant, but they overlook errors that are more serious that exist among them.

Yeah, that's right, Arnie. In fact, Phil, that's interesting. I've done a whole lecture on that subject, and he's exactly right.

We really ought to, and one of the problems is people don't learn the lessons of history. We ought to learn from the lessons of what happened to the fundamentalist movement in the 20th century.

The name fundamentalism, or fundamentalist, has become a pejorative now.

Nobody wants to be labeled a fundamentalist because it carries all kinds of baggage.

Well, not nobody, but a shrinking number. Yeah, that's right. But the original idea of fundamentalism was good.

What they were saying was, look, there are these certain fundamental truths, and by that what they meant was, these are the essential doctrines that you cannot compromise, the fundamentals of Christianity.

And so they were called fundamentalists. They were maybe too prone to fight, too much in love with the idea of fighting, just like the hyper critics today that I'm talking about, so much so that when they ran out of stuff to anathematize one another over, and this took 30 or 40 years, by the middle part of the 20th century, it's true that the fundamentalist debate was to a very large degree focused on things like dress codes, music styles, and legalistic issues like that, rather than the fundamentals of the faith.

By the end of the 20th century, it got to the point where large swaths of people who self -identified as fundamentalists, many of them, couldn't even tell you what the fundamental doctrines were anymore, because they thought the fundamentals were things like dancing and card playing and, you know, hairlength, and a list of things that you must not do if you want to be a true fundamentalist.

But they'd totally forgotten about the gospel itself. You could go to a fundamentalist church for months and never hear the gospel proclaimed with any kind of clarity or depth.

And the fundamentalist movement devoured itself, because fundamentalists ran out of stuff and people to fight with and began to fight with one another, and the whole movement fragmented so that today it barely exists.

There's a remnant of sound and, you know, sober, doctrinally informed fundamentalists out there, heirs of the fundamentalist movement, the true heirs of the original movement.

But they are very few and far between. I love them when I meet them, because our hearts sort of beat together on a lot of these issues.

But it's true that that was the downfall of the fundamentalist movement, a love for the conflict rather than a love for the truth.

Yeah, they have so overemphasized, and I'm not saying that these things aren't important again, they can carry some serious weight, like what kind of music we have in the church, that's an important issue.

But when you inflate those things to the top priority of what you preach on and what you evangelize on, when you're really preaching to the choir, because typically a fundamentalist preacher will be yelling at the top of his lungs to a congregation that agrees with him on those things anyway, and they don't participate in the things that he's yelling about.

But fundamentalists have to preach to the choir, they're the only ones that have choirs anymore. But the thing that's ironic is in their alleged hatred for the heresies of Rome, they actually, in reality, when they are condemning their

Calvinist friends to the pit of hell for teaching the doctrines of demons, they don't even realize how much closer they are to Rome in regard to the nature of man and his will and so on, than biblical

Christianity teaches. Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right, and I know there are people who will doubt that statement because they're not really familiar with church history, but my encouragement to them is read

Martin Luther's book, The Bondage of the Will. He had a lengthy dispute with Erasmus over this.

Erasmus was a Catholic scholar defending the Catholic view, and taking basically the

Armenian position, arguing the same points and using some of the same arguments that modern

Armenians used. Luther was defending the sovereignty of God and the bondage of the will.

That was the title of the book, saying the human will, because it's fallen, is not able to lift itself up.

And that was really what prompted Luther to such a clear understanding of the gospel, because he understood what it is to be so fallen that you are in bondage to sin and incapable of reforming yourself.

And that fear of judgment is what ultimately drove him to the grace of God.

Amen. Well, two hours is basically, I think, the best framework to interview you,

Phil, because we're already out of time, and it went by too fast. Just interviewing you for an hour always leaves me disappointed, because there's so much more that I wanted to have you say and I wanted to ask.

We'll do it again. I would love to have been on for both hours today, but I already have a commitment to do a podcast with another person, starting in like six minutes.

Okay, I understand. But I want to make sure our listeners know that your website at grace2u is gty .org.

And also, don't forget, Phil Johnson is on the roster at the upcoming G3 Conference in College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, and so keep listening for all of the details that you need to register for that conference.

But let me just tell you now, anyway, it's g3conference .com, g3conference .com,

and the conference is January 17th through the 19th, 2019. I'm looking forward to seeing you there in Georgia, Phil.

Me too. That has quickly become my favorite conference of the year, other than the

Shepherds Conference. Of course. I'm contractually obligated to say that.

Actually, it's true. I love the Shepherds Conference, and it'd be hard for anyone to beat it, but the close challenger would be

G3 in Atlanta. Love that conference. This will be my, I think, my third year to go there.

That's my third year as well. Yeah, great conference. Yes, and hopefully

I'll be able to see you one day at the Shepherds Conference. I've never been to one, so I hope to be there at some point.

Oh, great. Yeah, we got to get you out here. Yeah, I would love it. Well, thanks so much, Phil, and I look forward to your return to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in the near future.

All right, thanks, Chris. Thank you, and don't go away, folks, because we have, as I mentioned earlier, my dear friend, sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and the first pastor

I had as a newborn Christian in the 1980s, who actually immersed me in the waters of baptism,

Mike Gaydosh, is going to be on to speak about the fear of the unknown, Michael A.

Gaydosh's recent health trials, and an update on his recovery. If you have any questions for Mike Gaydosh, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away, we'll be right back.

Now, this is our elongated break, so please be patient with us, because we needed this longer period of time in the middle of our two segments to satisfy the requirements of Grace Life Radio 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, who needs to air their own public service announcements and local commercials there in Lake City, Florida, to localize

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to Lake City. So, please be patient with us and use this time to not only write down information provided by our advertisers, but to write down questions for Mike Gaydosh at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we'll be right back after these messages. Iron Sharpens Iron welcomes

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James White here, co -founder of Alvin and Omega Ministries, and occasional guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I'm so delighted. My friend Chris Arnson will be heading down to Atlanta for the next G3 conference from January 17th to the 19th, 2019, where I'll be joining a very impressive lineup of speakers on the theme,

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.nyc. Have a great day. Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Ironson on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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We also have some upcoming events that we want you to be aware of that I will be attending,

God willing. And the first one is coming up on November 9th and the 10th and that is in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania.

It is sponsored by our friends at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and is being held at the

Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Quaker Town, Pennsylvania. I will be there with an

Iron Sharpens Iron Exhibitors booth, so I hope that you greet me during the breaks at the

Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology. The theme this year is the

Glory of the Cross and the speakers include David Garner, Ray Ortlund, Richard Phillips, Timothy Gibson, and Carlton Nguyen.

That's November 9th and the 10th at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Quaker Town, Pennsylvania.

For more details on registering, go to AllianceNet .org, AllianceNet .org,

click on events, and then click on Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology.

And then coming up in January, from Thursday January 17th through Saturday January 19th, 2019, the event that you've been hearing advertised, you heard

Phil Johnson and I discuss it briefly during the first hour of today's program. That's the

G3 Conference held at the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, and the theme is the

Mission of God, a biblical understanding of missions, and the roster is just as long and as powerful and impressive as it was last year.

We have the roster featuring Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, John Piper, Stephen J.

Lawson, Vodie Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad M. Bayway, Tim Challies, Phil Johnson, who we just had on the program today for the first hour, we have

Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, we have Don Curran, we have his wife

Cindy Curran, we have Stephen J. Nichols, the president of Reformation Bible College, the college founded by R .C.

Sproul and Ligonier Ministries, and many more. And I would strongly urge you not only to register to attend the conference, but I would urge that you register for an exhibitor's booth just like I will be manning, because they are expecting between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people there.

So go to g3conference .com, and by the way, G3 stands for Gospel, Grace, and Glory.

That's g3conference .com, g3conference .com, and make sure that you tell all the folks there that you heard about them from Chris Arnsen and Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Last but not least, if you want Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to remain on the air, you hate the thought of this program disappearing from the airwaves.

You hate the thought of our free MP3s, the guests that I interview, the topics that we discuss.

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Never put your family in financial jeopardy by giving to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Those two things are commands of God providing for church and home.

Providing for my show is not a command of God, but if you love the show, you don't want it to go away, and you're financially blessed above and beyond your ability to obey the two commands

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Go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, then click. Click to donate now. If you don't have a church home where you are a member, then please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and I will help you find a church home no matter where in the world you live.

I have lists of churches that are biblically faithful all over the world, and I have helped people find churches. As far away as Perth, Australia and other parts of the world in the

United States, I've helped listeners find good churches that they have joined. I was so delighted to hear from Josh Tyson, who

I mentioned earlier, sat right in front of me at Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who heard about the

Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Harrisburg through my interview last year with Phil Johnson, and he joined that church as a result, and he providentially was sitting right in front of me in a random pew that I picked to sit down in on Sunday night at their conference.

But send me that email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church home in the subject line, and we will help you find a church as best as we can.

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solid -ground -books .com, and order as much as you can from Solid Ground Christian Books.

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The reason I'm saying this is because Mike Gaidosh, when he was laid up in the hospital before and after his very serious heart surgery, he definitely had experienced a severe dip in sales.

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solid -ground -books .com. And we are going to be joined by Mike Gaidosh in a moment now.

If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA, and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And now we are joined by my second guest today,

Mike Gaidosh, a very dear friend of mine since the 1980s, my very first pastor after becoming a born -again believer in Christ.

He has been a friend of mine, a faithful and loyal friend through thick and thin, a mentor to me to this day, the one who immersed me in the waters of baptism.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, my dear friend Michael A. Gaidosh.

How are you, Chris? I am doing great. I'm even better now that you are back on the program after a long absence, obviously due to your health problems that you experienced.

Yes. And in the event that there is a miracle and there is a listener of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio who's never heard of Solid Ground Christian Books, why don't you tell our listeners about that before we go into your testimony today?

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Well, today we are discussing the theme, The Fear of the Unknown, Michael A. Gaydosch's recent health trials and update on his recovery.

Mike, tell us when you first became aware that you had a very serious health problem that needed an urgent remedy, meaning this very serious and complicated open -heart surgery that you underwent.

Well, I've known for years that I was going to eventually have heart surgery, but because I was born with a bicuspid valve, my brother, who's a couple years older than me, had emergency open -heart surgery when he was 45, which was 24 years ago.

And ever since that time, I've been monitored and my heart has been watched.

But everything was fine. The really only problem I knew about was my valve.

There was a valve that was leaking, and they were monitoring it for years. And it wasn't until we moved to Florida last

August that we began to have more careful investigation going on in my heart.

I had no symptoms, but my cardiologist, my new cardiologist, even though there was a lot of information from Birmingham, Alabama, where they had been monitoring my heart for many years, she wanted to be able to start fresh.

And so she started having tests done this past summer, the beginning of the summer. And the first one was something

I'd had done before, which was a nuclear stress test. And when I came home from the stress test, my wife asked me how it went, and I said, well,

I think I did well. I don't know that there were any problems. I'm not supposed to be going back until September.

Well, three hours later, I get a phone call from the office saying that the doctor wanted to see me the next day.

One of my friends said, well, it might be good news. I said, I don't think so. They don't usually ask you to come back into the office the next day if it's good news.

They would tell you that over the phone. And so I went back the next day. And and what

I did, the first thing I did the next morning is I called into the office to seek to find out what the issue was.

And they just said, well, there does appear to be some blockage, and we're going to need to take a closer look.

And so I went in and spoke with the doctor, and she said, well, we're going to need to have a catheterization done in order to be able to see more clearly where the blockage is and how serious it is.

So we went in. A couple weeks later, after we were able to jump through all the hoops for the insurance,

I went in for the catheterization. And the catheterization is about an hour -long procedure, and they went in through my wrist.

And they put you in kind of a twilight sleep. You're not completely out.

So if you need to move, they can tell you to move. But you're not really fully aware of what's going on, and you certainly don't feel anything.

Well, I came out of that after about an hour and went into the recovery room, and the doctor came in.

And when I went in for this procedure, my understanding was if they found the blockage, they would probably be able to repair it with a stent.

And then I would maybe stay in one night and then go home. And within a week or so,

I would be fine, maybe even less than that. But when I came out, the doctor came to me and said, well,

I'm sorry, but we couldn't do the stents because you have too many blockages, and they are too serious.

And so we're going to need to take this differently. Well, within a minute of that time,

Dr. Katz walked in, and I had heard about him ever since we had moved to Florida.

I'd heard that he is the top heart surgeon in South Florida. So I suddenly was introduced to him, and very quickly he put me at ease and told me that it was serious, that this was something that he was confident we'd be able to take care of.

And so he did a battery of tests while I was there in the hospital, checking a whole bunch of different things.

And when I met with him on Saturday that week, he said, we need one more test.

And two weeks later, we did what's called a TEE, a transesophageal echocardiogram.

It's a test in which you basically put a camera down your throat, and they are able to take a picture of your heart from the inside.

They had done echocardiograms. They had done a bunch of other things, but this was the thing that was going to give a definitive picture of the valve and the aortic root, and the blockages they already knew about because of the catheterization that I had done.

So I went in and I came through that, and the doctor came in and spoke to me afterwards and spoke to my wife and just said, well, the problem with your valve is more serious than we thought.

It's moderate to severe, and so we're definitely going to need to take care of that.

And she said, I'll give you a call this Friday, and she said, I'll give you a call Monday or Tuesday and tell you after I speak to Dr.

Katz what will be the next thing we have to do. Well, that night at 9 o 'clock at night, on Friday night,

I get a phone call from Dr. Katz. And right away, I know that this can't be good news.

And he called me to tell me that the problems are more severe than we originally thought.

My aortic root was enlarged, and I was going to have to have not only the bypasses done, and there were six bypasses, and not only have the replacement of the valve that needed to be replaced, but I was going to have to have the ascending aortic root also replaced, which

I was told later is almost more difficult to do than doing a heart transplant.

And Dr. Katz said that because of the serious nature of the surgery, because of the fact that I had to have all these things done, he felt

I needed to go to Gainesville and to Shands Hospital. Shands is a world -renowned heart hospital, but it's three and a half hours north of us.

And the reason why we had the doctors we had in South Florida was because I anticipated eventually

I'd have to have open heart surgery, but we wanted to have it closer to our family. And we moved down here to be closer to our sons.

And so as soon as I find out we have to go three and a half hours north of us, which would be over four hours north of our one son, and four and a half hours north of the other, you know,

I was disappointed. But Dr. Katz assured me that the man that he was sending me to was the only man that he would trust to do this surgery.

He told me that he said, look, you only want to do this surgery once.

You don't want to have to have a second open heart surgery. So this man was honest enough that he did not want to do the surgery himself.

He said that, yeah, because he told me, in fact, the very first thing that he told me the first time I met with him, something that he said struck me.

He said, he said, my goal every night is to put my head on my pillow with a good conscience, knowing that I've done the very best for every one of my patients.

When he takes a patient, he doesn't let anybody else follow up on those patients.

He himself follows up personally. He visits, he goes into the hospital.

He's the only one that will follow up on his patients. And so that night when he called me on the phone at nine o 'clock, he didn't want me to wait until Monday or Tuesday.

That's why he called me right away. And he said, once again, he said, look, he said, if I'm going to have a good conscience about this,

I need to send you to the very best place. And he said, I can do this.

I've done it, but I don't do it often enough. And our team down here doesn't do it that often.

I want to send you to Dr. Martin at Chance Hospital in Gainesville. He said he does this every week.

And he said he is the best. In fact, he told me, he said, if I ever have to have my heart worked on or my wife ever has to have her heart worked on, the only one

I'll let touch me or her is Dr. Martin. So I, you know, right away,

I just, I struggled. I was trying to process it all because, you know,

I went from originally having this bent on and maybe having the bowel repaired to now all of a sudden having to face a seven -hour surgery and having to go to a doctor

I've never met, to a place that's three and a half hours away. And I just, I just struggled that night.

But the Lord gave me, you know, sent my wife to hold me and just encouraged me that, you know, she said, look, the

Lord has gotten us through harder things than this. He's going to get us through this. And this is all

I needed to hear to immediately calm me down. And from that point on, it was determined, okay, we're going to Gainesville.

We're going to go to Dr. Martin. Well, one of the things that, you tell me when we've got to take a break.

Let's see here. You know something? Why don't we take the break now anyway so we get it out of the way and I don't have to interrupt you mid -sentence.

All right. But one thing I would like to say before the break is that it is interesting how that news that Dr.

Katz gave you of his urgent suggestion, very serious suggestion that you use

Dr. Martin, that you have him perform the surgery.

That is at the same time more frightening perhaps because you realize the seriousness of this complicated surgery.

But at the same time, you're getting added with that the comfort of knowing that the very best is going to be the surgeon.

But we're going to have you address that when we come back. Okay, very good. And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And we are back now with the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, Mike Gadosh, as he continues to give his testimony of the frightening trial that he just endured, and perhaps in some ways still enduring, as he continues to recover from very serious and complicated and dangerous open -heart surgery.

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

If you have a question for Mike Gadosh, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter.

Mike, if you could pick up where you left off before the surgery, you now know that you are going to be, of course, first and foremost, under the hands of the great physician

Jesus Christ, who will be guiding the surgeon himself through this surgery, but also the best surgeon that your doctor could recommend,

Dr. Martin. And if you could pick up where you left off there. Yeah, what I soon learned was that Dr.

Martin, Thomas Martin, he is the head of thoracic surgery cardiac unit in Shands Hospital in Gainesville, one of the leading hospitals in the

South, particularly for dealing with hearts. And what

I learned when I went up for my appointment with him before the surgery was scheduled,

I learned that he was a believer in Jesus Christ. Wow, I think I'm learning this for the first time right now.

And this, of course, was, in fact, I started reading the testimonies of people who had been cared for by him.

And the number of incredible testimonies was just so encouraging to me.

I was reading about people who just said that, I'm not a religious person, but Dr.

Martin prayed with my father before the surgery. And in many cases, they said, nobody else would touch my father or my husband or my brother.

And Dr. Martin was willing to take the case. And because of him, my husband, my brother, et cetera, is alive and doing well.

And I had since learned, I've learned afterwards that Dr. Martin, he takes the most difficult cases that no one else will take, because he believes that the

Lord has called him to serve in this way. And I'll fast forward to the actual day of the surgery when

I was very blessed. Let me say this. I want to thank you, Chris, and all of your listeners who prayed for me, because I can tell you that what

I went through leading up to the surgery was nothing short than life changing.

The number of people who called me, the number of people who wrote me, texted me, sent cards to me, was just overwhelming.

I had people who I had pastored and hadn't spoken with probably in 20 years that called me.

And it was almost like the Lord used this as an opportunity. It's like you started hearing things from people and hearing from people that normally you would have not heard from until your funeral.

And it was almost as if the Lord gave me an opportunity to experience my own funeral before I died.

And just the encouragements that I received from people all over the country, people who apparently whose lives

I've touched through the years felt like this was the time for them to let me know.

And it was really quite a remarkable experience that I went through.

The morning of the surgery, it was Friday morning, August 24th, I was wheeled into the operating room and several of the people in there came to me, one by one, introduced themselves and told me what they would be doing.

And I had the anesthesiologist shared with me that he had served with and worked alongside of surgeons all over the country for many, many years, over 30 years.

And he said, Dr. Martin is one of the three top art surgeons in the country.

And as soon as he said that, he kind of stepped away. And the next moment is the last thing

I remember before they put me out for the surgery. And that was Dr.

Martin coming in, getting on his knees.

He locked arms with me and he prayed. And his prayer was such a genuine, humble, heartfelt prayer, acknowledging his own weakness, acknowledging his dependence on the great physician.

And that's the last thing I remember. I woke up 15 hours later, the surgery was over.

And I just felt, you know, what an unbelievable experience that was for me to have the comfort of knowing that this doctor, first of all, knowing what the anesthesiologist had said about him being one of the top surgeons in the country.

And then on top of that, to have him then lock arms with me, kneel right beside me and pray that way.

You know, it was just truly an unbelievable experience. Yes, I had read on Facebook that he had prayed with you, but I did not know until now that he was a

Christian. I thought that he might just be a man who knew of your faith and wanted to comfort you with a prayer.

No, actually, he is a vibrant Christian. We've had some conversations since then.

I actually was able to give him a copy of J .I. Packer's book,

Weakness is the Way. He wrote it just as he had turned 90.

And it was just a wonderful book on how, as Christians, it is in our weakness that we are made strong.

And I gave that to him, and he was very touched by that. And he took it the morning of the surgery.

And he came to me several times after the surgery was over, and we were able to talk.

And he's been working on a book himself, and he was excited to hear I was a publisher. Well, make sure he gets on this program to discuss his book.

Yeah, well, when he does. Right now, I know that he's so busy that I kind of doubt he'd be able to do that right now.

I think he probably won't be able to finish the book until he retires, and that's not going to be anytime soon, even though he's been doing this for 37 years.

But what's happened since that time? It's been over six weeks since the surgery.

The first few days were rough, as you would expect. But one of the things that was quite wonderful for my wife and I, we went up to Gainesville.

Of course, we were hours away from anyone that we knew. But what the Lord did is he sent us family and friends to be there every step of the way for the whole week

I was in the hospital. And really, it was both for my wife and for me as well.

And it was just quite a wonderful experience. Friends drove down from Birmingham, Alabama, seven hours to be with me.

My brother, sister -in -law, my sister and brother -in -law. And it was just an absolutely wonderful experience.

It really was. And they get you up walking immediately. I was walking the day after the surgery on Saturday.

The hardest thing, I think, initially was just how dry my throat was, how sore it was from the two being down it for hours.

And anybody who's had this kind of surgery knows exactly what I'm talking about. But I came through all of that just fine.

I've been six weeks now in recovery. I'm walking longer every day, getting stronger every day.

Yesterday, I met with Dr. Katz. He's been following up on me since we were so many hours away from Gainesville.

Dr. Martin turned me over to Dr. Katz to do all the follow -up. And he just released me yesterday.

So I will not have any more visits. It's now just a matter of letting the bones heal.

I still can't lift very much. And so it's just a matter of time now.

But I feel stronger. I've been able to do work.

I've been able to do a lot more work every day. I just get tired, which is standard for the kind of surgery that I had.

And I just have to rest. When I get tired, I rest. And that's it. I did want to share with you,

Chris, what I was able to share with a Sunday school class before the surgery.

I was given an opportunity to do the Sunday school the Sunday right before my surgery, which was on Friday.

And I just entitled it How to Face Upcoming Trials in a Honoring Way. And basically, the first thing

I did was look at two truths. The first is, the trials are common for all who live in a fallen world.

In Job 5, we read, For affliction does not come from the dust, nor does trouble sprout from the ground.

For man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. That goes all the way back to Genesis 3 and man's fall into sin.

And because of the sin of our parents, we know we live in a fallen world, a cursed world.

And therefore, by the sweat of your face, you will eat bread till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken.

For you are dust, and to dust you shall return. And therefore, what I was facing and what your listeners are facing, if they are facing trials at this particular time, and I'm sure they are, because they come in so many different forms, we need to realize that this is part of our lot in life in a fallen world.

And this is not anything unusual for us to be going through. The second thing is, the trials are a certain mark of all true believers.

Jesus said in John 16, These things I've spoken to you, in me you may have peace, in the world you will have tribulation.

But take courage, I've overcome the world. And so we know that one of the marks of a child of God is that he will go through times of testing.

He will go through trials. And trials, of course, as James tells us, come in various forms.

Consider it all joy when you fall into various trials, James said. And so we need to recognize that what we go through is not anything unusual.

It is very common, even if it's an unusual thing for us. The open heart surgery, of course, was an unusual experience, but it's just part of being in a fallen world.

And then knowing these truths, what should be our focus as we face trials? And in a word, our focus should be

God. Not the trial itself, but God. Understanding that God is the one who is above it, behind it, before it.

And as we fix our eyes upon the Lord, what we need to focus on is the three persons of the

Trinity. We focus on the heart of our all -seeing, all -knowing, all -caring

Heavenly Father. We know that nothing comes to us but passes through His hand. He is too wise to be mistaken.

He is too good to be unkind. And then we also focus on the heart of our merciful and faithful and sympathetic

Savior, God's beloved Son. He is a merciful and faithful High Priest.

We are told that we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses. And that's putting it in a negative way.

To state that positively, it says we do have a High Priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses.

Therefore, we are to draw near with confidence to the throne of grace so that we may receive grace and help in our time of need.

And then we need to focus upon our ever -present comforter and intercessor, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has been given to us to be our paraclete, one called alongside to help.

There are so many times when you're going through these tough times, when you're filled with fear and uncertainty about what's going to happen in the future.

And the Holy Spirit will quietly, softly minister from within, interceding for us at times when we don't even know what to pray or how to pray.

And as we focus our heart and our eyes upon the Triune God, we need to also focus upon His inspired

Word. Psalm 31, But as for me, I trust in you, O Lord. I say, you are my

God. My times are in your hand. Psalm 61,

Hear my cry, O God. Give heed to my prayer. From the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint.

Lead me to the rock that is higher than I. That passage,

Psalm 61, is a passage that I was reminded of by Doug Totter and Larry Silviero about 38 years ago.

I was in the hospital and Doug and Larry came to visit me, and I shared that passage with them as a passage that God used to encourage me.

And both of those men over the past couple of months have shared with me that they've never forgotten that experience when they went into the hospital when

I had my gallbladder removed back when I was 30. And both of them independently, individually called me and said to me that that passage,

Lead me to the rock that is higher than I, is a passage that has been used to minister to them, and they've used it to minister to people through the years.

And they decided, you know what, maybe I could use it again. So they reminded me of the passage that I had shared with them when

I was going through a difficult time, Psalm 61, verse 2. Praise God.

And it's such things as that that the Lord used to remind me of his goodness.

Psalm 73 would be the last verse I'd like to share. In Psalm 73, we read,

Nevertheless, I'm continually with you. You've taken hold of my right hand. With your counsel you will guide me, and afterward receive me to glory.

Whom have I in heaven but you? And besides you, I desire nothing on earth.

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Amen. Well, we don't have any time left for listener questions, but perhaps we can have you back on the program at some point when you feel healthy enough and strong enough to be on.

I want to thank you so much for taking the time out of your schedule today, even though you are still in the midst of recovery and still getting weakened fairly easily, or at least easier than before.

And I want to remind our listeners that you could use sales more than ever because of your time laid up in the hospital.

Go to solid -ground -books .com, solid -ground -books .com, and help

Mike Gadosh recover from the setback financially that he has endured during this time of being laid up in the hospital and recovery.

Thank you so much, my dear brother. I am still thanking God for his delivering you from this frightening trial and that you are still here with us, that you are still my friend and mentor, and I look forward to many opportunities to interview you and share fellowship with you in the future.

Thank you, Chris. I love you, brother. Thank you. I love you, too. Thank all your listeners again for their prayers. I appreciate it so much.

And 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.