July 5, 2017 Show with John Samson on “The Five Solas: Standing Together, Alone!”

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.

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this fifth day of July 2017.

I'm so delighted to have back on the program John Sampson, who's an author and pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Today we are continuing a discussion we began very recently on the five solas, Standing Together Alone, which is a booklet that John has written, now in print and available by Solid Ground Christian Books.

That's solid-ground-books .com, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor John Sampson.

It's great to be with you again, Chris. Thank you.

I thought it would have been blasphemous to have you on my program yesterday, you being a Brit, and yesterday being the great and wonderful holiday on which we commemorate the independence.

Of our nation. Yes, you shook off the tyranny of the British Empire. I remember that.

Yes, and John is that old. He does remember that. But John, kidding aside, I know that you do this every time you come on the program, but if you could let our listeners know about King's Church in Peoria, Arizona.

Yeah, we're a Bible-believing, started in a home, not a nice facility on a Sunday there, and they have the normal activities through the week, but delighted to be there.

So your church actually moved out of the home. Why do I keep hearing from people that you belong in a home?

Yes, yes, we try to keep that quiet.

And if anybody wants to look up more information about King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, go to kingschurchaz .com, kingschurchaz .com, and we'll be repeating that later on. And of course, you can look up other interviews we've had with John Sampson at ironsharpensironradio .com, ironsharpensironradio .com.

Look up in the archive, you can type in S-A-M, as in Michael, S-O-N, Sampson, just like the biblical figular, figular? Biblical figure without the P. And John has a phenomenal, mind-blowing testimony, actually, of how he was once a pastor in the Word of Faith Pentecostal movement, and not only a pastor, but even a talk show host on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, and he was drawn out of that and delivered from that by the grace and mercy of God after discovering the doctrines of sovereign grace, and we are so delighted that John has left that heresy behind him.

And in fact, we are both working on the possibility, it's not etched in stone yet, but we are working on the possibility of having Kosti Hinn on my program, the nephew of Benny Hinn, who is a Reformed pastor, and where is he pastoring, John?

In California. Yeah, and was he ever a part of the Word of Faith movement like his uncle, or was that just something that he was aware of in his family?

Well, he grew up very much as a Hinn, that's his last name, of course, but he functioned as an assistant to Benny, one of the catchers, if you can think of that as a biblical office. He was one of the catchers in the services.

Yeah, well, I'm looking forward to interviewing.

Him with you, God willing, if God opens up that door. I have contacted him and I'm awaiting a reply. But what we are discussing today isn't even completely removed from that because of the five things that the five solos of the Reformation stand for.

This booklet that you have written, first of all, before we even go into the contents, I notice that you've dedicated this booklet, the five solos standing together alone, to R .C. Sproul and Dr. James R. White of.

Alpha Omega Ministries. Tell us why you did that. Yeah, those two men under God were used very significantly. You talked about me coming out of that heretical movement, and it was Dr. Sproul who first came to Scottsdale, Arizona, not too far from me, impacted me greatly in the weekend, and it caused me to start studying and looking through the scriptures, realizing that he was exposing my shallow understanding, and he really helped significantly in that.

And also, Dr. James White, both with the theological precision that R .C. Sproul brought and then the actual exegesis that the going into the scripture in such detail that Dr. White was able to provide.

Between the two of them, they had a massive influence in my life, and James became a friend as well. He lives here in the Valley, too, but these two men really have impacted me, and I just wanted to say so in a public way.

Well, praise God, and a wonderful way to do it.

When you've got something that you've put into print here, and I thank you also for the wonderful personal autograph that you've put in the book with your comment here.

Oh, it's nice of you to say that. Thank you.

Thank you very much, and I'm going to announce our email address right now if anybody would like to join us. It's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

In fact, I might as well take a question from a listener in Ben Salem, Pennsylvania right now. We have Jenny in Ben Salem, Pennsylvania, who has several questions. First of all, she asks, you were a word of faith believer according to your testimony.

How long were you a word of faith believer? Did you pastor as a word of faith preacher? Was your family also believers in word of faith? Well, the only question that you haven't answered already today is how long.

I'm not sure off the top of my head how long you were in that movement. Yeah, I think very early on in.

My Christian life, that's really designated myself as. I was over in England at the time and was part of a local church in Somerset that could be described as that training and theological training with a gentleman called Harry Greenwood, who was really one of the princes or associate minister.

That was back in 1987. And then pastored a church in England, co-pastored with another young gentleman, young at the time. And now having come to the United States, started a church in 1993 here in the Phoenix Valley, and it was certainly coming on two decades, I was in the word of faith and pastoring and ministering from 1987 through to the year 2000.

As a word of faith minister. And she asks, was your family also believers in the word of faith?

Yeah, I'd say so. My mother kind of what was preaching and depending on what I was preaching, she was believing it and was significantly impacted by it too, but in a strange way also called himself Reformed.

But you get into that and you think, how can that be? How can that be? I don't know the answer to all of that, but he would be listening to Martin Lloyd-Jones and Kenneth Copeland, if you can imagine.

So yeah, very strange.

And what led you to minister here in the United States and why Arizona of all places? This is another question from Jenny in Ben Salem, Pennsylvania.

In the nine months I was with this gentleman called Harry Greenwood, I was his associate minister living in England, but we traveled about six months of the nine months outside of England to places like India, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.

And each trip was a significant trip in that it wasn't just for a weekend, but for weeks, sometimes even a month at a time. And so one of the places we came to was the U .S. and it was in a trip over to Arizona that I was spending quite some time here and it just kind of felt like home.

But over time, there was this significant sense of being drawn here that this is unexplainable, except felt I needed to somehow move here and getting here was an issue because you can't just, believe it or not, get off a plane and start a church.

You have to have significant paperwork behind you and it was a two or three year process to do that. So it really was a determined effort to come based on this just strong desire and to be my home. And there's no other way to explain it other than that, really, because it's very hot right now, as you might know.

I think it's forecasted 113 for today and something like that. Well, I heard a song once that mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. It's all true and they drink cups of hot tea no matter what the temperature.

I've got a cup of tea with me now and I go outside and you go into a bank that stopped serving coffee in the banks long ago. But I'm looking wistful as I go in there saying, have you got a hot drink in this weather?

I'm one of those mad dogs.

Yeah, I can hardly think of two more opposite places. I've never been to England, but the image I have in my mind of England and Arizona, the only other place that I could think of more different that would be perhaps Hawaii.

Where in England were you from? I'm sorry, I forgot.

I was hoping you'd remember. I forgot too. Place called Chester in England, which is about four or five miles from the border with Wales. And it's significant. I'll tell you a very quick story. The soccer team in Chester never been very good, but they were wanting to move to a new stadium for the new stadium.

And one third of the stadium would be inside the border with Wales. The team, if it's in Wales, well, only a third of the stadium. We will not. They had to come up with a plan because the supporters said they wouldn't show up between the two countries.

And so it's about 20 miles south east of Liverpool, which I'm sure everyone's heard of. And then Manchester is about 40 miles away. And each place has a different accent, believe it or not, 20 miles and 40 miles.

And Chester has its own accent. And it was the edge of the city back then. It's obviously grown beyond that now. But it takes about 45 minutes to walk around this wall that was built in the first century by the Romans.

Not all of it.

The Development of the Five Solas and the Authority of Scripture

And now she finally gets into the heart of the matter of your book. She says this is Benny again, Benny, Jenny in Penn, Salem, Pennsylvania, says, I know that the five solas are the essential doctrines of faith, especially in regard to salvation, that were some of the distinctives of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.

However, I was surprised to learn that the reformers essentially identified three solas, scripture over tradition, faith over works and grace over merit. Can you give us a brief history on how the five solas were developed over time?

Yeah, that's interesting. We actually touched on that the last time that the five solas were actually present apart from one another in the writings of the reformers, but they weren't joined together as a unit of five until a 20th century Christian had put them that way in print.

That's correct. And it's kind of a surprise to me that that was the case, but certainly each of those were mentioned, but no one kind of put them together in that way that we do now of the five solas.

But you could go back to Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, this town in Germany in 1521, where he made his statement, unless I'm convinced by sacred scripture, I will not recant my conscience is held captive to the word of God.

And he basically took his stand there and you could say that scripture alone being the standard came out of Luther's mouth at that point. Whether it was articulated as sola scriptura straight away, hard to really pinpoint, but certainly he was instrumental in that.

And if we start with scripture as being the final authority, the sole infallible church, it's out from that, that the other doctrines can be found. When we look to scripture, we see that it teaches sola fide, which is faith alone by faith alone, apart from works, we have a peace with God, justification, the declaration of God, that we're right in his sight.

So it's out from who speaks for God that we then determine that scripture alone is God breathed, has the weight behind the human conscience, rather than a pope or you or me, all of us, as the Bible says, let God be true and every man be a liar.

It's God who's spoken in his word and out from that the other essential doctrines. Yes. And that is what.

Separates the true religion, the true gospel, the true Christianity of the reformation in contrast to Rome, the one word alone, because the church of Rome has always believed that faith was essential, that grace is essential, that Christ is essential, that the scriptures are essential.

And of course they claim they are glorifying God, but the alone part just radically, that one word just radically transforms what would have other been true Christianity into an imposter.

True, and many don't understand exactly what you fall in. It's vital people grasp that because what they've decreed as to be, and they're surprised when they come across this is necessary, and they think, whoa, Rome's changed, haven't they?

Grace is necessary. I thought they thought justification, not grace. No, they've always, as you've rightly said, insisted on the necessity of the essential in the human merit, so it's not grace alone.

They cannot sing amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me and fully understand it as the Bible would teach it as grace alone. Ironically, they are singing that in the.

Catholic Church now. They have been, I think, ever since Vatican II or so. It is quite strange for them to be singing that because they really don't understand what that song is about, what.

That hymn is about. Yeah, that's true. Not only of the Roman Catholics but of many Protestants as well on the East Coast. Here in the States that changed, revised the words of the song so that it was not that saved a wretch like me, but they changed it to saved a person like me.

Yeah, and Phil Driscoll changed it to someone like me. It really was like a kick in the stomach.

Oh, really? Really, really. No, we were wretches, but the message of the Bible is that Christ died for the ungodly, that justificates for the ungodly. It's not as if God has to wait until we're godly, and then he says, I see.

I can analyze this individual. Now they're godly. I can declare them godly. No, it's because of Christ, Christ alone on the basis of his person, his work for us. On that basis, he can declare us right in his sight because our faith in him allows Christ to be all that he is for us, and that's the God's life.

He died for us an atoning death. Sins that were transferred to Christ, he literally bore them. Isaiah says he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement, the punishment we deserved was upon him, and by his stripes we were healed.

It literally happened, and his righteousness is transferred to us, and on the basis of our faith in him, all that Christ is. Amen. Then finally, Jenny from.

Ben Salem, Pennsylvania. I think she's trying to get my job here as host of the Iron Shards. She says, there have been some suggestions from Anglican bishops to add two more solos to the list. Sola Ecclesia and Sola Caritas.

Are you aware of this, and are these a viable and essential necessity to add? Well, it seems that Sola Ecclesia would totally destroy the meaning of the other solos, the church alone, and I'm actually surprised.

I'm not 100 sure that Jenny's accurate or her sources are accurate, but it would seem strange that a non-Roman Catholic church would want to add Sola Ecclesia to the list, and I'm not sure what Sola Caritas.

Means. I'm going to plead ignorance rather than attempt an answer where I'm not really sure. I'd need to have access to where that's been said officially by that church to be able to comment.

On it. Well, thanks a lot, Jenny. Keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and spreading the word about it in Ben Salem, Pennsylvania and beyond. Your questions are always a wonderful addition to the Iron Sharpens Iron program, and there is some information backing up Jenny's claim here from an Anglican website that there is a movement to reconciling evangelical and Anglo-Catholic perspectives, so there was something Romish.

Behind this. Anyway... But I'd agree with you if you understand Sola Scriptura, then it negates Sola Ecclesia, the church alone, understanding from God as to how we are to view things, belief. We don't go to scripture alone.

We go to the church to tell us what scripture means, and that would negate at least the Protestant understanding of Sola. We don't rightly interpret them. We don't have the right to misinterpret them, but we are responsible to rightly divide the word of truth.

Timothy 3 says to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, and because of message of scripture on salvation, we don't need to go to anyone else but scripture or anything else, any other organization, to know what God wants us to believe concerning the message of salvation.

So anything that would negate that clear, declarative message of the Bible is something we should avoid rather than run to.

And I found out that Sola Caritas means love alone, so that can be problematic when you start determining a person, requiring that a person has love before they are justified, because that just.

Gets in the whole, that really muddies the waters of the gospel. And people can misapply that so easily, because what is love? Love means to me that this, that, that, and the other, and then another one will say it means this.

And I was reading Galatians just recently, and just struck by the fact, hadn't really noticed it before, so incensed about the false gospel that the Judaizers were bringing into that Galatian community, that he threatened them and anyone else, including himself, with the anathema of God, if they adjust the gospel or preach a different one.

And I was reading that Galatian recently, and noticed that right at the end, it's in that exact book that he says, the fruit of the Spirit is love. And you think, well, what he's just done in the first couple of chapters isn't loving, right?

Not impulsive, and not in the Holy Spirit's view. The same Holy Spirit that inspired chapters one and two inspired chapter five that speak of the fruit of the Spirit being love. And it's loving to tell people the truth of the gospel, and to stand for it, and to say, you believe something else, and you're under God's anathema.

That's loving, and not everybody will accept that.

Sola Scriptura, Charismatic Claims, and the Need for Hermeneutics

We have a first-time questioner, Gordy from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. And Gordy, I'm just enlarging the font on his question, because it's very tiny. Secondly, which of the five solos do you think is most resisted within the church at large?

Secondly, which do you think is more contentious within the church at large, the five solos or the five points of Calvinism, and why? Lastly, based on your experience within charismatic circles, what approach do you recommend for confronting the doctrinal errors associated with the movement, meaning the charismatic movement?

Very interesting three-part question, or three questions. The first being, which of the five solos do you think is most resisted within the church at large? Well, I know the Church of Rome most clearly resists Sola Scriptura more vociferously, because they are more prone to try to cloud the real meanings of the other solos.

But the Sola Scriptura, in my experience, having arranged debates with Roman Catholics since 1995, that one, of course, Sola Fide would be a second one, but they tend to be—it depends on what Catholic you're talking to.

Some Catholic might want to claim Sola Fide, but cloud the meaning of it. But certainly, Sola Scriptura, they would all be opposed to. If you could comment on your experience, John.

Yeah, I think I find that is true. I think on the Protestant side, it also would be the case that the answer would be, it depends on who you talk to. If you find out about the person, what kind of church background they have, you can normally—not always, but normally—understand where they're coming from and where the Scripture needs to be applied, whether it's to them, to me, all of us.

We need to apply Scripture to us and those in the Protestant realm who are influenced by anything other than the Bible. Two other things for recognition as to how to approach ministry, how to do counseling.

There's resistance to anyone who's just going to have a Bible in front of them and counsel in that sense. Oh no, we need to know what the world says and get our training from the world. Excuse me, 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 describes anything that will be involved in Christian ministry.

Paul is telling Timothy, whether it's counseling, preaching, teaching, business, people you need to talk to, people with marriage issues, relationship issues in many, many ways. I think in the charismatic realm, there's a lack of understanding of what we have in the Scripture that we certainly need something else according to them.

We've got the Bible, but we need God to speak to us. Ask God to speak to you. And what they mean by that is outside of the Bible. And I love a quote, Steve Lawson, I put it in the new book about, if you want to hear a fresh word from God, just buy yourself a new Bible.

I like that.

Then read it out loud, I think is the second part.

Just get yourself a new Bible and you've got a fresh word there. It's true, it's the real temptation that was thrown at Adam and Eve in the garden. Has God said it? The first question, as we know, the first question in the entire universe.

And it was a question that was really a less than subtle attack on the Word of God. You don't have God's Word or He's holding out on you, you need something else other than God's Word. Did God really say, as one translation puts it, well, God has spoken and He's spoken clearly.

And anytime we go away from the scripture or say we need something else or something more, I believe it's a quick way to deception. So strange answer to say it depends on who you talk to. A Methodist might answer that differently from a Lutheran, might be very different from someone who's a Presbyterian and a blind spot to come under the sound of God's Word and adapt and change where we see what we believe and what we practice.

It really does depend on who it is we're talking to, I think. Right, and then of course you have.

The ecumenical movement turning out Protestants or so-called Protestants and evangelicals who would say we should just drop the solos, I mean, should drop the solos altogether and just say that we affirm the need for faith and grace and Christ and the Bible and we need to glorify God.

But they would want to extend an olive branch to the Church of Rome by removing the solos. And they have already, and it's been going on for over a decade and longer where you'll have evangelical ministries that have been around for a long time and used to have as a mission statement something very close to the five solos and then they've removed the words alone off of them in order to be more comfortable for Roman Catholics to either physically join as members of these parachurch groups or support them with their money.

But that's a shame. It's pretty sad. But anyway, we have to go to break right now and we will return to Gordy's other questions. He has two more questions that we haven't got to that I read to you already.

And if anybody else would like to join us, 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 of the USA.

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You for many years to come. Welcome back. This is Chris Arns and if you just tuned us in today, our guest for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is John Sampson. He's an author and pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona.

We are continuing a discussion we began recently on Iron Sharpens Iron on the five solas, Standing Together Alone, which is a new booklet that Pastor John Sampson has written and which is published by solid-ground-books .com.

That's for pastors and deacons out there, those that have the authority to order things for your church tract rack. This is a booklet that could easily fit in a tract rack, especially if it's one large enough to have the Ultimate Questions booklet, which is a very famous booklet amongst Christians spanning denominational lines.

I would urge you to buy these in bulk, especially because of the fact that it's the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation and it's easy to hand these out and inexpensive enough to hand out in large numbers to inform people, not only your own congregations, but visitors as to what is so important about the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

So go to solid-ground-books .com and order this booklet, and please try to order it in bulk. Even if you're not an authority in your church, order them for yourself in bulk so you can hand them out like tracts to individuals.

It's a really well-summarized work addressing the five solos of the Reformation. Our email address, if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com, and please at least give us your first name, your city and state and country of residence if you live outside the USA.

And Gordy in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania also asked, which do you think is more contentious within the church at large, the five solos or the five points of Calvinism? And I would say that the five points of Calvinism are more contentious because not only have you set apart yourself from the rest of the religious world and from Christendom with being Protestant, but this even further separates you by being uniquely Calvinistic and attributing a hundred percent of the praise, honor, and glory and thanksgiving to God for your salvation.

But if you could comment as well, Pastor John.

Yeah, I would agree. I would echo what you've just said of religion, but the doctrines of grace take you further into biblical truth and designations and distinctions that need to be understood to have a true aspect.

It's very misunderstood in the Protestant world. Properly understood, the reformers were preaching and teaching what we would call monogism, one power, one party working to effect regeneration. And that was understood in the grace alone teaching that our salvation rests solely alone, which is where many in the Protestant world now are.

They would say, well, I'm saved by grace alone, but they believe that their human action is what caused them to be saved. Whereas properly understood, grace alone encompasses the idea that even the faith is because of God's grace to us in a microcosm form.

All of the doctrines are found in that expression of grace alone, but not everybody understands that, and that's a contention in our own day.

And then lastly, Gordy from Mechanicsburg asks, based on your experience within the charismatic circles, what approach do you recommend for confronting the doctrinal errors associated with the movement?

And that actually does tie in. It might be unexpected that it would tie in for many folks, but I think, and I believe you have asserted this on previous interviews, that the charismatic movement, just as the Church of Rome, but perhaps for different reasons, really denies Sola Scriptura, because it is not sufficient in the minds of many charismatics, especially the more extreme versions of them, like the Word of Faith movement.

It can seem to be, you know, how would you go about, I think if you can sit them down and say, let's open our Bibles and have a discussion, that's a lot further than most people get in that kind of a discussion.

But if we look to the Scripture, it making claims on itself that certainly, I don't know many charismatics who have made the same claim for themselves. They say that God spoke to them, they say it over and over, the Lord told me this, the Lord said this, I was having a dream and the Lord showed me this, and all of that.

But very few, none of them put it on that level. But that's exactly the point. It isn't on that.

Level. Yeah, and if they were consistent, if they were logically consistent, they would,.

Though, say it's the 67th book of the calendar. Yeah, exactly. And if we start with that as the premise, can we then sit that person down and say, so are you claiming that what you felt between your ears, your thoughts, are on the level of Scripture?