September 10, 2024 Show with Brandon Crawford on “Let Men Be Free: A Christian Vision for Ordered Liberty”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 10th day of September 2024.

What will prove to be, no doubt, a historic date as tonight,

President Donald Trump is facing off with Vice President Kamala Harris for their first debate, it might be their only debate in this race for President of the

United States. This should be a fascinating time for all to behold.

And I will give you my thoughts the next time we are live. Obviously, this is also the eve of one of the most tragic events in the history of the

United States, the eve of September 11th, the anniversary of the most horrific attack on American soil by foreign terrorists and resulting in the loss of nearly 3 ,000 lives, not only at the

World Trade Center, but at the Pentagon building, and also on a flight that was forced to crash in a field here in my own state of Pennsylvania.

And if anybody would like to listen to what

I think is a fascinating interview I conducted some years ago with my friend,

Staff Sergeant David Carnes. Well, he was a true hero of 9 -11.

In fact, there was a movie called

Twin Towers, which features a portrayal of David Carnes by actor

Michael Shannon. And it is quite a fascinating interview,

I believe, that I conducted with Lieutenant Colonel—I'm sorry, with Staff Sergeant David Carnes, and it was co -hosted by my friend who was a lieutenant colonel, now he's a general,

Kevin Girard, also a United States Marine. And the original interview took place on September 9th, 2016.

So, if you'd like to listen to that, you can email me at chrisorensen at gmail .com,

and I could send you the link, or you could just go to ironsharpensionradio .com and type in K -A -R -N -E -S, the last name of Staff Sergeant David Carnes, and you will be able to hear that interview of the story of how

David was used of God to locate and rescue

New York City transit police officers who were trapped beneath the rubble of one of the collapsed

Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001. And in fact, it was an area where the search and rescue teams had already given up their search.

And so it's even more remarkable that David, on his own accord, voluntarily, began roaming through those ruins and thankfully heard one of the men trapped beneath the rubble banging on a piece of metal, and the rest is history.

So I hope that you will listen to that sometime later tonight or tomorrow. Also, I want to remind all men in ministry leadership that the next free biannual

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It's just a time to treat pastors and leaders in Christ's Church to a wonderful time of edification and refreshment and a time to fellowship with not only old friends that they may not have seen in years, but make new friends as well.

So I hope that as many of you as possible, who are men in ministry leadership, can attend this event on Thursday, October 10th, 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, to register. Send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, that's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com,

and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line. And please make sure you give me not only your full name, but the name and location of your church or parachurch ministry and the number of men who will be joining you at the free luncheon.

And I just heard word earlier today from my dear friend, my longtime dear friend,

Phil Johnson, who is the Executive Director of John MacArthur's Media Ministry.

Grace to you. Every time we have one of these luncheons, Phil Johnson personally has books shipped out for free that we can give away to the pastors there.

And he is just one of many who do that. And among the many books that will be available for the men in attendance this time around will be the book

At the Throne of Grace, A Book of Prayers by John MacArthur.

So that's just one of many of the books that will be available for free at the Iron Trip and Zion Radio Pastors Luncheon.

Once again, if you want to register, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put

Pastors Luncheon in the subject line. Please remember, as I have already informed you on this program in the past, and as Phil has informed you himself in social media, please continue to keep

Phil Johnson in your prayers as he is battling blood cancer and is going to be undergoing a bone marrow transplant.

So please pray that the Lord either uses divine miraculous means to heal our dear brother or to just steadily and meticulously and carefully guide the hands and the minds of all those physicians and others who are providing medical care for Phil so that we can hear wonderful praise reports about his full recovery.

So keep dear brother Phil in your prayers. But I am excited to have a returning guest today.

We are going to be discussing a theme that we have discussed on the show before from different points of view, and I'm eagerly looking forward to hearing today's guest's point of view on this issue.

We have Brandon James Crawford returning to the show, or should I say

Dr. Brandon James Crawford. He is author of Let Men Be Free, A Christian Vision for Ordered Liberty, and he is also the lead pastor at Grace Baptist Church of Marshall, Michigan.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Dr. Brandon Crawford.

Well, thank you so much, Chris. I'm delighted to be here. And just calling me Brandon will be fine. Okay. Well, first of all, before we get into the theme of your book, let our listeners know about Grace Baptist Church of Marshall, Michigan.

Grace Baptist Church is in South Central Michigan. We serve a community of about 7 ,000 people.

And we are a Calvinistic Baptist church, and our distinctives include a commitment to expositional preaching, to Reformation theology, particularly to a revised

Second London Baptist Confession. We're also known for our commitment to reverent worship and to family integration as well.

So we unite all age groups in every aspect of our church's ministry.

We're also committed to faithful praxis. We are committed to pursuing the biblical mission without resorting to ploys or gimmicks.

We rely solely upon prayer and faithfulness and the sovereign working of God.

Amen. Well, if anybody wants to find out more about Grace Baptist Church of Marshall, Michigan, go to gracebaptismarshall .com,

gracebaptismarshall .com. And God willing, we will repeat that information later on in the broadcast.

Well, as I've already said in the outset of today's show, the topic of today, not obviously under this specific title of Let Men Be Free, A Christian Vision for Ordered Liberty, but the subject of exactly how the roads of church life and the church of Jesus Christ itself and the road of politics intersect and how we are to deal with each of these subjects and topics in a faithful way honoring

God and His inerrant word. There are, as you fully know well, especially having written a book on this subject, there are differing views in the body of Christ, and there are sometimes very heated and passionate disagreements over this, sometimes even sadly leading to sharp division and sometimes even to the extreme of folks disfellowshipping one another, which is a tragedy in my opinion.

I have learned something from everybody that I've had as a guest on this program, even when they have had differing views from one another on how to address this subject.

But with all of the books that have come out, especially in recent years, because this is definitely a hot topic in the church of Jesus Christ today, what did you think was lacking in what was already available not to disparage any of the authors who have already written on this subject and had their works published, but just something that you believed there existed a void of some sort where your own contribution to this subject, you believed,

I need to write a book of my own on this and have it available to those seeking biblical truth.

How is your book right out of the gate here offering a somewhat different approach or adding information that might not otherwise be readily available in print?

Thank you so much for asking that question. And if I could start by explaining what really motivated me to write this book.

Sure. There were a couple of events. The first was the government's response to the

COVID -19 pandemic. I think most people in our country knew that our government was drifting from constitutional order, but they didn't realize how far the government was willing to go.

And so during the pandemic, the federal government and many state governments basically suspended our constitutional rights in the name of public health.

And so from 2020 into 2023,

I was fielding all kinds of questions from the members of my own church, as well as from people outside of the church who wanted to understand the proper relationship between church and state.

They wanted to understand what the biblically defined roles were of church and state.

They had questions about the proper relationship between the individual and the state.

Lots of questions were coming to me related to matters of conscience, how to respond to government mandates that violated conscience and so forth.

And I tried to answer every question as each came in. I also wrote some articles for our local newspaper to try to explain a biblical perspective on these things.

I did a couple of sermon series on these topics, beginning with the book of Daniel, because we find a lot there that can offer guidance to us on matters of the individual and the government.

So that was one issue. I finally concluded that I needed to do more than just write these articles on a piecemeal basis or field questions one at a time.

I really needed to put everything together in a single volume that could be made widely available to people.

But then the second issue was the rise of an aggressive new form of Christian nationalism.

And we also saw this come to fruition during the pandemic. And this really culminated in the publication of a pair of books by Canon Press.

The Case for Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolfe came out in 2022. And then

Doug Wilson's book, Mere Christendom, came out in 2023. And those books gained a lot of traction in the

Christian world. And it generated a lot of questions from people in my orbit.

And I was also aware of Doug Wilson's challenge to Baptists in particular.

He said to Baptists on one of his podcasts that he had published his vision for church and state.

And he wanted to see a Baptist publish their vision. And so between the issues that were coming to the surface because of the government's response to the pandemic and then the rise of Christian nationalism and Doug Wilson's challenge,

I thought that I ought to give a book -length treatment of these topics an attempt.

So the contribution that I think my book makes is that this book is a direct response to both recent events and a recent challenge from at least

Doug Wilson's version of the Christian nationalism. And so it addresses both the militant secularism that we are up against in this nation right now.

And it also provides biblical responses to that other perspective.

Well, that's great to hear. And I'm assuming you would agree with me.

Maybe one of the rare times in your life that you would say that you would agree with me.

But that the term Christian nationalism, very hot -button term, controversial term, controversial subject, is not represented by a monolith.

There are people that call themselves

Christian nationalists, like, for instance, Stephen Wolf, who you mentioned before, who is theologically a

Thomist. He is vehemently opposed to presuppositional apologetics and theonomy.

And then you have folks who are themselves theonomists, reconstructionists, and presuppositionalists, and postmillennialists, who also call themselves

Christian nationalists. And you have, of course, a wide spectrum in between perhaps those two extreme views, some saying that they can't even tell right now at this point in the game, since it's a fairly new label, they can't even decide whether they should use that label to identify themselves, because they see and hear so many differing voices claiming to be the same thing.

Would you agree that I'm somewhere on the mark there in viewing the landscape over this issue?

Oh, absolutely. In fact, I'm reminded of that reporter from Politico who recently defined a

Christian nationalist as anyone who believes that our rights come from God and not government.

And by that definition, then, we are all Christian nationalists. Even Thomas Jefferson was a

Christian nationalist. But there is another form of Christian nationalism that I'm more interested in interacting with, and that is the version of it currently being proposed by Stephen Wolfe, also by Doug Wilson, this idea of a

Christendom 2 .0. Stephen Wolfe, for example, is calling for a, quote, theocratic

Caesarism, which would work to make the earthly city an analog of the heavenly city.

In his version of Christian nationalism, all citizens would be baptized at birth, and the national government would be working to suppress blasphemy, heresy, disregard of public worship among the baptized.

The government's chief executive— Are you still there, brother? You got cut off.

for theological education. He would call synods in order to resolve doctrinal conflicts and moderate the proceedings.

Following the proceedings, the Christian prince could confirm or deny— Yeah, you keep cutting out, brother.

I'm not sure you're aware of it. —of the land. In fact, he goes so far as to say that the state ought to be able to tell local churches how they should arrange their auditorium furniture, where the pulpit should be in relation to the communion table, and so forth.

You know, it's interesting. And by the way, brother, I don't know if you're— Christian nationalism. I don't know if you're aware, brother, but you keep cutting out.

Are you aware of that? Hello, Dr.

Brandon, are you there? Yes, I lost you for a second, but I can hear you again.

You keep cutting out, and I didn't know if you were aware of that. I don't know if somebody is calling you on another line because sometimes things like that interfere with connections, but hopefully that won't continue throughout the whole program.

But for some reason, you were cutting out for several seconds. Okay. At what point did you lose me?

I basically got your whole frame of thought, but they were just—in the midst of your remarks, every 10 seconds or so, there was about a three -second muting of your voice.

But we'll just press on, and hopefully that won't continue. Okay. And it's interesting the way you described

Stephen Wolfe's views, that this is the very thing that many non -theonomists or even anti -theonomic

Christians have accused theonomy of teaching, and folks like my friend

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, he is—I don't know how many years it's been since he has identified as not only post -millennial, but as a theonomic reconstructionist, but he would oppose those items in Stephen Wolfe's description of the vision of the future that he wants to see established.

And it was kind of comically interesting that our mutual friend

Dr. Owen Strand, who has been a guest on this program, when he was moderating a discussion at one of the

G3 conferences, he wrongly assumed that Dr.

White was a Christian nationalist, or at least he wrongly assumed that Dr. White used that label to identify himself during the panel discussion.

And he said, I've never said that. And he has been, as you may know, Dr. White has been an open, vehement critic, vociferous critic of Stephen Wolfe's work.

Yes, you were right earlier to point out that there is a spectrum of belief under that heading of Christian nationalism.

And in the book that I've published, I am specifically addressing the version of it being promulgated by Stephen Wolfe and Doug Wilson, which is proposing this reunification of church and state, whether you would have the church as a department of the state, as Wolfe would have it, or if the church would swallow up the state as Wilson would have it.

That is the issue that I am particularly concerned to address in this book. Great.

Well, we are going to our first commercial break. If you have a question of your own and you'd like to join in to the conversation, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence. If you live outside the

USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say, for instance, you are a member of a church that is identifying itself as a

Christian nationalist church or your pastor or pastors, plural, identify themselves as Christian nationalists and you are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with that.

Or perhaps it's the exact opposite of that. Anytime somebody is critical of their own pastors and elders and congregation, we would actually request that they remain anonymous.

We don't want to unnecessarily bring reproach upon a church where we don't know all the facts and so on.

But things like that, that you believe compel you to remain anonymous, feel free to make that request and we will grant it for you.

But if it's a general question regarding my guest book, regarding history, regarding the scriptures on the subject, please give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence.

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Lindbrook Baptist Church, a

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And we are now back with Dr. Brandon James Crawford. We are discussing his book,

Let Men Be Free, A Christian Vision for Ordered Livery. And if you have a question, submit it to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state, or country of residence. And let's have you dissect for us, if you will, the title,

Let Men Be Free, and also the subtitle, A Christian Vision for Ordered Liberty.

Let's start with Let Men Be Free. Exactly what do you mean by that? Most patriotic

Americans and Christians love the sound of that, even if they may disagree with your conclusions on how to attain that.

But please give us your understanding of that. So the title,

Let Men Be Free, comes from a sermon that was delivered by Pastor John Leland.

He was a Baptist pastor, and the sermon was entitled The Rights of Conscience Inalienable.

He delivered it on New Year's Day in 1791. And the line that my title comes from says this.

If government can answer for individuals at the day of judgment, let men be controlled by it in religious matters.

Otherwise, let men be free. So I'm calling for an arrangement of church and state that allows men and women to live with dignity as image bearers of God and who can enjoy all of the rights that come from that high status.

I don't believe that the modern secular state offers that.

I also don't believe that the version of Christian nationalism being offered by men like Wilson and Wolff can offer that either.

So I'm calling for a different way, which is actually the historic

Baptist way of a free church working within a free state.

And if you could be more specific and detailed on how your understanding of being a free church in a free state differs from the major voices of opposition that you're hearing.

And I'm sure that it's more than just the brand of Christian nationalism espoused by Stephen Wolff.

You have leftists who are promoting, even though they would never dream of calling it a theocracy.

But there are leftists out there who are definitely proposing and promoting and trying desperately to establish a leftist theocracy.

And, of course, you have even from the wing of the church that would identify itself as Christian, but nonetheless be indifferent or differing from you,

I should say, and all of the aforementioned voices to point out an extreme of folks like the

Amish. Who have purposely, in many regards, isolated themselves from any kind of government authority that they can legally get away with and prohibiting, in some cases, even voting and so on.

So where would you start with some of the main principles that you stand upon in difference to the opposing voices?

Yeah, my book actually begins with the modern secular state.

And in the book, I define secularism as the notion that we can build a civil society without any reference to God or that we can establish liberty and justice and domestic tranquility without any transcendental ground.

And I explain how the seeds of that began with the

Enlightenment, but really came into full flower in the early 20th century as far as the

American government is concerned. And the trouble with this is that once you have removed

God from his proper place above us, then the government itself becomes

God. And government makes a very poor substitute for the living and true

God. And that's what we've been living under for some time now. A government who recognizes no authority above itself, and therefore, it has assumed plenary powers over all of its citizens.

And it can change its demands on its citizens at a whim. What was good yesterday might be considered evil by the government today, and vice versa.

This is tyranny by another name. And I think that on the side of the aggressive

Christian nationalists, there is really a desire there, which is a good desire, to reassert the lordship of Christ over all things, to give

God his proper place as the king of this universe. And they are right to insist that all human institutions need to answer to God.

But I fear that what they are doing is leading us into just another form of tyranny.

That by wedding church and state back together, by insisting that all citizens be baptized at birth and compelled, at least for Stephen Wolf, to compel them to attend church, to compel them to affirm sound doctrine, we're actually setting ourselves up for a new tyranny.

And we are giving to government, on the

Christian nationalist side, we're giving to the government powers that God has not entrusted to government in this age.

And in so doing, we're also robbing Christ of powers that he is reserving to himself and which only he is capable of exercising and which he will exercise when he returns and establishes his kingdom on the earth.

And so what I propose in this book is a system in which church and state are working independently of one another.

These are two sovereign institutions of God. They have very specific mandates from God, and the state ought to be focusing on its divine mandate, which would be simply securing the

God -given rights of its citizens. And meanwhile, the church is executing its mandate, which is to make disciples among all nations.

And if the church is sticking to its mandate and the state is sticking to its mandate, we have the possibility of a society that is stable over the long haul.

It's what I call a system of biblically ordered liberty. Now, how do you respond to folks who would be critics of the description that you gave in some measure?

Not that they disagree with everything you said, but I have heard, for instance, from some who would identify themselves either as Christian nationalists or theonomists.

And to remind our listeners, they are not necessarily the same thing.

They are sometimes even considering themselves to be polar opposites of one another to some degree anyway.

But the criticism of the reason why the

Nazis successfully, for at least a season before they were destroyed or brought to their knees toward the end of World War II, the reasons why they had such success in their establishing evil was because of the inactivity and lack of participation of the professing church, with the exception of some heroes of the faith.

And of course it's debatable amongst Christians on whether or not we should identify

Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a hero. But you understand what I'm saying, that they will say that taking your description exclusively of what we should be seeking just leaves an open door for a fourth

Reich, if you will. Yeah.

So I think it's helpful you cut out between the institutional church and individual

Christian citizens. So as an institution, the church's mandate is very precise.

We are simply to go preach the gospel, gather the converts, baptize them, and teach them to observe all that Christ commanded.

But as individual Christians, we have a dual citizenship.

I mean, we are citizens of the kingdom of God. We are also citizens of earthly kingdoms.

We ought to be very active in the civic sphere. We ought to be speaking

God's truth. We are participating in government, particularly those of us who live in democratic societies.

We have this ability to make our desires known to the governing authorities, to represent biblical truth in the public square.

We ought to be doing that. We ought to be voting in elections, being involved in the political process and all of that.

So I don't want to suggest that because the institutional church's mission is very narrow, that Christians as individuals should withdraw from the larger society.

Now… Also, please go ahead. Oh, no. I'll remember what

I was going to say. You can continue. OK. I was also going to mention that there is a doctrine which is held from the

Reformation forward called the doctrine of interposition, which explains that God hasn't just ordained one government, but he's ordained many governments.

He has ordained self -government and family government and church government and then the civil government.

And within civil government, there are local, state or provincial. And God has entrusted to each of his governments certain responsibilities, and each ought to be zealous to protect its responsibilities from encroachment by others.

And so we all support the church to declare to the government when it is transgressing its

God -ordained bounds and to resist at those points.

I'm going to ask—we're going into our midway break momentarily. I'm going to ask you, brother, perhaps you should log out of Microsoft Teams during the break and log back in.

And I have no idea why that's happening. It didn't happen during our previous interview with each other and did not happen during our test earlier today.

So I have no idea why this is happening. So if you could do that, log out and log back in.

During the midway break, which we are now taking, that would be helpful. Hopefully that's going to resolve the issues we've been facing.

But folks, please be patient with us because the midway break is always a little longer than the other breaks in the show.

Because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the

FCC requires of them to localize Iron Trip and Zion Radio geographically to Lake City, Florida, where the radio station is located.

They do so with their own public service announcements and other local things that they air in the middle of the show, while we, on the other hand, simultaneously air our globally heard commercials.

Please use this time wisely. Respond to as many of our advertisers as you can because they and their finances are what keep

Iron Trip and Zion Radio on the air. And also send in your questions to Dr.

Brandon James Crawford, to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence, and all of you who have already submitted questions, please be patient with me as we will try to get to your questions as soon as possible.

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

It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners from all over the world.

Here's Joe Riley, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,

Dr. Joe Morecraft. I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener here in a tie in County Kildare, Ireland, going back to 2005.

One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Morecraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

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In the film Chariots of Fire, Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt

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Before I return to my conversation with Dr. Brandon James Crawford and his book

Let Men Be Free, A Christian Vision for Ordered Liberty, let me just remind you, folks, if you love this show and you don't want it to go off the air, please go to IronSharpensIronRadio .com,

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So send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line.

Please never forget, folks, I never want an Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener to give less money to the church where they are a member on the

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The Bible is very clear that we are primarily to use the money with which God has blessed us, which is still

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Go to IronSharpensIronRadio .com, click support, then click click to donate now.

Last but not least, if you are not a member of a biblically faithful, Christ -honoring, theologically sound, doctrinally solid church like Grace Baptist Church of Marshall, Michigan, I have extensive lists of biblically faithful churches spanning the entire globe, and I've helped many people in the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience all over the planet Earth find churches that are biblically faithful, sometimes even just a couple of minutes from where they live.

And if you are spiritually homeless, as it were, I may be able to help you too, no matter where on the planet

Earth you live. Send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line.

That's also the email address where you can send in a question to my guest,

Dr. Brandon James Crawford. That is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence.

We do have prudence in Nixa, Missouri, who has a question for you,

Pastor Brandon. And prudence says, I've heard from various sources that one of the problems with Christian nationalism is that there are some who are truly guilty of the sin of racism in their midst.

But I must hasten to add that not all of them and perhaps most of them are not in any way, shape or form guilty of that sin.

What are your thoughts and discoveries on this? So I have not seen that to be a widespread problem among people who identify as Christian nationalists.

But there there are some isolated statements that have been concerning to me.

One in particular comes from Stephen Wolf at the end of his book,

The Case for Christian Nationalism. He makes the statement that we need to be more ethnocentric.

And that's generated a lot of controversy. It sounds like a racist statement.

Now, Doug Wilson has clarified on Stephen Wolf's behalf that he was not referring to, say,

Caucasians or Hispanics or African -Americans, but that American itself is its own ethnicity.

And he was simply saying we need to be more focused on on our own nation and its people before being concerned about other nations and peoples.

But I'm not I'm not sure that I fully buy that explanation.

And, yeah, there are some some isolated statements like that that are concerning to me.

Obviously, American is not an ethnicity. Yeah, that's right. But that that is what

Doug Wilson said about Stephen Wolf's comment that we need to be more ethnocentric. And it sounds like you you're struggling with that explanation as well.

Yes, I am. Actually, there is no reason why Christians need to feed into the slanderous suspicions of those who hate

Christ, his word and his church by giving them ammunition to be convinced that we are really racist.

And by the way, I don't even like that term because I think that using the term races itself is an unwitting acquiescence to the to the understanding that there are races of people.

And I don't believe that there's one race, the human race. Or if you want to say

Adam's race and, of course, the new creations in Christ. But I don't

I don't even like referring to people as being in a race. But anyway, but thank you,

Prudence. Please give us your full mailing address in Nixa, Missouri, because you have won a free copy of Let Men Be Free, a

Christian vision for ordered liberty. And that is compliments of G3 Press.

And by the way, folks, if you want to find out more about G3 Press and all of the titles they author, including getting more details on this specific volume, go to G3men .org,

G3men .org, which stands for G3 Ministries. G3men .org and click on press at the top of the page and you'll have all the information that you need.

And by the way, if you are listening to this broadcast today, especially if you are listening and perhaps you're driving or you are listening to a recording of this show from the podcast or archive, and there's no way for you to obviously respond in that case or in those cases, you can still purchase the book at a discount.

G3 Press is very generously offered Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners a 25 percent discount off retail prices for this book.

And the code that you need to type in is my last name, Arnzen, A -R -N -Z -E -N,

A -R -N -Z -E -N. And God willing, we'll be repeating that later on in the program.

We also have a listener who has submitted a number of questions, and we can't take the time to read all of his questions, even though they all look fantastic.

I think they want a stack of free books. That could be the motive.

I'm not sure. And I just was looking at that email and it seems to have slipped by me.

Where is that email that I was looking at? But, well,

I'm going to repeat our email address while I am searching for this email. If you want to join the conversation,

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least. Your city, state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. And I just found our question today.

Ian from Sarnia or Sarnia, Ontario, Canada.

Let me read the last two questions that Ian provides for us.

Do you believe the concept of ordered liberty is inherently tied in with the

Noahic covenant via the establishment of human government? And does this overlap at all with the thinking of David Van Drunen with regard to natural law?

And when you come around to answering that second part of the question, perhaps you could explain who

David Van Drunen is. Okay. So I've never considered connecting the

Noahic covenant to the term I'm using here of ordered liberty.

But the concept itself simply speaks of a system of governance that has reconciled the demands of public order and personal freedom.

And in my book, I use the term biblically ordered liberty because I'm calling for a polity in which church and state are regulated and relating to one another in ways prescribed by scripture.

So specifically, I'm advocating for a system in which the free church is fulfilling her mandate to make disciples, while a free state is fulfilling its mandate to secure the basic rights of its citizens,

Christians and non -Christians alike. And I see this as the biblical ideal for the present age.

Now, I'm not one to appeal much to natural law to establish the proper structures for society.

I prefer to go to the scriptures and to revealed religion to establish that.

But I know there are some that I think Andrew Walker, for example, would put a lot more weight on natural law.

So if you want to see those arguments, you could pursue his writings. Now, I know Stephen Wolfe is a

Thomist. Would he also? That's true as well. He would also focus on natural law. Yes.

Well, thank you very much, Ian. And we may return to some of your other questions later on in the program.

By the way, unfortunately, since you live outside of the 50 United States, we cannot have

CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, ship out to you a free copy of the book we are addressing today.

But as I mentioned earlier, you can purchase it for 25 % off retail by going to G3men .org,

click on press, and use the promo code or the discount coupon code

ARNZEN, my last name, A -R -N -Z -E -N. And thank you so much for taking the time to write such excellent questions.

I'd like you, before we go to any additional questions, to continue highlighting those things that are unique to the conversation.

When I say unique, obviously you believe they're biblical and you believe they have a place in especially

Baptist history. But I'm talking about in regard to the contemporary debate over these things, some of the things that you want to emphasize in contrast to what your opponents are saying in writing.

OK, so one more really significant difference would be in our understanding of the

Great Commission. This is the church's mandate given in Matthew 28, verses 19 and 20.

Now, if you read Wilson, Torba, and Isker, and some of these other guys that are on the more aggressive end of Christian nationalism, they will say that the

Great Commission instructs the church to, quote, disciple the nations.

And by that, they mean that it's the church's job to be politically and culturally engaged in such a way that they are aiming to change the structures of society, to change the governance structures of a nation state.

But I argue in the book that they are misunderstanding a couple of things in the

Great Commission. For starters, it does not say disciple the nations.

It says make disciples of the nations. And this is very different.

We are not called to engage with nation states at a structural level so much as we are to preach the gospel to individuals seeking their repentance and faith in Christ.

And we're not instructed to baptize the nations, but rather to baptize the disciples that we make.

Also, particularly, I'm thinking of Torba and Isker here in their book on Christian nationalism.

They seem to confuse the word nation in the Great Commission with modern nation states.

So they write in their book, you know, the Great Commission tells us to disciple the nations.

Well, America is a nation, so we need to disciple America. Well, the word translated nations there is actually the

Greek word ethne. And it's not speaking of nation states, but rather of distinctive ethno linguistic people groups like Jews or Samaritans.

And so the Great Commission is a mandate for the church to go into all of the world's various ethno linguistic people groups to preach the gospel to those peoples, to gather those who respond in repentance and faith, to baptize them, establish local churches.

And those churches then become bases of operations to take the gospel still further. So this is one major difference between what

I'm arguing for and what some Christian nationalists are arguing for.

A church that is an institutional church that is actively trying to change the structures of nation states to bring them into submission to Christ versus a mandate to make individual disciples within the various people groups of the world.

And clearly, that's a very big difference in our understanding of the Great Commission.

OK, we have another listener. We have

Buck in Laramie, Wyoming. And Buck says, are some of the disagreements you have with Christian nationalists rooted in a different chronological order of things that would develop naturally if you are being used of God through evangelism and spreading the gospel?

Hearts and minds are going to change, and citizens of various nations should eventually be used of God to transform even the governments of those nations.

So in one sense, the outcome is the same, but perhaps the chronological order is different.

Am I totally off base here? I appreciate that question.

And some of the differences, say, between my vision for church and state and Doug Wilson's vision is in our ecclesiology.

I'm a Baptist. He's a Presbyterian. And also in our eschatology, I'm premillennial and he is postmillennial.

And so we have a different conception of what the church exactly is, who comprises the church, and then how the kingdom of Christ is going to be established on the earth.

So some of the differences are there. But I certainly believe, and I write about this in the book as well, that if the church is being faithful to its mission of making disciples, if the

Lord should bless the church's efforts with numerical growth, and if the church is being faithful in making sound disciples, then yes, there will be major impacts on society as a whole.

America today continues to be an incredibly blessed nation because a biblical worldview has had such an influence, because there have been so many

Christian peoples to be salt and light in this society.

So absolutely, if the church is fulfilling its mission, it will have society -wide impact.

But it's not the job of the institutional church to try to take the levers of political and cultural power and to try to coerce those changes, say, before disciples are actually being made.

Okay, and by the way, listener, you have also won a free copy of Let Men Be Free, A Christian Vision for Ordered Liberty.

Make sure that you send us your full mailing address so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service can ship that book out to you at no charge to you or to us.

And we want to thank, again, G3 Press for providing not only this limited number of free copies of the book we are giving away to those submitting questions, but also offering others in our audience who cannot win a copy the great discount of 25 % off retail price.

If you order at g3men .org, click on Press, and then use promo code

ARNZEN. By the way,

Brother Brandon, are you aware of a shortcut to go directly to G3 Press' website?

No, I think if you simply go to g3men .org, right there on… Unfortunately, we are back to you cutting out.

Are you there, Brother? Hello, Brother Brandon. You were cutting out for a moment.

Yes, so were you. Okay. If you could explain g3men .org

and… g3men .org, and if you simply scroll down the homepage, you will see my book displayed right there on the homepage.

You can click on that and order. Great, and make sure you use promo code ARNZEN to get 25 % off retail.

Let's see. We have Chickie in Great Falls, Montana, who wants to know, what is the worst case scenario of interpreting

Scripture in the way that you believe Christian nationalists and others who oppose your views are interpreting it?

Worst case scenario? Yeah, I guess the worst results. Yes, the worst possible results.

Well, for starters, I would say that the vision espoused by men like Wilson or Wolfe end up giving to the state powers that God has not given to it in this age.

I would also say that in so doing, they are robbing Christ of powers that he alone is able to wield and that he intends to wield at his coming.

And so I don't think it's a small thing that their system is trying to assume powers to itself or to the state in this age that Christ simply does not want to grant to it.

But if we're looking at worst possible situation, let's say that they are successful in achieving their goal of reuniting church and state.

Well, we will probably end up with a situation like we had in the late Middle Ages, where we had a church hierarchy or a church leadership that was largely unregenerate, that consists of political appointees rather than consisting of men who are biblically qualified for the job.

And over time, if we have a corrupt church, we will have a corrupted gospel. We will end up in a new tyranny.

I think that would be a worst case scenario. Yeah, obviously, any Baptist who heard your description earlier, if you're accurate about Stephen Wolf's vision, he envisions in his dream government, if you will, the mandating of infant baptism.

So those of us who are Baptists can only wonder, what is the outcome of refusing that?

We who are Baptists who know anything about history know that not only the

Roman Catholic Church, but even fellow Protestants who are Paedo -Baptists have, on occasion, very gruesomely tormented, tortured, and murdered

Baptists for refusing to baptize infants.

And so what is—does Stephen Wolf detail what he believes is the methodology that the

Church is supposed to maintain a mandate like that? And also, does

Doug Wilson agree with that level of a theocracy or an ecclesiocracy, might be a better way of putting it, since you're not just talking about God's law, you're talking about a specific church's interpretation of one of the ordinances or sacraments of the church?

So if you could answer both of those. Sure. Yeah. Well, what happens in both of their visions is that the

Church and the state lose their distinctiveness as separate institutions of God.

And what happens is that you end up with a state where everyone—or excuse me, a church where everyone is automatically enrolled at birth, just like the state.

And the Church's mandate begins to blend with the state as well, using the sword to enforce some of the

Church's doctrines. Now, Stephen Wolf has a much more aggressive form than Wilson does.

All Wilson would like to enforce is the Apostles' Creed. Stephen Wolf would want to enforce a much more robust confession of faith.

And in terms of punishing religious dissenters, I'm not exactly sure where Wolf would come down on it, but I know that Wilson in his book,

Mere Christendom, says that he would fine Baptists for refusing to sprinkle their babies at birth.

So at the least, there would be a financial penalty there. And I'm assuming you're cutting out.

And folks, we don't know why this is happening. We apologize for the inconvenience of my guest cutting out, but we are going to be entering into our final break.

And if anybody would like to submit your own question, our email address is chrisarenzen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

And I'm going to ask my guest, Dr. Brandon James Crawford, if you can hear me, to do a repeat of what you did last time, log out of Microsoft Teams and log back in.

So hopefully when you return, we can have the remainder of the program free from the cutting in and cutting out.

Don't go away. We are going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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Sovereign Lord, God, Savior, and King, Jesus Christ, today and always.

I'm Pastor Sule Prince of Oakwood Wesleyan Church in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and the

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor John Sampson of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, and the

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Chuck Volo of New Life Community Church in Kingsville, Maryland, and the

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Steve Herford of East Fort Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, and the

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Roy Owens, Jr. of the

Church in Friendship in Hockley, Texas, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

Here's a great way for your church to help keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. Pastors, are your pew

Bibles tattered and falling apart? Consider restocking your pews with the NASB, and tell the publishers you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Go to nasbible .com, that's nasbible .com to place your order.

I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word, and to enthusiastically proclaim

Christ Jesus the King and His doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.

I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love as I have.

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net,

that's hopereformedli .net, or call 631 -696 -5711, that's 631 -696 -5711.

Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.

Here's Joe Riley, a listener in Ireland, who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,

Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland, going back to 2005.

One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio,

Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, are largely to thank, since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.

Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards, and Dr.

Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight -volume commentary on the larger catechism. Heritage is a member of the

Hanover Presbytery, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great

Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers, scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone,

Christ alone, and God's glory alone. Their primary goal is the worship of the Triune God that continues in eternity.

For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com.

That's HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com. Or call 678 -954 -7831.

That's 678 -954 -7831. If you visit, tell them

Joe O 'Reilly, an Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener, and a tie in County Kildare, Ireland, sent you.

Greetings, this is Brian McLaughlin, President of the SecureComm Group and supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron radio program.

SecureComm provides the highest level of security systems for residential buildings, municipalities, churches, commercial properties, and much more.

We can be reached at SecureCommGroup .com.

That's SecureCommGroup .com. But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor,

Doug McMasters, of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.

In the film, Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner, Eric Liddell, remarked that he felt

God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.

I sensed that same God -given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.

That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a Savior who died for sinners.

And that God forgives all who come to Him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the

Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.

That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.

That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word, and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

Chris Arnzen here. I am forever grateful to Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service for their generous financial support of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

But that's not the only reason I love them. CVBBS .com carries the finest in theologically reformed literature from 16th century classics like Calvin's Institutes, 17th and 18th century

Puritan treasures like the works of Jonathan Edwards, 19th century volumes by the

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Sproul, Steve Lawson, Votie Baucom, and more. On top of their stellar book selection,

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IRON. That's CVBBS .com, enriching minds and maintaining the theologically reformed influence of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio through their financial support.

Now shipping worldwide. And folks, don't forget that this program is also paid for in part by the law firm of Buttafuoco and Associates.

If you are the victim of a very serious personal injury or medical malpractice, please call my very dear longtime friend

Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, at 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, or visit his website, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com,

1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com. Call that number no matter which of the 50 states in which you live.

All 50 states are qualified. That's 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, or visit the website, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com.

Please tell Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, that you heard about his law firm, Buttafuoco and Associates, from Chris Aronson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And now we are back with Dr. Brandon James Crawford discussing his book,

Let Men Be Free, A Christian Vision for Ordered Liberty. And we have

Quintina, who is located in East Islet, Long Island.

And Quintina asks, I don't know if you've already mentioned this, but it seems that one of the most troubling results that could occur if a vision of the aforementioned

Christian nationalism was accomplished was a heightened percentage of false converts in the body of Christ because people are going to become

Christians in name only primarily out of fear. I think that's a good question.

Yeah, and I think it's a good assessment of the worst case scenario. It would be a return to a late medieval

Europe where the true Church of Christ was a persecuted minority and it was being persecuted by the corrupted church.

There is a real risk when you join church and state and you mandate first baptism into church and then you mandate the affirmation of sound doctrine and you mandate regular church attendance and things like this, that you will have an entire generation who are raised under these circumstances and they never experienced the true birth.

And then as they grow up and they take positions of ecclesiastical leadership, you now have the

Church of Christ being led by pastors who are unregenerate.

And it's only a matter of time before the true

Church of Christ again finds itself in the position that it was in just prior to the Reformation.

And we certainly don't want to see that occur. Amen. And just out of curiosity, is

Stephen Wolfe a professing Calvinist? Because I don't assume that he is saying that these professions that would come in because of a mandating of Christian beliefs, even in Doug Wilson's minimal view of the

Apostles' Creed, I'm assuming that they don't believe this would deem those people genuine, regenerate members of the body of Christ, would they?

I mean, that seems to defy, it doesn't seem to, it does defy the core of the doctrines of sovereign grace.

Sure. And neither one of them would say that everyone who is a part of the

Church in this scheme would be regenerate. But in Wolfe's case, he believes that the civil government has the responsibility to curtail or to punish anything that could potentially or actually cause harm to citizens.

And in his view, false doctrine is a potential or a real harm to a nation's citizens, and therefore the government needs to suppress it using the power of the sword if necessary.

So he says that no, regeneration is a matter between the individual and God, and you must come to personally receive in repentant faith.

The gospel to be saved. But he would also deny the right of people to articulate beliefs that would run contrary to the doctrines established by the state in consultation with the church.

And there would be no option except to go to a church that was approved by this state apparatus.

It almost seems like an effort to create a

Protestant papacy. Yeah, it's not too far from that.

Not at all. Oh, by the way, Quentin, go ahead. I'm sorry. And not only does that violate the right of conscience and the freedoms of speech and peaceable assembly, but it also gives the state powers that Christ does not give it in this age.

Now, after Christ returns and establishes his kingdom, there will be a holy theocracy and the government and the church will be wed together, but it will be ruled by a perfect man and all will be glorious.

But we don't want to give those kinds of powers to the state in this time before Christ comes when it would be ruled by sinful men.

It's simply a recipe for disaster. Quentin, you've also won a free copy of Let Men Be Free, so please make sure you provide for us your full mailing address so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

can ship that book out to you. And also, we want to make sure we thank once again our friends at G3 Press for providing our listeners with a limited number of free copies.

And I'll try to squeeze one more question in here. Let's see.

We have Gabriela in Newmanstown, Pennsylvania.

And Gabriela says, I somewhat said something similar to that in the beginning of the show today that, you know, leftists often think they're getting away with saying that they're not imposing their religious views upon the society like so -called

Christians are doing. But they really do, I believe, have a theocratic concept of ruling not only this nation but the world.

But it is a false religion that they have even if they don't acknowledge it as a religion.

I'm assuming that may be a part of what the listener is saying, but do you have your own thoughts on that? Yes. Well, I fully concur that secularism is not neutral.

It is a distinctive worldview. And a secularist government is a government that believes it is

God. It believes there is no God above. Therefore, they are the highest authority.

And the trouble with a secular government that thinks it's God is that it always leads to tyranny, to the violation of human dignity, human conscience, of the rights of free speech and peaceable assembly.

A secularist government will do the kinds of things they're doing right now, redefining marriage, enslaving the unborn by giving their parents the right to end their lives on demand.

Secularism, militant secularism particularly, as we're dealing with in our day today, is the enemy of civil society.

It's no friend to it. What we need is a government that recognizes its divinely ordained role and is willing to limit itself to its divine role.

And we need a church that is understanding its divine role and that it is very eager to practice and to execute its mandate from God.

When we have that in place, then we're in a position where the society can flourish.

We can have stability, but we can also have freedom, and that's the only way.

And we are out of time. I want to repeat some important websites. First of all,

Grace Baptist Church of Marshall, Michigan can be found at gracebaptismarshall .com.

And don't forget, you can purchase the book that we have been addressing, Let Men Be Free, from G3 Press.

Go to g3men .org and scroll down until you see the

Let Men Be Free being offered. And if you enter the promo code or the discount coupon code

ARNZEN, my last name, A -R -N -Z -E -N, you will get 25 % off the retail price.

I want to thank you, Dr. Crawford, for being such an exquisite guest. I look forward to your return to the show.

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater