Keep sharing good news without ads.
No description available
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 Arntzen.
Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity who are living on the planet Earth, listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 19th day of July 2016, and I thank you for your patience, those of you listening who are wondering why we did not begin at four o 'clock sharp.
That is still a mystery to me. We were having a problem connecting with the main radio network in Texas, but we eventually did connect. You may have even heard me saying things in frustration that before I even knew that we were on the air and being recorded, but anyway, glad that vulgarity is no longer a typical habit of mine, but thank you for being patient with us and sticking around until we made contact and have begun broadcasting today, and I am looking forward again to our interview with David Innes.
David Innes, who we have interviewed on the past on Iron Sharpens Iron, is going to discuss today faith and politics when Christ's church radically divides over candidates or abstains from voting, and David Innes is the chair of the program in politics, philosophy, and economics and associate professor of politics at the King's College in New York City.
He is the author, or the co-author I should say, of the book Left, Right, and Christ, Evangelical Faith and Politics, and he's got a new book coming out very shortly, God willing, at the same time that Left, Right, and Christ is being re-released.
So it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr. David Innes. Yes, and the pleasure is all ours, and let me on air introduce you to my co-host, Reverend Buzz Taylor. And we meet once again.
And unfortunately for me, the Presbyterians once again are outnumbering the Reformed Baptists here.
Get used to it.
Well, according to my scheme of post-millennialism, that's not going to happen. True. But anyway, before I even go into our subject at hand, Dr. Innes, please let our listeners know something about the King's College in New York City, especially for those of our listeners who did not have the privilege of hearing you last time, or anybody else from the King's College that I've interviewed in the past.
Let our listeners know about the King's.
College. Yes, and I am looking forward to my interview with Greg Thornberry, the current.
President. We had scheduled an interview in the past, and something came up on my end where I had to postpone it. So we're still working on getting him rescheduled, and I'm looking forward to that, especially since I've known his father, John Thornberry, a Reformed Baptist church historian.
I've known him since probably 1990, and has been a dear friend of mine, and has written a number of books that I've interviewed him on. So I'm looking forward to interviewing his son, Greg. And this is obviously a very timely subject that we are discussing.
It would be timely no matter when we addressed it in reality, but the fact that we are entering into the presidential race head-on between the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, and the Democratic Party candidate, Hillary Clinton, and last night began the Republican National Convention in Ohio.
And before we get in any further into the divide amongst Christians over this political race, what were your thoughts on what occurred last night in regard to the speeches and so on?
...who lost the African was Jamil, and then the mother helped onto the stage by speaking from the heart of a mother who lost her son. They lied to her and then called her a liar. And oh, again, it was very powerful.
And these are ordinary people. So that was, I thought, well done. Of course, the Democrats. At the Democratic Convention, you will have similar...
Yes. And so what did you actually think of what Donald Trump had to say and his wife, Melania?
He didn't really say anything. He introduced his wife. His walk-on was very impressive with the light behind him. Somebody was doing something right. Melania's speech, I thought, was a very good speech.
I mean, again, like the others she's addressing at a convent, giving speeches to large crowds. That's not easy to do. It's easy to get rattled. You could see the two Benghazi special ops guys. You could see how difficult it was.
They were nervous on stage. She did herself well. Canada, for example, I would point out, as one myself. She is from Slovenia. And I thought it was a very well-delivered speech. And it was only the next day I learned that some of the lines seems obvious to anyone who looks at it taken from somebody else's speech.
And then you learn that somebody else's Michelle jaw dropped. So that's the story today, instead of what a wonderful speech she made. And it was a wonderful speech. The story, sadly, is who is responsible for this?
And why isn't so-and-so being fired, whoever it is? So a political campaign is an extremely complex and delicate thing. And it really needs a lot of ingenious in making up for it, on the other hand.
Now, I may have missed something that you said, because I was looking at the monitor to make sure that we were still back on the air. But did you say that Melania's speech was plagiarized.
From Michelle Obama? Or sounds like? The campaign manager said, oh, well, they're common. If I passed off my own novel, would it be a defense to say, well, all these words are common words? They're all in the dictionary.
You don't have access to that. Well, no, it's the order of the words, the grouping of.
Them. Well, how identical was it? See, I didn't hear the news this morning, because I've been busily attending to other vital matters in my life. So I didn't even hear the news this morning.
I saw a five-term paper. I would fail the paper. Wow. Yeah. Here on the internet, conventions served by someone, and that has become, even if she did it herself, somebody in the campaign should have caught it.
Yeah. It is the fault of somebody in the campaign. But, you know, that's what happens when you're an outsider and you don't have, you're bringing with you from a governor's office or a life in politics.
I mean, there's a downside to that. This is the downside to being a complete outsider.
So there you go. Well, let me quickly announce our email address for those of you listening who would like to join us on the air with a question. It could be in regard to anything in the realm of Christianity and politics.
It doesn't necessarily have to be specifically on a thing that we are discussing at the time. It can be just under the general umbrella of Christian politics. And our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
Chrisarnson at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Now, when you were saying stinginess, are you talking about the fact that they don't seem to be spending the time and money on the necessary resources and teamwork to make sure things like that don't happen, and like Melania duplicating a speech?
Or what did you mean by.
That stinginess? At this point, half of the affiliates of the Old Scottish, I am afraid, don't care. Which apparently Scots are tempted to do. And his mother was Scottish. Let's not forget that. This is all coming together now.
Okay. Let's see. We have a listener. We have Pastor Bruce in Farmingville, Long Island. He asks, given the overtly biblically-based platform the National Republican Committee just approved in Cleveland, Ohio, isn't it time to support Donald Trump as the standard bearer for the party?
If not, what is the standard for a nominee that has such a godly mission statement guiding his party? Also, if Donald Trump offers a mea culpa in his acceptance speech for prior foolishness, would that make him acceptable?
Okay. The Democrats next week will come up with a party platform that will look like it was written by Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders endorsed her the other day. Bernie Sanders. He says, vote for this woman because she believes, and they just went through everything that he'd been campaigning on for the last six months, and she's nodding the whole way through.
So, whether she's nodding at what Bernie's platform says, Vladimir Lenin was a great guy, we believe everything he said, and that's our platform. He doesn't have to do any of that, and I wouldn't be surprised if she departed in a number of ways.
I think a godly platform, an arguably godly platform, is better than the opposite. Candidacy is a largely separate question. I think the platform, given the influence on the platform, I think that's one reason.
Take a chance with Trump, but there are other reasons for, and there are reasons against, and we can get into that when you want. I hope that's helpful.
Yeah. We also have Pastor Mark in Merrick, Long Island, New York, who asks, after picking Governor Pence for his vice president, and obviously surrounding himself with some conservative influences, Carson, Walker, etc., do you think that more Christians would be inclined to vote for Trump, or will that not make a difference?
Also, I want your thoughts on the lesser or two evils philosophy.
In effect, yes, what you really meant to say was the Romney non-election, not the Romney election. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, the Romney nomination. So that was a tough moment in his life. But now it's even worse.
Christians are really divided over this man, this man who doesn't think he needs to repent of anything. If he needs God's forgiveness, he'll let God know, this sort of thing. They've been stated quite eloquently on the internet and on publications like First Things and National Review and so forth.
His narcissism, his materialism, his philosophy of life, and he's going to make America great by bringing us into that grabbing. The whole country's going to grab, and America's going to be great again.
He said this after his Nevada win in the primaries. He said exactly that. You go down the list, the way he speaks of people in public. The Democrats just ran a commercial today where it's got little kids with their precious faces looking at the television.
There's Donald Trump saying these very crude things, not people around him, but a candidate who takes our concerns seriously. As I think you mentioned, an administration is not just the president. He's obviously a big part of it, but there's the people around the president.
He seems to be, there seems to be good people around him. There's the effect the president has on the Supreme Court. Hillary Clinton, radicals who care nothing about the Constitution and everything about the cutting edge of Enlightenment thought, whereas Donald Trump probably will, a conservative Constitution-respecting jurist.
So there's the effect on the Supreme Court, and that has effects, particularly at this time at the divided court, for one, two generations to come. There's the effect on Congress, having a conservative or more conservative than the other party people in Congress.
The corresponding president of the White House is a whole lot better than divided government so far, particularly when Barack Obama has set the precedent of legislating from the executive branch, saying, well, if Congress won't go along with me, I'll just do it on my own.
So there's the effect on that. There's the effect on peace in the streets. Trump seems to be somebody who will be more effective against the terrorist threat. He succeeds or not is another matter, but should be more effective.
So there's all these considerations. So it's reasonable to think that a Christian person would vote for Donald Trump because he is more promising on these fronts, and he is not a criminal. He is not a traitor.
The other candidate is a temptation, particularly in this election. It was true in the last election, but also in this election for Christians to judge each other. How can you possibly, how can you possibly support this man?
How can you possibly not support this man, given the alternative? And they turn on each other and treat really compromised Christians, and I don't know what you will say to your Lord on Judgment Day. We have to resist that.
There are incredible arguments on both sides of this, and these matters are difficult to figure out. We all know this. I am among the perplexed. It's not clear to me, and I get paid to think about these things.
So yes, and it's what makes it obviously the whole thing more of a difficult decision to make is that most politicians either straight out lie or exaggerate. And Donald Trump, you would think that if he is elected, if he was being truthful about everything he says, he would be ushering in the millennium, really.
I mean, the promises that he makes, but even I used to scratch my head even listening to Ted Cruz, and of course these are kinds of promises that nearly every politician makes, but Ted Cruz would repeatedly promise that he was going to bring an end to ISIS, and Donald Trump is obviously saying that too.
How could you make a promise like that? You can't. But what are we to do with going back to the lesser of two evils? I mean, do Christians who say that to violate your conscience by choosing either evil is a sin, do they have a legitimate case there and say that if we really think that both candidates are evil, that voting for either of them would be indeed sin just because we want to have a pragmatic approach to seeing somebody elected that we favor over the other in some fashion?
I mean, are we not still sinning by voting for somebody that we are knowingly pulling a lever for an evil person?
Yeah, it's kind of like, and at that point you start saying, well, this one is, what a privilege. Look at, we've been looking at France in the news, we've been looking at Turkey in the news, and maybe you've noticed Nigeria, Jonathan turfed out, and the Muslim president came, and I don't know anything about him, but this is the world most people live in, and historically, virtually everyone has lived in this kind of world.
What a privilege that we've been living in a country where we can say, I'm not voting for the lesser of two evils because they're both evil. Well, hello, that's what most people have always had to choose between, evil, a more evil and less evil candidate.
And isn't it great to be able to have a popular influence, be part of a popular influence in one or the other, and thus have some sort of popular restraining effect on one or the other? So, and in America, this has been a largely Christian country, but it's less and less a Christian country.
We've all noticed this. This may be the future. People saying, well, I'm going to sit this one out because voting for the lesser two evils is still voting for an evil, thinking that maybe next time there won't be evil.
They may look two or three elections down the road and go, well, I thought things were bad in 2016. I don't think things are going to change. It's been four elections now. This may be what we're looking at for the future.
So Christians, what are we going to do? And there's an argument for saying, if you want, are acting as a block. I'm actually on record. Is it going to happen? Is it sort of five people, 50 ,000 people pulling back and saying, let's all do this.
This will work. Knowing full well that most people are going to do this or that and not what they're doing. So, but a citizen responsibility, and I can advance this candidate or that candidate. I can limit the evil in this way or I can advance it.
It's kind of what, maybe it's like abortion voting in Congress. You voted for a bill that supported abortion. Yeah, I did, but it limited abortion. It's a step. People in the anti-abortion, the pro-life world understand how incremental voting, incremental policy advances.
And I'm never voting for anything except this entire feeling of righteousness and babies are dying. So perhaps it's like that, but I'm not saying we have to go to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question.
Of your own, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Don't go away. We're going to be right back with David Innes.
Thriving Financial is not your typical financial services provider. As a membership organization, we help Christians be wise with money and live generously every day. And for the fourth year in a row, we were named one of the world's most ethical companies by the Ethisphere Institute, a leading international think tank dedicated to the creation, advancement, and sharing of best practices in business ethics.
Contact me, Mike Gallagher, financial consultant at 717 -254 -6433. Again, 717 -254 -6433 to learn more about the thriving difference. Finances and generosity.
That's The Thriving Story. Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is sponsored by Harvey Cedars, a year-round Bible conference and retreat center nestled on the Jersey Shore. Harvey Cedars offers a wide range of accommodations to suit groups up to 400.
For generations, Christians have enjoyed gathering and growing at Harvey Cedars. Each year, thousands of high school and college students come and learn more about God's word. An additional 9 ,000 come annually to Harvey Cedars as families, couples, singles, men, women, pastors, seniors, and missionaries.
90 miles from New York City, 70 miles from Philly, and 95 miles from Wilmington, and easily accessible, scores of notable Christian groups frequently plan conferences at Harvey Cedars, like The Navigators, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Campus Crusade, and the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.
Find Harvey Cedars on Facebook or at hcbible .org. Hcbible .org. Call 609 -494 -5689. 609 -494 -5689. Harvey Cedars, where Christ finds people and changes lives. Welcome back. This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is Dr. David Innes, who is on the faculty of the King's College in New York City, and we are discussing faith and politics.
Before we return to that discussion, one of our sponsors has an event that they want to invite you to, the Fellowship Conference New England. That is going to be held this August, the 4th through the 6th, at the Deering Center Community Church in Portland, Maine, and among the speakers are Jesse Barrington, Charles Leiter, Mike Durham, and a very dear friend of mine, Pastor Mack Tomlinson of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, who has been a guest a number of times on Iron Sharpens Iron, and this is going to be a wonderful time of not only hearing the Word of God preached by some powerfully gifted men, but it's also going to be a lot of time for fellowship and worship and singing and just an all-around wonderful time, and we hope that you could take advantage of it, especially if you live in or near Maine or have the means to get there by plane, train, or automobile.
For more information on this conference, go to fellowshipconferencenewengland .com. That's fellowshipconferencenewengland .com. And once again, if you have any questions for our guest, Dr. David Ennis, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
Chrisarnson at gmail .com. We have Bracey in Dix Hills, Long Island, New York, who says, you are on record for exhorting Christians to stay out of the elections during this election cycle, according to The Guardian.
So I want to know, are you concerned that your opinion as a Christian politics professor will influence many Christians to take a course of action, i .e. do not vote, that has the least impact on society against the forces of evil?
Scandal, and FBI Director James Comey and his presentation, and you think this woman can, and what's the alternative? The alternative is Donald Trump. And then you start weighing, okay, well, which one is better than the other?
What is the effect of just sitting out? Now, of course, sitting out in a swing state is not the same as swinging out in Wyoming or Vermont. The effect of one sitting out is different in different states.
What I mean when I say, you may come to a conclusion as to what the right thing is, but it's vastly complicated. And to judge one's fellow believers for not coming to the same practice you do, though you may agree on simplifying the situation, so it may be like, I don't know, Christian schooling.
Do I dare mention that? That chooses this form of schooling because of their situation and the needs of their children and so forth. And this one chooses that alternative because of their situation, which is, our situation is very complicated, and it's tempting to judge one another.
And in some cases, maybe that's justified, I don't know. But this is even more complicated. This is very complicated. As I mentioned, the Supreme Court, Congress, the role of the administration, the alternative, Hillary Clinton, and how you weigh these factors about Donald Trump.
There are a lot of people who are saying that the public Trump is not the real Trump. You know, well, then why is the public Trump there? On the other hand, these people speak well of him. Obviously, Mike Pence is supporting him, okay?
Mike had to be comforted. He was going to get the nomination. Conservative principle. He is making tactical judgments. Some people accuse him of selling out. But he's more likely thinking, I am not sitting in my base.
How am I going to maximize the good for the American people? So he's making his judgment. I'm sharing with you today the complexity as I see it at this point. The complexity may look different in four weeks.
But at this point, this is the complexity as I see it. And that is politics. I teach my students that politics is not, they pull you in different directions. And you can't just choose one or the other.
That's what makes it attention, all of those things. And when you think it's all simple, you're deceiving yourself and others, because that's the way it is in a fallen world. So I try to, why? This is what you tell young, passionate people.
Be wise. The world is more complicated. This is what you see in the book of Proverbs. The world is complicated. Do not answer a fool in his folly. And then the next verse says, do not answer a fool. It depends on the context.
It requires prudence. It requires wisdom. So what is wisdom? In this election with all its baffling perplexity, for me to say wisdom is this, I think would be presumptuous and oversimplifying. That's why I'm trying to show.
Arguments on both sides. Well, I want to give our listeners a bit of a surprise today. I'm interviewing one of the candidates for president of the United States. And I'm going to give you a couple of hints.
One of the names, one of his names begins with a D. And another hint to this would be the word castle. And I want to let you have a few seconds to try to figure that out. No, it's not Donald Trump who used to own Trump castle.
It is Daryl's castle, who is the constitution party candidate. I'm interviewing him on August 2nd. And then the following day on August 3rd, I'm interviewing Tom Hoefling, who is the America's party candidate for president.
And obviously, most of the citizens of this country probably never heard of either of them. But I'm interviewing them because just to hear what candidates for the presidency that the media is going to be ignoring completely, have to say why they are even running, knowing that it is certain, barring some kind of modern day miracle that parallels the parting of the Red Sea, how they would possibly be elected president, and what they think is missing in the Republican Party and its candidate that would compel them to run.
Both of these candidates are a conservative, claim to be Christian, have biblical morality as a part of the very makeup of their fabric of life and so on. So you might want to mark your calendars down for those two dates, August 2nd and August 3rd, if you'd like to ask them questions.
And Daryl Castle is probably the more well known of the two. Do you know anything about either of these candidates,.
Dr. Innes? Okay, well, that's obvious. That has not crossed my radar. Okay, well,.
That is obviously just an independent conservative party that this Christian individual is running under. But Daryl Castle, I'm assuming you may have heard of Daryl Castle. I looked him up on.
His website. The only thing that struck me about him is that he talks about the other candidates, talk something like that. And they have to, that you have the wisdom to that you're the guy to follow.
And that requires a rhetorical gift. We've seen candidates who just couldn't speak their way out of a paper bag, if that makes any sense. And you think, well, that guy would be a great candidate. He doesn't know how to connect.
And so that is important in not just getting elected,.
But getting things done once elected. Yeah, I do know that George Grant, who you may be familiar with, who I interviewed recently, a Presbyterian theologian, he knows Daryl Castle personally and thinks the world of him, although he doesn't think that Daryl has a chance, obviously, to win the election.
And I'm not even saying that Dr. Grant is voting for him, because I don't know if he made that clear either. He just happens to know him personally. And Dr. Grant was actually one of the key figures involved in founding the Constitution Party,.
Along with Howard Phillips and so on. I can't tell if they double their party. No, no, maybe There's an argument for that,.
Despite the fact that he's not going to win. Right. If you could be clearer about that, because obviously the folks that I know that have made it very obvious that they're voting for Trump, either regrettably, either that they're acquiescing to the fact that he is the lesser of two evils, or there are some that I know that are really excited about Donald Trump.
But the common response to voting for an independent party candidate is that you are insane, you are wasting your vote, you're voting for Hillary Clinton, you are voting for abortion to become more rampant in this country, you are voting for homosexuality to be entered into more spheres of life than it is even now, and you're giving them more power, the homosexual rights activists, and the feminists, and the leftists, and you are really opening the gates for illegal aliens to come flooding in here and doing all kinds of atrocious things in regard to not only crime and murder in local areas, but nationwide terrorist acts.
So that's basically what you hear when people say that you may vote just because of your conscience being bothered by voting for either Trump or, obviously, Hillary. Any kind of indication that you may not vote for Trump, you're almost on the level of being a traitor, is what I'm saying.
So where would there be any value for somebody voting, in your opinion, for either a Daryl Castle, or a Tom Hoefling, or for.
Nobody? I was, what can I add? Well, I'll try. I was surprised. Let me back up a little bit. I don't think that he's an independent, not even a democrat, who wouldn't support Hillary Clinton, but he did.
So in this country, they just don't know. Or maybe there's just a, people are afraid to say anything about, you know, a young Arab male, and so they see something suspicious in this guy Mateen's garage going on, but they don't want a profile.
They don't want to be politically incorrect, so they don't say anything. And then that guy and his wife shoot up a workplace. And maybe that involves one of your loved ones. It makes a difference. So there are greater and lesser evils in this world.
And so... Bill, my question actually... I could say, listen, I mean, I wouldn't say it. I wouldn't say to one of my friends, it's your fault, you have blood on your hands, third party candidate. I live in New York, right?
Whether my friend does or does not vote this way or that way, I don't think it's going to make any difference. I'm not going to lay that on my friend. Now, if I was in Ohio, even then, I love my friends too much.
People have to... I just made a case for...
Right, right. That's exactly... My question was actually, is there value at all in voting for an independent party candidate that is going to be a certain loser? But if you could... You want me to make the argument?
Voting for an independent party candidate. Yeah, but you have to do that after the break, though. We have to go to a break right now. And if you would like to join us on the air as well, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA. And I'm especially looking forward to hearing from actually those from overseas who from time to time chime in on this program because I'm dying to hear about what some of our overseas listeners think about what's happening here in our race, our presidential election here.
And so I would love to hear from you at chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. And by the way, I forgot to mention this earlier. We had a couple of first time emails from a couple of listeners that would be Bracey.
And I think there was one other first time listener today that sent in an email, but you are getting a free copy of the New American Standard Bible complements of the publishers of the New American Standard Bible who have been sponsoring this program since it first went on the air in 2006.
And we thank the publishers of the NASB for helping Iron Sharpens Iron to remain on the air. So we're going to need your full mailing addresses to get those free Bibles out to you. Anyway, we're going to be right back with Dr. David Ennis and more of our discussion on faith and politics after these messages.
So don't go to the church at Galatia.
For my now seeking the approval of man, or of God, or am I trying to please man, if I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.
We are a Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.
That's not the best recipe for popularity. But since that wasn't the apostles priority, it must not be ours either. We believe by God's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.
If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship. You can call us at 508 -528 -5750. That's 508 -528 -5750. Or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our TV program entitled Resting in Grace.
You can find us at providencebaptistchurchma .org. That's providencebaptistchurchma .org. Or even on sermonaudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read. He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.
You need to read. Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the Prince of Preachers to heart. The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future, and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.
Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God-centered, Christ-exalting books for all ages. We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid-ground-books .com. That's solid-ground-books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past to present you can unearth from Solid Ground.
Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Linbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue in Linbrook, Long Island is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century.
Our church is far more than a Sunday worship service.
It's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant. It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement. It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people in healing.
We're a diverse family of all ages enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ in fellowship, play, and together. Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman and I invite you to come and join us here at Linbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.
Call Linbrook Baptist at.
516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402 or visit linbrookbaptist .org. That's linbrookbaptist .org.
Welcome back. This is Chris Orrins and if you just tuned us in for the full two hours today, we are having as our guest Dr. David Ennis who's on the faculty at the King's College in New York City. We're talking about faith and politics and in a minute we're going to be hearing more about his books, Left, Right, and Christ, Evangelical Faith and Politics, which is coming out in a new edition very shortly, God willing, and also another book that he has written and we will find out as I said in a moment about that.
But if you could address any pros or benefits to a Christian saying, I know he's going to lose, but I'm pulling that lever for Daryl Castle or Tom Hoefling or any other conservative Bible-believing man of principle, even when it is going to be a certain loss barring a modern-day miracle that parallels the parting of the Red Sea.
If you could, why on earth would somebody do that? And in essence, as people very often say, that means that they're just pulling the lever for Hillary Clinton. And there are maybe people who want to pull the lever for Hillary Clinton for completely.
Different reasons, but I'm talking about in the voting book. I don't understand it, but there you go. Yeah, that's what you think, Chris. Well, you know, there's no truth on it. Should I not marry him?
Decisions in life, should I buy this house? Should I not buy this house? The decisions aren't always clear. And why should politics be different? Which is more complicated. Why should it be any different?
But is there an argument for somebody voting for a third-party candidate who would be compromising? I am not going to vote for one of these two candidates, because clearly neither one of those candidates is interested in the mind of God on any measure.
How would you address the.
Argument that, well, the president really doesn't have a whole lot to say about the social issues.
Today anyway? In fact, there's a listener who has a question that really goes hand-in-hand with that. Bob in Great Neck, Long Island, says, isn't it true that the best way for improvement to be made in this nation is really for the masses in the population who are citizens here to frighten the president to make decisions that are in their best interest?
For instance, if the president thinks he's going to lose the support of his constituency in certain areas, that will be a better way of securing what we need to have accomplished in this country, rather than thinking that the person himself is really in power.
I don't know if that.
Was clear enough for you. Right. This is what evangelical leaders were trying to do early on in the primaries. People like Russell Moore, leaders in World Magazine, they did a survey of evangelical leaders and found that in favor of Donald Trump, most of them seemed to be in favor of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, mostly Marco Rubio, I think.
But ordinary people were a different story. There was a real disconnect between the leaders and those they were leading. As far as what? Evangelicals were not behind Donald Trump in the primaries. But that didn't seem to scare him at all.
And the same with conservatives. All of them were, and maybe still are, against Trump. It didn't bother him at all. Okay, well, that didn't work. At Coolidge's, the executive branch of it has expanded in every direction.
Do you know that the executive branch has absorbed legislative responsibilities, as well as judicial responsibilities. Yes, yes. I think this law is constitutional, so I'm not going to enforce it. Well, his time to do that is in the veto process.
Once the law is passed, he has to enforce it, regardless of what he thinks of it. So he's taken up the judicial function there, which is the violation of the separation of powers. And also, we've seen a lot under this president taking up the, the Congress won't pass this law, I will put it into effect through executive or choose not to enforce the laws, and then just regulations.
And then you consider the administrative part of government, the agencies, you know, like the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, the IRS, the Food and Drug Administration, all these, all these agencies, Congress passes vague laws, and then they hand them over to the bureaucracy to fill in regulations, and so forth.
So these unaccountable regulatory agencies and bureaucracies end up executing the laws, they end up passing new law in the form of regulation. And then they end up judging you for having violated these regulations.
So these, these bureaucracies combine the powers of the executive, legislative and, and judiciary in themselves, which Thomas Jefferson rightly said, as well as James Madison, is the very definition of tyranny.
So this is what's going on. And the President, so the President oversees all of that. Yeah, I wish he didn't have any, you look at the Dear Colleague letter that his Justice Department and Education Department sent to the schools.
Oh, by the way, when we interpret Tyshon against transgender students, which is now a thing, be covered by Title IX. So transgender students, sports team, they want, they get to be in whatever bathroom, whatever change room they want, and so forth.
And that's the way things are now. That is the public schools that changes the whole of American life. Yes. The nature of what it is to be a human being. The President doesn't affect social policies all over abortion funding here and abroad.
Yeah. I seriously doubt that anybody in the public schools today is learning about the separation of powers. And I, I, we've mentioned schools a couple of times. I wonder, I continue wonder every decade, I wonder what will it take?
Craziness in sex ed classes, craziness in bathrooms, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What does it take? Apparently there is, there's nothing that can switch. Some people are poor. They just can't afford to get out of the public schools.
It's sad or nothing. Other people, they can anyway, but that's so that in throwing things in maybe my, my opportunity to jump in. You had an ad for World Magazine. Yes. World Magazine, one of your sponsors.
Let me say something about World Magazine. I was, another fine outfit. I was, I had the privilege of writing a version of the magazine. And I also had the privilege of serving under Marvin Olasky when I was the provost at the King's College.
I know what he's written and I've worked with some of the world people on the inside from a distance, you know, writing the column and discoverer World Magazine buying godly people. And they really are a credit to the journalistic profession in a day when there's a lot of journalism that is just about headlines and content and ads that will get people clicking and generating revenues.
They, they're not going to go down that road. I mean, they want revenues, right? Money pays for things, but I'm an example of, so I just throw.
That in as somebody who's been on the inside. Well, I just, I just received my new commercial for World Magazine. I'm going to get to editing on that right now. But I really appreciate that. And I'm sure World Magazine appreciates that very much.
Yeah, well, well, let's talk a bit about your two books. The first you co-authored with a liberal who professes to be an evangelical Christian and yet simultaneously adheres to liberal political views.
That would be Lisa Sharon Harper. And this is the book, Left, Right, and Christ, Evangelical Faith and Politics. And then, of course, after you explain that book, if you could tell us about your new book,.
That's going to be hot off the press very shortly. Evangelical, it's not supposed to be these things of an enlightenment from generation to generation. I think progressive describes them better than the word liberal, which used to mean oriented toward individual liberty.
So, but Lisa is from that point of view. And the book came out in 2011. And it is relevant in any time. But I think it is particularly relevant today, because Bernie Sanders, the socialist from Vermont with his radical views, mention of a lot of young evangelicals, and a surprising number of them claim to have felt the burden.
Their left-wing views are taking a particularly evangelical form. They try to be obedient to the gospel and at the same time embrace this dragging down. This is the sort of stuff that is entering their heads.
This is the sort of stuff they're learning about, the sort of thing Lisa talks about. This is the sort of stuff they get at their, you know, big jubilee conferences and rallies and events they go to, or just stuff they pick up on websites.
So the book would be, at this time, very useful in understanding young people who are trending left and offering responses. Helping them, my side of the book, I believe, would help them build a biblical.
So it is, the book is, I think, particularly... And so what is the new book, the title again? It's entitled The Voting Christian. That's right. Seeking Wisdom for the Ballot Box. And it's just that. I'm addressing to or not vote in the fall, in November, and who are seeking wisdom as that day approaches.
So there's the title. And what I've done is I've taken a World Magazine column that I've written over the last several years and arranged them to polls to consider when subjects, and some subjects that don't appear in Left, Right, Christ, like religious liberty.
Five years ago, we didn't think religious liberty was at all in question. And now it's hanging by a thread. So religious liberty, the sexual revolution, race and police, and things of this sort. And then there's a reflection back on what he's done.
And then some concluding thoughts. Advocating a liberty party, or something like this. And then Rod Dreher has advocated something called the Benedict option. Entering a new dark age, as he says, and the Benedictine option of drawing back from the culture wars and focusing on building Christian community is this Benedict option.
So I have three columns on. And then the last one is following Jesus as public enemy. Well, that doesn't sound appropriate. An appropriate description of our situation. You haven't been paying attention.
So also a book that will be to people facing this election and the future in general. When is that coming out? Probably the middle of they're both coming out of the middle of August. Left, Right, and Christ is coming out August 9th.
You can pre order on Amazon month to find out about it. Okay, and that's David C. Innes, I-N-N-E-S. You can find people on Facebook.
Well, we're going to our final break right now. And this is your last opportunity to send us a question. We do have a couple of people waiting to have their questions asked. So if you'd like to join them and have your questions asked on the air and answered by David to the best of his ability, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. And by the way, Bob in Great Neck, you are a first time questioner, for lack of a better term, because I don't know if you're a first time listener, but you're a first time questioner.
So we will be mailing you a copy of the New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers absolutely free of charge if you give us your full mailing address. And we'd also like to thank Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com for shipping out all of the books and Bibles that our listeners win at no charge to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
And we are forever in their debt for such graciousness and generosity and helping us to remain on the air with their support. So that's cvbbs .com for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. And we're going to be going through our final break, as I said, so don't go away.
We're going to be right back with the final half hour of our interview with Dr. David Ennis on faith and politics. Hi, I'm Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a Christian perspective.
Try World at no charge for 90 days and get a free copy of R .C. Sproul's book, Relationship Between Church and State. I rely on World because I trust the reporting, I gain insight from the analysis, and World provides clarity to the news stories that really matter.
I believe you'll also find World to be an invaluable resource to better understand critical topics with a depth that's simply not found in other media outlets. Armed with this coverage, World can help you to be a voice of wisdom in your family and your community.
This trial includes bi-weekly issues of World Magazine, on-scene reporting from World Radio, and the fully shareable content of World Digital. Simply visit wng .org forward slash iron sharpens to get your World trial and Dr. Sproul's book all free, no obligation with no credit card required.
Visit World News Group at wng .org.
Forward slash iron sharpens today. I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. The New American Standard Bible is perfect for daily reading or in-depth study. Used by pastors, scholars, and everyday readers, the NASB is widely embraced and trusted as a literal and readable Bible translation.
The NASB offers clarity and readability while maintaining high accuracy to the original languages which the NASB is known for. The NASB is available in many editions like a topical reference Bible. Researched and prepared by biblical scholars devoted to accuracy, the new topical reference Bible includes contemporary topics relevant to today's issues.
From compact to giant print Bibles, find an NASB that fits your needs very affordably at nasbible .com. Trust, discover, and enjoy the NASB for yourself today. Go to nasbible .com, that's nasbible .com.
Tired of box store Christianity? Of doing church in a warehouse.
With all the trappings of a rock concert? Do you long for a more traditional and reverent style of worship? And how about the preaching? Perhaps you've begun to think that in-depth biblical exposition has vanished from Long Island.
Well, there's good news. Wedding River Baptist Church exists to provide believers with a meaningful and reverent worship experience featuring the systematic exposition of God's Word. And this loving congregation looks forward to meeting you.
Call them at 631 -929 -3512 for service times. 631 -929 -3512. Or check out their website at wrbc .us. That's wrbc .us. Attention coin collectors and investors, Long Island Galleries of Wedding River, New York has brilliant uncirculated 19th century Morgan silver dollars for only $54 per coin with free shipping and handling for a limited time.
There's a 40 coin limit, so order now while supplies last. Call 888 -260 -8111. 888 -260 -8111. Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express welcome. Price is subject to change, so call now at 888 -260 -8111.
888 -260 -8111. If you prefer ordering your brilliant uncirculated 19th century Morgan silver dollars by check, mail it today to Long Island Galleries, 9 Susan Drive, Wedding River, New York, 11792. That's Long Island Galleries, 9 Susan Drive, Wedding River, New York, 11792.
Remember they're only $54 per coin with free shipping and handling and a 40 coin limit. New York State residents must add sales tax. Long Island Galleries is honored to sponsor Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
See the Long Island Galleries display ad at ironsharpensironradio .com. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen and just to remind you, if you hear a website or any kind of contact information about an ad you are interested in on Iron Sharpens Iron and you don't remember what the website was, you didn't write it down, you can always go to ironsharpensironradio .com, ironsharpensironradio .com and scroll all the way to the bottom.
We have all of our sponsors banner ads there and if you click on those banner ads, they each one will take you with a hyperlink to the website of the sponsor. So you don't necessarily have to remember the sponsor's phone numbers or their website addresses, just go to ironsharpensironradio .com and they're all there at the bottom.
If you'd like to join us on the air right now, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com and Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania has a question that I was going to ask you, Dr. Innes.
Harrison wants to know what your thoughts are on Hillary Clinton being cleared by the FBI and he wants to know if you think there's more to it than just an honest investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation or if there was some coercion behind the scenes that made them.
Come to this conclusion that she should not be charged. How can he do that? He's under-signaling.
And we also have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania who asks, do you think there is a realistic possibility still of a Ted Cruz or someone being nominated by the party.
Even though the people have spoken in regard to Donald Trump? It pertained to closed primaries, perfect sense to me. Why on earth would you let non-party members elect, help elect the party standard bearer?
Doesn't make any sense. But anyway, so no, I don't think there's any. Donald Trump, most of the delegates, he won fair and square.
So now it's interesting that there is, I think you said earlier, a 60 unpopularity percentage for Trump in this election. And yet he is also, from what I keep hearing, the person who received, the candidate who received more votes in the primaries than anyone in history.
Is that correct? Are they both true? Yeah.
Republican party that is intended to do better in OPE's success. And they presumably will vote for him in the general, but there's a lot of people. But the people who participate in the primaries are a relatively small fraction of people in the electorate.
Relatively small fraction of people actually vote. CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island wants to know why.
Specifically do conservatives call Donald Trump a liberal when it seems the liberals despise him so much and he is for a strong military and is pro-life. So please, if you could explain why.
This conclusion is made by hardcore conservatives in the Republican party. Yeah. But then the contemporary Democrats are further left than they were. So that's why they hate him. The party don't trust him because he is this, what we would now call a hybrid, but used to be called a.
Democrat. Well, yeah, it's interesting that Hillary Clinton, during her primary race against Bernie Sanders, I never heard her say, ladies and gentlemen of the United States, how could you possibly even consider voting for a socialist?
That was not her rhetoric. It was, we're not that different. We're almost the same. And yet, whenever, prior to this, whenever people would make the insinuations that the Clintons or Barack Obama or most of those who are in political power in the Democratic party, when the insinuations or accusations were made that they were socialists, they would laugh and mock those accusations.
Well, how could you say that there's not much difference between you and Bernie Sanders and yet mock someone who calls you a socialist?
Well, you know, let's focus on Don. Just avoid the question, and Hillary Clinton has done the same thing, because they know that a lot of them are keen on Bernie for discussion.
Now, can a socialist be in bed with Wall Street, as Bernie Sanders used to say about Hillary Clinton? Can the two things coincide?
Calculating how can I, someone like me later on, capture, and he has successfully captured, the Democratic party. As for Hillary Clinton, you know, we talk about Bernie Sanders is a, how can he get the nomination of the Democratic party?
But Hillary Clintons are all about Clinton Incorporated. So hide the emails and any emails pertaining to the Clinton Foundation policy. This is the way she will conduct her presidency. When Bill Clinton was president, he did the same thing, renting out the Lincoln bedroom in exchange for campaign contributions and other things of this sort.
This is Hillary Clinton, not a woman of the people, given the choice between the well-being of the people, and even the little people, and the enrichment of the Clintons. She'll go with the enrichment of the Clintons every time.
So that's a plutocrat, a plutos, Greek for wealth, right? So hers in particular.
So then...
Democratic party is a mess, and we would be focusing on that if there were...
Right. Well, couldn't you identify Donald Trump as a plutocrat?
One could identify him as a... He's got his own money. Well, there's a higher life on making money, maybe, but he's also had these strong opinions about their trade practices. This goes back a long, long time.
So these seem to be core beliefs. There is a genuine patriot. There's a very limited understanding of what a patriot is, all revolving around business ideas, of course. Not about the Constitution, and individual liberty, and freedom of religious liberty, and free press, and things like that.
That doesn't seem to be part of his thinking of what a patriot defends. Understood in business terms. He has thought in business terms...
Yeah, well, one of the things that I don't understand is that people keep buying the rhetoric and actually repeating it, that he was an outsider to the political machine, that he is not a politician, and so on.
But yet, he seemed to be bragging constantly that he used to buy politicians throughout his whole career. I mean, wouldn't that place you right in the middle of the mess? When he was confronted with why he had made such huge contributions to liberal political candidates, and so on, it was always, well, that's what you do in business.
I mean, you basically line the pockets of people. I mean, wouldn't that make him a part of that whole machine?
Which will be true. You see, the thing with Hillary Clinton is we know her. We know her from 25 years in politics or more, if you're from Arkansas. We know who she is politically. And we know Donald Trump from his television shows, and his self-promotion career in New York City, and so forth.
But we don't really know him politically. So there's a lot of unpredictability and a lot of absence about Hillary Clinton. So this is part of what makes, when you have political people with political records, you know where Rick Santorum is going.
You know where John Kasich, two-term governor, a congressman, so forth, you know where this guy's coming from, and you know where he's going. And he's an older guy, so he's not going to change. This is who he is.
Marco Rubio is a younger man, so does he even understand himself? Probably not as much as he thinks he does. So there's an unpredictability about Marco Rubio. Is he just NII-supported? But how much of it is just a good, that he sincerely believes, and where does the actual ability come in?
So there's that unpredictability with him. With Donald Trump, it's just like, what will he do in politics? I mean, he's run this business empire, but running a government is not like running a business empire.
It's vastly more complicated and takes related skills, but nonetheless a different set of skills. So how will that work? I mean, he doesn't seem to be having an easy time running a political campaign, and that's always a test for how well somebody will run the country.
Not an infallible test, but a test, a credible test. So he doesn't seem to be doing very well on that. But this is just a question, I'm not making assertions. But Hillary Clinton, she's predictable. So this is part of what's before us.
Will he be a plutocrat? Will he be an influence peddler? Will he continue his in the office? But even then, what will that look like as the country is grabbing people's oil, selling protection around the world?
Will we be the international mercenary regime? And then, of course, the president is limited by Congress. He can't just, we're not electing him king. He can only do what Congress allows him to do. So we'll see how the negotiator does.
But in politics, he doesn't seem to be as good a negotiator as he has been in New York real estate. You would think he would have taken a more negotiative position with John Kasich, swing state, and Susanna Martinez, southwestern swing state.
Instead, he insults them. So what on earth is that? What kind of dealmaking is that? What is he supposed to get out of that? So the art of the deal, great for his real estate empire, but I haven't seen it showing itself in the conduct of the campaign.
So again, there's this, but it's not like we have 10 candidates from which to choose, unless you go through all the various third party candidates, early in America's party,.
Libertarian party, the et cetera, et cetera, you know, the iron Sherpins, iron party. Anyway, do you know, I think we're probably close to the same age. I'm 54. So is that what you are? 54? Yes, sir. Wow.
That's some providential thing.
Who's got two people born in the same year?
And I cannot remember a race, a political race, as far as the primaries are concerned, where the church, where Christians were so sharply divided over a candidate as with Donald Trump. I mean, there was some with Mitt Romney, but this was above and beyond what I remember with Mitt Romney.
Do you remember anything from history, even if it was before your time, just your knowledge of history, where the Christians were so sharply divided in the United States over a.
Political candidate? Then we came to 1980, where they really, since then we've just felt that we, we as an American, and he was Southern Baptist, what's your problem? I remember at the beginning of his presidency, he was waving at somebody on the way to church at the inauguration, and I noticed it was an awfully new looking Bible.
Born again, Reaganite, I mean, there's a godly man in his own way, humble, and so forth. So George W. Bush, no problem. And that brings us to Barack Obama. So we, I don't think Christians have expected a Christian candidate, or you go back far enough, it's just assumed that they're Christian candidates.
They're all churchgoers, they're Episcopalians of one kind or another. So what's the issue back then? That was not the issue. It's only after the 1960s and in the 1970s, where the cultural assault against Christian civilization, after that started, then we start looking for a Christian candidate, as though that's an unusual thing.
And we were spoiled, and now, whether you look after that with John McCain, not too many people were upset at John McCain, although he did stick it to the evangelicals in South Carolina, and that had people.
Then there's the Mitt Romney, the Mormon candidate, we were going to do with this. And and if fewer Christians had dissented from that, we might have had a Romney presidency instead of a second term of Barack Obama.
That's interesting. You're listening audience to figure out the.
Consequences of that. It's interesting that Mitt Romney used the same accusations against Donald Trump as being a charlatan when it comes to being a true conservative. Those were the very accusations being hurled at him because he had been so clearly liberal in his voting record.
Prior to running for president. In 2004, when he was against it, that state, but he fought back in 1980. And there'll be people who are looking at his record as governor and saying, I don't know about this guy, maybe a good Goldwater conservative.
I don't know about this guy. The talk is good over here. But over here, you look at his record. Well, he was governor of California, you have to make political compromises to get things done. And you have to take that into account when when judging a politician.
Because, you know, you're not king, you have to work with people. By the way, we're going half a loaf is better than no loaf, as they say, right?
We're going three minutes over, because of the fact that we went on three minutes late. So I would like you to try to, I know that you're not a prophet, being an Orthodox Presbyterian, you would never claim such a thing.
But can you just differentiate what you think America will.
Look like, both to start with if Trump wins, and then if Hillary wins? 1980, the same sex marriage decision was essentially made up out of nothing. No, rather, the Chief Justice himself said, no reference to that at all.
So the text, that's where we're going. So the Republic may be over. Donald Trump may slow it a little, or maybe continue it in his own way. But so that may be interesting. Maybe that may be where things are going.
But the Lord, we pray to the Lord for mercy, and it would be mercy, not our entitlement, to look forward to if we got it robust. But that would be God's doing despite all that. Well, if you could, in the two minutes that.
We have left, just summarize what you most want etched on the listeners' hearts and minds today.
Extremely difficult, and could take a lifetime. But that's what we're called to as Christians, as voting Christians, as living Christians. Know God's Word, know the world in which you're living,.
And apply God's Word to your marching orders. Amen. Well, how can our listeners get in touch with you if they have further questions, or if they want to keep up to date on your books,.
And so on? Well, on Twitter, I'm at... I try to make it... Great. Well, I want to thank you so.
Much for being back on the program. I want to thank all of our listeners, especially those who took the time to write in. I want to thank my co-host, Reverend Buzz Taylor, for being here with me. And I want all of you to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater Savior than you are a sinner.
We look forward to hearing from you tomorrow and your questions for our guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. God bless.