August 18, 2023 Show with Ron Kronz on “The Gospel at War with Principalities”

Opening Banter and Program Introduction

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 Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 18th day of August, 2023.

I ask of my listeners, as I have been doing for the last several episodes of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, to please pray for my brother, Andy, who is 75 and who lives in a nursing home here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

He has a life-threatening blood contamination called sepsis, and thankfully, he is being treated with antibiotics, and I have no idea how successful those treatments are at this point. I saw him yesterday, and he looked like his health did not yet decline in any way, but looks can be deceiving.

So I'm asking you all to please pray that either the Lord uses the physicians and nurses in that nursing home to bring him to a point of improved health, or that our Lord uses miraculous means to do so.

And I am also asking you to pray for something infinitely more important than that, that my brother makes a very crystal clear and believable profession of faith in Jesus Christ. My brother has made professions, but not to the point where I am very confident that they are genuine.

So I really ask that both of those prayers be lifted up to the throne of grace, and I will give you updates on my brother next week when we return to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. But today, I'm very thrilled to have as a first-time guest Ron Kranz, who is a speaker, teacher, business owner, author, founder, and pastor of a church in the Washington, D .C. area called Street Church, whose motto is, No Walls, No Fear, No Retreat, and which stands for the rights of the king in matters of justice, mercy, truth at abortion mills, churches, schools, and the public square.

Ron is also the principal overseer and founder of an overseas missions group called Bishop of Souls, primarily influencing South and Central Africa. Today, we're going to be discussing the gospel at war with principalities, and we'll also be announcing and promoting the three-day event that we have been advertising on this show for quite some time recently.

The three-day event featuring Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. This is the Future of Christendom Conference that is being run by the Mid-Atlantic Reformation Society, and I arranged Dr. White's involvement for them, having been a dear, close friend of Dr. White since 1996—actually, 1995.

And Ron Kranz, my guest today, is one of the featured speakers at this three-day conference, September 15th, 16th, and 17th in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, more specifically Mannheim, Pennsylvania, at the Spooky Nook Sports and Events Complex.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Triple Zion Radio, Ron Kranz.

Street Church and Ministry in the Public Square

Yeah, thanks for having me, Chris. It's really a pleasure to be here, and thanks for all you're doing with the Mars Conference and leveraging your friendship with Dr. White and all that you're doing, really, for the kingdom of God.

And be assured of our prayers for your brother, Andy.

I really appreciate that more than you will ever know. And tell our listeners something about Street Church.

Yeah, it has this idea. We decided that the gospel of the kingdom was—the king deserved more than he was getting from the church, that the gospel was designed to be into conflict with the surroundings, with the culture, with the enemies of our day, whatever they may be.

And so we started having church at abortion mills. We would have services there. And every other week, we meet where they kill babies. And then we go to—we're in D .C., so there are a lot of opportunities.

We go to the parades, and we go downtown to evangelize, and we go to universities, and the whole nine. We're really all hands on deck with that. We've sought to develop a culture where every believer is engaged in some way or another of pressing the rights of Christ into the culture.

Well, praise God. And also, tell us about this fascinating ministry, this overseas mission group called Bishop of Souls.

Yeah, I got started with that a number of—it's quite a number of years ago now. I was invited by my friend, also a speaker at the Mars Conference, Charles van Wyk, a South African missionary. And he had heard me preaching in the United States, and we became friends, and he asked me to go to Africa.

And I started going under the pretext of doing men's ministry, and then it just kind of blew up. And I found myself really like a duct of water. I've been there many, many times, and I have found my sea legs, if you will, going to war-torn places, places where nobody wants to go, that kind of thing—Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Burundi, Rwanda.

Zambia and Zimbabwe are rather peaceful now, but South Africa's a mess. That's just the places we choose to go. And I find that the door is really open. When you go to—it's almost like going to the abortion mill.

If you want a ministry, go somewhere where nobody wants to be there, and you'll have a ministry. There's lots of opportunities to minister. So that's kind of the essentials of what we do there.

Great. And now tell us, in summary form, about a couple of books you've written. One is titled The Beast, the Whore, and the Forgotten Vision, and the other one is called Fighting to Win and Other Things I Didn't Learn in Sunday School.

Yeah, there's a lot to not learn. A lot doesn't get taught in Sunday school, that's for sure. That first book I wrote to chronicle some of my experiences in Africa and overcoming spiritual challenges.

I took Nehemiah's life, the life of Nehemiah on a template, and how he came into conflict, how he was surrounded by enemies, and he continued the good work that the Lord had given him, very much in contrast to the way the culture of Christianity is done now.

That one, I really enjoyed reading it. It was an easy write because I went to a lot of my own experiences, and I've got stories of course for days.

This is Fighting to Win? That's the one?

Yes, sir. Yeah. Fighting to Win and Other Things I Didn't Learn in Sunday School. That one was an easy write. That was not difficult. I churned that out in no time. The other one required more research, The Beast, the Whore, and the Forgotten Vision.

And I am post male, but it's not a book about eschatology proper. I take the template there is in the book of Judges where you have Samson. And Samson, his mother, gets this vision from God, and she fails to tell the reason that Samson is coming.

Remember, she knows that she's going to be given a child, and she knows that her shame is going to be taken away, but she doesn't understand the greater purpose, and so she fails to tell her husband, Manoah, the bigger vision, which is he will begin to deliver God's people from the Philistines.

And that's sort of the forgotten vision today is the gospel's only been reduced to personal benefits, personal favors, with no vision for the cultural influence that God has intended for the world. I mean, even the Word says that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.

That's sort of the forgotten vision, and I chronicled the descent of Western Christianity going back to the 1600s and forward.

R .C. Sproul, Jr.

And I see that Martin Silbretti, who I've had on this program—it's been a while, but I had Martin Silbretti on the program a number of years ago when I had an eschatology marathon on the program. I believe it lasted eight days because we needed at least three different episodes to have three different representatives of postmillennialism, since there is such a broad spectrum of viewpoints within postmillennialism.

And Martin took one of the theonomic postmillennial positions that differed from most theonomic postmillennialist positions that I have become familiar with in that, from what I understand—and if Martin's listening, perhaps he can correct me—I believe that Martin did not view Nero as the beast of revelation, which most partial preterist theonomists do.

And I can't remember if he also rejected the whore being Israel, as most partial preterist theonomists do. But do you recall what Martin's positions are on those and what yours are, more importantly?

I don't know exactly what his position, what his nuanced position on that is. I tend to, and I'm certainly no eschatology academic, I tend to side with Kaiser. I believe that there was a change in Nero's life in the early 60s when he was possessed by a demon, and that that demon then possessed Vespasian and Titus at their death.

There was this kind of the death of the ruler initiated repossession, if you will. But again, I don't want to get in over my head. I mean, you know, but Martin, let's just say this, when Martin speaks about eschatology, matter of fact, when Martin speaks about anything, I sit forward and listen.

Yeah, he's a brilliant guy, that's for sure. Well, if anybody wants to find out more about my guest, Ron Kronz, about his activities, labors for the kingdom of Christ, his books, go to ronkronz .com, that actually kind of rhymes, ronkronz .com, and that's ronkronz .com, and we will hopefully repeat that later on in the broadcast.

Well, we have a tradition on Iron Sharpens Iron radio, whenever we have a first-time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony that would include the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which they were raised, and the kinds of providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them, and we would love to hear a summary of your story.

Salvation Testimony and Early Conviction of Sin

Yeah, I'd be delighted. I knew from a very young age, I mean, a very young age, that I was a sinner. I was aware of my guilt before God. Even as a young, I mean, like four years old, I can remember being terrified of the reality, thinking that I was in trouble with God.

I didn't know why. I didn't have any answer for that. Now, my parents were casual Christians, and they eventually divorced, and I think my mom became a Christian before she died, and my dad has since become a Christian, but I don't know that they were Christians then.

At any rate, we went to church, but there was never any mention of the Lord. The Bible, the Word of God wasn't central to our lives at all. I had a praying grandmother, and I would go to Indiana and work for my uncles during the summer as a teenager, and she took me to a camp meeting, a Nazarene camp meeting.

I loved the Nazarenes, but my theology almost couldn't be further from those guys now. But if you know anything about the Nazarenes, they had an altar call for everything. I mean, if you had a men's prayer breakfast, you had an altar call.

And so I came to the thing, and I was probably 16 or so, and I was like every other young man. I was there to look at girls and meet my future wife or my future ex-wife, and I was struck by the preaching, the clarity of the reality that hell was a real place, and Jesus is a real Savior, you're a real person.

He paid a real price, and this convicted me so much that I was sitting in the back of the room, and I took an altar call, and as I got close to the altar, I began—I was terrified, so terrified of hell that I was afraid that I might have an aneurysm or something on my way to the altar.

I mean, can you imagine? I'm thinking, oh no, like what happens if I trip and bump my head and I die? Do I get credit for trying to get to the altar? I'm trying to get there. And of course, this is horrible theology, but I was—.

And of course, you were not really approaching an altar at all.

That's exactly right. The altar had approached me, but I didn't know that. I learned that many, many years later, and I threw myself, but I threw myself across the man-made altar, as you indicated, and I really wept over my sins and asked the Lord to save me.

I believe that was a salvific moment, although you know of your salvation through the fruit, obviously, which came later. I began reading the Bible voraciously, but I was confused by the theology that I was getting, because the Nazarenes then told me that now I needed to be sanctified, and I didn't know what that meant.

Of course, I had no idea what sanctification meant. I thought that everything had been done in the exchange at Calvary. I thought it was a complete deal. Well, actually, I was right, but they, of course, believe in the second baptism, the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

This set me into a stage of confusion, and afterwards—and again, this is why I say I think I was saved—I got into drug addiction. I was actively using drugs daily. I went into the Navy. I got flown out of the Navy for failure to rehabilitate, but I signed with Augustine on this.

I think Augustine wrote in Confession something to the effect of that in all of his debauchery, nothing, absolutely nothing, could wholeheartedly hold him captive but the lordship of Jesus Christ. I place a lot more emphasis on that than I do on me falling across an altar in 1979.

That's the three-minute version of my salvation.

How the Reformed Faith Clarified Salvation

Now, how did you come to discover and embrace the Reformed faith?

Yeah, I have Ligonier Ministries, R .C. Spruill to thank for that. I began listening to Renewing Your Mind in the—must have been the late 80s, early 90s. It pulled so much together for me because, remember, I was operating in kind of a fear-based, man-centered salvation where I had chosen God.

Of course, if you can choose God, you can choose to un-choose God. I was forever kind of measuring whether or not I really saved, and it was thanks in great part to Dr. Spruill and his teaching that kept—made a very simple appeal to the fact that salvation is of the Lord.

It's his work. He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. And so that was my initiation. Well, praise God for that. Well, I'm going to.

Turn to a passage of Scripture that is connected very strongly to our discussion today. Ephesians 6, verse 12, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

And as I announced in the beginning of the program, our discussion is involving the—actually, the session where you will be speaking at the upcoming Future of Christendom conference on the Gospel at War with Principalities.

If you could, please, define for our listeners, especially those of our listeners who are babes in Christ or perhaps they're not even Christians at all, they're not very familiar with the Scriptures yet,.

What exactly is meant by principalities? Yeah, principalities are governing rulers who seek to rule particularly as trespassing beings over and above the authority of Christ. Anything that holds themselves up and above the final authority of Christ is that type of principality against which we must wrestle.

We have to be coming into conflict with them. The idea that we're to escape principalities, when you saw it in the—think about it in 2020, when the governors around the nation, I think with the exception of South Dakota maybe, gave mandates to shut churches down.

Well, that was an ungodly mandate. There was no reason for us to shut the doors, not one day, because we already had a mandate from God to continue gathering together. But people by force just listened to those—that was a principality against which we should have been wrestling.

And it has been said before is that was a golden opportunity for the church to exert her muscles and declare the supremacy of Christ, but we failed. We didn't do that. We weren't ready for that fight.

No reasons for that. So everything—and I should add this, Chris, that once it's defined, once the idea is accepted that there is some principality that does not have to answer to Christ, then every principality tries to become one of those principalities.

So then you become the CDC as its own principality. And then in the eyes of—I'm talking about in the eyes of Christians. There are Christians who think that the CDC doesn't have to answer to Christ, or that the World Health Organization, the United Nations doesn't have to answer to Christ, or NATO doesn't have to answer to Christ, or the governor doesn't have to answer to Christ.

And now you're left wondering, well, what exactly does have to answer to Christ? And pretty soon, the authority of Christ has been abandoned completely, and we need.

To change that. We need to change that narrative. Yes. I'm assuming that most professing Christians would never verbalize it in that way, but what they believe and say and do actually boils down to them not requiring those principalities to bow to the Lordship of Christ.

Right. Well,.

I think it was Shakespeare who said, paraphrased, what you do is so loud I can't hear what you say. Right. They told us who—they told us. They told us who they think is the highest principality. They told us.

They were very clear about who they thought was the highest authority, in spite of the words of Christ, who said, all authority is given me, and heaven and earth go therefore and make disciples of all the nations.

In spite of the words of John the Revelator, who said that Jesus is the ruler of the kings of the earth, they still rolled over. And that's.

A big problem. Yeah, there are multitudes of Christians, even those that are truly regenerate, who foolishly, over and over and over again, will still believe, even though they have the Holy Spirit indwelling them, that there are certain things in this life that you've got to delegate to the experts.

And even though you'll have doctors supported by the White House that believe there is absolutely nothing wrong with ripping a baby apart in the womb while it's alive, and even putting a baby in a shoebox and putting it in a storage room to die of malnutrition if it's born alive during an abortion attempt, even though the White House and the leftists support those in the field of medicine that will agree that a man can be a woman and a woman can be a man and that a man can have a baby, we're supposed to trust those people with other vital.

And important areas of health. That's a great point. Yeah, that's a fantastic point, Chris, is you're trusting the guys who kill babies, you're trusting the guys who create foreign wars, that you're trusting the guys who exactly, who castrate boys.

That's what they're talking about, castrating little boys and cutting off the breasts of little girls. That's what they're talking about. And we're saying they're going to somehow be neutral or even unimaginably out of character with themselves and be good.

And these things have to be taken on. What happens, Chris, frequently in Christendom is guys like you and me who think like we do and are probably most of the listenership, your listenership, tend to hang out in what they call echo chambers.

We talk to one another about this, but this stuff needs to be brought to bear on the culture. An example of that, since we're talking about the war with the gospel of conflict and war with principalities, we go to universities and we were at a university, we do anti-abort type stuff there and they get pretty frenetic and angry about us being there.

There's a woman there and I can remember her, she's telling me, well, you need to trust the experts, just what you had said, because these technocracies somehow, these guys who have become multi-billionaires selling pharmaceuticals are going to be neutral about that.

But she's telling me we need to trust these experts and so forth and so on. And I, me, of course, I'm a science denier. And I said, and I said, she said, and not only that, you're a man and you can't tell a woman what to do.

And then she caught herself, Chris, and she said, wait a minute, you are a man, right? And I said, who's the science denier? I mean, like, you don't know, you know I'm a man. I said, you know, notice you didn't say you are a woman.

She knows I'm a man. She's suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. She's drifting into absurdity and for all of her degrees at George Mason, wherever she goes, she can't overcome her own absurdity.

And we need to bring that stuff out. We need to be, we need boots on the ground who will take that on instead of sitting in the back of the narthex of our churches, murmuring quietly, well out of earshot of any real enemy.

And of course, we all know that the only man who should ever tell a woman to do with, do with what her body, the only man who should tell a woman to do something with her body, I should say, is Anthony Fauci.

That's the only man.

Right, right, right, exactly. Well, I assume he's a man.

Not a real man, but we're going, we're going to our first commercial break. If anyone has a question for Ron Kranz on the gospel at war with principalities, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Chrisarnsen at gmail .com gives us your first name at least. City and state and country of residence only remain anonymous. If your question involves a personal and private matter, don't go away. We'll be right back.

Mid-Atlantic Reformation Society presents the future of Christendom 2023, the gospel at war September 15th to the 16th in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, featuring Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega ministries.

We are excited to be including a formal debate in this year's conference. Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega ministries will be debating Dr. Gregory Cole's author of single gay Christian, a personal journey of faith and sexual identity.

The debate topic is gay Christian, a biblically acceptable identity for a member of Christ's church. So come join us for the sixth future of Christendom conference. The event will take place at spooky nook sports in Mannheim, Pennsylvania, and we'll run from Friday evening through all day Saturday with an invitation to the Sunday morning worship service of the independence reformed Bible church.

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Head to futureofchristendom .org. James White of Alpha and Omega ministries here. I'm very.

Excited to announce that my longtime friend, Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the G3 national conference. That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday, the 23rd on a theme that I've been preaching, teaching, writing about, and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

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That's royaldiadem .com. Make sure you mention chris arnzen of iron sharpens iron radio we're now back with ron kranz who is one of the speakers at the upcoming uh future of christenedom conference also featuring uh keynote speaker dr james r white of alpha omega ministries.

Uh this conference is being held in lancaster county pennsylvania september 15th 16th and 17th. It's a friday saturday and sunday. And the specific theme that my guest ron kranz is speaking on is the gospel at war with principalities.

And if you have a question our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com. Chris arnzen at gmail .com. Uh we have a listener in perry county pennsylvania arnie who says i have always heard of the gospel in relationship to bringing peace between those who are at an enmity with god that peace and the love and mercy and grace of god are the things that should be conjured up in our minds when we hear of the gospel.

Can you explain how you believe the gospel at war is an appropriate phrase and concept.

The Gospel as Peace on Christ's Terms

Yeah the there's there's no doubt that he's the prince of peace. There is no peace apart from the prince of peace. There's no love. The love is the fulfillment of the law. The point that's critical to understanding is that those things must be on his terms.

Peace is not on the term of the enemy. It's on the term of the savior. By his stripes we're healed. He determines. He's the one who determines right from wrong. He's the one who determines the peace. And until that point there is a point of conflict.

It's it's widely believed that in christendom that if you make people mad you must be doing something wrong. That you need to be calm. And you should be calm. I'm not taking away from that. But they need to be calm.

Is that you need to soothe them and assuage their their desires. Well that's to put god on trial and make them the judge. They still need to wave the white flag. And so and until we and we need to make it our business to get in these kind of to to bring the conflict.

Because here's the thing about conflict with the gospel is the conflict already exists. I'm not bringing conflict. All i'm doing is bringing jesus into the discussion the conflict. They already the bible says there's there's a pre-existing hatred that the unbeliever has with the lord.

You don't have to do that much. An example. I mean if you don't think so get yourself a sign that says jesus christ is king. And take it to a campus and hold it up over your head and look for all that peace.

You'll find out there is no peace. I'll give you another example. Uh we were i was at a conference. I was speaking at a conference in wichita. And an abolitionist conference. And they uh an abolitionist of abortion conference.

And the satanist came and followed us there. Well the satanists were already in wichita kansas. They didn't come there. They didn't just appear out of thin air. What vote. What provoked them was the true proclamation of the gospel.

The question isn't why are people agitated by the gospel. Maybe the more clear question is is why aren't they provoked when your pastor teaches. When your pastor if your church doesn't bring any if nobody's agitated there are no enemies when to your preaching to the programs of your churches friends.

They're not really being true to the gospel. Yeah. And uh in fact.

I like to look at it just as uh an army standing for a righteous cause will go into the enemy territory and liberate the captives. Uh that is exactly what christ is doing when he uh rescues his elect.

When he rescues his own people he is liberating us from enslavement to the enemy which is satan. And uh we have to remember also that the only reason why grace is amazing and why the gospel is uh good news.

And why uh the most horrendous event in the history of humanity the death of jesus christ was a glorious and beautiful thing is because of the flip side of the good news is the bad news. The bad news is without christ we are going to spend an eternity in hell.

And it's like the difference between uh telling a death row inmate that you have been exonerated and you will be set free. The difference between what will be going on in his heart and mind and for you to be sitting across the uh enormous desk of the ceo of a fortune 500 company the man's a billionaire and without you giving any bad news to him you're sitting across from him and saying to him by the way i just want to let you know the wonderful news you've been exonerated and liberated and you are going to be set free.