December 23, 2025 Show with David Dykstra on “Yearning to Breathe Free? Thoughts on Immigration, Islam & Freedom”

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, 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 Tuesday on this 23rd day of December 2025.

I just found out moments ago that one of my heroes of the Christian faith when I was a new believer, Joel Niederhood, who went home to be with the Lord that he served so faithfully for so long, four weeks ago on December 2nd, 2025.

He was 94 years of age and really blessed the body of Christ through radio, television, and through the books and articles that he had written. And not only a brilliant, biblically faithful, Reformed brother in Christ, but also an extraordinarily humble man.

And I am glad that I had the opportunity to interview him while he was still among us on the planet Earth, and that he wrote a glowing commendation for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio after being interviewed.

And he will surely be missed. Please continue to pray for the Niederhood family as they mourn the loss of this great man of God. Today, we have on the program a longtime friend of mine. I've known him since the 1980s, and I am thrilled that after a long absence, he has returned to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to address a book that he wrote several years after the horrific tragedy now known as 9 -11, I believe the largest loss of life at the hands of a foreign enemy on American soil in our history.

And this book that he has written, I think, is more relevant today even than when he had first put pen to paper. I'm speaking of my friend David Dykstra, who is an author, a retired Reformed Baptist pastor, having had decades of experience in pastoral ministry in New Jersey and Texas.

And today we're addressing the aforementioned book, Yearning to Breathe Free, Thoughts on Immigration, Islam, and Freedom. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, David Dykstra.

Good to be with you, Chris.

Immigration Policy, Borders, and Assimilation in Scripture

Well, Pastor David, and forgive me for calling you pastor, I know that you're retired, but it's something that automatically comes from my tongue knowing you for so long as a pastor. But this book that we are addressing today, what were the compelling factors that made you say, you know, I've got to write this book, the contents of which was stirring in your heart and mind after the aforementioned horrific tragedy of 9 -11, if you could explain.

Well, you know, after 9 -11, soon after 9 -11, I began to really start thinking about our policies of immigration. You know, when you had 23 Saudis that abused our freedoms here in America to attack our country, I started thinking about Islam and I started thinking about immigration.

And there were, you know, from my general reading and from my reading of the Bible, I came to certain conclusions. And the two books from my general reading that really impacted me and caused me to start to write, believe it or not, were David McCullough's great biography of John Adams and also Edmund Morris's great biography of Theodore Roosevelt, namely Theodore Rex.

And from reading McCullough's biography of Adams, I came to the conclusion that we've been at war with radical Islam from the very beginning of our country. And then also from reading of Theodore Rex, I came to the conclusion that Teddy Roosevelt had immigration policies that were far wiser than the immigration policies that were being pursued by our country.

So it was from my general reading of those two books after 9 -11 and also from reading the Scriptures, you know, just reading from the Scriptures, I realized that the law of God spoke to the issue of immigration and assimilation in five ways.

First of all, from the Old Testament, we learn that Israel had defined borders on all four points of the compass. Those borders were defined. You know, we can read about that in Numbers chapter 34. Secondly, within these borders, Israel was required to develop a distinct cultural identity, not like the other nations.

Deuteronomy chapter 4, verses 5 through 8. And then Israel had to, thirdly, Israel had to respect the borders of other nations. Deuteronomy chapter 21. And then Israel distinguished between foreigners to be accepted and those that were to be rejected as far as who they were going to welcome and who they weren't going to welcome.

And, you know, we realize, for instance, you know, when we when we think about the fall of Solomon and that text that describes Solomon's fall and all the foreign wives that he married that were identified as nations that Israel was to have nothing to do with.

So Israel distinguished between foreigners that were allowed to become sojourners in the land and foreigners that were not allowed to become sojourners in the land. They were dangerous. And then the fifth thing, and most importantly, and this really applies to us today, is that Israel's law required assimilation of the sojourner.

They had to assimilate to the culture of Israel. I mean, we read about that, for instance, even in the fourth commandment, that the Sabbath law applied even to the sojourner who stays with you. And then also in the scriptures, we read that there was one law for the native and for the stranger or for the sojourner, Numbers chapter 15, verse 16 and verse 29, a one law.

In other words, in Israel, there was there was no tossed salad approach where you had competing civilizations within the nation. There was one law for the Israelite and for the sojourner who was within the nation, you know.

And this is the distinction between our country as a melting pot or our country as, you know, a tossed salad. You know, what do I mean by that? Well, remember that our country has has long been likened to a melting pot.

But, you know, that pot has a structure to it. And what is the melting pot of of America? Well, it's. It's our our way of life, it's our rule of law, it's our constitution. We have. We have many, many men who have who have said over the years that.

That America has it's defined, G .K. Chesterson once once said this, he said, even that metaphor of a melting pot implies that the pot itself is of a certain shape and a certain substance, a pretty solid substance.

The melting pot must not melt. And the original shape was traced on the lines of Jeffersonian democracy. America invites all men to become a citizen, but it implies the dogma that there is such a thing as citizenship.

And so now we've come to the point in in America today, over the last number of decades, where instead of, you know, the melting pot of American civilization, which is defined, we've got more of a tossed salad approach where in a tossed salad, you know, the lettuce stays lettuce and the peppers stay peppers and the onions stay onions.

And so we have we have this as the effect of multiculturalism. You know, that is not something that we see from the pages of Scripture, one law for the native and for the sojourner within Israel. And of course, now throughout the Western nations, we see all kinds of absurdity.

You know, 85 some Sharia courts in the UK operating now. Where the government says that, yes, Sharia courts can can have a place in our country. And this is something that, you know, is just going to lead to further decline in among the Western nations, and we're seeing it here in the United States as well.

The demand for these things, whether it's in Houston or in Dearborn or in Milwaukee, we see we see these things taking place.

I just wanted to read some of the texts that leftists and those who believe in very liberal immigration policies, even to the point of desiring no borders of all at all. These are the areas where leftists who no doubt do not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, but they love to find scriptures that in their minds make folks like us evangelical Bible-believing Christians who believe in the inerrancy of Scripture.

They try to make us look foolish, like hypocrites, like we don't even know our own Bible, etc. But they love to bring up texts just like were brought up at a recent borough council meeting here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where there was a vote taken to officially make Carlisle, Pennsylvania a sanctuary city.

And one gentleman who got up claiming that he had theological training and I don't know if he was a minister in a liberal denomination or perhaps just an apostate who fell away from the faith, I don't know.

But he would bring up texts, even texts that you include in your book. Like Exodus 22, 21, you shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. In Exodus 23, 9, you shall not oppress a stranger since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 24, 14, 15, and 17, you shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your countrymen or one of your aliens who is in your land, in your towns. You shall give him his wages on his day before the sun sets, before he is poor, and sets his heart on it, so that he will not cry against you to the Lord and it becomes sin in you.

You shall not pervert the justice due an alien or an orphan or take a widow's garment in pledge. And there are other texts as well that leftists love to recite along with when they're trying to promote socialism.

They'll love to go to Acts 2, 44 through 45. And all the believers were together and had all things in common, and they would sell their property and possessions and share them with all to the extent that anyone had need.

Of course, that text doesn't say anything about a government imposing a law that would force people to do this. But what do you have to say, and of course, you do have something to say about this in your book, about those favorite texts of those who want completely open borders?

Well, of course, I acknowledge all those texts. And America brings in, you know, over a million people a year legally into the United States. And so I acknowledge all those texts. Those are texts that apply to us.

But nevertheless, the previous points that I made refute the idea of no borders. Israel had defined borders. Israel was taught not to violate the borders of other nations. Israel had one law within its borders that all the sojourners had to abide by.

In other words, assimilation was required. And we, you know, we have many examples of foreigners who came into Israel and became Israelites. You know, in one of the, you know, one of the most important books, I think that Christians can read today to understand this is O. Palmer Robertson's book, The Israel of God.

Anybody could become an Israelite. It wasn't a matter of blood. And so you could come into Israel and as long as you assimilated, you became an Israelite. You know, we read in the book of Ruth where, you know, that great statement where Ruth says to Naomi, you know, where you go, I will go.

Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people and your God shall become my God. You know, we think of Rahab. As well, and so anybody could become an Israelite, but assimilation was required.

They weren't allowed to come within Israel and and have their own competing civilization. Which is what we're seeing throughout the West right now. Competing civilizations, you know, within Western nations.

And and this is something that you don't see in the Bible at all. And it's foolish. It's absolutely foolish to allow this. And this is why, you know, we we have to require, you know, people who come into the United States to assimilate to our culture.

And that's something that that is, you know, I got when I read Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. This is what Teddy Roosevelt said in his day. He said, we welcome every honest immigrant, no matter from what country he comes.

Provided only that he leaves off his former nationality and remains neither Celt nor Saxon, neither Frenchman or German, but becomes an American desirous of fulfilling in good faith the duties of American citizenship.

And that's that's exactly what Israel had. They they distinguished between foreigners that were to be welcomed and and those that were proved to be a danger to the country that they were not to have anything to do with.

But assimilation was required. You know, because they had one law that governed the citizen and the sojourner who stayed with them, you know, and when Roosevelt said we welcome every honest immigrant.

How does that apply to our situation today? I mean, if you if if you were if you owned a store and somebody came in and they stole something from the store, you would deem them to be a thief. They would be dishonest.

And so how about people who enter a country illegally? We are to deem them not to be honest people. They didn't come in the correct way. From the very beginning, coming into the country illegally, they become felons.

In violating federal law, and so when Roosevelt says we welcome every honest immigrant. No matter from what country he comes. And so we've had, you know, decades in in previous administrations of a completely open border by people who hate borders that have allowed in, you know, people that have proven to be a detriment to our country.

Crime, criminals coming in, and now we're getting it back under control. And actually, we're conforming more and more right now to what the scriptures teach about this, having clearly defined borders, distinguishing between people who ought to come in and people who would be dangerous to allow in and requiring one law for the people who come in, namely our Constitution and our rule of law in America, disallowing any competing civilization and their set of laws like we see happening through in Texas, in Minneapolis and in the UK.

You know, the very idea of Sharia courts being allowed, I mean, way back in 2003, even Banner of Truth magazine had an article on the Islamization of Europe. And even back in 2003, they were decrying the presence of Sharia courts.

And that should be something that every Christian opposes today.

Why the Title Echoes the Statue of Liberty and the Case for Freedom

Now, the title of your book, the first sentence of your title, obviously, Yearning to Breathe Free? Thoughts on Immigration, Islam and Freedom. Obviously, the first sentence comes from the Emma Lazarus poem, which is etched on the plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, which says, Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door. And the leftist will obviously throw this in our face, too, if we are patriots, saying that we're being hypocritical by ignoring this hallowed poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty.

Why did you use that phrase, yearning to breathe free, question mark, in the very title of your book?

Well, I mean, that's a great poem, isn't it?

Yes, it is.

We welcome those who seek freedom. But we ought not to be welcoming people who seek to overthrow our system. They're not coming into America to pursue freedom. They're coming into America with their own agenda.

And with radical Islam, their approach has always been, I mean, it's easy to see, you know, infiltrate, procreate and dominate. And that's exactly what we see. Whenever they get into sufficient numbers, they begin to dominate.

They begin to make demands of people. And they begin to make demands of whole cities. When people pay attention to what's going on in Texas right now, with imams going to different stores and telling them what they can and cannot sell.

And that, you know, these store owners then are being threatened. And this is always the way it has been, wherever Islam has spread. It's always infiltrate, procreate and then dominate. And when we think of the declining birth rates in Western Europe, you know, where, for instance, I think in the UK right now, you know, their birth rate of UK citizens is, you know, they don't even replace themselves.

Yeah, it's so low. But among the Islamic population, you know, the birth rates are far, far higher. And this is why the president has turned attention to Europe and said, listen, in 20 years, we might not recognize you.

You know, it may be too late. You know, one of the things that people need to read. And it's only a pamphlet size, for crying out loud, it's only 29 pages long. And that's the National Security Strategy of the United States of America published in 2025, just in November, last month.

And one of the things that the security strategy of America right now is pointing is pointing out is that Europe is facing civilizational erasure. This is the phrase that's used in the national security strategy.

And what they're talking about here is just the declining birth rate of Europeans, of European countries, the increasing birth rate of the refugees that they've allowed in and the ultimate civilizational erasure of Western European countries.

And this is a wonderful document to read. It's only 29 pages long. And when I read it, you know, I said I said to myself, you know, this is what yearning to breathe free was all about. This is what yearning to breathe free was all about.

That there has to be, you know, warnings given as to what's going to happen if we allow unchecked immigration, imprudent immigration, if we give in to those that don't want any borders, and if we give in to multiculturalism.

And we ought not to give in to it. I remember a great statement by Thomas Sowell where he said, what multiculturalism boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture.

And you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western cultures. And that's multiculturalism, isn't it? Yes, that's the the tossed salad approach that that doesn't believe that any culture is in any way superior to any other culture.

Right. And we're going to pick up right where you left off after we return from our first commercial break. If anybody would like to join us with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com.

Chrisarnsen at gmail dot com. Give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence. If you live outside the USA, don't go away. We're going to be right back right after these messages from our sponsors with more of Dave Dykstra and his book Yearning to Breathe Free.

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Welcome back. If you just tuned us in, our guest today on Iron Turban's Iron Radio is David Dykstra, the author of Yearning to Breathe Free, Thoughts on Immigration, Islam, and Freedom. If you have questions, send them to chrisarnson at gmail .com and give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

But we do have some questions already coming in. And before I go to any of them, I'd like you to tell our listeners how the popularity of this book, when it was first published, or not long afterward, really caught fire, as it were, and word began to spread.

And this book became a very large seller at one point.

Well, I was very surprised. You know, here I was just a country pastor of a small church, you know, in New Jersey. And, you know, I had written this book, and I was in my study at home one morning when, to my great surprise, I got an email from Marvin Olasky from World Magazine.

And it turns out that he read the book. He read a number of books while he was on his treadmill. And he read the book, and he contacted me and said, listen, we want to do an interview with you about your book.

Would you be willing to answer several questions for us? And so he sent me a number of questions, and I took a morning to answer those questions. And I got a short email back from him that just said, excellent, send a picture.

And tell us how many copies of World Magazine you would like to give to your family. So that was in October of 2006. And the article in World Magazine, it was a two-page spread. The title of the article was Cougars Among the Flock.

And, of course, that was the imagery that, you know, in allowing through improper immigration policies, enemies to our culture, we were allowing cougars among the flock or wolves among the flock. And so that's how it spread.

It was through that article in World Magazine. And, of course, after that, I had a number of talk shows that invited me on. In fact, one of the most significant was when Dr. D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Presbyterian down in Florida interviewed me, having read the book.

And I was one of the last ones that he interviewed before he passed away.

Wow, wow.

And so Coral Ridge Presbyterian, I believe they ordered 400 copies of the book.

Wow.

And they gave it out to anybody who sent in a donation to their ministry that particular month. So word started to spread primarily through the article that I had in World Magazine. I was contacted by a number of people that I hadn't seen in years because of that article.

Praise God. Well, we do have, let's see, we have Giacomo in Bossier City, Louisiana. I hope I'm not mispronouncing the name of that.

Bossier City.

Oh, Bossier, okay. Glad that you were there to correct me. Giacomo says, I have a hunch you are not intending to sound racist when you are opposing multiculturalism. Perhaps you should explain to the listeners how you are differentiating multiculturalism from multi-ethnicity.

I'm a member of a church that has members from probably over a dozen countries. And of all races. And so when we speak of multiculturalism, multiculturalism really is, it's a leftist idea that says you can never say that one culture is superior to another culture.

Now, that's not saying, you know, and when we oppose multiculturalism, we're not opposing other races. We're simply saying that there are cultures that are just better than other cultures. And you can see that just by examining them.

I mean, if you go to Afghanistan, for instance, and you find a culture that accepts pederast rape of children and views women as mere chattel, you have to say that a culture that doesn't accept pederast rape of children and doesn't view women as chattel, you have to come to the conclusion that that culture that does not accept those things is superior to that culture that does.

And so this is not a racial thing at all. But I don't think that Christians in the West should ever be embarrassed by saying that Western culture, largely developed from Christian roots, has produced more freedom and more prosperity for people than any other culture.

And so it's not a racial thing at all. It's just, it's just be discerning.

Now, how do you explain, I don't even know if you can, because it is bizarre, but you have this phenomenon where leftist politicians will claim an identity with Islam. They will claim to be Muslims. And yet they are believing in and promoting things that, if they were living under Sharia law, would have them executed.

They are promoting homosexuality, transgenderism, and every other abomination associated with leftism, and yet still attempt to maintain an Islamic identity. How do you explain that?

Well, I mean, how do you explain that? It's so contradictory that there is no explanation for that. One of the things that I want to come back to, if I may, and that is, in reading McCullough's biography of John Adams, we've been in at war with radical Islam from the very beginning of our nation.

The founding of the Marine Corps came from that, didn't it?

Well, you know, just, you know, this is how it happened historically. You know, our founding document, of course, is the Declaration of Independence. But our first governing document was the Articles of Confederation.

The second and last thing, you know, governing document, of course, is the U .S. Constitution. But under the Articles of Confederation, the states were not allowed to have a navy. It was disallowed to have a national navy.

And in the arguments for the development of the Constitution, one of the things that Washington and others argued is, listen, these problems that we have with Muslims in the Mediterranean require us to have a national navy.

And that was one of the arguments for the development of the U .S. Constitution. Now, what was happening in the Mediterranean? Well, what was happening, of course, was for centuries, Islamic raiders were going into Europe as far away as Ireland, and they were capturing Europeans, largely Christian Europeans, and enslaving them.

And then, and these were from the North African states. And, you know, when you read the biography of John Adams, you soon come to the realization that our founders were dealing with radical Islam from the very beginning.

And our navy and Marine Corps came into existence to stop the preying upon our merchant ships in the Mediterranean and the eastern coasts of Africa. You know, we think of the Marine Corps hymn, you know, from the halls of Montezuma to what?

To the shores of Tripoli, right? And for a long time, we were paying money, exorbitant amounts of money, to just pay them off so that we could have free trade in the Mediterranean without them capturing our merchant ships and enslaving our crew members.

But this used to happen throughout all, you know, throughout Europe. Communities would be invaded in Italy and Sicily, Sardinia, Greece, by these Muslim raiders from the Ottoman Empire. And this went on for a long time until we put a stop to it with our navy.

But people are not taught history anymore. They don't realize that we've been fighting radical Islam from the very beginning of our country and even into the 19th century. I mean, you know, when you read, for instance, Mark Twain, and he has this wonderful book called The Innocence Abroad, you know, it's nonfiction.

And it describes his visit to the Middle East at the end of the 19th century. And what did he observe? Well, he observed the way the Ottoman Empire was treating non-Muslims. And what did Twain say in The Innocence Abroad?

It's very funny. I'll read it to you. He said, if ever an oppressed race existed, it is this one we see fettered around us under the inhuman tyranny of the Ottoman Empire. Now, here's his funny line. He says, I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little.

Not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining rod or a diving belt. So, you know, what was he observing? Well, you know, I mean, in 1876, the Ottomans, the Muslims, you know, they massacred Bulgarians.

And then, you know, there's the, you know, the jihad genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman Turks that followed that. So this is something that Americans are not taught, that from the very founding of our country, we've been involved with radical Islam and fighting radical Islam.

Now, thankfully, we're making a turn in America today. You know, for instance, our Director of National Intelligence last week, Tulsi Gabbard. What did she do at the Turning Point conference? She said that the most difficult thing we're facing today is the problem of Islamism.

And she was open about that. What's our Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, doing right now? Well, he's applying our president's national security strategy, and he's identifying the danger of Islamism that has made great strides in Europe and also in the UK.

You know, and there's another aspect of this, and it comes back to the civil magistrate, doesn't it? You know, what do our confessions of faith say with regard to the civil magistrate and the basic duties of the civil magistrate?

Well, you know, our Second London Confession of Faith, for we Reformed Baptists, says this. It's lawful for Christians to accept and execute the office of a magistrate when called thereunto in the management whereof, as they ought especially to maintain justice and peace according to the wholesome laws of each kingdom and commonwealth.