September 5, 2023 Show with Matthew Wear on “The Joy of Evangelizing Children”

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 Tuesday on this

fifth day of September 2023.

I hope that you all had a wonderful, relaxing,

refreshing, God -honoring Labor Day weekend.

I hope that you had the time, the opportunity, the pleasure of relaxing

with family, friends, and loved ones, enjoying their company, and being a light

for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And I'm so delighted that many of you are tuned in today to hear

my interview.

I want to give you an update on my brother, Andy, in the nursing home here in Carlisle,

Pennsylvania, for whom many of you have been praying, and I want to thank the hundreds

of you who have been earnestly and fervently praying for my brother as

your emails to me and your posts in social media indicate.

I want to give you all the praise report that our gracious,

merciful, kind, and compassionate God and great physician

has heard your prayers and answered them because, I don't know if this was

an overt miracle of God or if he was merely using

the physicians and the medicines with which he has blessed us to

bring my brother to this point of health, but the sepsis that was

threatening his life is no longer evident in his bloodstream.

So my brother has been indeed healed of this sepsis, and every single

person that I spoke with before this sepsis was healed, when I informed them

about my brother's condition, every single person that I spoke with who was a

nurse, either in a hospital or nursing home, told me

that this is an extremely deadly situation, and in fact, a couple of them told

me that they had never seen a case of sepsis in a nursing home

that did not bring an end to the life of the patient.

So I just am rejoicing that my brother is healed of

this and now continue to pray for his spiritual condition, because although he has

claimed for decades to be a Christian, his testimony does not

leave me with a lot of confidence and peace of mind.

So I'm praying that the Lord, and I ask of you to join me in praying that the Lord, if he has not

done so already, truly saves my brother and that his testimony is completely

credible that I may have peace of heart and mind before he departs this earth,

whenever that day will come, that he will be with Christ for eternity.

But thanks again to all of you for praying.

Today we have a first -time guest on Iron Trip and Zion Radio that I am really looking forward

to interviewing, because one of the main reasons is because he is one of the speakers

at the upcoming conference that I assisted Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society in

arranging.

This is the three -day event in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Mannheim, Pennsylvania, to be more

specific, the Future of Christendom Conference, which is going to be held

at the Spooky Nook Sports and Events in Mannheim, Pennsylvania, from September

15th through the 17th.

That's Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

The featured keynote speaker is Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, and he is not

only going to be speaking at the conference, but debating on Saturday, September 16th, Dr. Gregory

Coles on the theme, Is Gay Christian a Biblically Acceptable Identity for a Member of

Christ's Church?

But one of the other speakers, as I mentioned, is my guest today, Matthew Ware, Assistant Director

of Child Evangelism Fellowship of Redding and Berks County, Pennsylvania.

And it is my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Matthew Ware.

Thank you, it's good to be here.

Before we enter into our topic that you and I will be discussing, the joy of evangelizing children,

tell us about Child Evangelism Fellowship.

Yeah, the ministry's been around for quite some time.

I don't have the exact number on it, but over 80 years, I believe.

It started with a man named Jesse Urban Oberhauser, and that man, he

grew up in a day and an age where the mentality, children are better seen and not

heard, was alive and well at the church.

And at the church that he was raised in, the common belief was the

gospel is too mature for children to understand.

We don't try to evangelize children or share them the gospel until they're older.

And so that's what Jesse grew up in.

And when he was a young boy, he was very convicted of sin, and he wanted to know how he could have his

sins forgiven.

But his church and the people in his church, his parents even, told him that he was too young

to understand it.

And so Jesse made a decision when he was younger that he said, well, if I can't get saved, I might as well not try to be good.

And he made quite a mess of his life when he was in his teenage years.

And finally, by the grace of God, he was saved in his 20s, I believe.

But that always had an impact on him, and he would go to become a pastor at some point.

But it wasn't until he was reading, I think it was a sermon by Charles Spurgeon, actually, where Spurgeon had made the claim that a

child, if properly instructed in the doctrines of the gospel at the age of five,

could be regenerate by the Holy Spirit.

And Jesse Urban Overhauser, when he heard that, he didn't believe it, not one bit.

But then he eventually decided to try it, though I believe he actually tried it on 10 year olds instead of five year olds.

He didn't have that much faith.

But when the children understood the gospel and professed the faith in Christ, that changed Jesse's life.

And that would start the launch of Child Evangelism Fellowship and all the different ministries that we

have today.

Now, I'm part of Child Evangelism Fellowship of Eastern PA.

So we are pretty much, if you look at a map of all the

counties in Pennsylvania, you start in the middle and then you head eastward.

We're most of those counties.

Some belong to CEF Inc as well, but we are CEF of Eastern PA.

But we've been out here, I in Redding City.

I've only been here since 2019, but we've been going into the schools in

Redding City, in my county, Berks County, been doing it for 27, almost 28

years now.

And what we do is we go into schools for after school clubs and we preach the gospel.

We teach Bible lessons with the gospel weaved throughout them.

We teach memory verses, missionary stories.

There's games, but it's very much evangelism.

If you're going to learn a memory verse, you're going to hear how it connects with the gospel.

If you're doing a Bible lesson and we like to teach through the Bible.

So whether if you're on the life of Christ or Jacob and his two wives in the book of Genesis, you will hear the

gospel.

And in all our different teachings, it's always to help children understand the gospel.

So that is what we do.

Great.

And if anybody wants more details, go to C .E .F. Berks and that's B as in Boy,

E -R -K -S dot com, C .E .F. for Child Evangelism Fellowship,

Berks, B as in Boy, E -R -K -S dot com.

Now tell us about this exciting event that I already mentioned some months ago,

our mutual friend Joel Saint, who is the founder, I believe, and

president.

I frequently get titles mixed up when I'm introducing people, but I believe he's the founder and president.

I know he's the founder of the Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society.

And the founder of the Future of Christendom conferences, he contacted me

some months ago and said, I know of your friendship, your very close friendship with Dr. James R. White of Alpha

Omega Ministries, do you think it's possible that you will be able to arrange a conference

and debate for Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society here in Pennsylvania?

And thanks be to God, when I contacted Dr. White, he immediately accepted the

invitation to be the keynote speaker for this conference and also to debate

Dr. Gregory Coles, who identifies himself as a gay

Christian.

He'll be debating Dr. Gregory Coles on, as I said before, is gay Christian a

biblically acceptable identity for a member of Christ's Church?

The conference is September 15th, 16th and 17th, Friday through Sunday, and the debate itself

is Saturday, September 16th, 3 .30 p .m. to 6 .30 p .m.

But tell us more about this conference and about your specific role in it.

Yes, I'm still trying to figure out how I'm one of the speakers there.

That was quite a surprise when Luke Sank gave me a call, I guess it was a few months ago

at least.

I'm still kind of coming out of the summer ministry workload that my ministry's had.

We had probably about 60 hour work weeks with camps, clubs and different things of reaching kids.

So it was sometime during then that I got the call about it.

But yeah, it looks really exciting.

I've been going to Mars conferences since 2020.

That's when I really got connected with Joel and everybody that's involved with that.

I've actually been going to Joel's Church, Independence Reformed Bible Church, ever since Mars Conference 2020.

So I always look forward to this time of year just because there's always great teachings and topics and different

things.

And then a lot of my friends from different connections with our church come out to that.

I love all the speakers.

And I didn't think that I'd be one of the speakers there anytime soon.

So that was quite the surprise.

But yes, the conference is the Gospel at War.

And so that's quite a topic in of itself.

And if you look at the different expositions and topics and things that will be addressed throughout, it looks like it's

going to be quite the weekend.

My topic or exposition is what they're calling it.

It's like 18 minute talks.

But mine is going to be the Gospel at War with heresy.

So I got that topic assigned to me and I thought to myself, now, what am I supposed to

say in 18 minutes that can address that topic?

And I am, quite frankly, a very big fan of the KISS method, the keep it simple, stupid.

Method.

That was originally coined for President Bill Clinton, wasn't it?

Oh, man.

Well, I guess he did do some good.

That wasn't my reason for mentioning it.

I just thought that immediately popped in my memory.

And I can't remember if he actually coined the phrase or one of his campaign

individuals coined it for him.

But I just remember that was.

Well, anyway, keep going.

I heard it back in college and it struck a chord in my heart because I actually

I bear.

Correction.

I think it was.

It's the economy, stupid.

So you're free to use that phrase now without any fear of connection with Bill Clinton.

Well, I was looking at this topic, the Gospel War with heresy, and I'm like, OK, I don't have an hour

to go on throughout church history, confessionalism, all these different things.

And so I thought, let's just keep it really simple.

And what I really want to deal with in this and everyone who's at the conference, and I believe it will be

recorded.

I don't know if that's for certain, but they usually are.

So I'm assuming it will be recorded.

But I really want to talk about how we have one faith, one gospel that has been handed down to

us in scriptures by the holy apostles.

And anything that would threaten this gospel is heresy, anything that would add to it,

diminish from it.

And I really want to press because I know there's this there's a lot of talks going on and the church

days, the church is looking at more involved in politics and Christian nationalism.

How do we deal with this?

How do we not?

And people are having talks.

And what I really want to do with my brief time is talk about how God curses

heresy.

God hates heresy.

Anything that would attack the gospel, whether it's the doctrines of Christ, justification, all these things.

And we as Christians, as we are seeking to establish righteousness in the earth, as we are seeking to

serve the Lord, we need to make sure that we do not bless what God curses.

But we also need to make sure that we do not curse what God blesses as well.

And there will be a lot of application to go into that.

But really just looking at remembering in the in the in

the war of the gospel, if you want to call it that heresy is still heresy and the gospel is at war with heresy.

So wrapping up my PowerPoint for that and getting those things

all tuned in, I would have loved to do more work on it, but I managed to get myself sick for Labor Day weekend.

So got a little delayed on that.

Okay.

Yes.

Heresy is an area that is

sadly and tragically rarely brought up from behind

the pulpits or in the books or in the

conferences of many, if not most modern evangelicals.

In fact, although they might not phrase it this way, the

greatest heresy of the church is to believe there is such a thing as heresy in their minds.

And then the other problem that we have on the other end of the spectrum, that's a smaller group,

a lot smaller, but it exists and can definitely be a blight

on the name and reputation of the body of Christ.

And that is those heresy hunters that go to an extreme

and basically spend the vast majority, if not all of their waking hours,

hunting down heretics, or at least people they think are heretics in their mind.

And they're very often slandering brothers and sisters in Christ.

So this is an area where a great balance,

wisdom, caution, discernment, and accuracy is absolutely required.

We have to really know what we're talking about and what a so -called

person worthy of the label heretic, we have to really know what they're saying, teaching,

and so on before we say a word in public in a negative fashion about them, don't we?

Yes, we do.

And that's a big thing I really want to talk about with the application and when I have the

exposition, is I think it's easy when people are in the fight for a while,

whether if you're—I've done a lot of abortion ministries, I've gone out to mills and preached out there,

and I know that there's a lot of people out there that can get so angry at some other

Christians who maybe aren't fighting the battle the same way that they are that they'll almost end

up accusing those other Christians of preaching a different Jesus or a different gospel.

And that's a pretty serious charge.

But on the other side of that, like, let's just stick with the abortion issue.

There's been times where I'm out there and I'm one of, if I'm not the only, Protestant out

there, and there are Roman Catholics and other people that are out there.

And then you have to deal with the trouble of, OK, how far can we work

together?

How much—I mean, obviously, we both do not want babies to die inside of said

abortion mill, but then I'm preaching the gospel and they don't want me to preach that

because they won't say it this way, but they hate the preaching of the gospel.

And I've seen that at some of these mills.

And it's very complicated when you're out in the battle of it.

But we've got to remember when it comes to the gospel that the gospel is at war with

heresy, to go with my title.

And so it's easy when you're in the fight to just fall into those categories of either

dealing with people who are truly brothers and sisters in Christ.

They have the gospel right, but maybe they're not doing the same kind of work you're doing and you're angry at them or

you're out there at the mills or wherever else you're doing and you're working with pro -lifers

or Roman Catholics.

And you've got to remember that you two might be fighting a similar fight, but if they're holding on to heresies, that's a different

gospel than they're not your brothers and sisters in Christ.

And so it's a very difficult topic for me to take on.

And then I have to do it in 18 minutes, but we'll try to do it.

Yes, doing a live radio program

slash podcast that is very diverse in its spectrum of guests and topics.

I am routinely attacked on both ends of the

spectrum regarding heresy.

I am attacked by people who think I'm a mean, nasty, heartless,

judgmental, pharisaical host, and my guests are as

well, for pointing out heresy in specific individuals and

ministries and churches and movements.

And on the other side, I am constantly being asked, why

on earth did you have that person.

On?

That person believes this and that and the other thing.

So I just know that it is a not very

easy tightrope walk that we make when even

speaking about the issue.

And sometimes I believe it can be a healthy sign when people on opposite ends are attacking you when you're talking

about this.

Yeah, that is a good way to think about it.

But by the way, if anybody, and I hope as many of you as possible listening, will want

to attend this three -day event or at least two of the days if you have your own

church where you want to have worship service on the Lord's Day.

But if you're traveling outside of your own local area, you may want to attend

the worship service as well on Sunday.

But the event again is Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, September 15th, 16th, and 17th

at the Spooky Nook Sports and Events, which I understand is an absolutely

breathtaking conference venue.

And that is in Mannheim, Pennsylvania, which is in Lancaster County.

And that's featuring a whole host of speakers, including my guest, Matthew Ware,

and including the keynote speaker, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, who, as I said before, is

debating Dr. Gregory Coles on the theme, Is Gay Christian a Biblically

Acceptable Identity for a Member of Christ's Church?

If you want to register, and I hope you do, go to futureofchristendom .org,

futureofchristendom .org.

And of course, for more information on the Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society, which is

the host of this event, go to midatlanticreformation .org, midatlanticreformation

.org, and there'll be a host of information there.

We are going to our first commercial break, and when we return, before we get into the joy of evangelizing

children, our main theme today, since you are a first -time guest, I want you to give a summary of your

salvation testimony.

And I will also now give our listeners our email address if you have a question for Matthew Ware on

evangelizing children.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E

-N at gmail .com.

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

Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

We'll be right back with Matthew Ware right after these messages from our sponsors.

Don't go away.

The 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 Coles, 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 will run from Friday evening through all day Saturday,

with an invitation to the Sunday morning worship service of the Independence Reform Bible Church.

This will be a weekend packed with practical teaching, with a theme of the Gospel at War in many areas of our culture, including

government schools, the Supreme Court, missions, feminism, and even the church pulpits.

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.

I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott

Anuel, and Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries.

And there's more great news.

Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio can get you a 30 discount off the registration

fee.

Go to g3min .org, that's g3min .org, and enter promo

code G3ISIR, that's G3ISIR

for the 30 discount.

Chris Arnzen, I look forward to seeing you all Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd at the G3

National Conference in Atlanta, Georgia on the sovereignty of God.

Make sure you stop by the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio exhibitor booth and say hi to Chris Arnzen while

you're there.

Go to g3min .org and enter promo code G3ISIR for

your 30 discount off the registration fee.

I'm Brian McLaughlin, president of the SecureComm Group and an enthusiastic supporter of Chris

Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio program.

The SecureComm Group provides the highest level of security, close -circuit television, access control,

and communication systems for Manhattan's top residential buildings, as well as churches, commercial properties,

municipalities, and more.

We custom install exactly what you need to protect yourself, including digital recording, off

-site viewing, and connectivity from most smart devices.

From simple code -activated systems to the latest technology using facial recognition, the

SecureComm Group has it.

We also provide the latest in intercom and IP telephone systems.

In addition, we provide superior networking platforms.

We'll create, maintain, and secure your local network, whether it's a Wi -Fi or hardwire network.

We'll implement the latest secured firewall, endpoint solutions, and cloud backup.

I would love to have the honor and privilege of helping protect the lives and property of Iron Sharpens Iron

Radio listeners and their associates.

For more details on how the SecureComm Group may be of service to you with the very latest in security

innovations, call 718 -353 -3355.

That's 718 -353 -3355.

Or visit securecommgroup .com.

That's securecommgroup .com.

This is Brian McLaughlin of the SecureComm Group, joining Chris Arnzen's family of advertisers to keep

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air.

Puritan Reformed is a Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church.

Here at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, praise God for the generous monthly financial support of

Royal Diadem Jewelers, educated by and affiliated with the American Gem

Society, Jewelers of America, and the Gemological Institute of America.

For the perfect custom -designed engagement ring or any one -of -a -kind piece of jewelry created

exactly according to your imagination and specifications, Royal Diadem Jewelers

has you covered.

No matter where you live in the world, Royal Diadem will walk you step -by -step through every stage of the

process and even hold a high -tech internet virtual visit using state -of -the -art jewelry design

technology to serve you.

They start by listening carefully to determine your needs.

They're interested in making what you want, not what they want to sell you.

From rough design to digital model, to photorealistic image, to wax prototype model, to

the finished product, they're continually listening to your input, likes and dislikes,

making any changes necessary along the way.

This will ensure that your custom jewelry will turn out exactly as you dreamed and well beyond

your expectations.

Visit royaldiadem .com.

That's royaldiadem .com today.

Sterling Vandewerker, owner of Royal Diadem Jewelers, his wife, Bronnie, his business partner

and manager, Brian Wilson, and the entire family, thank you all for listening to, praying for,

and supporting the work of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And don't forget, folks, royaldiadem .com is still offering Iron

Sharpens Iron Radio this mind -blowing opportunity.

They are going to give Iron Sharpens Iron Radio 100 of the profits from any

sale of jewelry to an Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener, as long as that listener

mentions Iron Sharpens Iron Radio when making their purchase.

So whether you are making a purchase of jewelry that is

already in stock at royaldiadem .com, valued at $100 or more, or

if you are having a custom design piece of jewelry created, like an engagement ring or like taking your church

logo, your parachurch ministry logo, your denomination logo, your seminary logo,

or anything else that you can conjure up in your brain that you want turned

into a piece of jewelry, they will take what's in your brain and create a physical piece of

jewelry that will blow your mind.

I've seen firsthand the mastery that they have over custom designing jewelry at royaldiadem

.com.

And on top of everything, your jewelry, your custom design jewelry, is guaranteed to come out

exactly the way you want it to, because you, no matter where you live in the world,

through the miracle of computer software, are able to see every single

phase, every step of the creation process.

And you have the ability at any time to make changes.

Hey, I love this, but I hate that.

Hey, can you make this bigger and that other thing smaller?

Can you change the color of this stone?

And on and on and on.

And then on top of all of that, when the visual presentations you have seen are

affirmed by you, approved by you, on top of that, you will get in the mail, no matter where in the world you

live, a physical wax prototype, three -dimensional wax prototype that will be

shipped to you.

And you can hold it in your hand.

You can see exactly how big it is or how small it is.

You can flip it at every angle.

And you then still have opportunities to make changes.

And then when you make the changes on the three -dimensional wax prototype, if any, they will finally cast it

into your final piece of jewelry.

So please, if you have any interest in purchasing jewelry for yourself or someone you love, go to royaldiadem

.com very soon, because we have no idea when they're going to pull the plug on this amazing offer

to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, where we get 100 of the profits from your purchase.

So please go to royaldiadem .com today and mention Chris Arnzen of Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

We are now back with our guest today, Matthew Ware.

Assistant Director of Child Evangelism Fellowship of Redding and Berks County, Pennsylvania.

We are discussing the joy of evangelizing children.

Our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

As I said before the break, Matthew, before we get into the actual primary theme

of the joy of evangelizing children, we have a custom here where whenever we have a first -time guest, that

guest gives a summary of their salvation testimony that would include what kind of religious

atmosphere, if any, in which they were raised, what kind of

providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you

to himself and saved you.

And so please begin with your story.

Sorry about that.

I had you on mute accidentally.

Oh, okay.

I'm back now.

All right.

So I was raised in a professing Christian family.

We were mainline denomination, I believe.

Yes, it was the PCUSA, raised in Severna Park, Maryland.

So I was raised going to the churches, memorizing the

Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, those things.

And that was just how I kind of affiliated the Christian life.

I had a friend when I was growing up whose dad was a very serious Christian who did

everything that he could to try to lead his son to the Lord.

But his dad got me and him set up for a camp

that was in Northern Maryland, a Christian camp.

And in my teenage years, I spent six or seven years, just every summer,

we would go for one week and we'd go to this camp.

And it was the absolute best time of the summer.

It was a lot of fun with my buddy.

But they had chapel services that evening.

And the preachers that they had were pretty good.

This was a long time for me now.

I'm 32.

This is like half a life ago.

But I still remember some of the illustrations, some of the words, even if I can't remember the preachers.

And I would say I definitely learned the simplicity of the

gospel at these camps.

I think of one man who now I know he was quoting Jonathan Edwards many times in his sermon from Sinners

in the Hands of an Angry God.

But I remember learning very clearly that I was a sinner, that my

sin had separated me from God.

I deserved to be punished, cast into hell for that.

But Jesus died on the cross and came alive again so that I could be forgiven and I wouldn't get that

punishment.

I very much learned kind of that, the gist of it.

And I was very convicted and moved by that.

But what would happen is I would come home from camp and I'd be all

fired up.

I want to talk more about God, listen to more Christian music or whatever.

I'd try to be more excited about going to the mainline church that we were going to, though that never really worked.

And it would just take a week or two after coming home from camp and that zeal would kind of fizzle out and I'd go right

back to my old self.

And that's how it was for, again, six or seven years.

But I never forgot those sermon messages.

I really was convinced that I was a Christian at that time.

I believe there was a God.

I believe that Jesus died and came alive again.

And I believe that if I believe in Jesus, I'll be saved.

Well, as I got to my later teens and early 20s, that's when I started to show my true colors and I

started to get involved in all the things that I really, really shouldn't have.

And this would go on until about five days after my 24th

birthday.

That was back in the day I was drinking a lot of alcohol a day, smoking weed, doing all this different

stuff to just kind of dull myself out constantly.

But I kind of had just a wake up call one day where I just knew that I needed to change everything about my life if I

ever wanted to have, I don't know, whatever it is that I wanted.

It was kind of like that weird wake up call.

And I didn't really know what that meant, but I stopped drinking and sobered up that day.

I started losing weight.

And when you come out of a lifestyle of regular intoxication and getting

high and stuff like that, I mean, I know there's plenty of people who had it worse than I did.

But like when you come out of that, you start to get clarity.

You start to see just how messed up your life was.

And my life was messed up.

I'd been flunking community college for five years.

Like long story in that I was a nobody living in my parents' basement, pretty much.

I technically slept upstairs, but like I just came to see how worthless I was.

And then I decided that maybe I should go back to church because I hadn't gone to church for a while.

And so I decided to go to church.

I ended up signing up for like a midweek program.

And I think honestly, I was just going there to meet women.

And I get there and I'm like the youngest person in there by like 20 years.

So I know I've immediately made a huge mistake.

But then the unthinkable happens.

The class was called growth class.

I didn't really know what that meant.

I didn't really care.

But it was really kind of like a class that would talk about the attributes of God

and stuff like, you know, God's plans for your life.

But they would do something that I'd never really had done to me.

They read from the scriptures and they just started reading different Bible verses and talking about

who God is and what he was like.

And a lot of these things I'd heard before, but that was the day like everything just shifted, like

everything just changed.

Like I just realized I was wrong about God.

God is very personal and I really want to live all of my life for God.

And that day was the day I really think I

was converted.

Like again, it's a mysterious process because all the gospel theology and everything that I kind of learned

before that kind of came alive that day.

That was the day where I was like, whatever happens from here on out, I just want to live for the Lord.

I started going back to church regularly.

I got my first Bible, read it all in a year and just would listen to sermons constantly my

whole life as I was cleaning up my life and getting back into becoming somewhat of a normal human

being was God centered.

I knew I just wanted to learn more about God.

I just wanted to live for God.

And very early in that process with the conversion was a strong

desire to serve the Lord in ministry.

And so that it's interesting when I look at ministry and my calling for that and my

conversion, the two are very similar.

I can't think of a time where I was ever what I would call a true Christian where I didn't have

an overwhelming compulsion to serve the Lord and preaching and teaching the word, evangelizing the lost

and just serving the Lord.

I went to Bible college here at Lancaster Bible College back in 2017

to 19, finished all my credits, studied pastoral ministry.

And then I ended up here with CEF instead of the pastorate.

But yeah, that's kind of the spiel of it, how the Lord just kind of took me through a lot of different

stuff.

And then it was like that time at that midweek church meeting is when it all kind.

Of just came alive and came together.

Praise God.

Well, now we are entering into, as I mentioned, the theme

today, the joy of evangelizing children.

And once again, our email address for questions from our audience is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

But there is something that is indeed joyful

about evangelizing children.

But that does not mean that every instance and situation where children are

being evangelized is joyful.

And of course, depending upon the age group that you are speaking of,

there are children, especially in their preteens and teens

and post -teens, that are more openly rebellious to

any efforts of evangelism.

But I'm assuming that even when most children who are

raised by Christian parents likely will parrot

their parents' love for Jesus just because they

hear Jesus spoken of and praised and worshipped in

song and in teaching and when they're taken to worship services at church,

that it'd be very rare for a little child to say, Mommy, I disagree with you about the

hypostatic union, you know.

But I must be impressed.

But so tell us exactly about what you are referring to, to the joy of evangelizing children.

So I'll just describe kind of what the Good News Club

ministry looks like now in the year 2023.

So I'm ministering in Reading City, and so the vast majority of our clubbers

are Puerto Rican, or there's some DR, some Mexican, some black, hardly any white kids left

in the inner city Good News Clubs that we do.

When we go in and we teach the Bible and the gospel, what's happening more and more, and I

bet it's going to happen in October when we start off at Good News Club again, is

we find out that these kids, many of them don't even know who Jesus is, never heard of him,

much less Christianity, the Bible, nothing.

We're at that time now where children are being raised and brought up who many of them

don't have even living relatives that go to church anymore.

So what's happening again and again when we do Good News Club is children are coming in

pretty much with a clean slate.

There is some Roman Catholic influence for some of the kids.

Some of them do come from Espanol churches in the city or whatnot.

But again and again, what I'm finding is when we start out with them, they got

nothing, Chris.

They got everything that we think.

Everybody knows that.

No, they think Jesus is a cuss word.

So I start with that, and what happens is over the months,

the kids just light up.

Some drop out.

Some, they have to do other clubs come in.

Some aren't that happy to be there, but especially me as a man who teaches, I have a bit

more of an intimidating presence, but the kids just light up.

They memorize the gospel.

They love coming to club.

They love learning about God and the Bible, and I'm

telling you, after years of doing this, it's such an incredible thing because these children,

a lot of them, like what you just described, that's not what my clubbers look like in Reading City.

I'm dealing with pretty much an unreached people group, and I'm going

in there, and we don't write up our own lessons.

We have an agenda we follow.

We're teaching through the Bible.

Just last year, we were teaching through Joseph and Moses, so really the first five books of the

Bible, and the first Bible lesson some of those kids ever heard in their life was Jacob

and his two wives.

You could imagine having no familiarity with the Bible and then hearing that, but they kept

coming, and they heard the gospel.

They heard who God is.

It's a totally unreached people group, a lot of these kids, but they're listening.

They're coming back.

They're smiling.

They're having fun, and I do a lot of street preaching.

I go out to mills.

I go out to public squares, and I've seen a lot of very gospel -hardened people,

but when I go into these pretty much unreached kids, when I go into these schools, whether they're in the libraries or in

a classroom, and I'm teaching through the Bible to the kids, it's a totally different response.

Children are so much more receptive, even when they're almost completely unreached.

They're so much more receptive, particularly third graders and fourth graders.

That's who I teach, and it's almost unbelievable.

If I wasn't doing it, I would almost have a hard time believing that, but there's something just incredible.

Children, just to give you an idea, I was talking with a young lady back in 2019,

and she professed that after she'd learned about God and Jesus, she

had said, I always knew there had to be a God, and she professed faith in Jesus, and I just decided one day I'm

going to talk to her, and I told her, now, young lady, when you get older in your schools, they're going to try to tell you how there is no

God and how nothing created everything.

There is no absolute truth.

We're all just kind of here trying to get along together.

We're bags of cells bumping around.

I was giving her the whole atheist dream, and this third grader looked at me with horror and

unbelief, and she told me, Mr. Matt, that's stupid, and I told

her, you're right.

It is, but that's what adults and that's what people

want to do when they want to ignore God, when they want to sin, and

the child understood that that was ridiculous, and it's fascinating when you minister

to these children because we're all sinners.

We all have that original sin, but these children, they're still so ready to absorb and to

absorb new information and learn about the Lord.

It just makes so much sense again and again when you're reading through the Bible, both Old and New Testament, the great

commandments again and again that God gives his people.

Teach your children.

Teach your children.

Teach your children.

Don't wait till later because the children, I'm telling you, they are so much more receptive to the

Word of God, and when is someone truly regenerate?

That's the great question.

Maybe they are now.

Maybe they are later, but the reality is they're so much more receptive than adults.

From years of street preaching and years of teaching children, there's a radical difference.

Between the receptivity to the gospel.

Now, how do you carefully and delicately balance

being very truthful about what the Bible teaches about

who will and who will not go to heaven especially when you're

preaching to children, evangelizing children, teaching children?

Well, what lengths do you go to to scare them

about the reality of hell, or as probably the majority of

evangelicals do, do you avoid that altogether?

So, it's one of the easiest ways I.

Could answer that is just to talk about how we bring up, we call it the sin point

when we're teaching a Bible lesson or how I would talk with a child.

So, what we would do is we always take our time going through sin, whether if it's a Bible lesson, if we're

doing what we call counseling, or if I was just talking one -on -one with someone

because you have to talk about sin.

That is one of our main gospel points is speaking of sin.

We define sin.

We tell them sin is anything you think, say, or do that breaks God's laws.

We read a verse from the Bible that like Romans 3, 23, for all

have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

We explain what that means.

That all means everybody.

You and I, we give examples, but we take our time.

We speak very seriously but gently.

That's how you want to speak with this with a child.

You don't want to, we don't go through sin and we say, you are an impudent

sinner and you have earned God's wrath and you deserve hell and all these things.

But very much like we're speaking to children, we say, John, you and

I, the Bible says are guilty of sin.

We have done things that we know are wrong.

You, John, have done things that you know break God's commandments.

And that sin deserves God's punishment.

Because what you've done is evil.

It's wrong.

But John, Jesus is a sinner of the sin.

Uh, brother, you are cutting in and out now for some reason.

I don't know why.

I don't know if you're speaking now, but you're, you're not in.

Uh, well, we're going to go to our, our midway break.

Perhaps you can see if you could resolve the issue.

I'm not sure what's happening, but, uh, we're going to our midway break.

And, uh, I'm going to remind our listeners, please be patient with us because the midway break is always longer than the other breaks

in the show because Grace Life Radio, 91, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida

requires of us a longer break in the middle because the FCC requires of

them to localize Iron Sharpens Iron Radio geographically to Lake

City, Florida, where they're physically located.

They do so with their own public public service announcements and other local things that they air in the

middle of our show.

While we simultaneously air our globally heard commercials, please use this time wisely, write

down as much of the contact information as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you can

so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to our advertisers.

We absolutely positively depend upon our advertisers to

exist.

The financial support that comes through the advertising is absolutely necessary for our survival.

Unfortunately, the donations that come in don't nearly cover enough for us to depend on them

solely.

So please respond to our advertisers.

We hope that that often means you'll use their services or buy their products, visit their churches.

But when you can't do that, there's one thing all of you can do.

You could thank our advertisers for sponsoring this show, and that should go a long way.

But also use this time to send in your questions.

We'll be right.

Back.

Please don't go away.

The 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 Coles, 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 will run from Friday evening through all day Saturday,

with an invitation to the Sunday morning worship service of the Independence Reform Bible Church.

This will be a weekend packed with practical teaching, with a theme of the Gospel at War in many areas of our culture, including

government schools, the Supreme Court, missions, feminism, and even the church pulpits.

Head to futureofchristendom .org.

James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here.

I'm very excited to announce that my long -time 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 have been preaching,

teaching, writing about, and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott

Anuel, and Josh Bice, founder of G3

Ministries.

And there's more great news.

Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio can get you a 30 discount off the registration

fee.

Go to g3min .org, that's g3min .org, and enter promo code

G3ISIR.

That's G3ISIR for the 30 % discount.

Chris Arnzen and I look forward to seeing you all Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd at the G3

National Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, on the sovereignty of God.

Make sure you stop by the Iron Sharpens Iron radio exhibitor booth and say hi to Chris Arnzen while

you're there.

Go to g3min .org and enter.

Promo code G3ISIR for your 30 discount off the

registration fee.

It's such a blessing to hear.

From Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners from all over the world.

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

he really loves hearing interviewed,.

Dr. Joe Moorcraft.

I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener here in Attai in County Kildare, Ireland.

Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe

Moorcraft.

If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming,

Georgia are largely to thank, since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.

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

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

Moorcraft is the author of an eight -volume commentary on the larger catechism.

Heritage is a member of the Hanover Presbytery, built upon the of the apostles and prophets,

Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great Protestant

Reformation of the 16th century.

Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers, scripture alone,

grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, and God's glory alone.

Their primary goal is the worship of the triune God that continues in eternity.

For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch

.com, that's heritage presbyterianchurch .com, or call 678 -954

-7831, that's 678 -954 -7831.

If you visit, have them Joe Reilly, an Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener, and Mattai in County Kildare,

Ireland, send you.

When Iron Sharpens Iron radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the New American Standard

Bible were among my very first sponsors.

It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the Iron Sharpens Iron radio audience have been

sticking with or switching to the NASB.

I'm Dr.

Joseph Piper, president and professor of systematic and homiletical theology at Greenville

Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylors, South Carolina, and the NASB is

my Bible of choice.

I'm Pastor Chuck White of the First Trinity Lutheran Church in Tonawanda, New York, and the NASB

is my Bible.

Of choice.

I'm Pastor Anthony Methenia of Christ Church in Radford, Virginia, and the NASB is my.

Bible of choice.

I'm Pastor Jesse Miller of Damascus Road Christian Church in Gardenville, Nevada,.

And the NASB is my Bible of choice.

I'm Pastor Bruce Bennett of Word of Truth Church in Farmerville, Long Island, New York, and

the NASB is my Bible of choice.

I'm Pastor Rodney Brown of Metro Bible Church in South Lake, Texas, and the NASB is

my Bible of choice.

I'm Pastor Jim Harrison of Red.

Mills Baptist Church in Mayapac Falls, New York, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

Here's a great.

Way for your church to help keep Iron Sharpens Iron radio on the air.

Pastors, are your pew bibles tattered and falling apart?

Consider restocking your pews with the NASB and tell the publishers you heard about them

from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron radio.

Go to nasbible .com.

That's.

Nasbible .com to place your order.

Getting a driver's license, running a cash register,.

Flipping burgers, passing sixth grade.

Do you know what they all have in common?

They all require training, assessments, and certifications.

But do you know what requires no training at all?

Becoming a parent.

My name is A .M. Brewster.

I'm the president of Truth, Love, Parent, and host of its award -winning podcast.

I've been a biblical family counselor since the early 2000s, and what I've discovered is that the majority of Christian parents have

never been biblically equipped to do the work of the ministry in their homes.

That's why Truth, Love, Parent exists.

We serve God by equipping dads and moms to be the ambassador parents God called and created them to be.

We produce free parenting resources, train church leaders, and offer biblical counseling so that the next generation of

dads and moms can use the scriptures to parent their children for life and godliness.

Please visit us at truthloveparent .com.

Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor.

Chris Arnzen of.

Iron Sharpens Iron radio has had a longtime partnership with our friends at CVBBS, which

stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

They specialize in supplying Reformed and Puritan books and Bibles at discount prices that make them affordable for

everyone.

CVBBS has been a family -owned book service since 1987, operating out of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

They seek to bring you the best available Christian books and Bibles at the best possible prices.

Unlike other book sites, they make no effort to provide every book that is available or popular because, frankly,

much of what is being printed is not worth your time.

That means you can get to the good stuff faster.

It also means you don't have to worry about being assaulted by the pornographic, heretical, and otherwise faith

-insulting materials promoted by the secular book vendors.

Browse the pages at ease, shop at your leisure, and purchase with confidence at Cumberland Valley

Bible Book Service.

Order online at cvbbs .com.

That's cvbbs .com.

Or you can order by phone at 1 -800 -656 -0231.

That's 1 -800 -656 -0231.

Please let our friends at CVBBS know that you heard about.

Them on Iron Sharpens Iron

radio.

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

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

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

McDowell.

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church

in Corham, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into

the unfathomable riches of Christ in his holy word, and to enthusiastically proclaim

Christ Jesus the King and his doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and

beyond.

I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing

of being showered by their love as I have.

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

That's hopereformedli

.net, or call 631 -696 -5711.

That's 631 -696 -5711.

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

on Iron Sharpens Iron.

If you love Iron Sharpens Iron radio, one of the best ways you can help keep.

The show on the air is by supporting our advertisers.

One such faithful advertiser who really believes in what Chris Hansen is doing is

Daniel P. Patafuco, serious injury lawyer and Christian apologist.

Dan is the president and founder of the Historical Bible Society.

Their mission?

To foster belief in the credibility of scripture as the written word of God.

They go to various churches, schools, and institutions to publicly display a rare

collection of biblical texts along with a fascinating presentation by Mr. Patafuco

demonstrating the reliability of scripture.

To advance the cause of the gospel, they created a beautiful, perfect facsimile of the

genealogy of Jesus Christ from the original engravings contained in a first edition

1611 King James Bible.

This 17th century hand -engraved chart shows the family tree of Jesus Christ

going back to Adam and Eve.

This book is complete with gorgeous full -size illustrations of Noah's Ark and the Tower of

Babel and an explanation of why the genealogy of Jesus is so important for his

claims to the throne of the universe.

Originals of this work are in museums and nobody has ever made it accessible to the public

in a large book form before.

You can have your own copy of this 44 -page genealogy book for a donation of $35

or more.

Visit historicalbiblesociety .org.

That's historicalbiblesociety .org.

Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on the.

Air.

We're devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in scripture alone.

Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image -bearing prophets, priests, and

kings.

We teach families to worship together as families.

Puritan is committed to teaching the whole counsel of God so that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of

God as the waters cover the sea.

We sing the Psalms, teach the law, proclaim the gospel, make disciples, maintain discipline, and exalt

Christ.

This is Pastor David Reis of Puritan Reformed in Phoenix, Arizona.

Join us in the glorious cause of advancing Christ's crown and covenant over the

kings of the earth.

Puritan Reformed Church.

Believe.

Build.

Fight.

PuritanPHX .com.

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 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.

And please folks, don't forget that.

Solid -Ground -Books .com is experiencing a huge slump in book

sales.

So, knowing that they are very much a primary source

of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio's existence, the funding that they provide through their advertising, is

absolutely essential for us to remain on the air.

Please go to Solid -Ground -Books .com and make the largest purchase that you've ever made,

if at all possible.

And if you've never purchased from them before, please make today your first day of purchasing books from them.

And please remember you're not only going to be doing Solid -Ground -Books .com a favor

by keeping them in business through your financial

support through purchases.

And remember, you're not only going to be doing Iron Sharpens Iron Radio a favor by keeping one of our primary

advertisers happy, you're going to be doing yourself and anyone for whom you are purchasing books from Solid

-Ground -Books .com a huge, enormous favor of incalculable value because they bring back

into print and publish for the very first time nothing but the very finest in Christian literature, dating back to the 16th

century Protestant Reformation and extending forward to our current day, including such modern day authors

as Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

So, go to Solid -Ground -Books .com today, purchase generously, and mention Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens

Iron Radio.

Before I return to my guest today, I have some very important announcements to make.

If you love this show and you don't want it to go off the air, please, I'm urging you to go to

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

You could donate instantly with a debit or credit card in that fashion.

If you prefer a snail mail, there will also be a physical address that appears on your screen when you

click support at IronSharpensIronRadio .com where you can mail your checks made payable to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

If you want to advertise with us, as long as whatever it is you're promoting is compatible with what I believe, I would

love to help you launch an ad campaign because we're just as much in urgent need of your advertising dollars as we are in your

donations.

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

I also want to thank right now somebody who just did that very thing, Baptist Publishing

House.

My dear friend, Brother Jordan Too, is the Executive Director of BaptistPublishingHouse

.com and they just renewed their advertising campaign.

In fact, they doubled what they formerly were spending in advertising with us.

Thank you, Jordan Too, the money is urgently needed and

enormously appreciated.

Also, folks, please remember that as urgently and as desperately as I need your

donations, never cut into the money that you have set aside to give to your own local church on

the Lord's Day in order to bless us financially.

Never do that and if you're struggling to survive, wait until you are financially stable and back on your feet before

you send us a financial gift.

The Bible is clear that we are commanded to provide for our church and our family and we're not commanded,

obviously, to provide for Iron Trip and Zion Radio, but if you are blessed financially above

and beyond your ability to provide for church and family, you have extra money for benevolent, recreational, and trivial

purposes.

Please share some of that money with us if you really want us to survive.

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

And last but not least, oh, well, actually two more things.

If you're a man in ministry leadership, please register for the next Iron Trip and Zion Radio free

pastor's luncheon on Thursday, October 5th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in

Loisville, Pennsylvania, featuring one of the most powerful preachers I've ever heard in my life, Pastor Jeff Noblitt

of Grace Life Church of the Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

It's free of charge and that includes your meal and a heavy sack of free brand new books

donated by publishers across the United States and the United Kingdom.

Everything is free of charge, so if you could get to Perry County, Pennsylvania, and more specifically

Loisville on Thursday, October 5th, and you're a man in ministry leadership, I hope to see you there.

Send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line.

Now, last but not least, if you are not a member of a biblically faithful church, I have extensive lists spanning the

globe of Christ honoring doctrinally sound churches, and I've helped many people in our audience all over the world

find churches sometimes within just a couple of minutes from where they live.

If you are in that situation of not having a biblically solid church home, send me an email

to chrisarnson at gmail .com and I need a church in the subject line.

And we are now back with our guest Matthew Ware.

We are speaking about the joy of evangelizing children, and our email address for questions is

chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And let's see, we have Julia in San Francisco,

California with a question.

Julia asks, I'm sorry if you said this earlier, but what are the primary age groups that you

deal with evangelizing with.

The ministry child evangelism fellowship?

So every county, every area is different.

An easy answer for that could be K through five, but it just depends on

where you're teaching.

Like what the type of children that I end up ministering to oftentimes in my

area is third and fourth graders.

Fifth graders are moved into junior high where I'm from, which is just strange for me, but it is what it

is.

We find oftentimes that first and second graders, unless if they have an older sibling or something in the room,

kind of struggle a bit to sit through some of the content because it is a lot of learning and teaching

with active helps as well.

But I mean, outside of just child evangelism fellowship, I also teach Sunday schools

elsewhere.

I've had clubs just this summer where the average age was three

and four.

And so that, that in and of itself is an adventure.

And then I've also had teenagers come to different clubs, 15 year olds, 16 year olds, and

they've actually participated and gone along well.

So really all different ages from as little

as two or three, and I do count babies in the room too, even up to

teenage years is where I find oftentimes that I'm ministering the gospel

too.

I find that if I'm going by grades, third and fourth grade, I think are some of

the most receptive to the point that they've matured enough that they can sit and listen.

They're asking the right questions.

They're not as hardened as perhaps a 15 or 16 year old who

is just, you know, listening to metal and hates God.

So it's all sorts of different ages throughout that.

But I'd say third and fourth grade is the vast majority of who I reach.

Great.

Thank you, Julia.

Let's see.

We have, I don't know if our listener pronounces his name Augustine or

Augustine, but we have either of

those pronunciations in Denton, Texas, a city that I have

visited in Texas myself, and he asks, isn't one of the major

problems that exists amongst Christians who evangelize children is that they too readily

and quickly accept the child's profession of believing in Jesus for

salvation when they're really just mimicking what their parents and other people at church have to

say?

Oh, I mean, there's plenty of truth.

To that.

I mean, I'm no fan of the sinner's prayer myself.

We don't as a ministry use that.

I understand where that's coming from, but I also recognize

A, the commandments and scriptures that we are to teach our own children these things of the Lord and B,

the commandment that we are to disciple all nations and that involves children.

So yeah, I would say I'm very much against trying to get professions of faith out of children that I'm

teaching so I can go tell everybody, look how successful we are.

We're not really like, we have stats, we're a ministry, we have stats.

So these things can get written down.

But the real goal of what we're trying to do is reach as many children as we can so

that they can hear the gospel, that we can teach it in a way that they can understand it.

And if they do seem to profess the faith, then we thank God for that.

But if not, we're just thankful that they were there and we were able to teach them.

At a level that they could understand.

In fact, I have a very strong recommendation for a booklet

that involves this dilemma or this situation.

It's by Dennis Gunderson, and he spells his last name with an S -E -N,

Gunderson, Your Child's Profession of Faith, and

you can get that.

For some reason, his own publishing ministry is out of stock with the book, but I see it in

stock at press .founders .org.

That's press .founders .org, and if you type in the search engine,

Your Child's Profession of Faith, that will come up.

You can also try Amazon or perhaps even cvbbs .com, who sponsors this program.

Perhaps they have some in stock, cvbbs .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

Excellent booklet, basically focusing on

when you're considering the source,

the utterance of a little child who is saying, I love Jesus, and all of

that.

It's focusing on 1 Corinthians 13, verse 11.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put

away childish things, which is, I think, very clear God

-breathed evidence that children think differently than adults, and we can't automatically

accept when a little child says, I love Jesus, and so on.

In fact, we can't even accept that immediately with any adult that approaches us

and immediately want to baptize them or something and invite them into membership of our church just by a mere quick

profession without digging a little deeper.

Now, do I think that some of my fellow Reformed Baptists take that to an extreme and

have weeks and weeks and weeks of courses that have to be accomplished before they're baptized?

Yeah, I don't agree with that either, but am I making sense here?

Maybe you disagree with what I'm saying.

Well, yeah, so it's interesting what we're talking about.

I'm thinking of the question earlier, it's kind of thinking about how we train up our children,

and really, a big part of what my ministry is, is not reaching children of believers, but

really children of unbelievers.

A lot of what we're doing, I'm in a brand new sphere with that because I do get to teach children

of believers on a semi -regular basis.

I help with church sometimes.

There's other ministries that I volunteer my services to teach their children, and I do

love reaching children of believers and giving them the gospel, of course, but when I'm going in with some of

these clubs and other things that I've been doing, I'm reaching a completely unreached people group.

A lot of these kids have no knowledge of the gospel.

They're not going to hear from their parents.

They're not going to church at all.

I'm kind of starting on ground one.

If someone ends up professing the faith, it's like, that's an exciting thing.

Is it genuine or not?

I don't know.

I'm really working on ground one.

I want them to understand who God is.

I want them to understand his attributes.

I want them to understand what sin is, that it separates us from God, that it deserves

punishment from God.

I want them to understand who Christ is, that he died and rose again.

I'm laying down these foundations, and after a while, if they profess the faith, it's like, okay,

I'll put it in my records.

Does that mean that they've immediately become a true born -again Christian in my eyes?

Not really.

I've kind of learned over time to just be open about that, but yeah, it's one of those things.

I think there's definitely two extremes in this.

We don't want to fall into the category of, oh, Billy professed the faith.

He's a genuine Christian, but we also don't want to fall in the category that there's literally no way that a child can be born

again.

I don't think we're at any of those categories.

The real reality of what we're doing is we're sowing seeds.

When we're evangelizing children, whether they're born again or not, one of the great gifts of my ministry, having

been around for so long, is on a regular basis, when I tell people what I do, and I'm speaking to

people who are like 60, 70 years old, is they remember when they were children in good news clubs, and to this

day, they say, that's when I came to know Jesus as my Savior.

That's just happened again and again in my.

Ministry, so I just find that to be an amazing thing.

Well, thank you.

We also have Topher.

I'm wondering if that's a nickname for Christopher.

Topher in Burlington, Vermont, and Topher asks,

one thing that does concern me is that many Christians over -simplify

Bible stories, especially in the Old Testament, to entertain children

and to gain their attention.

An example might be those wonderful, colorful paintings and drawings

we have all seen of Noah's Ark with all the animals aboard with big smiles on their faces.

It doesn't really address the frightening, terrifying aspect of what actually occurred

when Noah rescued not only his family but two of each of the animals of the earth when

God flooded the earth and destroyed all its inhabitants except for those on the Ark.

Am I making sense in my critique, or am I overstating things?

I think that's a very good question, because very often Noah's Ark, probably more than anything,

is being used to appeal to children, and it's presented almost like a

vacation pleasure cruise for the zoo animals, and

you don't see anybody in the water scrambling for their life, and I don't know

if you would think that would be too traumatizing for a child to see anyway.

I guess it would depend on the age, but give us your response to our listener, Topher.

I agree with that.

I think a lot of what passes throughout for children's ministries and all

is guilty of that very same stuff.

It's why I do not do that.

We speak very seriously about sin.

We teach through the Old Testament and the New Testament, and we talk about the things that are very difficult.

We teach about the Ark, for example.

We have pictures.

Now, the pictures are not thousands of people drowning in the water.

It's nothing that we're not trying to be excessive here, but we're very real with them.

Because of sin, God sent the flood, and all these people who did not listen to Noah's preaching,

they drowned.

They died.

We will talk about this, so yeah, we're about that.

I'm going to be teaching on Joshua at some point this year.

That's going to be interesting to talk about.

We talk about the battles.

We talk about sin, Bathsheba.

Now, that's a fun one to teach children.

Yeah, right.

Obviously, you have to be very careful because of the sexual content.

Yeah, but we don't shy away.

We make it appropriate for children, but we do not delude the truth.

I could never do that teaching the Word of God to children because you have to show them the seriousness of sin, but there's

a way to do that that's appropriate for children that doesn't delude the message at

all.

Somebody told me a while ago that teaching children, that's what made it so hard.

You have to teach all this theology, all of this truth, but you have to teach in a way that children can

understand it.

If you can learn to do that, well, I'm four years in.

I'm starting to figure it out, I think.

Maybe not.

When you show them a photograph of Noah's Ark, is it okay, in your opinion, to show a child one or two

people drowning in the water, not thousands?

Was that another question, or is that yours?

Oh, that's mine.

I mean, personally, I don't know if this makes me a bad person or not, but personally, I

wouldn't shy away from that.

I mean, I'm not trying to give kids nightmares by any means, but we're talking about very serious things

here.

Hey, if you can have Bambi's father, I think it was Bambi's

father that was shot by a hunter, his mother.

That was his mother?

Yeah, I still remember.

Okay.

Obviously, it traumatized you, but if you can include that in

an animated movie, primarily intended for children, why can't you include something, like you just said, that is

infinitely more important, but that would have some kind of a graphic

representation of that?

I was teaching on Esther to some campers over the summer and

talking about the great irony of what happens to Haman with the 75 -foot gallow, and I

didn't need a picture of Haman on that gallow to get the point across.

We could talk in detail about it, but the kids understood it, and that, obviously, I wouldn't want to use a

picture for, but we talk about these things, and we do it, and the children know exactly what

we're talking about, but again, it's none of that nightmare -inducing.

Well, if they are getting nightmares, hopefully, it's the spirit working,.

But I don't think they are.

Okay.

We have another listener.

I'm not sure if the listener is using an alias, but the name provided is Love, L -O -V -E,

in Urbana, Illinois.

You said earlier that very often, if not primarily, you are evangelizing children of

unsaved parents.

Do they give their permission to you to do so?

Yes.

So, we have permission slips for that, and the family,

maybe they're totally unchurched, maybe they have a Roman Catholic background.

We don't really know, but the reality is, if kids are coming to

our camps or anything like that that I'm running, their families have

signed permission slips, and we tell people what we're about.

We tell them that we teach Bible lessons and that we do memory verses and things like that, so it's no

big secret, but yes, it's one of those things.

Years ago, I was like, there's no way, but it's true.

They do that.

Now, that might have something to do with the area that I'm in.

Again, I deal with a lot of Puerto Rican families, Latin American, different people like that,

but yes, for lack of a better explanation, I don't know how outside of the grace of God, but yes,

the parents know what their children are being taught.

I don't know if they feel if it's just like, oh, it's some spirituality lesson.

I don't know if they view us as just another church program or something.

We're in a very poor area of America.

It could be another.

Program, but they signed the paper, so.

Let's see here.

We have, I was just looking, oh, here it is.

Merrick in Aquabog, Long Island, New York.

I have fond memories of Aquabog going apple picking with my late wife many years ago.

Aquabog, it's gorgeous out there in that area of Long Island.

Merrick asks, I don't know if you've ever encountered this situation, but in this

crazy world we live in, I would not be surprised if it has happened.

Have you ever had parents who believe that their child is so -called transgendered,

has sent their child to you with restrictions on how you are to label or call or

identify that child using preferred pronouns, etc., and if you have not

experienced that, how would you.

React to such a request?

Well, so years ago there was a boy that I got

to help teach, and he was a very sweet boy, very well -behaved, but I

found out a few weeks in that he felt like a girl.

You heard that from the boy's lips?

Yes.

I heard that, and I found out that his mom was.

Very much encouraging him in that.

Now, how on earth would a mother doing that send a child to a ministry like yours?

That seems bizarre.

It's such a mystery.

It almost sounds like a test to see if they could contact some

authority to have you fined or something, lose your license.

I don't know.

Maybe this will be their testimony against me, but that's how they were reacting.

This boy was sharing that, and I wasn't the main teacher here,

but there was another teacher who was encouraging him with what the Bible said, but I pulled

out Psalm 139, the classic, and I just highlighted a few things.

It just so happened that that day that the boy's mom was running late, so he was the only one left over

after dismissal.

We were teaching, and I was sitting down with him, and I was just going through the Psalm with them and talking

about how God knew everything about him before he'd ever be born, how God

designed him, how God created him, and that he was fearfully and wonderfully made, and that

God knew exactly what he was doing when he did this.

I gave him that Bible after doing this.

He was nodding his head, and he was being friendly, and I let him keep that Bible, and I'm

glad I did because I can't remember if it was the week afterwards or two weeks

or something like that where the boy couldn't come to club anymore.

Now, we were told the reason why was because he was involved in a bunch of other different things, and that

could very well have been true.

He was very busy with other things, but it was very interesting

how that happened, but the big thing that I like to always go to—I think Ken Ham has nailed it.

The answers are in Genesis.

Always talk about how God created us, male and female, how God made us this way

because when we're teaching children, and we're teaching them about

God, how he created us and all things, as they're dealing with these issues,

we got to go right back to the creation.

God made you.

He made you this way.

He made you very well.

He made it very good.

Sin came in and ruined things, and that's what we did with this boy, but I'm shocked that I

have not had more instances like that, and I feel like inevitably, I will.

I wouldn't be surprised if this would be the issue that would one day get us thrown out.

I hope it doesn't, but I'm also a realist, but yeah, so I did have an

instance like that when I was brand new teaching children with a boy, and he was a good boy, too.

He was a very friendly guy.

Did you prod a little bit, or pry, or however the way to phrase it, a

little deeper to find out if this was really the thoughts of this boy or if it was being,

basically, if the boy is being brainwashed by his own mother because I have heard stories,

especially during custody cases of children where there are

battles going on between the parents, and you'll have one parent who is either a Christian or just has

a sane understanding of what a man, and what a woman,

and what a boy, and what a girl are, and the mother, in

fact, it seemed to always be the mother, at least in the circumstances I'm familiar with.

The mother was saying, oh, we're going to call

Tommy Tina from now on because Tommy's really a girl.

He believes that he's a girl, or she believes she's a girl, as they might phrase it,

and so therefore you can't ever refer to him as a boy or by the name Tommy anymore, and then when the father had

really pressed the child, not in any kind of a frightening way, but in just a gentle way, the child had no

such thought in his mind.

That's just why I'm wondering if it might have been a similar circumstance.

It was interesting, and this is a few years ago, I'm trying to, if the past few years were a lot longer than

other years, but yeah, it

seemed like this boy, he just, I don't think he related a lot with other

guys because the other guys, just in the club, for example, were much more

horsing around, silly, wanted to run around and do all that stuff, and

he just didn't feel like he could be a boy because he didn't

feel like doing what they were doing, and I do wonder how much his mom might have been instigating that about

because I didn't really get to meet his mom too often, but from what I saw, I wouldn't

be surprised if she was I don't know if you want to call it a full -blown activist or just a full

believer in the whole thing, but it does seem like mom

might have very much been stirring up some of that.

I can't prove that, but I do wonder if mom wasn't supporting that or pushing towards that, if he would

be at.

The same conclusion.

All right, we have to go to our final break right now, and our email address is

chrisorenson at gmail .com.

Chrisorenson at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you

live outside of the USA.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Don't go away.

We will be right back right after these messages from our sponsors with more.

Of Matthew Ware.

The 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 Coles, 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 will run from Friday evening through all day Saturday,

with an invitation to the Sunday morning worship service of the Independence Reform Bible Church.

This will be a weekend packed with practical teaching, with a theme of the Gospel at War in many areas of our culture, including

government schools, the Supreme Court, missions, feminism, and even the church pulpits.

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.

I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott

Anuel, and Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries.

And there's more great news.

Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio can get you a 30 discount off the registration

fee.

Go to g3min .org, that's g3min .org, and enter promo

code G3ISIR.

That's G3ISIR for the 30 % discount.

Chris Arnzen, I look forward to seeing you all Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd for the G3

National Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, on the sovereignty of God.

Make sure you stop by the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio exhibitor booth and say hi to Chris Arnzen while

you're there.

Go to g3min .org and enter promo code G3ISIR for

your 30 discount off the registration fee.

I'm

Brian

McLaughlin,

president of the SecureComm Group and an enthusiastic supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens

Iron Radio program.

The SecureComm Group provides the highest level of security, close -circuit television, access control,

and communication systems for Manhattan's top residential buildings, as well as churches, commercial properties,

municipalities, and more.

We custom install exactly what you need to protect yourself, including digital recording, off

-site viewing, and connectivity from most smart devices.

From simple code -activated systems to the latest technology using facial recognition, the

SecureComm Group has it.

We also provide the Intercom and IP telephone systems.

In addition, we provide superior networking platforms.

We'll create, maintain, and secure your local network.

Whether it's a Wi -Fi or hardwire network, we'll implement the latest secured firewall,

endpoint solutions, and cloud backup.

I would love to have the honor and privilege of helping protect the lives and property of Iron Sharpens Iron

Radio listeners and their associates.

For more details on how the SecureComm Group may be of service to you with the very latest in security

innovations,

call 718 -353 -3355.

That's 718 -353 -3355.

Or visit securecommgroup .com.

That's securecommgroup .com.

This is Brian McLaughlin of the Advertisers to Keep

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the Air.

Puritan Reformed is a Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church.

We are devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone.

Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image -bearing prophets, priests, and

kings.

We teach families to worship together as families.

Puritan is committed to teaching the whole counsel of God so that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of

God as the waters cover the sea.

We sing the Psalms, teach the law, proclaim the gospel, make disciples, maintain discipline, and exalt

Christ.

This is Pastor David Reis of Puritan Reformed in Phoenix, Arizona.

Join us in the glorious cause of advancing Christ's crown and covenant over the

kings of the earth.

Puritan Reformed Church.

Believe.

Build.

Fight.

Puritanphx .com.

I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology

at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use

the eight -volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the Westminster Larger Catechism titled

Authentic Christianity by Dr. Joseph Moorcraft.

It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism.

It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and

systematic theology.

Dr. Moorcraft is pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and I urge everyone looking

for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.

For details on the eight -volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com,

westminstercommentary .com.

For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit

heritagepresbyterianchurch .com, heritagepresbyterianchurch .com.

Please tell Dr. Moorcraft and the saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr. Joseph

Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sent you.

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

If you've watched my Dividing Line webcast often enough, you know I have a great love for getting Bibles and other

documents vital to my ministry rebound to preserve and ensure their longevity.

And besides that, they feel so good.

I'm so delighted I discovered post -Tenebrous Lux Bible rebinding.

No radio ad will be long enough to sing their praises sufficiently, but I'll give it a shot.

Jeffrey Rice of Post -Tenebrous Lux is a remarkably gifted craftsman and artisan.

All his work is done by hand, from the cutting, to the pleating of corners, to the perimeter stitching.

Jeffrey uses the finest in buttery soft imported leathers in a wide variety of gorgeous colors, like

the turquoise goat skin tanned in Italy used for my Nestle All -in -28 edition, with a navy

blue goat skin inside and the electric blue goat skin from a French tannery used to rebind a

Reformation study Bible I used as a gift.

The silver gilding he added on the page edges has a stunning mirror finish resembling highly polished

chrome.

Jeffrey will customize your rebinding to your specifications and even emboss your logo into the leather,

making whatever he rebinds a one -of -a -kind work of art.

For more details on Post -Tenebrous Lux Bible Rebinding, go to

ptlbiblerebinding .com.

That's ptlbiblerebinding .com.

Bill

Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens

Iron Radio financially.

Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives

to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in scripture through the person and work

of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And of course, the end of which we strive is the glory of God.

If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes,

or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will

join us some Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior.

Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.

Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org.

That's gracechurchatfranklin .org.

This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our sovereign

Lord God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ,.

Today and always.

Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona.

Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the Iron Sharpens Iron podcast.

I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity.

He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions, while always defending the key

doctrines of the Christian faith.

I've always been happy to point people to this podcast, knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the internet

where folk won't be led astray.

I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide.

This is a day of great spiritual compromise, and yet God has raised Chris up for just such a time,

and knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer

and in finances.

I'm pleased to do so, and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting Iron

Sharpens Iron financially.

Would you consider sending either a one -time gift or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry?

I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would.

All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com, where you can click support.

That's ironsharpensironradio .com.

Hello, my name is Anthony Uvino, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corum, New York,

and also the host of the reformrookie .com website.

I want you to know that if you enjoy listening to the Iron Sharpens Iron radio show like I do, you can now find it on the

Apple's iTunes app by typing Iron Sharpens Iron radio in the search bar.

You no longer have to worry about missing a show or a special guest because you're in your car or still at work.

Just subscribe on the iTunes app and listen to the Iron Sharpens Iron radio show at any time, day or night.

Please be sure to also give it a good review and pass it along to anyone who would benefit from the teaching and the many

solidly reformed guests that Chris Arnson has on the show.

Truth is so hard to come by these days, so don't waste your time with fluff or fake news.

Subscribe to the Iron Sharpens Iron radio podcast right now.

And while you're at it, you can also sign up for the reformrookie .com podcast and visit our website and the YouTube

page.

We are dedicated to teaching Christian theology from a reformed Baptist perspective to beginners in the faith, as

well as seasoned believers.

From Keach's Catechism and the Doctrines of Grace to the Olivet Discourse and the Book of Leviticus, the Reform

Rookie podcast and YouTube channel is sure to have something to offer everyone seeking biblical truth.

And finally, if you're looking to worship in a reformed church that holds to the 1689 London Baptist Confession

of Faith, please join us at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, New York.

Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Avino, and thanks for listening.

And pastors in the Iron Sharpens Iron radio audience have been sticking with or switching to

the NASB.

This is Darrell Bernard Harrison, co -host of the Just Thinking podcast,.

And the NASB is my Bible of choice.

I'm Pastor Tom Buck at First Baptist Church in Glendale, Texas, and

the NASB is my Bible of choice.

I'm Pastor Kent Keller of Faith Bible Church.

In Sharpsburg, Georgia, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

I'm Andrew Rapport, the Founder.

And Executive Director at Striving for Eternity Ministries, and the NASB is my

Bible of choice.

I'm Mark Romaldi, Pastor of Sovereign Grace Church in Greenbrier, Tennessee, and the NASB

is my Bible of choice.

I'm Christopher Cookston, Pastor of Prineville Community Church in Prineville, Oregon,

and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

I'm Matt Tarr, Pastor of High Point Baptist Church in Larksville, Pennsylvania, and the NASB.

Is my Bible of choice.

Here's a great way for your church to help keep Iron Sharpens Iron radio on the air.

Pastors, are your pew Bibles tattered and falling apart?

Consider restocking your pews with the NASB, and tell the publishers you heard about them

from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron.

Radio.

Go to nasbible .com.

That's nasbible .com to place your order.

Getting a driver's license,.

Running a cash register, flipping burgers, passing sixth grade.

Do you know what they all have in common?

They all require training, assessments, and certifications.

But do you know what requires no training at all?

Becoming a parent.

My name is A .M. Brewster.

I'm the president of Truth, Love, Parent, and host of its award -winning podcast.

I've been a biblical family counselor since the early 2000s, and what I've discovered is that the majority of Christian parents have

never been biblically equipped to do the work of the ministry in their homes.

That's why Truth, Love, Parent exists.

We serve God by equipping dads and moms to be the ambassador parents God called and created them to be.

We produce free parenting resources, train church leaders, and offer biblical counseling so that the next generation of

dads and moms can use the scriptures to parent their children for life and godliness.

Please visit us at truthloveparent .com.

Every day at thousands of community centers, high schools, middle schools, juvenile institutions,

coffee shops, and local hangouts, Long Island Youth for Christ staff and volunteers meet with young people

who need Jesus.

We are rural and urban, and we are always about the message of Jesus.

Our mission is to have a noticeable spiritual impact on Long Island, New York by engaging young people in the lifelong

journey of following Christ.

Long Island Youth for Christ has been a stalwart bedrock ministry since 1959.

We have a world -class staff and a proven track record of bringing consistent love and encouragement to youths in

need all over the country and around the world.

Help honor our history by becoming a part of our future.

Volunteer, donate, pray, or all of the above.

For details, call Long Island Youth for

Christ at 631 -385 -8333.

That's 631 -385 -8333.

Or visit liyfc .org.

That's liyfc

.org.

As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get.

Requests from listeners for church recommendations.

A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in

Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Allen Dunn.

Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshipped and how he

shall be represented in the world.

They believe churches need to turn to the Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship

God in spirit and truth.

Grace Covenant Baptist Church endeavors to maintain a God -centered focus.

Reading, preaching, and hearing the Word of God, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs,

baptism, and communion are the scriptural elements of their corporate worship, performed with faith, joy,

and sobriety.

Discover more about Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey at

gcbcnj .squarespace .com.

That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com.

Or call them at 908 -996 -7654.

That's 908 -996 -7654.

Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And don't forget, folks, the new website for Grace Covenant Baptist Church of Flemington, New

Jersey is gcbc -nj .org,

gcbc -nj .org.

Please disregard the website provided in the commercial.

So we're now back.

Matthew, I'm going to have you summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today

before I go to any listener question, because I really want to drive home what you think is the most

important.

Aspect of our discussion.

The joy of evangelizing children.

Children are, I believe, a very unwanted mission field in our

culture, in our country, even in a lot of churches.

And yet, I think they're the greatest mission field.

Never in my life and all my evangelism have I seen people more open to receiving

the Word of God than children.

Does that mean that they're all immediately regenerate and brought into the kingdom?

No, it doesn't mean that.

But children, there's so many, and they're being brought up today in an age where they're not going to be taught the Bible at home.

All the assumed Christian morals and values that other generations had in this country, they're just

gone.

And now children are being raised totally secular in this culture.

And yet, they are a very ripe mission field that we should want to be able to

reach, whether if it's joining a ministry like mine or just

coming up with something to do.

I remember when the drag queen story hours were blowing up on

social media and all these things, and different Christians were chomping up and they're being like, we need to have a pastor

story hours response.

And I was chuckling a bit when I saw that because my ministry has been doing this for so long.

And it's kind of like it took drag queen story hour on social media to get people in some of the

reform camps, especially to start talking about having a whole hour just set aside in a public

library or in a park or somewhere where children are going to come and hear the Word of God

taught to them.

Well, I'm all about that.

Let's do that.

Let's go out and reach the children because we got to realize the wicked

understand that the children are the mission field.

The wicked have to go in and indoctrinate them ever since they start, even before grade school, through

social media, through TV.

The wicked are out to indoctrinate the children.

They know that they need to raise the children up and they're nonsensical, atheistic, LGBTQ,

insanity, all these things.

And many Christians, as unfortunately I just see in the reform camps, oftentimes, it

seems like many Christians are kind of dealing with the same type of mindset that our, my ministry's

founder, Jesse Urban Oberhauser's family was dealing with.

And that is this idea that, well, children are too young to understand this.

So children, I think are the most fruitful mission field.

And we as Christians should be zealous to reach them.

And we are out of time, bro.

And your website for everybody listening, cefberks .com, c -e -f

-b -e -r -k -s .com.

And don't forget about futureofchristendom .org, the website to find out more about the upcoming

conference featuring Dr. James R. White, September 15th through the 17th.

That's futureofchristendom .org.

And tomorrow, James White is joining us on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

So please tune in and join us for the question.

I want to thank you for doing such an excellent job today, Matthew.

I want to thank everybody who listened.

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

a sinner.