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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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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.

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

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

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this fifth day of September 2023.

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I hope that you all had a wonderful, relaxing, refreshing,

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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I want to give you all the praise report that our gracious, merciful, kind, and compassionate

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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.

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But the sepsis that was threatening his life is no longer evident in his bloodstream.

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So my brother has been indeed healed of this sepsis. And every single person that I spoke with before this sepsis was healed, when

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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.

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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.

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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

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Christian, his testimony does not leave me with a lot of confidence and peace of mind.

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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.

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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

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Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society in arranging. This is the three -day event in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Mannheim, Pennsylvania to be more specific.

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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.

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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,

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Dr. Gregory Coles on the theme, Is Gay Christian a Biblically Acceptable Identity for a

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Member of Christ's Church? But one of the other speakers, as I mentioned, is my guest today,

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Matthew Ware, Assistant Director of Child Evangelism Fellowship of Reading and Berks County, Pennsylvania.

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

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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.

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Yeah, the ministry's been around for quite some time. I don't have the exact number on it, but over 80 years,

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I believe. It started with a man named Jesse Urban Oberhauser.

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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.

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And at the church that he was raised in, the common belief was the gospel is too mature for children to understand.

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We don't try to evangelize children or share them the gospel until they're older. And so that's what

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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.

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

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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.

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

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And finally, by the grace of God, he was saved in his 20s, I believe. But that always had an impact on him.

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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

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

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

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He didn't have that much faith. But when the children understood the gospel and professed the faith in Christ, that changed

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Jesse's life. And that would start the launch of Child Evangelism Fellowship and all the different ministries that we have today.

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Now, I'm part of Child Evangelism Fellowship of Eastern PA. So we are pretty much, if you look at the map of all the counties in Pennsylvania, you start in the middle and then you head eastward.

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We're most of those counties. Some belong to CEF Inc. as well, but we are

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CEF of Eastern PA. But we've been out here. I am Redding City.

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I've only been here since 2019. But we've been going into the schools in Redding City, in my county,

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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.

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We teach Bible lessons with the gospel weaved throughout them. We teach memory verses, missionary stories.

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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.

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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.

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And in all our different teachings, it's always to help children understand the gospel. So that is what we do.

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Great. And if anybody wants more details, go to C .E .F. Berks, and that's

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B as in Boy, E .R .K .S. dot com. C .E .F. for Child Evangelism Fellowship, Berks, B as in Boy, E .R

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.K .S. dot com. Now, tell us about this exciting event that I already mentioned.

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Some months ago, our mutual friend, Joel Saint, who is the founder,

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

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

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Future of Christendom conferences. He contacted me some months ago and said,

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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

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Reformation Society here in Pennsylvania? And thanks be to God, when

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I contacted Dr. White, he immediately accepted the invitation to be the keynote speaker for this conference and also to debate

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Dr. Gregory Coles, who identifies himself as a gay

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

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Christian a biblically acceptable identity for a member of Christ's church? The conference is

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

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Saturday, September 16th, 3 .30 p .m. to 6 .30 p .m. But tell us about this.

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Tell us more about this conference and about your specific role in it. Yes, I'm still trying to figure out how

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I'm one of the speakers there. That was quite a surprise when

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Luke Sank gave me a call, I guess it was a few months ago at least.

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I'm still kind of coming out of the summer ministry workload that my ministries had. We had probably about 60 -hour work weeks with camps, clubs, and different things of reaching kids.

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So it was sometime during then that I got the call about it. But yeah, it looks really exciting.

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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.

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

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

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And then a lot of my friends from different connections with our church come out to that. I love all the speakers.

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

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But yes, the conference is the Gospel at War. And so that's quite a topic in of itself.

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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.

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My topic or exposition is what they're calling it. It's like 18 -minute talks. But mine is going to be the

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Gospel at War with heresy. So I got that topic assigned to me.

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And I thought to myself, now, what am I supposed to say in 18 minutes that can address that topic?

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

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

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Well, I guess he did do some good. That wasn't my reason for mentioning it.

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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.

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But I just remember that was. Well, anyway, keep going. I heard it back in college, and it struck a chord in my heart.

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Actually, I bear correction. I think it was it's the economy, stupid.

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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

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Gospel at 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.

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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.

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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.

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And anything that would threaten this gospel is heresy. Anything that would add to it, diminish from it.

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

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And the church days, the church is looking at more involved in politics and Christian nationalism. How do we deal with this?

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How do we not? And people are having talks. And what I really want to do with my brief time is talk about how

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

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

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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

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God blesses as well. And there will be a lot of application to go into that. But really just looking at remembering 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.

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So wrapping up my PowerPoint for that and getting those things all tuned in.

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I would love to do more work on it, but I managed to get myself sick for Labor Day weekend. So got a little delayed on that.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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We have to really know what we're talking about and what a so -called person worthy of the label heretic.

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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?

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Yes, we do. And that's a big thing I really want to talk about with the application and when

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I have the exposition is I think it's easy when people are in the fight for a while, whether if you're

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I do, I've done a lot of abortion ministries. I've gone out to mills and preached out there.

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

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Christians who maybe aren't fighting the battle the same way that they are, that they'll almost end up accusing those other

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Christians of preaching a different Jesus or a different gospel. And that's a pretty serious charge.

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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

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Protestant out there. And there are Roman Catholics and other people that are out there.

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

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How all much I mean, obviously, we both do not want babies to die inside of said abortion mill.

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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.

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And I've seen that at some of these mills. And it's very it's very complicated when you're out in the battle of it.

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But we got to remember when it comes to the gospel that the gospel is at war with heresy to go with my title.

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And so it's easy when you're in the fight to just fall into those categories of the either you either dealing with people who are truly brothers and sisters in Christ.

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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.

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And you're working with pro lifers or. Roman Catholics, and you got to remember that, you know, 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.

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And so this is it's a very difficult topic for me to take on. And then I have to do it in 18 minutes.

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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.

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I am routinely attacked on both ends of the spectrum regarding heresy.

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I am attacked by people who think I'm a mean, nasty, heartless, judgmental, pharisaical host.

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And my guests are as well for pointing out heresy in specific individuals and ministries and churches and movements.

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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.

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So I just know that it is and it is a not very easy tightrope walk that we make when when even speaking about the issue.

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

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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

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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.

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

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Spooky Nook Sports and Events, which I understand is an absolutely breathtaking conference venue.

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And that is in Mannheim, Pennsylvania, which is in Lancaster County. And that's a that's featuring a whole host of speakers, including my guest

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

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Dr. Gregory Coles on the theme is gay Christian, a biblically acceptable identity for a member of Christ Church.

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If you want to register and I hope you do go to future of Christendom dot org, future of Christendom dot org.

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And of course, for more information on the Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society, which is the host of this event, go to Mid -Atlantic

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Reformation dot org, Mid -Atlantic Reformation dot org. And there'll be a host of information there.

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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,

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I want you to give a summary of your salvation testimony. And I will also now give our listeners our email address.

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If you have a question for Matthew Ware on evangelizing children, our email address is

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Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at Gmail dot com.

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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.

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We'll be right back with Matthew Ware right after these messages from our sponsors. Don't go away.

23:33

The Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society presents The Future of Christendom 2023, The Gospel at War.

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September 15th to the 16th in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Featuring Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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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

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Dr. Gregory Coles, author of Single Gay Christian, A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity.

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The debate topic, Is Gay Christian a Biblically Acceptable Identity for a Member of Christ's Church?

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So come join us for the 6th Future of Christendom Conference. The event will take place at Spooky Nook Sports in Mannheim, Pennsylvania.

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And will run from Friday evening through all day Saturday. With an invitation to the Sunday morning worship service of the

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Independence Reform Bible Church. This will be a weekend packed with practical teaching. With a theme of the

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Gospel at War in many areas of our culture. Including government schools, the Supreme Court, missions, feminism, and even the church pulpits.

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Head to futureofchristendom .org. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here.

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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

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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.

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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.

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Go to g3min .org and enter promo code G3ISIR for your 30 % discount off the registration fee.

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We are now back with our guest today, Matthew Ware, Assistant Director of Child Evangelism Fellowship of Reading and Berks County, Pennsylvania.

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We are discussing the joy of evangelizing children. Our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

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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

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USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. As I said before the break,

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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

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Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you.

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And so please begin with your story. Sorry about that,

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I had you on mute accidentally. Oh, okay, I'm back now. All right, so I was raised in a professing

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Christian family. We were mainline denomination, I believe, yes, it was the

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PCUSA, raised in Severna Park, Maryland. So I was raised going to the churches, memorizing the

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Apostles Creed, the Lord's Prayer, those things. And that was just how

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I kind of affiliated the Christian life. I had a friend when I was growing up whose dad was a very serious

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Christian who did everything that he could to try to lead his son to the

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Lord. But his dad got me and him set up for a camp that was in Northern Maryland, a

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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.

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And it was the absolute best time of the summer. It was a lot of fun with my buddy. But they had like chapel services that evening.

35:21

And the preachers that they had were pretty good. This was a long time for me now,

35:27

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.

35:37

And I would say I definitely learned the simplicity of the gospel at these camps.

35:45

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

35:52

Hands of an Angry God. But I remember learning very clearly that I was a sinner, that my sin had separated me from God.

36:01

I deserve 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.

36:11

Like I very much learned kind of that, you know, like the gist of that. And I was very convicted and moved by that.

36:18

But what would happen is I would come home from camp and, you know,

36:24

I'd be all fired up. I want to talk more about God, listen to more Christian music or whatever.

36:30

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

36:36

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.

36:44

And that's how it was for, again, six or seven years. But I never forgot those sermon messages.

36:51

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.

36:58

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

37:05

I started to show my true colors. And I started to get involved in all the things that I really, really shouldn't have.

37:11

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

37:19

It 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.

37:27

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,

37:36

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.

37:44

I started losing weight. And when you come out of a lifestyle of regular intoxication and getting high and stuff like that,

37:53

I mean, I know there's plenty of people who had it worse than I did. But when you come out of that, you start to get clarity and you start to see just how messed up your life was.

38:00

And my life was messed up. I'd been flunking community college for five years.

38:07

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

38:14

I technically slept upstairs. But I just came to see how worthless

38:19

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

38:25

And so I decided to go to church. I ended up signing up for like a midweek program. And I think honestly,

38:31

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.

38:39

So I know I've immediately made a huge mistake. But then the unthinkable happens. The class was called growth class.

38:46

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 God's plans for your life.

38:58

But they would do something that I had never really had done to me. They read from the scriptures. And they just started reading different Bible verses and talking about who

39:07

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.

39:15

Like everything just changed. I just realized I was wrong about God. God is very personal. And I really want to live all of my life for God.

39:25

And that day was the day I really think I was converted.

39:32

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.

39:40

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.

39:46

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

39:52

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

40:00

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

40:12

Lord in ministry. It's interesting when I look at ministry and my calling for that and my conversion, the two are very similar.

40:21

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

40:29

Lord and preaching and teaching the word, evangelizing the lost and just serving the Lord.

40:34

I went to Bible college here at Lancaster Bible College back in 2017 to 19, finished all my credits, studied pastoral ministry.

40:43

And then I ended up here with CEF instead of the pastorate. But yeah, that's kind of the spiel of it, how the

40:52

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.

41:02

Praise God. Well, now we are entering into, as I mentioned, the theme today, the joy of evangelizing children.

41:17

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

41:23

But there is something that is indeed joyful about evangelizing children.

41:31

But that does not mean that every instance and situation where children are being evangelized is joyful.

41:41

And of course, depending upon the age group that you are speaking of, there are children, especially in their preteens and teens and postteens that are more openly rebellious to any efforts of evangelism.

42:02

But I'm assuming that even when most children who are raised by Christian parents likely will parrot their their parents love for Jesus just because they hear

42:21

Jesus spoken of and praised and worshiped in song and in teaching.

42:28

And when they're taken to worship services at church, it would be very rare for a little child to say,

42:37

Mommy, I disagree with you about the hypostatic union. You know what I mean? I'd almost be impressed.

42:46

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

42:57

Good News Club ministry looks like now in the year 2023.

43:03

So I'm ministering in Reading City. And so the vast majority of our clubbers are

43:10

Puerto Rican or there's some D .R., some Mexican, some black, hardly any white kids left in the inner city

43:16

Good News Clubs that we do. When we go in and we teach the

43:22

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

43:35

Jesus is. Never heard of him. Much less Christianity, the

43:41

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.

43:55

So what's happening again and again when we do Good News Club is children are coming in pretty much with a clean slate.

44:03

There is some Roman Catholic influence for some of the kids. Some of them do come from Espanol churches in the city or whatnot.

44:12

But again and again, what I'm finding is when we start out with them, they got nothing,

44:18

Chris. They got like everything that we think. Everybody knows that. No, they think

44:24

Jesus is a cuss word. So I start with that. And what happens is over the months, the kids just light up.

44:35

You know, some drop out. Some, you know, they have to do other clubs come in. Some aren't that happy to be there.

44:41

But especially me as a man who teaches, I have a bit more of an intimidating presence.

44:47

But the kids just light up. They memorize the gospel. They love coming to club.

44:54

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.

45:12

Like I'm dealing with a pretty much an unreached people group. And they are just and I'm going in there and we have we don't write up our own lessons.

45:22

Like we have an agenda we follow. We're teaching through the Bible. Just last year, we were teaching through Joseph and Moses.

45:29

So really the first five books of the Bible. And the first Bible lesson some of those kids ever heard in their life was

45:36

Jacob and his two wives. You could imagine having no familiarity with the

45:42

Bible and then hearing that. But they kept coming and they heard the gospel. They heard who

45:48

God is like. It's a totally unreached people group, a lot of these kids.

45:55

But they're listening. They're coming back. They're smiling.

46:00

They're having fun. And I do a lot of street preaching. I go out to mills.

46:06

I go out the public squares. And I've seen a lot of very gospel -hardened people.

46:12

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

46:21

Bible to the kids, it's a totally different response. Children are so much more receptive, even when they're almost completely unreached.

46:29

They're so much more receptive, particularly third -graders and fourth -graders. That's who I teach. And it's like, you know, it's almost unbelievable.

46:39

Like if I wasn't doing it, I would almost have a hard time believing that. But there's something just incredible that children – to give you an idea,

46:48

I was talking with a young lady back in 2019. And, you know, she professed that she – after she learned about God and Jesus, she said,

46:58

I always knew there had to be a God. And she professed faith in Jesus. And I just decided one day

47:04

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

47:10

God and how nothing created everything. There is no absolute truth.

47:17

We're all just kind of here trying to get along together. We're bags of cells bumping around.

47:23

I was giving her the whole – the atheist dream. And this third -grader looked at me with horror and unbelief.

47:30

And she told me, Mr. Matt, that's stupid. And I told her, you're right.

47:36

It is. But that's what adults – that's what people want to do when they want to ignore

47:44

God, when they want to sin. And the child understood that that was ridiculous.

47:52

And it's fascinating when you minister to these children because, you know, we're all sinners.

47:57

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

48:07

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.

48:17

Teach your children. Teach your children. Teach your children. Don't wait till later because the children,

48:22

I'm telling you, they are so much more receptive to the word of God. And, you know, when is someone truly regenerate?

48:28

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.

48:36

Like from years of street preaching and years of teaching children, there's a radical difference between the receptivity to the gospel.

48:45

Now, how do you carefully and delicately balance being very truthful about what the

48:55

Bible teaches about who will and who will not go to heaven, especially when you're preaching to children, evangelizing children, teaching children?

49:10

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?

49:27

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

49:37

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

49:48

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.

49:58

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

50:07

God's laws. We talk, we read a verse from the Bible that like Romans 3, 23, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

50:17

We explain what that means. That all means everybody, you and I, we give examples, but we take our time.

50:24

We speak very seriously, but gently, as that's how you want to speak with this with a child.

50:30

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

50:38

God's wrath and you deserve hell and all these things. But very much like we're speaking to children, we say,

50:46

John, you and I, the Bible says are guilty of sin. We have done things that we know are wrong.

50:54

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

51:03

God's punishment. Amen.

51:09

Well, I'm glad because what you've done is evil. It's wrong. But, John, Jesus of the sin.

51:23

Brother, you are cutting in and out now for some reason. I don't know why. All right.

51:30

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

51:41

Well, we're going to go to our midway break. Perhaps you can see if you could resolve the issue.

51:47

I'm not sure what's happening, but we're going to our midway break. And I want to remind our listeners, please be patient with us because the midway break is always longer than the other breaks in the show.

51:58

Because Grace Life Radio, 91 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle because the

52:08

FCC requires of them to localize. Iron Sharpens Iron Radio geographically to Lake City, Florida, where they're physically located.

52:17

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

52:28

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.

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We absolutely positively depend upon our advertisers to exist.

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

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

53:01

So please respond to our advertisers. We hope that that often means you'll use their services or buy their products, visit their churches.

53:10

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.

53:19

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.

53:27

Twenty twenty three. The gospel at war. September 15th to the 16th in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, featuring

53:34

Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. We are excited to be including a formal debate in this year's conference.

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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.

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The debate topic is gay Christian, a biblically acceptable identity for a member of Christ's church.

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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

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Saturday with an invitation to the Sunday morning worship service of the Independence Reformed 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

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Supreme Court, missions, feminism and even the church pulpits. Head to futureofchristendom .org.

54:35

James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here. I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the

54:46

G3 National Conference. That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I've been preaching, teaching, writing about and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

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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.

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

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and I need a church in the subject line. And we are now back with our guest,

01:13:16

Matthew Ware. We are speaking about the joy of evangelizing children, and our email address for questions is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:13:27

And let's see, we have Julia in San Francisco, California, with a question.

01:13:35

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

01:13:44

Child Evangelism Fellowship? So, every county, every area is different.

01:13:52

An easy answer for that could be K -5, but it just depends on where you're teaching.

01:14:00

The type of children that I end up ministering to oftentimes in my area is 3rd and 4th graders.

01:14:09

5th graders are moved into junior high where I'm from, which is just strange for me, but it is what it is.

01:14:15

We find oftentimes that 1st and 2nd 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.

01:14:29

But I mean, outside of just Child Evangelism Fellowship, I also teach

01:14:34

Sunday schools elsewhere. I've had clubs just this summer where the average age was 3 and 4.

01:14:43

And so 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.

01:14:55

So really all different ages from as little as 2 or 3, 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 to.

01:15:14

I find that if I'm going by grades, 3rd and 4th grade,

01:15:19

I think, are some of the most receptive to the point that they've matured enough that they can sit and listen.

01:15:26

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

01:15:39

God. So it's all sorts of different ages throughout that, but I'd say 3rd and 4th grade is the vast majority of who

01:15:47

I reach. Great. Thank you, Julia. Let's see. We have,

01:15:54

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.

01:16:12

And he asks, isn't one of the major problems that exists amongst

01:16:18

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?

01:16:36

Oh, I mean, there's plenty of truth to that. I mean, I'm no fan of the sinner's prayer myself.

01:16:42

We don't as a ministry use that. I understand where that's coming from.

01:16:50

But I also recognize, A, the commandments and scriptures that we are to teach our own children, these things of the

01:16:56

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

01:17:03

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.

01:17:13

We're not really like we have stats. We're a ministry. We have stats. So these things can get written down.

01:17:19

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.

01:17:29

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.

01:17:40

In fact, I have a very strong recommendation for a booklet that involves this dilemma or this situation.

01:17:52

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

01:17:58

Gunderson. Your Child's Profession of Faith. And you can get that.

01:18:06

For some reason, his own publishing ministry is out of stock with the book. But I see it in stock at press .founders

01:18:17

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

01:18:24

Your Child's Profession of Faith, that will come up. You can also try Amazon or perhaps even

01:18:30

CVBBS .com, who sponsors this program. Perhaps they have some in stock. CVBBS .com,

01:18:36

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,

01:18:59

I love Jesus, and all of that. It's focusing on 1

01:19:05

Corinthians 13, verse 11. When I was a child, I spoke as a child.

01:19:10

I understood as a child. I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things, which is,

01:19:18

I think, very clear. God -breathed evidence that children think differently than adults, and we can't automatically accept when a little child says,

01:19:29

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.

01:19:47

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?

01:19:59

Yeah, I don't agree with that either. But am I making sense here? Maybe you disagree with what

01:20:05

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

01:20:14

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

01:20:22

And really, a big part of what my ministry is, is not reaching children of believers, but really children of unbelievers.

01:20:31

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.

01:20:40

I help with church sometimes. There's other ministries that I volunteer my services to teach their children.

01:20:45

And I do love reaching children of believers and giving them the gospel, of course.

01:20:51

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.

01:20:59

A lot of these kids have no knowledge of the gospel. They're not going to hear from their parents.

01:21:04

They're not going to church at all. So I'm kind of starting on ground one.

01:21:09

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

01:21:15

Is it genuine or not? I don't know. I'm really working on ground one. I want them to understand who

01:21:21

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.

01:21:31

I want them to understand who Christ is, that he died and rose again. I'm laying down these foundations.

01:21:38

And after a while, if they profess the faith, it's like, okay, I'll put it in my records.

01:21:43

Does that mean that they've immediately become a true born -again Christian in my eyes? Not really.

01:21:49

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

01:21:56

I think there's definitely two extremes in this. We don't want to fall into the category of, oh,

01:22:03

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.

01:22:11

And I don't think we're at any of those categories. The real reality of what we're doing is we're sowing seeds.

01:22:18

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

01:22:28

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.

01:22:36

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.

01:22:43

So I just find that to be an amazing thing. Well, thank you. We also have

01:22:49

Topher. I'm wondering if that's a nickname for Christopher. Topher in Burlington, Vermont.

01:23:00

And Topher asks, One thing that does concern me is that many

01:23:06

Christians oversimplify Bible stories, especially in the

01:23:11

Old Testament, to entertain children and to gain their attention.

01:23:17

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.

01:23:29

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

01:23:36

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

01:23:42

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

01:23:47

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

01:23:53

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.

01:24:10

And you don't see anybody in the water scrambling for their life.

01:24:17

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.

01:24:22

But give us your response to our listener, Topher. I agree with that.

01:24:29

I think a lot of what passes throughout for children's ministries and all this stuff is guilty of that very same stuff.

01:24:37

It's why I do not do that. We speak very seriously about sin.

01:24:42

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

01:24:49

Ark, for example. We have pictures. Now, the pictures are not thousands of people drowning in the water.

01:24:57

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

01:25:03

God sent the flood, and all these people who did not listen to Noah's preaching, they drowned.

01:25:09

They died. We will talk about this. So, yeah, we're about that.

01:25:16

The battles. I'm going to be teaching on Joshua at some point this year. That's going to be interesting to talk about.

01:25:22

But, yeah, we talk about the battles. We talk about sin, Bathsheba. Now, that's a fun one to teach children.

01:25:28

Yeah, right. Obviously, you have to be very careful because of the sexual content. Yeah. But, yeah, we don't shy away.

01:25:35

We make it appropriate for children, but we do not delude the truth. I could never do that teaching the

01:25:41

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.

01:25:53

And that's actually one of the – somebody told me a while ago that teaching children, that's what made it so hard, is you have to teach all this theology, all of this truth, but you have to teach it in a way that children can understand it.

01:26:07

And if you can learn to do that, well, I'm four years in. I'm starting to figure it out,

01:26:12

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?

01:26:26

Was that another question, or is that yours? Oh, that's mine. I mean, personally,

01:26:34

I don't know if this makes me a bad person or not, but personally, I wouldn't shy away from that. Right.

01:26:40

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

01:26:46

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

01:26:52

Bambi's father that was shot by a hunter. His mother. It was his mother?

01:26:59

Yeah, I still remember. Okay. Obviously, it traumatized you. But if you can include that in a movie, 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?

01:27:24

Well, I was teaching on Esther to some campers over the summer and talking about the great irony of what happens to Heyman with the 75 -foot gallow.

01:27:35

And I didn't need a picture of Heyman on that gallow to get the point across. We could talk in detail about it, but the kids understood it.

01:27:44

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.

01:27:54

But, again, it's none of that nightmare -inducing. Well, if they are getting nightmares, hopefully it's the spirit working on them.

01:28:02

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

01:28:11

Love, L -O -V -E, in Urbana, Illinois. You said earlier that very often, if not primarily, you are evangelizing children of unsaved parents.

01:28:23

Do they give their permission to you to do so? Yes. So we have permission slips for that.

01:28:33

And the family, maybe they're totally unchurched.

01:28:39

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.

01:28:55

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.

01:29:03

So it's no big secret. But, yeah, it's one of those things. Years ago,

01:29:08

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.

01:29:16

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

01:29:23

But, yeah, for lack of better explanation, I don't know how outside of the grace of God, but, yeah, they are.

01:29:32

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.

01:29:40

I don't know if they view us as just another church program or something. We're in a very poor area of America.

01:29:47

It could be another program. But they signed the paper. Let's see here.

01:29:55

We have, I was just looking. Oh, here it is. Merrick in Aquabog, Long Island, New York.

01:30:02

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

01:30:09

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

01:30:16

I don't know if you've ever encountered this situation, but in this crazy world we live in,

01:30:21

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, et cetera?

01:30:42

And if you have not experienced that, how would you react to such a request?

01:30:47

Oh, there's a good one. Well, so years ago there was a boy that I got to help teach.

01:30:59

And he was a very sweet boy, very well -behaved. But I found out a few weeks in that he felt like a girl.

01:31:09

You heard that from the boy's lips? Yes, I heard that.

01:31:14

And I found out that his mom was very much encouraging him in that.

01:31:20

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

01:31:26

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.

01:31:41

I don't know. Maybe this will be their testimony against me. But that's how they were reacting.

01:31:49

And so this boy was kind of sharing that. And I wasn't the main teacher here, but there was another teacher who was kind of encouraging him with what the

01:32:00

Bible said. But I pulled out Psalm 139, the classic, and I just highlighted a few things.

01:32:06

And 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.

01:32:14

And we were teaching, and I was sitting down with him, and I was just going through the

01:32:20

Psalm with him and talking about how God knew everything about him before he'd ever be born, how

01:32:26

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.

01:32:35

And 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.

01:32:43

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.

01:32:53

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.

01:33:00

He was very busy with other things. But it was very interesting how that happened.

01:33:07

But the big thing that I like to always go to, I think Ken Ham has nailed it. The answers are in Genesis.

01:33:13

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

01:33:20

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.

01:33:34

God made you. He made you this way. He made you very well. He made it very good.

01:33:40

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

01:33:50

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

01:33:57

I hope it doesn't, but I'm also a realist. Yeah, so I did have an instance like that when

01:34:04

I was brand new teaching children with a boy. And he was a good boy, too. He was a very friendly guy.

01:34:10

Now, did you like 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?

01:34:29

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

01:34:43

Christian or just has a sane understanding of what a man and what a woman and what a boy and what a girl are.

01:34:54

And the mother, in fact, it seemed to always be the mother, at least in the circumstances

01:35:00

I'm familiar with. The mother was saying, Oh, we're going to call

01:35:06

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.

01:35:18

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.

01:35:33

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,

01:35:39

I'm trying to, the past few years were a lot longer than other years. But, yeah, it was, it seemed like this boy, he just,

01:35:52

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.

01:36:05

And he just didn't feel like he could be a boy because he didn't feel like doing what they were doing.

01:36:14

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.

01:36:23

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.

01:36:33

But it does seem like mom might have very much been stirring up some of that.

01:36:40

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.

01:36:48

All right, we have to go to our final break right now. And our email address is chrisorenson at gmail .com

01:36:54

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

01:37:04

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

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Don't go away. We will be right back, right after these messages from our sponsors with more of Matthew Ware.

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SecureCommGroup .com SecureCommGroup .com This is

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

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Iron Sharpens Iron radio on the air. Puritan Reformed is a

01:42:08

Bible -believing kingdom -building, devil -fighting church. We are devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone.

01:42:18

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

01:42:25

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.

01:42:38

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

01:42:44

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

01:42:50

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

01:42:58

Puritan Reformed Church. Believe. Build. Fight. PuritanPHX .com

01:43:13

I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

01:43:23

Every Christian who's serious about the Reformed faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight -volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the

01:43:32

Westminster Larger Catechism titled Authentic Christianity by Dr. Joseph Morecraft.

01:43:39

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.

01:43:51

Dr. Morecraft 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.

01:44:02

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

01:44:09

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

01:44:19

heritagepresbyterianchurch .com heritagepresbyterianchurch .com Please tell Dr. Morecraft and the saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr.

01:44:26

Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sent you. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

01:44:44

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.

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Besides that, they feel so good. I'm so delighted I discovered Post -Tenebrous Lux Bible Rebinding.

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No radio ad will be long enough to sing their praises sufficiently, but I'll give it a shot. Jeffrey Rice of Post -Tenebrous

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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.

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Jeffrey uses the finest in buttery soft imported leathers in a wide variety of gorgeous colors like the turquoise goatskin tanned in Italy used for my

01:45:27

Nessie Allen 28th edition with a navy blue goatskin inside liner and the electric blue goatskin from a

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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.

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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.

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

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.com That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com

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That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com That's gcbcnj .squarespace

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.com That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com understand that the children are the mission field.

01:58:40

The wicked have to go in and indoctrinate them ever since they start, even before grade school, through social media, through TV.

01:58:47

The wicked are out to indoctrinate the children. They know that they need to raise the children up in their nonsensical, atheistic,

01:58:55

LGBTQ insanity, all these things. And many Christians, as unfortunately I just see in the reform camps, oftentimes it seems like many

01:59:04

Christians are kind of dealing with the same type of mindset that our, my ministry's founder

01:59:10

Jesse Urban Oberhauser's family was dealing with. And that is this idea that, well, children are too young to understand this.

01:59:17

So children, I think, are the most fruitful mission field and we as Christians should be zealous to reach them.

01:59:24

And we are out of time, bro. And your website for everybody listening, cefberks .com,

01:59:31

c -e -f -b -e -r -k -s .com. And don't forget about futureofchristendom .org,

01:59:38

the website to find out more about the upcoming conference featuring Dr. James R. White, September 15th through the 17th.

01:59:48

That's futureofchristendom .org. And tomorrow James White is joining us on Iron Trip and Zion Radio. So please tune in and join us with a question.

01:59:56

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.