On Wall Street, the Dow's up five points. I'm Dave Anthony, Fox News Radio. Knowing the Truth with Pastor Kevin Bowling is a live call-in radio program providing doctrinal dialogue, cultural commentary, and insightful interviews with some of today's foremost Christian authors and leaders. Knowing the Truth is the outreach ministry of the Mountain Bridge Bible Fellowship located on Highway 25 in Traveler's Rest. The goal of the church and the radio program is to seek the glory of God in the salvation of sinners and the sanctification of the saints. by the ministry of the Word. For more information, go to www.knowingthetruth.org. Here with today's edition of Knowing the Truth is Pastor Kevin Bowling. Hey, welcome into this edition of the knowing the truth radio broadcast This is pastor Kevin bowling and so glad that you joined us on the broadcast today I hope that many of the people in our listening audience who named the name of Christ and who? By faith have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ and come to him by faith Leaning upon him and him only for their salvation I hope that you had the opportunity this past week to enjoy the fellowship of like-minded believers together and in the services that you attended and I hope that you were thoroughly fed by the word of God that your attention was turned to the Lord Jesus Christ and all of the glorious things that he is doing, has done for us and is now doing in us and through us. I know we had a wonderful time of worship together as the people of God In the church that I pastor, we've been going through a study in Hebrews, and we're just finishing up on the closing verses of Hebrews chapter 5, and looking forward, if the Lord wills, to start up next week in Hebrews chapter 6. So we've been looking, we're in that section that deals with the high priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ. around from chapter 5 to all the way through to chapter 10. It takes up the bulk of the book of Hebrews by far. The most important point, I think, that the author is making there, and just been thoroughly enjoying just looking at these various aspects of our wonderful Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, both in the Aaronic priesthood and now pictured for us as well in the Order of Melchizedek. And we're looking forward to seeing that in chapter 7 even more. specifically. On today's program, we're going to look at a very important subject. We're going to look at the gospel, that glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel specifically, though, in its call and true conversion. Let me read to you a statement from a publisher's webpage. It says this, the Apostle Paul gave the gospel the first place in his preaching, endeavoring with all his might to proclaim it clearly and even went so far as to pronounce a curse upon all those who would pervert its truth. Yet how sad it is that many, even among these or even among those considering themselves evangelicals, have reduced the gospel message to a few trite statements to be repeated and view conversion as a mere human decision. In The Gospel Call and True Conversion, Paul Washer challenges such easy believism as he examines the real meaning of things like faith, repentance, and receiving Christ, He also deals extensively with the effects of saving grace that God promises in the New Covenant, namely the creation of new hearts and new people. So on the program today, my guest is Paul Washer. Paul is the founder of HeartCry Missionary Society, and the purpose of that, I think, is to support Peruvian church planters, and he labors there with that missionary work, and he also periodically writes a couple books as well. I noticed he had one other book that I saw previous to this one. That book was entitled The Gospel's Power and Message, And this is in a series that is put out by Reformation Heritage Books. The second in the series is the one that we're considering today called The Gospels Call and True Conversion. With that, Paul, welcome to the Knowing the Truth radio broadcast. Thank you very much. It's a privilege to be here. Paul, I wanted to give you an opportunity here in the beginning to, before we get in even more specifically into your book and the subjects covered there, I was hoping that you could give us a little bit of some information about what HeartCry Missionary Society is all about, as the founder of that, to speak to us a little bit about your heart and wanting to found that organization, and then what's it currently involved in? Well, there's two classical viewpoints with regard to doing missions. One is doing missions through indigenous believers. Those are believers who live in that country. The other is cross-cultural missions in which, for example, a North American missionary may travel to Africa in order to preach the gospel. Both of those ways of doing missions is viable. Extremely, extremely important. And what HeartCry does is we work with indigenous pastors and missionaries around the world. It started out in in Peru many years ago, but now we're in, I believe, 26 countries around the world in South America and the Middle East, in Europe and Eastern Europe and Africa and Asia. So we support approximately I think we're nearing 200 missionary families and Our primary purpose is helping the indigenous pastor missionary to plant churches in his own country. And we not only provide financial support, but we also, and most importantly, provide theological training, such things as the classical and great doctrines of the Christian faith, along with the importance of expository preaching. So that's what we do. Praise the Lord. I had the opportunity to go down to Trujillo, Peru. I imagine you're familiar with that. Yes. Right there on the coast, and worked there for a little bit on a short-term missionary work there. It really ended up being tremendous training for me, personally, to be able to interact with the missionaries that were there. I took a group of eight people from the church that I pastor. We partnered together with another church, and I think we took about 25 people totally from the different churches there. I had an opportunity to preach in a couple of the churches down there with a translator and so forth, and really just appreciated the work that was there. One question came up in my mind, and I don't want to make the entire broadcast about this subject, but I just think this offers us the opportunity to just address it a little bit here. My issue with it has been I've not been thoroughly happy with the traditional way that short-term missionary efforts are done. I found myself questioning whether the amount of money that we spent and the actual work that we did Would it have been better for us to have supported an indigenous work there? Speak to that issue, if you would, just a little bit. We're here at a time of year where many churches are sending young people primarily, I think, but out onto the mission field and on these mission trips. Just speak to that subject and what do you think about that? Well, first of all, I want to be careful because I do know that there have been times when students have gone on mission trips, and it's been very productive in their own life, maybe led to a calling to the mission field and things like that. And I don't want to put out that fire, nor would I want to put out the fire of any young person who was thinking about going on some sort of a trip. But there are some serious things we need to consider, very serious. And first of all, when we look in the New Testament, do we see this kind of activity? Do we see people going out on mission trips? Well, of course we don't. And so we need to be careful on any action we would take, because we really don't have a lot from the scriptures to guide us. What we see in the work of missions are two things. One, we see men being sent out to do missions, men who are qualified to do mission, men who know the gospel, are mature, carry the characteristics of a mature man in Christ, and is able to really go out and speak to the people. We don't see a lot of just young, immature believers being carried all over Asia Minor to do things. Now, that's something very important. Another thing we need to understand is that missions, it's not about sending missionaries. There's probably more missionary activity in the world today than ever, but I'm not sure all of it is very biblical. Missions, it's about sending theological truth through missionaries. So the person that we send into the mission field, even for short term, it should not be primarily for their benefit. We send people for the benefit of those who have not heard. And if we're going to do that, they have to be people who know God's word and are able to expound it. A lot of times I've even seen pastors who'll say, well, you know, this particular young person is rather carnal we don't even know if they're converted we'll take them on a mission trip and try to get them fired up that's not the purpose that's like saying there's a real carnal man in my church and i'm going to give him the pulpit for the next six weeks because maybe it'll help him get into the word oh ouch we so we need to be very careful there's a lot of i don't know how to say it kind of hoopla circus atmosphere And there's so much activity, but we really need to get back to the sufficiency of Scripture. Is this what God wants? I was coming back. I was in the Lima airport a few years ago, and I saw a bunch of young Americans acting crazy, running around in the airport and doing all the things that young Americans do. And I noticed they all had the same T-shirt on. It was all a mission group, and they were acting very foolish. And they were drawing attention to themselves. That's true. There was about 40 of them. And I just began to think that 40 of them probably somewhere $2,000 a piece. That's $80,000 to send them on the mission field. They couldn't speak the language. They really couldn't witness. They didn't appear to be mature at all in the word. And, you know, that $80,000 would have put I don't know, 10 Peruvian church planters on the field 24 hours a day for a year. And so that's something to think about. Yeah, definitely. I think that there are a number of elements of it. Like you say, there may be some dimes worth of good, but a lot of it seems like a dollar's worth of harm in the current way that we're doing it. I've also had some discussions with those young people themselves. You know, they came and would like the church to do some sort of a program to help raise the money to go on the mission field. I can't help but noticing that in the particular cases that are coming to my mind where I said to the person, you know, I haven't noticed you have any interest in the lost people here in Greenville. Why, if we take you from the tarmac here in Greenville and we put you on a tarmac in Mexico, Why does that suddenly make you now interested in the lost and reaching lost? How come there's no effort here to reach out to the lost? And so I think there's something, as you're saying, in that whole mentality. I think it all needs to be revisited. and we need to look at it very carefully if we're not just wasting resources and wasting people's time and promoting a false theology in the process. I know people don't like to hear that. They want little Junior to go on this trip and hope that this is going to make him more spiritual, but the fact is it doesn't seem to be working out very good for us. Let me give a few suggestions. One, What young person would I want to take on a mission trip? First of all, it would be one that was noticed by the elders of our church as very conscientious of having a burden for the lost, having a real desire to know God's word, a growing, sincere Timothy type. And then if they came to me and said, which I would like to go, here's some of the things that I would do, I would go, okay. We're going to plan this out over several months. Here are some of the requirements. One, you're going to read through. I'm going to know that you have read through the entire Bible at least once. I'm going to give them a probably a systematic, you know, maybe something like Gruden, Burkoff, something. So you're going to read through that systematic. I'm going to give you several books to read. Now, if someone said to me, you're demanding far too much, I would say that is absolutely absurd. I'm demanding far too much. No way. I'm seeing if this young person genuinely has a concern. Now, if parents want their children to go to the mission field, then I would suggest we drop some of our socialistic ideas of having other people pay for it and having the church burden to pay for it. And I would say, Father, disciple your own children. Father, instead of taking that vacation to Myrtle Beach, you take your entire family to the mission field and you set it up and arrange it so that they can grow in the best way that the Lord shows you. I think that would probably solve a lot of that issue or at least get people looking at it from a completely different perspective. Our subject here today is really not disconnected from what we've been talking about already because Well, first of all, your book is part of a series. Talk to us a few minutes about that series, about the idea of recovering the Gospel message. And that's why I say it's really, since the mission work is about the Gospel, I say that what we've already talked about is not really disconnected, and we need to recover that Gospel message. Talk to us about that topic and how it relates to this series. No one, I think, would deny that evangelicalism needs a revival. Along with revival, there is the need for reformation also. Whenever we look throughout history, we see that the great reformations, the great revivals that have occurred, have always been centered around a rediscovery of the gospel. Now, you say, but, you know, we know the gospel. What are you talking about? Well, One of the things that's very important that our generation has lost is that we always need to do our hermeneutic, or our Bible study, in the context of the history of the Church. That is, when we come to our conclusions, we need to compare them to other godly people down through the ages. When we do that, if we do that, faithfully here in America and in the Western world, we realize the Gospel we're preaching is very different from the Gospel that Spurgeon preached. that Martin Lloyd-Jones preached, that Whitfield preached, even that Wesley preached, very different. That we have taken the gospel of Jesus Christ and we've reduced it down to just a few little, I can't even call them creedal statements because they're not intellectual enough. They're almost cliches. And then if someone says that they agree to those, we pronounce them Christian and welcome them into the family of God. Now, I want you to think about Europe. a few centuries ago, where everyone believed themselves Christian. And why did they believe themselves Christian? Because they went to church and because they were baptized, usually as infants. They believed themselves to be Christian. We've done the same thing today in evangelicalism. Most people believe that they are saved. Why? Because one time in their life, they prayed a prayer and asked Jesus to come in. You could You and I could stop this conversation. I could meet you on the road somewhere. We could both go into every bar in your town and find it full of people who believe themselves saved, even though there's no fruit whatsoever in their life. Because one time they prayed that prayer, and then a loving but misguided pastor pronounced them, popishly pronounced them to be saved. That's not the gospel. Also, when I'm sitting with someone on an airplane, or something, you know, I want to talk to them about the gospel. I usually ask them this question. I heard this from John MacArthur many years ago. You ask this question. Have you ever truly understood the gospel? Do you know why he had to die? And most people will say, honestly, no. And so then I begin to explain. And it always begins not with man, not with Jesus, even dying on a cross. But it begins with God, because if you do not understand something about the attributes of God, you can't understand the why of Calvary. And so speaking about God, the attributes of God, speaking about man, what the scriptures say about him, speaking about the great problem that exists, and that is this. If God is righteous, he cannot forgive. He must be just. And the only way he can forgive and still be righteous is for atonement to be made. And he became a man, died upon a cross. He suffered the wrath that justice demanded. And when he died for his people, he paid that. He made satisfaction. And now a just God can be the justifier of wicked men and still be righteous because he paid for their sins. He personally did it. And then the whole idea of, you know, how does one come to Christ? The Bible does say that those who receive him, the Bible does speak about calling on his name, but we have taken those and taken the meaning out of them and turned them into nothing but shadows. Because we neglect to realize that faith is an amazing, cataclysmic thing that happens in someone's life. and so is repentance, and both of them are required if a person is to be saved. It seems as if the mentality has become that we need some sort of an automated cookie-cutter manufacturing process in order to bring people to Christ. I read a lot of different books and a lot of different about a lot of different ministries and so forth, and I see some of them even just brashly proclaiming that this year we will see 5,000 people saved, as if, you know, if you just sing the right song and you give the right message and you do these pieces, you know, then you mix this all up and add a little bit of an altar call, we can go ahead and bring about salvation. Is that the type of mentality that you're talking about? Yes, that's part of it. And it goes, listen, the whole problem starts theologically, doctrinally. Not understanding who God is, not understanding who man is. When I walk out onto a pulpit to preach, I see myself in the same situation as Ezekiel. in a valley of dry bones. And if someone were to say to me, can these bones live? I wouldn't doubt God and say, yes, they will. Or I wouldn't presume upon God and say, yes, they will. But I wouldn't doubt Him and say, no, they can't. I would say, He knows. You know, Lord, that the conversion of a person is a demonstration of the power of God on par or exceeding God's creation of the universe. He created the world ex nihilo. It was a demonstration of power. But to save a man, he must create a new thing, a holy thing out of a massive, depraved corruption. He raises the dead. And see, that's why when when I walk out on the pulpit, even though I'm going to I'm going to beg people to repent and believe I'm going to set before them with as much clarity as my small mind can the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am not going to manipulate. I am not going to prod. I'm not going to turn it into a circus atmosphere because I know none of that has the power to raise the dead. Only the spirit of the living God. Amen. The gospel preacher is on a fool's errand. He is. Unless the spirit of God is there to raise the dead. And the spirit works along with the word, though, right? Like some hyper-Calvinists on the other end of the extreme would say, well, if it's the spirit that does the work, and if you, like you just said, the preacher is on a fool's errand, then why preach that we really should just be talking to the believer themselves and not trying to convince the kernel mind, because we don't have the ability to do that. So why should we go out and be about this work? Address that group, if you would, as well. Well, you know, that is so unbelievably humanistic, and people are going, what do you mean humanistic? Yes, what you've done with that kind of reasoning is you have replaced the Scriptures with your own theological construct based upon your finite reasoning. You see, you could reason, you could go down that road, you could reason that way. The problem is we do not create our theology based upon that. We simply look at Scripture. And what do we find in Scripture? We find God is all-sovereign. And we find also that men are required to make a decision. We know that only God can raise the dead, yet look at the Gospel preachers themselves. They are passionate. They are begging people to come to Christ. And so instead of taking one truth—and this is what happens, it's very dangerous—taking one truth, like the sovereignty of God, and then using our minds simply to reason, this, therefore, because of this. Instead of doing that, we just need to look. Yes, the Scriptures affirm he is absolutely sovereign, but the same infallible Scriptures show me that I am to be preaching the full counsel of God, I'm to do it with passion, I am to beg, plead with men like Whitfield. He believed in the sovereignty of God like no other man, and yet he told the lost that was listening to him, if you will not weep for your own souls, then I will weep for them. Same thing in Spurgeon and many, many other preachers, the reformers and many other preachers down throughout church history as well. I think we see here in the very beginning as we were talking about the easy-believism and then the other end of the spectrum and the hyper-Calvinism, it's not only destructive to the individuals, but it is damaging to the gospel. And that's what we're going to talk about when we come back from the break. We're going to look very specifically at the gospel call itself then. What about repentance? What about faith? Believing and confessing, receiving Christ and so forth. What about all of these things? We're going to continue our conversation with Paul Washer today about his book. We're talking about the book that's called The Gospel Call and True Conversion. I'll tell you more about that when we come back from the break. Stay tuned. You're listening to Knowing the Truth with Pastor Kevin Bolling. For more information about today's program, the radio ministry, and the resources we offer, go to www.knowingthetruth.org. A New York church is evicted from its worship space for a sermon on same-sex attraction. On the next Janet Meffert Show, we'll find out more from gallery church pastor Freddie T. Wyatt. And the Bible says God hates divorce, but do Christians? We'll get some thoughts from Matt Fletcher, pastor of Webster Bible Church, on the divorce epidemic. That and a lot more next time. Be sure to join us for the Janet Meffert Show. This afternoon, from 3 to 5 on Christian Talk, 660 and 92.9. Hi, I'm Sarah Lampman from Ligonier Connect. I hope you're enjoying some of the great teaching here on RefNet. If you'd like to increase your faith by studying the scriptures and interacting with other believers who desire the same, Ligonier Connect may be for you. It's an online learning community that you can experience whenever is convenient for you. You can access the courses on your computer, tablet, or smartphone. Watch lectures from trusted teachers like R.C. Sproul, Sinclair Ferguson, Robert Godfrey, Stephen Lawson, R.C. Sproul Jr., Stephen Nichols, and others. Engage in discussions with your fellow classmates by sharing your thoughts, answering their questions, or asking your own. There is so much opportunity to grow in your knowledge of God's Word. In fact, there are more than 45 courses to choose from. So give it a try. Join the over 12,000 other Christians who are learning together. It's only $9 a month and you can cancel any time. Go to Ligonier.org slash connect to learn more. Hi, this is Matt Thomas, Camp Director at Camp Marietta. If you are between the ages of 7 and 17 and looking for adventure, fun, recreation, and gospel-centered teaching, then Camp Marietta is for you. We offer Youth Week for 13 to 17-year-olds the week of July 22nd. We still have spots available during our last children's camp, the week of July 29th. Our camp offers unique experiences where campers enjoy the beautiful mountains along with fun activities like ziplining, disc golf, and sand volleyball. For more information about camp and the weekend retreats, please visit our website at campmarietta.com. Nothing in my hand I bring Simply to thy cross I cling Naked come to thee for dress Helpless look to thee for grace Foul I to the fountain fly Wash me, Savior, or I die Wash me, Savior, or I die That's Chris Rice singing, obviously, the classic Rock of Ages. I love that opening line, though. I think that expresses well what we're talking about today. It's not a meritorious work of our own, It's not something that we do. It is looking to the person and the work of our wonderful Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And we need to understand something about that and understand the Gospel itself. We have to have some idea of what it is or who it is that we are believing in. There's a passage of Scripture, I don't have it right here before me, but I remember the Lord Jesus Christ was speaking to a man and he said to the man, did he believe in the Savior? I can't remember the exact passage there, but then he says, well, how should I believe unless I knew who it was that you're talking about? He doesn't have any information. He doesn't know anything about him whatsoever. And that's kind of what we're referring to here today. We're talking about what is the nature of the gospel? What are some of the essential elements of the gospel message? We're speaking with Paul Washer on the program today, and Paul is the founder of HeartCry Missionary Society. Again, their website is www.heartcrymissionary.com. That's heartcrymissionary.com. The book that we're talking about today is called The Gospel Call and True Conversion. It's published by Reformation Heritage Books. Their website is www.heritagebooks.org, and you can go out there to find out more about how you can get a copy of this book. Paul, just for the break, I mentioned that I wanted to get specifically into your book. It's broken up into three I'll mention this for our listening audience sake. The opening part talks about the Gospel call. Part two talks about new hearts and the nature of true conversion. And then part three deals with new people and the nature of true conversion. So there's the outline of the book. Obviously, we won't get a chance to go through all of that in the time that we have remaining, but I'm just going to select a few things for us to delve down a little bit deeper into on the broadcast today. First up, Paul, is the idea of, or the doctrinal truth of, repentance. Your opening chapter in that first part of this book, The Gospel Call, it says, a call to repentance. What is biblical repentance? Well, there are certain essential characteristics that help us define repentance. There's a change of mind. There's a sorrow for sin. There's a personal acknowledgement of sin and the confession of it. There's a turning away from it. There is also, and many people don't understand this or it's not proclaimed sufficiently, a renunciation of self-righteousness. are good works, and then are returning to God as evidenced by obedience. You see, many people today, and I applaud their efforts, some of them. I know what they're trying to do, but they're still working in human construct instead of just letting the Scriptures speak for themselves. Many have eliminated the doctrine of repentance because they say salvation is by grace. And if you include repentance, you're including works. What they don't understand is if repentance is a work, then so is faith. But the old theologians and the confessions of the church declared that both faith and repentance were evangelical graces. Let me let me just give you, for example, it says repentance unto life is an evangelical grace. The doctrine thereof is to be preached by every minister of the gospel. And then that was Westminster in the New Hampshire says. We believe that repentance and faith are sacred duties and also inseparable graces, that where there is faith, there must be repentance. And then we go to the word. You know, Paul said in Acts 20, he said, I kept nothing back that was helpful, but proclaimed it to you and taught you publicly and from house to house, testifying to Jews and also to Greeks, repentance towards God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And so both of these are absolutely essential, repentance and faith. But let's just look for a moment at a few things. You know, I have also seen the other side. I'm so glad you brought up the other side, you know, where it was like a hyper Calvinism. But I've also seen people who either have a superficial view and do not include repentance and do not understand faith. But then there's a severe view on the other side where I've seen people who literally could not come to have an assurance of salvation because they looked at their repentance and they looked at their faith and they saw it so weak they said themselves, I must not be converted. And both those are dangerous ditches to fall off into. You see, one of the things we have to understand is that both repentance and faith are subject to sanctification. And what does that mean? I repented when I first believed. But both my faith and my repentance 30 years ago is nothing like it is today. I've gone through 30 years of a sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, so my repentance and my faith is hopefully much deeper. And it's the same way. If you were to just take all the characteristics of repentance and draw up a perfect biblical doctrine, you would find that none of us would be totally or completely conformed to that. So we have to be very careful on both sides. Repentance when people a lot of times I will talk about a change of mind. And people say, well, that's so superficial or people say, well, I've done that. I've changed my mind. I now believe Jesus is Lord. So, again, there's the superficial side and the severe side. But one of the best illustrations of repentance is actually the Apostle Paul and this idea of changing the mind. Let me give an example. When he left Jerusalem on the road to Damascus. In his mind, he believed that Jesus of Nazareth was probably the greatest or how can I say the most horrible false prophet that had ever risen in Israel. And he thought in his mind that everyone who followed him was a blasphemer and needed to be either arrested or put to death. And all of a sudden on the road to Damascus, he has an encounter with the risen Lord Jesus Christ. And what happened? His mind changed at that moment. He realized that the one he thought was a false prophet, he now realizes is the very Messiah and Son of God. And the people that he thought were blasphemers were the people of God that he was persecuting. And so he had, when he came into contact with Christ there, it was his entire reality disintegrated. It would be like you and me walking out the door tomorrow morning after we get up and everything is upside down. The sky is green, the grass is blue. Everything we knew about reality and belief, we find out to be wrong. That's what happened to the Apostle Paul on that day. And then what happened? Because his mind really changed, the rest of his life really changed. You see, the mind is the center point, the control center of everything that we feel, everything that we believe, everything, our volition, our will, everything. So when it truly changes, Like I was explaining to my son yesterday, I said, if I scream fire right now, will you jump out the window? And he said, no. I said, why? Because I don't believe there's a fire, dad. I said, but if you believed there was a fire, what would you do? He said, I'd jump through the window even if it wasn't open. Exactly. That's what happens when your mind changes. It's cataclysmic. And people say, well, that's the apostle Paul. No, let's just take a businessman today. He lives. to make money. He delights in his beautiful cars, his fine home, his comfortable clothing. He's all about the prestige he has at the country club. And one day, he's met in an elevator by a simple country preacher who dares to share the gospel with this brilliant businessman. And what happens? All of a sudden, he sees for the first time in his life, everything done has been wrought. Everything. And he sees that Christ It's the very focal point of all of history and must be the focal point of his life. When he walks out of that elevator, he's a different man. And he begins to live a different way. And people can't understand the change. I was just speaking about this in our Sunday School class this past Lord's Day, on the radical change in a person's perception, which is found, now I was doing it under the heading of denying of self, but I was speaking about it in similar terms as you're speaking about this with repentance, the change of mind that's there. that it shouldn't be viewed as just a small component or a compartmentalized aspect, but it's comprehensive, it's radical, it's transformative. So that in denying of self, I was making the point that a lot of times we think, okay, if I don't have a Milky Way bar or something as candy bar, that this is what's meant, you know, denying myself of some little delight that I might like to have in this world, and this is what Christ meant by denying ourself. No, no, no. Our perception has completely changed. Everything is not made for me. Everything is made for Him. everything is designed to bring glory to Him. Whereas, when I was in my fallen state, and even still carry some of this over into the new state now, when I was in my fallen state, I believed everything my perception was, it all centered around me. It was all about me. So, self-denial, which is part of the work of sanctification, is the cure for that. and seeing that, no, everything revolves around Him, which was the perception of Adam in the garden. He properly understood who God was, who He was, He understood His environment and what it was for, and we are now being renewed in that, in the knowledge of God and righteousness and holiness and all of these glorious aspects of the Gospel. Do you think that's a fair equation to what you were just describing as well? Yes, I do. It's the outward manifestation of a new inward reality. But let me also say this, and you know this very well, is that the radical change that happens on the inside is always the same. It is the new birth, but the manifestation of it in a person's life may be very, very distinct, one from another. I want to say that because, you know, I have seen believers, for example, I've seen people converted and make these dramatic changes outwardly and seem to grow and just run like the wind in the Christian faith and give every demonstration of conversion, and they're still walking today. And then I've seen others who were genuinely converted. All parents have genuinely converted, but they didn't External change didn't happen that rapidly. There were more struggles. There were there were other things that were going on in their life. And so I don't want to say everyone that's truly converted is just going to jump up and run like the wind. Yes, but there will be changes. We all grow in different degrees in different ways. But the evidence of genuine conversion is that there will be progress, there will be going on with God. And that's so important. Yeah, I'm so glad that you point that out, because here in the South, you know, believing and the things related to Christianity are cultural as well. So, just about anybody that you stop on the street and were to ask them if they, you know, had prayed a sinner's prayer or had, you know, believe in the things related to Christianity and so forth, everyone will, almost to a man, will say yes. And then when you ask them about it, they always point to something in the past that they threw a stick in the fire while they were at a camp and that was their indication that they were in with Christ. signed a decision card, or they walked an aisle, or so forth. And I always find it remarkable that they don't point to the present. And like you're saying, that there is, you're right, in justification we're all equally justified before God, and there is no difference. We're all made perfect because of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us by faith. But in sanctification, we're at different points and at different levels, and that's so true, and I'm glad you pointed out. But as you pointed out, there must be progress. There must be some change. You've gone from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, from the kingdom of the devil to God's dear son. Shouldn't there be some evidence of a radical transformation in the person's life? Yes, there will be. You know, it's interesting. I have a son that's 12 and one that's nine and a little daughter that's six. talking to my nine-year-old the other day, he said, but dad, he goes, you know, what is it? I mean, when it comes down to it, he said, you know, dad, believers still sin. Believers still struggle. He says, you know, how do I know? And I said, you know, it is that Christ, you know, I've known true believers who doubted their salvation, but I never knew a true believer who doubted that Christ and Christ alone could save them, that there is a sense of a tenacious clinging unto Jesus. And that is why repentance, one of the factors of it is repentance. And the old preachers just caught this way. Repentance, not only from sin, but repentance from good works. And what they meant was not that you stop doing good works, but that you repented from your trust. in anything that you might do. And you saw your salvation wholly and completely anchored in the person and work of Christ. And I have found that, you know, I remember I was witnessing to someone one day and I went up to them and I could already tell from their accent they were from the South. They seemed like a pretty good old boy. And, you know, I'm just afraid to ask them, you know, because I just thought I'm going to get the pat answer. I prayed and asked Jesus to come into my heart. And so I asked this man, I said, Sir, if you died right now, where would you go? And he said, Oh, he says, I would go to heaven. And I said, why? And he looked at me in his face, just at that moment, just shown, you know, like the son. And he says, Oh, because I am looking unto Jesus. I am looking unto Jesus. And see, it wasn't just a past event. He was holding on to Christ, and every year that he walked with Christ, he realized more and more that Christ was everything and that he was nothing. You see, we're very afraid of the word experience, but we cannot talk about conversion apart from experience. There is an experience. There is a change that is wrought. And Dr. Piper, I think it is, gives an illustration that I really like. Imagine a man on a mountainside on a cliff that's only a few inches wide. And he's got his back against the wall of the mountain. He's thousands of feet in the air. He's only standing on a ledge of a few inches. The wind is blowing, you know, 75 miles an hour. He's utterly terrified. I mean, terrified to the point of, of he's paralyzed almost. And he's inching his way, inch by inch along this, along this ledge, hoping, hoping somehow he knows he's going to fall any second. And all of a sudden, as he's moving along, his hand feels an open space. He moves a little bit more and he sees that it's larger than what he thought. And then he sees that it's a cave. And so all of a sudden he grabs the side of that hole and throws himself into that cave. He said, you couldn't drag that man out of that cave with a team of wild horses. He knows the terror of being outside of that cave. He knows the safety that he feels. And that's one of the ways in which we should look at conversion. I will not let go of him. I know my standing apart for him. I, I, I told again, my sons the other day about iron workers that we always see these old pictures in the twenties and thirties of men sitting on I-beams, you know, hundreds of feet above the ground eating their lunch, you know? And I said, son, those men walk without safety ropes. And I said, they were confident. They were bold. They were even arrogant. And I said, but I've heard stories of the same type of men walking. And one day, with all their confidence, their foot slips. And there's nothing between them and the ground but clouds and their foot slips. And they grab a hold of a column, a steel column. And that when the other workers come to rescue that man, they have to take wrenches and hammers and break his hands. because he is so terrified to let go of that being that there's no way he's going to do it. I said, he has immediately lost all confidence in himself and he is clinging to his one hope. I said, that's the way I said, if you want a description of your daddy, I said, that's it. You couldn't pry me off. I know that if it's 99.999% Christ and the rest is me, I'm going to hell. I know Christ is my only hope. We're increasing in our sanctification walk more and more each day. We're endeavoring to walk with Christ, to shun sinful behavior and to live righteously before God. And this is an ongoing process of repentance. It's not just a point-in-time event, but it's a point-in-time event with ongoing repercussions. In other words, we're repenting on a daily basis. The closer we get to Christ, the more we see more of our sinfulness, like Isaiah, one of the holiest men of his day, and yet he's called up into that temple picture before Christ in Isaiah 6, and then he says, woe is me, I'm a man that is undone. And I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell amongst a people of unclean lips. So the closer we get to Christ, we see more of our own sinfulness, and we see more of our need for the Lord Jesus Christ. I had an opportunity, Paul, to go to the Grand Canyon a couple of years ago with the folks from Answers in Genesis and the Master's Mission. And when you saw the canyon, and a mile deep, Resulting from the wrath of God, it just made me think a couple of things very quickly. One, this is not a God to be trifled with. Who knows the power of His anger and of His wrath? I was just overwhelmed with it as I saw this tremendous amount of wrath for sin that had these types of effects upon the earth itself. And the second thought that came to my mind was, thank God for Jesus Christ, because my whole life is wrapped up in Him, like Horatius Bonner said, upon a life I did not live, upon a death I did not die, upon another's life, upon another's death, I stake my whole eternity. It's not upon me, it's not upon my progress. I haven't reverted to looking at the progressive walk that I have as being my hope of salvation, but we're clinging to the Lord Jesus Christ and thank God for the provision of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul, it's been a joy talking with you today. We only got through the first one here, but I think we whet people's appetite for what you write about in this book. It's so necessary for today. It's so necessary for the correct preaching of the gospel. We've been entrusted with this glorious We've got to preach it in the way that we've been entrusted with it. And so I thank you, brother, for writing this book, and thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to visit with us here for a while on the Knowing the Truth radio broadcast. My privilege, brother. Thank you for the opportunity. OK, I'm going to give the websites here again, but thank you again very much. That was Paul Washer, as I pointed out in the beginning of the broadcast. Paul is the founder of a ministry referred to as the HeartCry Missionary Society. And I mentioned early on in the broadcast as well that you can go out and go to that website. They've got a lot of resources there. There's places where it'll tell you about the missionary work that they're doing, about how to get involved in indigenous missionary work, how you can support what's going on and so forth. Again, it's called HeartCry Missionary Society. Their website is www.heartcrymissionary.com. That's heartcrymissionary.com. Also, the book that we're talking about today is called The Gospel Call and True Conversion. It's put out by Reformation Heritage Books. Their website is www.heritagebooks.org, and again, I stress that that is plural, so it's heritagebooks.org, and you can go out there in order to find out about both of the books that Paul has produced. The first book in the series is called The Gospels, Power, and Message. And the second book is called The Gospel's Call and True Conversion. Both of those are available out there on that website. You can get them in both e-book format. You can also get them in a regular printed volume as well. Let me mention to you, talking about the Word of God and the importance of the Word of God, we're studying the Word of God together with the good folks there from Ligonier Ministries. They've made available to us to be able to make available to you, the listening audience, absolutely free, a study course out on their Ligonier Connect website. And that Ligonier Connect website, you can go to ligonier.org forward slash connect, and we're studying the parables of Christ along with Dr. R.C. Sproul. And you need a code word to put in there in order to get it for free. The code word is very simply this. It is KTT Radio. That's KTT Radio. And if you type that in, you'll get that course absolutely free. And so I want to make sure that you're aware of that. Also, Chick-fil-A is sponsoring their annual Chick-fil-A Father-Son Campout. It's going to be on the 27th. You can get in touch with the folks over there at Chick-fil-A of Pelham, 297-9912. This is a father-son event, take advantage of it. Remember this, the Lord Jesus Christ said, He said you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. We'll see you next time. You've been listening to Knowing the Truth with Pastor Kevin Bowling. Knowing the Truth is the outreach ministry of the Mountain Bridge Bible Fellowship, located on Highway 25 in Traveler's Rest. For more information about the church and radio ministry, visit us on the web at knowingthetruth.org. The opinions expressed on today's program are those of the announcers, their guests, and callers, and do not necessarily represent those of the staff and management of his radio network, the Radio Training Network, or Clear Channel Communications. 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