Category: Audio Episodes

Isaiah 9 famously proclaims how Christ came to establish and order his kingdom. In this episode we want to look at how extensive and expansive that order was and still is. In many ways the church has forgotten what the world was like before Christ came. Like fish who are so accustomed to being wet that they take water for granted, the church has lived within the kingdom of Jesus Christ from the moment of its birth. But do we understand it? And do we understand the work that our Lord has given us to do?

Please join us as we discuss this very orderly topic (in a less than orderly way).

Production of Reformation Baptist Church of Youngsville, NC
Hosts – Dan Horn, Jonathan Sides, Charles Churchill and Joshua Horn
Technical Director – Timothy Kaiser
Theme Music – Gabriel Hudelson

Over the past seven years, there have been a lot of headlines to this effect: “No Christian can justify voting for Donald Trump!” But often enough, the people writing these articles don’t really know God themselves. And so it’s easy to write them off. But here’s the real question: Could they be right anyway?

For most of us, this isn’t just political theory. In the next year, we’re probably going to have a couple of opportunities to vote and Donald Trump seems very likely to be the front-runner. So in this episode, we thought it was worth taking the time to try and unpack Donald Trump and why he gets so much support from Christians. Are those who support him truly thinking biblically or are they being manipulated by political forces? We think it’s a topic worth serious consideration.

Production of Reformation Baptist Church of Youngsville, NC
Hosts – Dan Horn, Jonathan Sides, Charles Churchill and Joshua Horn
Technical Director – Timothy Kaiser
Theme Music – Gabriel Hudelson

Limited atonement often seems like a simple doctrine. Christ died for the elect. The end. But it’s more complicated than that. Because Christ didn’t just come to save the elect. He also came to put away sin, destroy the work of the devil, and reconcile the fallen creation to the Father.

The other part about it that’s worth discussing is that even those who understand the doctrine, limit the atonement in practical ways when we act as if the blood of Christ has no real effect on the lives of those who believe. It’s so common today for Christians to be cynical and pessimistic about the world; to act as if the very world we live in has not already been blessed and changed by the death of Christ. And when we do this, we limit the atonement. Not by stated doctrine, but by practice and by our lack of faith.

The doctrine of limited atone is important. And while it’s not incredibly complex, it touches on many different aspects of Christianity. In this episode, we want to push on the modern view of the atonement, because while the atonement is limited, its scope and majesty are beyond measure. It is limited, but it is not small, and it is the means by which Christ accomplished everything. And even as Christ sits in authority at the right hand of the Father, its work is still ongoing and will continue until all his enemies have been defeated. Do we, his people, understand the atonement? Do we honor and praise him by doing the work he has appointed us, as we should?

In the first thousand years after Christ, the early church gradually transformed into the Roman Catholic church, leaving the Word of God and its holy practices and replacing Christ as the head of the church with a man. While we are certain that most of our listeners are familiar with the Protestant Reformation, where so many of these false doctrines and heresies were turned away from, in this episode, we want to look at a few of the events that caused this situation to come about in the first place, and ask the question: How did the Roman Catholic Church become apostate?

We want to consider three events in particular in this podcast. The broadening of the church at the time of Constantine(313 AD), the establishment of the papacy at the time of Gregory (590 AD) and the adoption of teaching through images by Gregory III (731 AD). While there are many other events that could (and should) be discussed, these three in particular were major steps in the Roman Catholic Church’s fall from grace and each consists of issues that the people of God are facing today, particularly in the American church, but in many ways worldwide.

Production of Reformation Baptist Church of Youngsville, NC
Hosts – Dan Horn, Jonathan Sides, Charles Churchill and Joshua Horn
Technical Director – Timothy Kaiser
Theme Music – Gabriel Hudelson

In this episode, we finish our discussion about physical and spiritual maturity and how God has designed each stage of life to have a specific purpose. In the last episode we discussed from birth to young adulthood/adolescence and in this episode, we focus on early adulthood, middle age, and being elderly. In early adulthood, we establish our household and our place in the world, in middle age, having established ourselves, we are able to reach out and have an impact beyond our home in the broader world, and in our final stage of life, we focus on establishing the next generation and handing over the responsibilities that we have taken on to those who come behind us.

As in the last episode, we also look at this from a spiritual perspective and consider how in the stages of spiritual maturity those young in the faith grow into adulthood, finding their place in the church body, reaching outside in faithful duty to have a ministry that others can depend upon, and then nurturing, teaching, and committing to those who are the next generation within the church. Please join us as we discuss this often-overlooked topic.

Watch part 1 of this episode here:
https://theconqueringtruth.com/2023/10/from-birth-to-childhood-building-toward-physical-and-spiritual-maturity-ep-142/

Production of Reformation Baptist Church of Youngsville, NC
Hosts – Dan Horn, Jonathan Sides, Charles Churchill and Joshua Horn
Technical Director – Timothy Kaiser
Theme Music – Gabriel Hudelson

We all know that there are stages in life, and because God is a God of order, we know that they have a purpose that He designed. But often, because of sin, it can feel as if we are scrambling through life without understanding what we should be doing along the way. We are born, we spend time as children, we are thrust into adulthood, we have families and careers, we have grandchildren, we retire, and then… we die. But looking back, we can see how we did not use our time properly, and how certain periods were suited for specific growth and purpose. It would be good if we could understand their purposes before we entered into them. It would be good to be able to better prepare our children.

And from a spiritual perspective, God has given us this image of being born again and becoming children of God who are trained up by Him in his household. But scripture does not spend a great deal of time talking about what that process of spiritual maturing should look like. Instead, God points us back to what physically maturing and growing should look like, insisting that those physical stages of maturity are a metaphor for growing spiritually. From Scripture, we can see five basic stages of life. In Hebrews, it talks about children before they are weaned and the writer is rebuking the people for still being like babies that they are not yet able to feed themselves solid food. Then as with the picture of Samuel being brought to the temple to server, there is childhood which extends until puberty. There is youth which goes from puberty to thirty when the priests would start their ministries like Christ. Then the ministry of the priesthood which goes from thirty to fifty. Finally, there are elders who are older than fifty. In each of these stages, there are both specific and general steps that are taken in the process of maturing, with each new stage building on the last. And these physical stages parallel spiritual maturity.

In this episode, we are going to cover the first three stages of life. From conception to birth, from newborn to around five years old, and from five to thirteen. We want to talk about how God designed each of those periods to accomplish specific things as we physically mature. And then we want to tie that to the corresponding picture of spiritual growth so that we can better understand what we should be looking for in ourselves and others as we mature in Christ. Please join us as we discuss this very important topic.

Production of Reformation Baptist Church of Youngsville, NC
Hosts – Dan Horn, Jonathan Sides, Charles Churchill and Joshua Horn
Technical Director – Timothy Kaiser
Theme Music – Gabriel Hudelson

In early October, soldiers from Hamas invaded Israel. They killed babies in their beds, kidnapped wives and grandmothers, and in general, attacked without any moral constraints on their behavior, deliberately and intentionally attacking non-combatants. Over 1300 people were killed and hundreds were taken hostage. Naturally, Israel is responding and firing upon Gaza. The media almost always reports on this story the same way, saying that Israel has a clear right to respond, but that since the Hamas soldiers hide in civilian housing, the Israelites are killing children. And while it is true that Israel’s counterattacks do result in the death of women and children, the question is, how should they respond when their enemies hide behind women and children. What should a nation that is trying to be moral do when enemy combatants use children as shields?

In this episode, we discuss the challenge of responding righteously when your enemy has no regard for the innocent. In particular, we talk about the often-overlooked fact that Hamas is the elected government of Gaza, and has strong support from Palestinians living there and in the West Bank. When you consider that Hamas is very open about both their hatred for Israel and their tactics of attacking from positions where they are surrounded by civilians, who should we hold to blame for the children that are killed? Does that not fall on the parents who chose Hamas? This is worth pointing out, because Christians often try to play games when it comes to difficult moral situations. We like to absolve certain parties of guilt, and in doing so, we shift the blame to someone else. And God is never ok with this. He says in Numbers 14 that while he is abundant in mercy, forgiving the iniquity and transgression, he by no means clears the guilty.
And we as Christians should remember this. When we choose evil in our land, God will bring judgment upon us, and it will not just affect us, it will affect our families. If we do not wage war against evil, not with flesh and blood, but with the sword of the spirit, against principalities and powers, then in that day, when when God hands us over to evil men and our children lay dead and dying, we must not weep and say, “Why has this injustice come upon us?!?” We chose it. And God is doing exactly what he promised. Please join us as we discuss this vital topic.

Past episodes:
Is the Israel-Gaza War Just?
https://theconqueringtruth.com/2021/05/is-the-israel-gaza-war-just-ep-21/
Is Israel Still God’s Chosen People? https://theconqueringtruth.com/2021/07/is-israel-still-gods-chosen-people-ep-27/

Production of Reformation Baptist Church of Youngsville, NC
Hosts – Dan Horn, Jonathan Sides, Charles Churchill and Joshua Horn
Technical Director – Timothy Kaiser
Theme Music – Gabriel Hudelson

Would you be surprised to know that over 460 years ago, a group of missionaries left Geneva for Brazil to preach the gospel? Or that by 1562, missionary efforts based out of Geneva and other similarly minded cities had planted over 2000 churches in France?

In this episode, we consider how God’s work in the lives of the men and women of the Reformation resulted in missionaries being sent out to the entire world. And while this early mission movement had similarities with what we think of as modern missions, there were also some key distinctives that the modern American church seems to have forgotten.

Production of Reformation Baptist Church of Youngsville, NC
Hosts – Dan Horn, Jonathan Sides, Charles Churchill and Joshua Horn
Technical Director – Timothy Kaiser
Theme Music – Gabriel Hudelson

We live in a culture where people almost throw temper tantrums when they don’t get their way. Where adults want to go back and live with their parents and be taken care of by them. Where people think that others should compensate for their incompetence. But Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:11 that when he became a man he put away childish things. So, what is childishness, and how should we think about it?

Production of Reformation Baptist Church of Youngsville, NC
Hosts – Dan Horn, Jonathan Sides, Charles Churchill and Joshua Horn
Technical Director – Timothy Kaiser
Theme Music – Gabriel Hudelson

In Deuteronomy 21:18-21, God’s law says that the parents of rebellious children are to take them to the rulers of the city and they are to be stoned. How can a loving God command such a thing?

In this episode, we deal with a passage that is often used by critics to demonstrate that Christianity is evil or at the very least that the God of the Old Testament was cruel and unloving. But as the Apostle Paul says in I Timothy, “But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully”, and in Galatians 3, “Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not! For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law.” And so knowing that the law is good, it is also good for Christians to understand and to be able to explain how God demonstrates his goodness and constrains the sin of men through his commandments. Please join us as we discuss the goodness of God’s law.

Production of Reformation Baptist Church of Youngsville, NC
Hosts – Dan Horn, Jonathan Sides, Charles Churchill and Joshua Horn
Technical Director – Timothy Kaiser
Theme Music – Gabriel Hudelson