Martyn Iles: Episode Description

On this episode of The Inspiration Project, Brendan Corr talks to Australian Lawyer, commentator, Preacher and former head of the Australian Christian Lobby now CEO of Answers in Genesis, Martyn Iles about the issues surrounding the Israel Folau comments, dealing with the difficult question of, “Do gay people go to hell?” on ABC Q&A, why he moved to America, his time with The Australian Christian Lobby, How Martyn became a Christian, navigating his calling to serve God early in life, why he chose to become a lawyer, why Martyn decided to start preaching the Gospel on social media, how Christians should deal with the new anti-Christian propaganda being pushed today, why we are living through the book of Daniel today and seeking the providence of God today.

Episode Summary

• Dealing with the issues surrounding the Israel Folau comments
• Why Martyn left Australia to move to America and become the CEO of Answers in Genesis
• How Martyn was able to navigate the difficult question of, “Do gay people go to hell?” on ABC Q&A
• Martyn’s time with the Australian Christian Lobby
• How Martyn became a Christian
• Navigating his calling to serve God early in his life and why he chose to become a Lawyer
• Why Martyn decided to preach the Gospel on Social Media
• How Christians should deal with the new anti-Christian propaganda being pushed today
• Why we are living through the book of Daniel today
• What seeking the providence of God looks like today

Martyn Iles: Episode Transcript

Sponsor Announcement
This podcast is sponsored by Australian Christian College, a network of schools committed to student well-being, character development and academic improvement.

Introduction
Welcome to The Inspiration Project where well-known Christians share their stories to inspire young people in their faith and life. Here’s your host, Brendan Corr.

Brendan Corr
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Inspiration Project Podcast where we talk with people living lives of significance and influence, and also living out their call of faith. The podcast you’ll listen to today is a recording of a conversation with Martyn Iles. Martyn is an Australian lawyer, commentator, and preacher currently living in the USA and serving as the executive CEO of the Answers in Genesis Organisation. Previously, Martyn was the managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby, one of Australia’s largest political movements. It was during that role that he became prominent in some of Australia’s media through his vlog, The Truth of It, and his appearances on projects such as Sunrise, 60 Minutes, The National Press Club, and the ABC Q+A. The conversation that you’re going to hear picks up when I begin to talk with Martyn about some of the opportunities that are presented in that role. Particularly, as he was in discussion in the public sphere around the issues of Israel Folau’s comments and the fallout of that. I really hope you enjoy the conversation that we have recorded for you.

Martyn Iles
For him. The first interview that I did for the Israel Folau Week was with Hamish. It was on The Project, the Sunday project. And that was probably my second major TV interview and the first one certainly that most people became aware of. And they called me into The Project in Sydney to defend Israel because his whole situation had just been unfolding. Hamish was the interviewer along with Lisa Wilkinson, but Hamish took the lead on that. And I remember he’d been to a Christian school. We found that out in the sort of pre-show discussion.** **He, himself, is a gay man, and there just seemed to be something unfinished in his experience there, something that was sort of alive to him, that was unresolved. And anyway, the pre-show discussion finished when the cameras rolled and all of a sudden as happens, the personalities changed and they became quite hostile. And the interview closed with him saying to me… He goes, “Oh, Martyn, before we go…” Now, Lisa might’ve said this one, he might’ve said the second, or he could have said both. I can’t remember, but it was something like, “But just before we go, could you just answer one question for me? Do gay people go to hell?” And I answered the question by saying, “Well, actually, it doesn’t matter whether you are gay or straight or anything else. The simple reality is that all of us are going to face God’s judgement one day, and that’s very real. And all of us are going to be found coming short of God’s righteous standard. And that for any one of us, no matter who we are, and no matter what our identity is, the only answer to that problem is the cross of Jesus Christ and what He’s done.” He did not like that. But it’s interesting because he came back and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t get the answer to my question. Do gay people go to hell?” And I said, “Well, it’s just what I said. It doesn’t matter who we are. We’re born having to face God one day in judgement and we’ll all be found wanting on that day, but the cross of Christ is the answer that is held out to every one of us, no matter who we are.” And then, as I was just getting that last sentence out, he goes, “All right, that’s enough. Cut the interview.” And I think he felt like he didn’t get me. He didn’t… When I said, “Get me,” he didn’t land the blow that he wanted to land. And there’s something there for him that he’s dealing with. Yeah, wrestling with. And so when I was invited back on the Q+A, it was at the beginning of his sort of tenure as the host. And there was definitely an unfinished business aspect of that. And they had Alan, who was the gay man in the audience, lined up to ask me that question of, “Israel Folau, why are you supporting a man that engages in hate speech, et cetera?” And again, by God’s grace and with God’s help, I was able to address that. And it was interesting. It was the only time in the evening that I almost felt like the rest of the panel was listening to me. They weren’t attacking and fighting. That started after a couple of minutes of me talking, but I got clear air and I got to talk about hate and the fact that hate is that motive by which we seek someone else’s… We long for someone else’s destruction. But the Christian longs for people’s blessing and that’s why they tell the truth and that’s why they say these things. And then the fact that repentance is not a gay thing or a straight thing, it’s a people thing. And God commands all people to repent. Now that really made Hamish angry ‘cause it was almost like, “Here we go again. The attack didn’t work.” And I really got that from him in a big way. And he wouldn’t look at me, he wouldn’t talk to me afterward. But yeah, I really have prayed for him since then on the night and since then. Because I just wonder whether or not that was a message for him. Yeah. There was something unresolved for him. And I’m sure it’s got to do with his sexuality has got to do with some Christian past. And I hope it is resolved for him.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. You’ve moved to America in the last few months.

Martyn Iles
I have, yeah.

Brendan Corr
So what has brought you home? Is Australia still home?

Martyn Iles
Australia is home. I still call Australia home, the song says…

Brendan Corr
Somebody should write a song about that.

Martyn Iles
Exactly. I don’t think that’ll ever change. You can live in a foreign country and you can even have significant roots there. But it was like I spent 10 years in Canberra with the Australian Christian Lobby and Human Rights Law Alliance, but Canberra was never home. My home was always Brisbane where I grew up where my family was and where my history was. So yes, I moved over there a few months ago, but I’m coming back and forth. And I’m here in Sydney for a conference and to speak at a certain school and various other things like that.

Brendan Corr
We are glad to have you here at our school, too. Some would say that Canberra is a little bit of a different nation itself. It’s across those borders. It’s a micro separate state in Australian society.

Martyn Iles
John Anderson, the former deputy prime minister of Australia, said that “Canberra is a city of 300,000 surrounded by the real world.” And there’s a remarkable truth in that. It is its own little bubble and its own little culture.

Brendan Corr
So that little bio that I read out, Martyn, has some interesting twists and turns, starting off as a youth pastor that’s… Finding yourself then as the leader of one of the most prominent Christian voices in popular culture in the country. And now we’re at an international stage, Answers in Genesis. It’s quite a trajectory.

Martyn Iles
Look, when you reflect on it and put it like that and see it all written out, sometimes I think to myself, “Did that really happen?” It’s been remarkable. And people always say to me, “How do you become…” When I was at ACL, it would be, “How do you become sort of the managing director of ACL?” And my answer is, “I don’t know.” All these things really just have been God’s leading through the years of my life. I’ve always been conscious… I always say to people, “I had a plan for my life once, but it got spectacularly disrupted by the providence of God and changes in circumstances that I never imagined.” And from that day forward, it’s been very different. I do live each day not holding too tightly to anything and just looking to the Lord for that leading. And yeah, it’s had some undulations and some twists and turns, but I can look back and say God’s been very good. And I’m sort of very blessed to have been able to do the things that I’ve done, and I trust that there’s more in the future.

Brendan Corr
So essentially it’s a philosophy of turn up, be faithful and God will direct the paths of the righteous that look to Him.

Martyn Iles
Absolutely. I think sometimes, we can fall into that trap of thinking we can control the future better than God can. Or we can control outcomes in our lives better than God can. And I think we’ve got to be… It’s always important to have somewhere you’re going, especially a young man who has to have a mission that he’s on a trajectory that he’s following, that he’s disciplining himself towards. But you’ve got to hold it very lightly and you’ve got to be open completely to God’s leading and God’s dislocation of circumstances and that will happen.

Brendan Corr
Let me push into that because of that sense of mission that you spoke about, you must have clearly had a sense of call to the ministry serving as a youth pastor and that sense.

Martyn Iles
Not at all. I mean, I say, youth pastor, it’s the best way to describe it. It wasn’t a paid role or anything like that. So that happened organically, so much. Really my goal was for a career actually. I started out thinking I was going to go into medicine. I wasn’t enjoying the sort of biomedical scientific aspects of that program. And so I sort of deferred, which is code for I might think about doing something else. Yeah, rethink the whole thing. Started a small business in the meantime, was getting really into that and earning a bit of money and growing a tech business. But I always wanted to go back into a career, and again, through providence, through meeting a family friend and a recommendation sort of like, “Well, have you thought of law?” “No.” “Oh, well I have an opportunity. Maybe my friend who’s the managing partner at a major law firm could get you in for a bit of an internship just to see how you like it.” So open doors. Oh yeah, why not take the opportunity? Went in there, enjoyed it, then studied law. I was going to think, “I’m going to become a barrister. I’m going to be in court making arguments and God needs Christians in the workplaces and all that.” And He does. And that was really what was on my mind. But as you can see, just from that story, that was very much about just grabbing the opportunities that came. And not being afraid to step into them, not being afraid to pursue them, not being afraid to try them. And a lot of people are held back by fears around that stuff, but God brings these things. And I find that in stepping into them, the next thing becomes clear and the next thing becomes clear. So I say to people, “Keep moving, keep doing what comes your way.” And through that, the law thing opened up. And meanwhile, there were other opportunities. I went to a church that did not have a youth group, for example. It had a Sunday school for small children, but there was this issue of kids at the age of 13ish moving away from Sunday school and drifting out of the church, having nothing for them. And so somebody else in the church came up to me and said, “We need to start a youth group. We need to look after these young folks. There’s a whole cohort of them that are starting to lose their way or wondering whether Sunday school is really for them.” And there was a whole group of unchurched kids from all different diverse backgrounds. There’s a whole story about how that happened. But we started a youth group for them, and then that turned into… Really, it’s kind of bigger than Ben-Hur. We persevered with studying the Bible with them. We did weekly activities with them. We had a whole program of outings and excursions to get them out of sometimes very difficult home environments. And we ended up studying the whole New Testament together over the course of several years. And I found myself in the hot seat to run that and to study the Bible with teenagers from Matthew 1:1 to Revelation… Is it 21 or 22? Right to the end. And in the process that… See, that equips you for so much more. And that door started to open. And then some changes in my legal career followed by another opportunity, someone ringing me and saying, “Hey, do you want to come down to Canberra and do this Lachlan Macquarie internship, politics theology right up your street?” “Oh yeah. All right.” Go and do that. Then the chairman of the board comes and says, “ACL is looking for a chief of staff.” “Oh really? Oh no, I think I’ll go back and be a lawyer.” Pray about it. Circumstances confirmed and changed. “Oh, I’ve got to go to Canberra. Don’t know why.” And that’s kind of the way it’s all unfolded. It’s just God and his goodness has just brought opportunities along at every step of the way and has just confirmed clearly each time I’ve been supposed to step into something different. It’s sort of been no doubt about it. You think of Gideon with his fleece and there’s a sense in which he kind of overdid it. He was like, “Oh, am I sure?” Yeah, can I check one more time? And God was very gracious and allowed him to check that one more time. And I’ve been in a few situations like that where I think, “I know the Lord called me to this, the youth group.” Such a sense of calling there, such a crucial five years for those young people. Will I move to Canberra? Put the fleece out, pray, “Lord, show me, give me circumstances, confirmations from devotions in reading in scripture.” Confirmations in circumstance. “Okay, I’m supposed to do this.” Off we go. And it’s that one day at a time looking for God’s leading and making the most and really pursuing wholeheartedly what it is that He’s given you on any day.

Brendan Corr
It’s an interesting point that you make Martyn, because there would be a school of thought, find your passion, find your dream, nail it on the wall, look at it every day, and set yourself for these goals. You’ve found that while that might have some measure of direction setting, it’s not… Hold it lightly.

Martyn Iles
Well see, it’s interesting. It’s funny in the talk before I was sort of pointing out the fact that when Jesus was on the cross, the scoffers said, “Come down from the cross.” Because what God was doing was too original for them. They couldn’t see it. In fact, it was too original for anyone to realise that actually, a cross would be part of God’s plan to save the world, something so low and something so terrible. There’s an ingenuity about the way that God moves. And the reason I raise that is because in this context, yeah, I had things that I really enjoyed and that interested me. So when I went and did that internship in the law firm, that’s something that really I just thought, “Yeah, I think I was born for this.” But see in my own understanding there, and I say, “Well, I’m going to be a barrister. I’m going to go and prosecute criminals. I’m going to do this and that because this is my calling.” But actually, all that I learned through law and the skills that I had in that profession have turned out to be absolutely crucial to something I never could have thought of. And it’s the same with the youth pastoring, going through the New Testament line by line, doing all that study, all that discipline, interacting with young people, working out where they’re at and understanding them. Wow, how that has been used in a way that I never could have imagined. And so yes, I think you do pursue those gifts and talents that are evident. But I think that God has a way of channeling them in ways that you wouldn’t imagine on your own. And so I’m very much against getting too controlling about our ultimate destiny. We’ve got-

Brendan Corr
Because He’ll override anyway, right?

Martyn Iles
Exactly. And He did. He overrode it for me. Exactly. He’ll have another idea and He’ll take you somewhere else, which is fine. But the point being that, yeah, you know for today, what’s in front of you. And you sort of have a sense today of where God’s led and what your giftings are and you pursue that. But then as the days unfold, you just don’t know.

Brendan Corr
Can you share with us, obviously in this scenario, the leading of God was already prominent in your life and you were conscious of being a disciple. When did that happen to you? When did you get to know Jesus in a personal way and acknowledge that He did have a plan for you?

Martyn Iles
That’s a very good question. Again, I grew up in a Christian family, a very strong Christian home, a Bible-teaching Christian dad who’s a medical doctor, but did a lot of Bible study in the church and that kind of thing. And yeah, I certainly had a great start. But -t was apparent to me as I kind of got a little older, so I’m talking five years old, six years old. The thing that was dawning on me was, “Huh, I am not right with God.” Whatever that means. I don’t know God. Because the question I was asking was, “Am I saved? Am I a Christian?” And then I realised, “Well if I don’t know the answer then I can’t. There’s something missing, there’s something wrong. So that started to dawn on me around the age of five. And it’s interesting when you read the testimony of a guy like Martin Luther, there’s something they describe as the madness of Luther and that manifests in a few ways. But one of them was that before he was actually converted before he was truly born again, he was just tormented by conviction. His sin just gripped him and he was despairing over his sinful condition, his hopelessness, and the fact that he was going to face the judgement of God and he didn’t know what to do about it. And it was like a torment. And it’s most… People worry when I say this, but I’m glad it happened. That happened to me from the age of five or six. I was tormented and I would do the wrong thing and it would be in hindsight, in a kid’s mind, a big deal. But in the scheme of things, I did something that-

Brendan Corr
Disobeyed your parents.

Martyn Iles
I did. Exactly. Something like this or told a joke that I shouldn’t have told at school. And whack the conviction would hit me so hard. And I was terrified and I was terrified of what that meant between me and God. What if the world ended today, what would become of me? And I did not know how to solve it. And that followed me in a really, really pressing, in a heavy way. The Bible says that “The Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, of righteousness and judgement .” And boy, oh boy, that’s what He did to me.

Brendan Corr
You got in double measure.

Martyn Iles
Really, really in double measure. I was almost driven to distraction actually in hindsight. But it was for the best because I was driven to find answers. And I do remember one day I read a particular scripture in Jeremiah. It was just the phrase, “You shall seek me and you shall find me when you search for me with all your heart.” And I was only a little kid when I read it ‘cause I was sort of flicking through the Bible in the evening because mum would always say, “Read your Bible.” “Okay, I’ll read something.” And I saw that and sometimes things leap off the page and by God’s grace they leapt off the page. And I got a piece because I thought to myself, “Huh. What I have to do is seek Him with all my heart.” And I knew that would be hard. I knew that that was no small measure. But I thought, “If that’s what it takes, that’s what I’ll do.” Because the promise is that you will find me. So that gave me hope. And it was through that scripture that I just guess hunkered down in a much more measured way. And just tried to grow as a Christian, tried to find out more about what salvation was. And yeah, I realised repent of your sins, and trust in Christ. All those things came and I thought, “Yep, I think that’s what I’m doing.” But I would describe it as almost like a dawning of the day. I couldn’t say, “Yeah, that day at that hour, at that second.” Maybe it was when I read that verse, maybe it was the prayer I prayed the next day. Maybe it was the conviction I had before that. I don’t know. But definitely in hindsight, profoundly conscious of God’s hand in my life. And I often wonder, “I wonder why. I wonder if that was all happening.” Even at the age of five, and I think it must’ve been people praying for me. There must’ve been prayers from my parents. Certainly as a kid, we used to go to… My dad was a doctor and he used to particularly have an interest in caring for the elderly. And we used to go to this nursing home where there were a lot of elderly… Christian nursing home, lots of elderly Christian folks, and dad would go and give all the medical care and then he would speak, do a devotion in the main sort of room there. And he would get us kids to do little items. I actually used to stand on a chair and preach, believe it or not, at the age of six. My sisters were very musically gifted, so they would sing and play instruments. And for the elderly folk, it was really a moment in their week. They just sort of loved it. Dad was very gifted with dealing with the elderly and ministering to them and did a lot of funerals. But what I found out later in life was that as a result of that, it was like this army of godly old people and they prayed for me every day. So I think God was good at orchestrating those prayers in my life.

Brendan Corr
A multi-factor.

Martyn Iles
Exactly. So I suppose there had to be fruit, right, when you’ve got all that going on. And yeah, I’m fortunate to be sort of aware… At the time, you see a lot of things in hindsight, right? And I guess in hindsight I’m looking back going, “Huh, God really had his hand on me young.” And that’s great to know.

Brendan Corr
I know in the conversation we had before we started this recording, you described yourself as a preacher.

Martyn Iles
I did, yeah.

Brendan Corr
At heart, that’s your sense of purpose in God from that standing on a chair preaching at an old people’s home.

Martyn Iles
Yeah. Strange, isn’t it?

Brendan Corr
Yeah. Had the opportunity to preach to nations and to preach on the broadcast public channels.

Martyn Iles
Yeah, it’s amazing. I think of prayers that I’ve prayed that stand out to me. You’ve got to be careful when you pray prayers because they might just get answered. And people don’t realise sometimes what’s involved in answering some of the prayers that we just glibly pray. But I think, for example, I remember very deliberately at one stage in my life, praying for courage, feeling that I wasn’t courageous. And I think as a direct answer to that prayer, God threw me into some really high-stakes stuff. I mean, others have done way more high-stakes things. But nonetheless, in the context that I was thrown into, I had to draw on courage. And it’s like you go, well, you pray for something and God answers the prayer by making you do it. And it’s similar. I have at times in my life, been really gripped by the importance of preaching, the importance of voices in a generation that apply the word of God to the times. I’m named after Martyn Lloyd-Jones for those who know him. He was one such voice, just had an amazing ministry that raised up a whole new generation of preachers. Many of the major names in America will cite Tim Keller and John MacArthur and all these… Alistair Begg… There’s all these names over there, and they have massive ministries. And you say to them, “Who’s your inspiration?” Lloyd-Jones will be at the top of the list, you know. And in every generation, you look at a Spurgeon figure or you look back at Whitfield and Wesley and you look back… There’s always people doing that. And I guess for some reason… Well, I’ve always prayed that I would have the opportunity to do that. And little did I know… I always thought that meant I would… There was a time when I thought that meant I had to go and be a pastor.

Brendan Corr
Yeah. I wanted to explore this with you.

Martyn Iles
Right. And I genuinely thought about that. I pursued enrollment in a couple of theological colleges, but I was just very conscious that the door just closed. It wouldn’t work. And I was despondent. I thought, “Ah, well, I guess I’ll-

Brendan Corr
Speaking to your point earlier, Martyn, that God has opportunities that you can’t imagine from your current vantage.

Martyn Iles
Well, precisely. Yeah.

Brendan Corr
And your preaching hasn’t been like Billy Graham or Martyn Lloyd-Jones, where it’s been theologically rooted and applied to stirring the church in some regards. Your platform has been applying the gospel to the world, applying the gospel to society.

Martyn Iles
Almost been… And I hesitate to use this word, but it’s almost been the ministry of a prophet in the sense of stating the word of God for the time, bringing it into speaking God’s word into the moment. And I don’t know. Again, that’s a hindsight thing where I look back and go, “Oh, the Lord enabled me to do that.” And that was… I say that it’s preaching for lack of a better word. Like you say, those doors opened up in ways that I just couldn’t have envisaged. And I look back and think to myself, “You know what? Those moments were the hardest moments of my life.” People see that stuff and go, “Oh, it must be exciting. It must be…” And it is, but it’s very hard. It’s a weight. And before you speak to people like that, you feel really, really burdened. And yet when it happens, I think, “This is why I’m alive. This is what God has given to me to do.” And again, it’s all come out in ways that you just wouldn’t have imagined. God’s a lot more ingenious than we are at these things.

Brendan Corr
So while I imagine… I know the answer or I know the comments that you’ll make in this sort of space. That is God’s sovereign providence, He’s opened these doors and provided these platforms for you to speak. I wonder whether it’s caused you to have a greater reflection on what is the role of the Christian public voice and what is an appropriate expression of the Christian perspective in the marketplace.

Martyn Iles
Yeah, look, I really have reflected a lot on that. And I think one of the first hurdles that I had to get over or one of the first things I had to resolve is probably a better way to put it. What is the tension? What is the difference between the gospel and evangelism and public engagement? Or is there a difference? Or are we thinking about it wrong? And I guess one of the things I’ve realised is that we might be thinking about it wrong because I thought to myself, “Well, where in scripture are we commissioned in relation to not the church, not each other, but to the world? Where are we commissioned to the world at large?” And that’s in Matthew’s Gospel chapter five, where Jesus himself gives a very clear commission where He says, “You are you…” And He’s talking to ordinary folks there who are listening to Him and learning from Him and becoming His disciples-

Brendan Corr
It’s the Sermon on the Mount.

Martyn Iles
The Sermon on the Mount. And He says, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” Big statements. You are the light of the world? But it’s interesting when he explains those metaphors. He says, for example, “What’s the light?” He says, “Well, the light is something that works so long as it’s seen and it’s visible.” And He says, “Don’t hide your light under a basket that’s useless.” It’s not what you do with lights. Lights are set on lamp stands, so they give light to all in the house. Lights are like a city set on a hill. It can’t be hidden. So He’s saying… And He says, “Do your good works before men so that they may see them and glorify your Father who’s in heaven.” And I sit there and think to myself, “That means that the good works we do in a visible way that are a witness and a testimony to others around us and the world at large must have an evangelistic capacity.” It must be that people can see what we’re doing and say, “Huh, what’s going on there?” And they should be able to see the gospel and the God that is behind it. And that’s what I’ve always aspired to. I’ve always said, “Yes, we are doing good work. Yes, we are proclaiming God’s truth. Yes, we are standing against forces of wickedness. We’re doing all of that.” But why? What’s the ultimate end? The ultimate end is that people might see through what we’re doing and that they might see the gospel that drives it. They might see what manner of God and what manner of Saviour drives it so that we are evangelists through our good works and our testimony. And of course, one of the great errors I think of in recent decades, especially in Western societies, is that Christians have tried to have in public spaces, a secular face. And they’ve tried to say, “No, no, let’s just argue in scientific terms. Let’s just argue in Sociological terms or whatever. “Let’s go into those spaces and make sure that people can’t see through what we’re doing.” But of course, what happens then is that people know why you’re there and they see through it skeptically as in, what are you hiding? Why are you ashamed? And I think the important thing to do is to say, “No, no, we are seen through proudly.” We want people to see through because we want them to see beyond us to the gospel itself and the person of Christ ultimately. And that was my absolute aspiration in all that I did at the Australian Christian lobby. And it continues to be my aspiration in everything I do in the public squares and that faces the world at large. And one of the impacts that has as Jesus says, “Is salt as well.” And salt stops the decay, right? And what’s salt doing in stopping the decay? We’re stopping the rot. And there’s a parallel there. Well, the world is subject, is prone to rot, it’s prone to decay, it’s prone to the forces of evil and wickedness and Satan and darkness. And part of our job is to hold them back. And that’s sort of the call to no compromise, hold it at bay. But then the light is the call to advance. It is to know, do good in the face of it, continue to overwhelm it with the righteousness of God, and witness to the truth that’s making you do it.

Brendan Corr
Let me extend this a little, this discussion we’re having because there is part of what I am hearing or I think I’m hearing in your commentary is that the public declaration is an end in itself. It is part of… The purpose of it is not necessarily to Christianize the nation or to Christianize the parliament or the Canon of Law. The declaration of gospel truth in and of itself has value and worth and imperative.

Martyn Iles
Yes, absolutely. And I’m a little skeptical of the language of Christianizing a thing because I think, “Well, what is Christian?” Christian is you. Christian is the soul that has been redeemed and then bears witness to Christ. And so obviously, I think to Christianize is actually to bring Christians into that space. And my goal… I always said, “Well, politics is not Christianity, but Christianity has a voice in politics. It has something to say about politics.” And that was my goal. It was to have Christians having something to say about politics, having something to say about the nation, having something to say about morality, about social issues. And something to say because of the God who made the world a certain way, and the God who moved out to us in Jesus Christ and saved us to conform all things to His image. And it’s an important sort of slight just nuance there where-

Brendan Corr
That’s worth making. It’s a very important distinction.

Martyn Iles
It’s an important nuance. People said, “Oh, well, you’re just dominionist. You’re trying to create this Christian political order.” No, we are trying to bear witness to the truth of God in this space.

Brendan Corr
That does then speak to the other side of that perspective that you mentioned, Martyn, is that if there is a measure of the responsibility of the Christian Church to hold back the advance of evil, that will then manifest in culture. It’ll be part of the things that are artifacts.

Martyn Iles
Oh, absolutely. And one of the things we learn is that holding back the advance of evil is always a good thing to do. It is the love of neighbour. You don’t want… When evil really has its way with people, boy oh boy, it ravages them. It destroys lives, it corrodes people and it’s so destructive. And so to keep people from those perils, to hold back, to keep… The scripture says, “The sins of the fathers are visited on the children of the third and the fourth generation.” And you think because of the sins done by this group of people, there are innocent generations that are born into that paradigm and suffer the implications and consequences of what went before. And you get this intergenerational impact and you sit there and say, to preserve generations from that fate is good. It actually blesses them, but also it brings them into a culture that is closer to the things of God where truth is more widely known, and more widely heard. Where the culture is such that the gospel is openly proclaimed. And that’s a blessing to them, not just in a temporal sense, but it’s a blessing to them in a gospel sense as well.

Brendan Corr
You’ve been upfront and face-to-face with some of those advances of an alternate view of culture, of individual worth, and the sense of imperative that the Christian Church faces now. Are you more concerned than you were 10 years ago? Are there greater forces arrayed against the truth of God, the church of God?

Martyn Iles
I think there’s a lot more clarity now about where things are than 10 years ago. 10 years ago… Recently, I’ve been talking about this theme, this sort of living in Babylon-type theme. And I think 10 years ago there were people who were clinging onto the notion that maybe this, let’s say this Babylon, this new post-Christian cultural order, this new neo-pagan kind of thinking, this new anti-Christian, secular power structure of politics. These things, which everyone was going, “Oh wow, Australia’s no longer a Christianized sort of nation.” Australia is much more a post-Christian place, and there are lots of forces arrayed against Christianity and the gospel of Christianity.

Brendan Corr
And anti-Christian.

Martyn Iles
Exactly. And I think 10 years ago there were a lot of people saying, “We can hold that down. That’s not going to come. That’s not going to happen. Society’s not going to change like that.” But see here we are 10 years down the road and I think that the clarity is, “Ah, actually it’s here and it’s not going anywhere.” So there’s a lot more clarity about the kind of world we live in. And the living in Babylon theme is really to say, well, it’s not like… You think of Daniel in Babylon, in the Old Testament. Daniel in his time, did not get to overthrow Babylon. He was called instead to have a fruitful witness to the one true and living God and a fruitful legacy for God in a pagan place. And that’s the clarity we now have. I think it is okay, the West has changed. All right, we’ve got the memo. And the question now is, well, how do we live? How do we live as those who are faithful to God in this place with all of its pressures? And I talk to people constantly who are in healthcare, who are in big corporate firms, who are in the public service and they’re just facing little things every day like, “Oh, it’s purple day tomorrow. What should I do?” Or other things like they’re getting challenged by a supervisor to say, “What do you believe about this? What do you believe about that? Can you sign our inclusion policies?” Oh gee, am I a bad person? Do I hate people? That’s the sort of challenge they’re dealing with. And young people especially right up to the big stuff which is like, “Well, oh wow, there’s a new policy here. This means that if my child has gender dysphoria, it’s going to be very hard for me to know how to navigate that in a way that doesn’t make me a criminal for not affirming gender dysphoria.” So there’s the big stuff as well. So all these things are sort of weighing down on people. And I guess the clarity we now have is, well, that’s what we’re trying to solve. We’re trying to say, “How do we live in the face of all of that?” And not just survive, but actually have a thriving witness to the saving power of the gospel and actually make inroads for the gospel in that environment. And of course, Daniel was pre-Christ, but in the way that he had inroads for the testimony of God and the kingdom of God in his place. So we can do the same.

Brendan Corr
Let me ask you about that. I understand exactly the point you’re making in regards to navigating that transition from what culture was 10 years ago to what it is now. Where do you think young people are who didn’t know what it was like 10 years ago? They don’t know that it’s changed, that it’s a shift, that it’s different. This is their world, this is all they have. How do they navigate this space? I only know being the minority. I know being pushy, only being disregarded, disputed.

Martyn Iles
Correct. So really for them, they’re getting comfortable with being in the resistance movement. They’re getting comfortable with being… I nearly said the rebellion, but the resistance movement’s a better way to put it. But in the sense that they are the counterculture, they are the different ones. And I find for the young folks, and I still continue to have a ministry to young people. And one of the things I find is that for them, at least in the Australian context, a lot of peace comes their way when you go, “You know what? That hostility, that sense of being out of step, that sense of, ‘Oh my goodness, I don’t think this person’s going to like me.‘” That is a feature. It’s not a bug in the Christian life in a world like this. It’s something that Jesus himself was not above. And He said, “They hated me without a cause. Servant’s not greater than his master.” So long as you’re not hated for being a jerk and you are hated for righteousness’s sake as Jesus says, which is a ground on which people will resist you and oppose you. On the ground on which culture will say, “You’re crazy, you’re out of step, you’re a bigot or you’re a homophobe.” Or, “You hate people or you’re erasing people or you’re doing this or you’re doing that.” So long as those accusations are for righteousness’s sake, then you’re in good company. And there’s a great lifting of the load when they see that and they go, “Ah.”

Brendan Corr
So in practical senses, what can some, a teenager, young adult, early twenties, maybe somebody in their late twenties try to carve out their career, carve out their life, how do they make sense of being labeled somebody that’s a bigot, somebody that’s intolerant? Where the paint is thrown, the brush is set, and you are defined. It’s a factor because you are a Christian. What sort of things are most useful in countering that?

Martyn Iles
Yes. Well, it’s important to know… I mean, what Jesus actually said… And this is a really… People gloss over this. They don’t realise what a strange paradoxical statement it is. He said, “Blessed are the persecuted for righteousness’s sake.” In other words, persecuted for righteousness’s sake… “Oh no, He’s saying you’re blessed.” No, blessed are you when people revile you when they’re disgusted by you, and when they say things against you falsely for my name’s sake. When they have a false apprehension about you, “Blessed,” He says, and we go, “Well, sure doesn’t feel blessed.” But it’s interesting. The life of faith is a life that believes that even when we can’t see it. And I think there’s something supernatural that can come into the situation where we do get peace, we do get joy despite all of that. And you see that in the story of the apostles. They’re chucked in jail, they’re singing hymns all night, they’re not crazy. Blessed are the persecuted. God comes alongside us in those moments. Christ stands with us in the fires, if you like to use a Daniel kind of reference. And we are drawn to Him and we rejoice. There is that sort of supernatural aspect. But the other aspect of it is… Again, to give a Daniel example. On Daniel’s first day when they say, “Eat the King’s food.” And Daniel’s probably inwardly kind of freaking out like, how can I say no? And the chief eunuch… That’s right. The chief eunuch says, “They’ve got to cut our heads off, man. It’s going to be bad.” That’s pretty terrifying stuff. And he’s thinking to himself, “Oh my goodness, people are not going to like me.” And yet he draws the line anyway. He’s careful. He does all that he can to be reasonable, but he still draws that line and stands firm. And you say, “Well, was Daniel blessed in that moment?” Yeah, it was the first day of the rest of his life. The scripture says, “They that honour me, I will honour.” And in those moments we can try and control our future and compromise to say, “Well, if I compromise now I can get something in the future.” Daniel didn’t allow himself to be lulled into that thinking. He was more like, “I can’t compromise. I know that much and I’m just going to have to trust God with the future.” And that was the right move. And that’s the move we all have to make where we say, “Yeah, I have to draw this line, and blessed are the persecuted for righteousness’s sake. I wait and see what the outcome is.” And I think everyone who has stood on those lines has seen the hand of God work in their favour as a result of time, even if it’s only with the power of hindsight. And there are some things we will never see until we get to heaven. But there are many things that God, by His grace, helps us see today or that God uses to take us from the pit of trouble to actually bring us into the place where he means us to be. And that’s Daniel’s story. That’s Joseph’s story, running away from Potiphar’s wife, flees temptation. Oh my goodness, he’s in jail for 10 years. Well, God brings that around. God saw it and so on. And so that’s the kind of confidence that we can have. And faith is basically saying, “I trust God in this and I trust God that this will come around and it will be used for good.” And once you’ve done that a few times and you’ve got some runs on the board, so to speak, and you’ve seen God’s hand, yeah, it becomes an incredibly blessed way of living.

Brendan Corr
To what degree, Martyn has your preparation for this, your apologetics research, being clear and confident about the Christian truths that are proclaimed in the gospel or that are asserted about identity or about culture? What role does that confidence play in your grounding?

Martyn Iles
Well, there’s a great quote, which is that “Courage is the flower of conviction.” And I think being Daniel in Babylon, one of the most pressing things for our generation, especially young people now, is that they need to be courageous. They’re going to be called on to be people of great courage. And we’ll be overwhelmed by that if we think that it relies on our own strength. God will give us the courage we need at the moment. I always say to people, ”Courage is not lack of fear. Courage is acting despite fear.” And God will give you the strength to do that. But where does that courage come from? And for everybody who needs to be a courageous witness, the courage comes from conviction. And this is why for every young person, I just continually say to them, “Don’t neglect the basics.” I think of myself going through all those verses in the New Testament. What a blessing that was. Those were the basics. Those were the fundamental truths of what I believed, the words of God written on the page for my edification, for my conviction, for my knowledge, and understanding. The best thing that a young person can do is to become familiar with scripture and study it. And I often say to people, “It can be hard at first. When you first start reading the Bible. You think bits of it are hard to understand and all that.” Well, find good books that are sort of exegetical. In other words, they unfold books of the Bible verse by verse and explain it to you and you’ll see it coming alive. And you’ll go, “Ah.” And then you’ll learn the discipline yourself and get your own reflections. And those sorts of basics, Bible study, prayer, et cetera. If you really throw yourself into those things young, that is where that bedrock of conviction will be laid, the foundation stones on which to stand. So that when the call comes your way to be courageous, or when God puts you in some place where you can be a witness for Him, small or great, you know what you believe and you are persuaded. And you can draw that line with much greater vigour and much greater confidence. And not just do it in an almost apologetic way, but a confident way. And what I have seen time and time again is, it is often that quiet confidence that the Christian has that really can win people and make people think to themselves, “Huh, what’s going on there?” And ask more questions. It’s interesting, isn’t it? Because I’m conscious of the fact that there’s a bit of a movement of a rediscovery amongst the broader Christian Church of the spiritual disciplines-

Martyn Iles
Yes. It’s probably true.

Brendan Corr
of meditative reflection, Bible study, silent engagement with God, and the slowing. And that reflective approach is what Daniel was known for. It was this.

Martyn Iles
Oh yeah. Three times a day in the window, praying.

Brendan Corr
Studying the scriptures of the nation. That gave him strength. And that’s a beautiful quote you said, “Courage is the flower of conviction.” That you know what you believe. You know what’s true. You know whom you’re persuaded by and it lets you stand.

Martyn Iles
Yep. And it’s those disciplines that are going to bring that into your life because Daniel was going out to work every day amongst the wise men and the astrologers and the magi and the politics. And anyone who ends up working in politics knows how messy and dark that can be sometimes. He’s got Babylon all around him. He’s got this pagan idol, worshipping society that’s shaping him, mould him. And you sit there and you go, “What’s the resistance in your heart?” And the resistance is being built up in his heart, as you quite rightly say, spiritual disciplines. Every person is small and great at the end of the day, they stand and fall based on the basics. And it was a spiritual discipline. Daniel was one of the greatest of the greats. But it was that praying three times a day, that spending time with the Lord, often, that understanding of the word, that’s what got him through.

Brendan Corr
Martyn, it’s been fantastic to spend some time talking with you and hearing your story. And on a personal note, can I thank you for the ministry that you have had in that very difficult, challenging sphere of the public discourse? Thank God for equipping you to declare the truth, and point people to Jesus as faithfully as He’s used you to do. May it ever be so.

Martyn Iles
Thank you, Brendan. It’s a pleasure. It’s all God’s grace. So He’s at work all over the world. We’ve just got to be passengers in His plan.

Brendan Corr
God bless you.

Martyn Iles
Thanks.