December 13, 2022 Show with Dan Nelson on “Early Baptists: A Comprehensive Study of the Anabaptist & English Baptist Movements”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson,

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legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning

issues facing the church and the world today.

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

sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to

have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener,

with your own questions.

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

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

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

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 13th

day of December 2022.

I'm thrilled to have as a first -time guest today a brother who has written

about a subject that absolutely fascinates me, especially since

I happen to be a Baptist, a Reformed Baptist specifically,

and I love history, and in particular, Baptist history.

Today we have on the program Dan Nelson, who is an author, teacher, dramatist, a

Baptist historian, and we are going to be addressing early Baptists, a comprehensive study

of the Anabaptist and English Baptist movements.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dan Nelson.

Thank you, Chris.

Good to be with you today.

Well, tell us something about one of the words I used to

describe you from your bio, dramatist.

That's the one that may pop out as something out of the ordinary, although I have

interviewed at least one dramatist on this program who conducts

a one -man play using the words and writings of

John Wesley, and he does a tremendous job on that.

But tell us how you are a dramatist and what you do with that skill.

Well, I think the best way you can describe history sometimes is to demonstrate it.

One of my history teachers in college, he dressed up like Washington and Wesley and others and came in, and that was

very expressive.

I had written a book on George Whitefield.

It's a biography related to him, and I think it's a very historical biography, very

chronological, and yet I wanted a way to express that to my congregation and other people.

So I had already done Peter and John for

Easter, and I memorized the script and basically Whitefield came to life

again.

So that's the way I got in as a dramatist.

I did that at Southwestern Seminary, but basically it was for that specific character, and

so I guess that's how you'd call me a dramatist that way.

Do you still do that?

Can people invite you?

I just did it about three or four months ago at a church here.

I'm in the Portland, Oregon area.

Did that.

They had a reading club, and they wanted me to come and tell about my book.

I said, well, I can also demonstrate who Whitefield was by the drama.

So I did that, and I think they got more out of that than they did my telling about my book.

Well, I'm looking forward to, God willing, seeing you perform as George Whitefield at some point

in the future.

But before we get into the heart of our subject today, early Baptists, a comprehensive study of the

Anabaptist and English Baptist movements, we have a tradition here where whenever we have a first -time

guest, that guest gives a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include any

kind of religious atmosphere they may have been raised in and what kind of providential circumstances

our Sovereign Lord used to draw them to himself and save them.

So I want to hear your story.

Well, I grew up in South Mississippi, close to the Gulf Coast down there.

The church was the center of the community, Agricola Baptist.

My parents became Christians as adults.

They came from a background, one, that my dad said baptism saved you, and the other was

a hyper -paganistic old primitive Baptist background that my mother didn't really have an assurance of salvation.

So they came to Christ in this church, and I sort of grew up in it

and came to Christ during an evangelistic meeting, series of prayer meetings.

Before that, I knew that I didn't have any assurance I'd go to heaven if I died, and I was convicted of my sin

and I knew that I needed Christ.

And at eight, I talked with a missionary speaker who was there, and

that night trusted Christ as Lord and Savior.

And since that time, he's been in my life.

And at 11 years of age, I was very influenced by our church and by a particular pastor

who went out visiting, sharing Christ with folks.

And my dad was my Sunday school teacher, and I just felt very strongly that God wanted

me to be an evangelist.

That was the first thing that came to mind.

That's been sort of evidence in my—as a pastor, even being an evangelistic pastor,

because I've been an ordained pastor for 50 years.

And so that put me on the road to preparing to pastor, and I

pastored three churches, one in South Mississippi there and the other two in California,

because I spent six years at First Baptist Church Burney and then

35 years at First Baptist Church of Camarillo.

It all began when I trusted Christ as Savior as a child.

And I just have to say that being in a Bible -believing, gospel -honoring, Christ -honoring church

really helped me to get on the right road, the right path to doing what God wanted me to do in.

My life.

Well, praise God.

Now, how did you begin to fall in love with history?

And in particular, Baptist history.

I think that it is a sad commentary, and I think it's an accurate commentary,

on evangelicals and even Baptists that history does not

fascinate many.

It fascinates me.

It always has fascinated me, even before I was a Christian.

But history does not seem to be a big subject with many

evangelicals and Baptists.

Roman Catholics, on the other hand, tend to major on history, but they get it wrong.

They hear a false version of history from their apologists who skew everything

to reflect what Roman Catholics believe and teach today,

or at least since the Council of Trent.

But many of them are in for a shock when they actually hear the accurate accounts

of history and that their beliefs are actually very novel when it comes to

what the disciples in early church believed and taught.

But how did you fall in love with history and begin to research it?

My dad was a football coach and history teacher.

I just grew up reading all about the Civil War during the centennial time, and I liked that.

When I was in the fifth grade, my dad had me come into his 11th grade class.

You couldn't do this today, a little small country school, and share with the class all that I knew about the Civil War.

And so I grew up knowing that.

But also I had a tremendous desire to study church history.

I went to William Carey College, William Carey University down in Hattiesburg, Mississippi,

and did a lot of church history courses there, and then went on to seminary.

I've been to four seminaries, and my doctoral dissertation was on the Great Awakening Movement.

I hope your tribe can be multiplied because it is a sad day that people do not know.

We don't want to know where we've come from and where we're going.

It's like saying we don't know anything about our past, and we're nothing to do

with the future.

So I think the best way we can do this is right on the subject.

And the Lord's sort of light on my heart is I've always used history as illustrations

and stuff, but in my pastoral ministry, but in sort of

retirement from full -time pastoral ministry, writing about history, I have a quest right now

to write chronologically about Baptist history.

It started with what Baptists believe in my book, Baptist Revival.

And then I've started going backwards.

I did American history first, Baptist biographies in

American history, and started with Roger Williams and went to the present day, those short

biographies, and then did the book on Whitefield, which is sort of an

outgrowth of my dissertation.

So I'm going backward now to what most Baptists today would think Baptists sort of begin as at least

an organized movement, and that is the Anabaptist and English Baptist movements.

I believe very strongly that people need to know more about these.

And so I put them more in a biological or biographical form

and the doctrinal beliefs and all that other stuff.

So my next quest, I guess, will be to look at groups that were sort of like Baptists from the time of Christ

up until the Reformation, different views about that, where Baptists really started.

But I think with the Anabaptist and English Baptist movements, you have sort of the

beginnings of the movements.

And, of course, some people that believe in the English Baptist, more reformed folks, do not really believe the

Anabaptists were that strongly Baptist today.

And then others like Dr. Paige Patterson and Southwestern Baptist Seminary,

with the brother that wrote the book on the Anabaptist story, William Eastell, believes

the Anabaptists have some, I guess, similarities to

Baptists today.

So that's how it came to pass.

I just love history.

I like everything about history.

I study as much as I can reading about history.

And so my books are more of a research -oriented thing where I give you a lot

of information.

They're the entire opposite of fiction.

And it's a lot of work.

But anyway, I want to leave with the next generation something to do with where we came

from and where we're going.

If that helps any.

Perhaps it would be wise to start with the Anabaptists who predate

the Baptists, at least in the minds of many historians.

Of course, we have landmark Baptists who believe that the specific

Baptist movement can be traced back to Christ.

I don't know how much of that viewpoint you agree or disagree with.

I think it's very difficult to say that.

I think, at the best, there are groups that are sort of like Baptists.

For instance, Dr. Criswell at First Baptist Dallas believed his namesake was Christwell,

and his descendants came from Ireland.

And he had done some research, preached a sermon on St. Patrick and how he led people to Christ

and baptized them by immersion.

The very word Christwell was his name.

And he took the T out and it was Christwell.

So you have all this.

I don't think we have a lot of information, which is what I'm searching for if I'm going to do this other book.

But we do have a lot of information on the Anabaptists and the English Baptists.

The uniqueness of my book is that I read books on the Anabaptists and English Baptists.

Tom Nettle's three -volume work starts with the English Baptists as well as David Beale's work.

But then you have books like Estep, who did very good work on

the Anabaptists.

And you usually have one group or the other.

But I put two groups both in one book and tried to make it as extensive as I could,

while at the same time interesting people, especially in the biographies.

We have 10 biographies on the Anabaptists and 10 on the English Baptists.

And there's some others like Spurgeon and Carey and

Fuller, and how the early English Baptist movement influenced the latter English

Baptist movement.

As a matter of fact, Spurgeon provided copies of the London Baptist

Confession, the second one, 1689, to all of his new converts because he wanted to ground them in the scripture.

So that tells you something about the strength of history.

Spurgeon really believed in that.

And really his number one, there's sort of a connection here in the reform movement,

his said number one human influence for his ministry was George Whitefield.

And so I think it's very important for us to not only

give homage to the history, but study it and see how these things work.

When I write on doctrine or preach on doctrine, I always

refer back to historical features, historical characters, movements, whatever, to

let people see this is not something that we just cooked up like the cults in the 19th century, but it's been something

that has been with us and we need to study and understand.

So that's why I wrote the book.

And as far as the Anabaptists, from what I understand, the term

began as a pejorative.

It wasn't something that those...

It was a rejection of the infant baptism of the day.

Infant baptism meant a lot more even back then than it does now.

It was the only way to get citizenship in a certain place in

Zurich, under Zwingling, the city council decided that those that were not

baptized as babies were not a part of the citizenry.

They weren't citizens.

And so when Conrad Grebel and some of the other Anabaptists said,

nope, I'm not going to baptize my child.

That was not something that was preference.

That was something that literally later after the third council there

carried with it the death sentence and the first, unfortunately, the first martyr

to the Anabaptist movement there in Switzerland was Felix Manz and it was

carried out by Protestants, by Zwingling consenting to that, the city council doing it.

So, yeah, it's very important to look at these things.

And I think the Anabaptists do have a role to play.

The pejorative term basically is a wide term and they were looked upon as enemies

of the state because there were some aberrations of the Anabaptists, the peasants' movement,

the peasants' revolt, and also the

kingdom of the monster where you have a bunch of way out guys that are doing bad things.

And you could just throw it out and say, well, they're Anabaptists.

And they really tried to stir up the princes and the rulers of the day saying, if you don't

kill them now or hunt them down or imprison them, they'll kill you.

So just look at the peasants' revolt or just look at the kingdom of the monster.

But those were aberrations.

Most of the Anabaptists, especially the Orthodox ones in Switzerland and Germany,

basically believed much of what Baptists believe today in the sense that we believe in a local church.

We believe in individual conversion.

You cannot decide for someone else like Catholicism basically does with infant baptism.

We believe in believers' baptism.

You have to be a believer to be baptized, of course, in our tradition by immersion.

And so these are basically we personally believe in the authority of scriptures, what

we believe today, and that the church is a local assembly of believers joined together for the faith of the gospel.

We are joined together with all believers in the kingdom of God.

But the Anabaptists rejected the state church because they did not believe that the

state and religion should be coerced.

You cannot coerce someone.

I was just reading from my book about John Merton, who was

a descendant or a descendant, was the pastor after Thomas

Helwes.

He mentioned in his work that he says, Merton declared that

if the state did try to enforce religious conformity upon its people, it would be nothing but

compel men to be hypocrites.

In other words, we'll just check the boxes that I am a member of

the Church of England because the Church of England's religion is Anglicanism or whatever.

And we see that today in a lot of places.

If you go to England, the churches are empty.

Basically, a lot of them basically because of state religion and not individually coming to Christ

and meaning something.

There was a worldwide and nationwide rejection of

state religion by the Anabaptists.

Some of those things we still believe in as Baptists and are codified in our Confessions of Faith,

the London Confession, and also the New Hampshire Baptist Confession, and the Baptist Faith and Message

that we affirm in our denomination.

And going back to the origins of the Anabaptists, I was

surprised that you said that the first Anabaptist martyr was executed by a

Protestant because I had been told that there were Anabaptist movements that even predate

Roman Catholicism, let alone the Reformation.

So where do you trace the origins of Anabaptists?

It is a big, wide term.

If you read Martyr's Mirror, which I've been trying to read.

It's 1 ,100 pages.

It was written by a Dutchman who traced back much of the before the Reformation,

people that stood against the state church, stood against infant Baptism, and basically the biggest

thing they rejected was transubstantiation.

They did not believe.

They believe that was just paganism to say that the body blood of Jesus

actually became that in the elements.

But many of them died for their faith, and many of them were called Anabaptists.

Yeah, they were called that generally because, again, it goes back to that one

point.

They rejected the ideal that infant Baptism was valid and legitimate and scriptural.

So, yeah, you're right about that.

I think there was more of a use of it during the Reformation time with the

Anabaptist movement, being in different areas.

You have the Hutterites who are Anabaptists that kept going eastward to erase from persecution, but you

have others, the Mennonites under Simon's going to

Holland.

So it became more widespread, I guess you could say, during the Reformation time.

Yes, and the Mennonites are among the few groups that actually

use the term Anabaptist to identify themselves.

So what did they have in common?

Because as we have been repeating, or you have been repeating, this is an umbrella term for anyone

who insisted upon a credible profession of faith to be baptized.

And if I'm not mistaken, the early Anabaptists were almost exclusively

doing this by effusion rather than immersion.

Yes, they began with effusion.

I mentioned that in the book.

Basically, the students of Zurich Zwingling started the Anabaptist movement there in

Zurich.

They said, Zwingling was a halfway man.

In other words, he was going to allow the city council to decide whether to retain infant Baptism or not.

And so he said, we just can't be a part of that.

That puts infant Baptism as a mandatory requirement for being a

citizen of that country.

And that little babies don't understand.

So when they rebelled, I guess you could say, in 1525, they

baptized one another.

But it was by effusion.

But we see in two months, Conrad Grebel baptizing a former monk,

Ulaman was his name.

And he baptized him in the Sutter River.

It's hard for me to believe that you would baptize someone, you're going to sprinkle them,

get them into water and sprinkle them.

William Barclay's material was used as a movie

in 1979.

I guess he wanted to please everybody.

So he had Jesus go out to his neck, and then John the Baptist poured water over him.

Well, the Baptist in me says, if you're going to go down to your neck, you ought to go all the way under, man.

Yes, I never understood those movies that depict that.

As Vance Hammer used to say, I'd rather see a gangster lecture on

honesty than to believe everything Hollywood does in the movies about Jesus and the Bible.

So we know that the commonality was a rejection of infant baptism and

an insistence upon credo baptism, that a person must be of an age

where their profession of repentance and faith could be deemed as credible.

It's individual, it's personal.

Right.

And so how broad were the differences?

I understand that there was a wide spectrum of belief amongst the Anabaptists,

which is why we have to be hesitant to claim them all as

our legitimate fathers in the faith, and we have to be very careful about

rejecting all of them as well.

Yeah, I think that's perfectly correct.

There are some things that modern -day Baptists believe in that the Anabaptists believe in.

There are other things that are sort of just way out there.

I just try to highlight those things that we have in common with

the Anabaptist movement, and basically it is on the

local congregation.

And I think individual conversion is so important because I've talked with many Catholics,

and I'll try to ask people for them to tell me a salvation experience they have.

And sadly, many of them will say, well, I'm Catholic, I'm Christian.

And what they mean by that, of course, they were sprinkled as a baby or baptized as a baby, and they

used that as sort of a false security of salvation.

Somebody else made the decision for them, and Baptists have always believed in individual, personal conversion.

John MacArthur says it's turnstile salvation.

It's not just—God doesn't save people by the group.

You know, Jonathan Edwards, his great preaching, especially at Centers in the Hands of an Angry God,

was to church people that were not converted who had signed the halfway covenant.

Their parents had signed it for them at age 12.

And so he comes over there and tells them, hey, you better get right with God because you're going to spend eternity in hell if you don't.

And it convicted them because they'd been signed up, so to speak,

to be saved by their parents.

And I really believe that that's one thing that we can highlight with all born -again Christians

and tell them, you know, you've got to personally come to Christ, and it's not something that your parents decide

for you or anyone else decides for you.

Well, going back to the stark differences that

Anabaptists had with one another, like, for instance, you had the Zwickau prophets.

I understand that some of the Anabaptists believed in executing disobedient children.

Some of them believed in plural marriages like the Mormons used to.

That was in the Kingdom of Munster, yes.

That happened about 1535.

Most of the Orthodox Anabaptists denounced that.

For instance, Thomas Munster, one of his adherents that he almost brought

into his fold was Hans Hutt.

And Munster was in communication with the Zurich Brethren when they were

separating from Zwingli.

And as soon as Comrade Grebel, who was sort of a leader of the Zurich Brethren there,

when he found out he was organizing a riot against the rulers of

the time and it was going to be violent, he cut off all communication with him and said, I renounce that.

So, yeah, there were those.

My book deals more with the Orthodox because the other guys, you know, I don't want to give them

all that attention.

I mentioned them as sort of a backdrop to why, for instance, the Mennonites

are very peace -loving and very pacifistic.

And that was a reaction to those things.

They were trying to get it right in a sense.

They were pacifists.

Well, you brought up a good point about Mennonites who still claim the term

Anabaptist for themselves, even though it began as a pejorative.

And so did Calvinist and many other terms that those who identify with certain theological

positions now proudly wear as a label.

But how much difference was there on things like

anthropology and soteriology?

Like, for instance, the Mennonites are Arminian and

perhaps even some would call them extreme Arminian.

And amongst the Amish, you would have even Pelagianism.

And, of course, you have Baptists today.

And I'm using the phrase Baptist this time, not Anabaptist.

Baptists who disagree on these issues.

And you have Baptists such as myself who are Reformed,

believe in the doctrines of sovereign grace and nicknamed Calvinism.

It seemed that there were a lot more centuries ago Calvinist Baptists than there are today.

But as far as the Anabaptists are concerned, were there differences on

these issues?

There were differences.

I think the basic issue we could say here is that they were on the run, the Anabaptist war.

They were persecuted.

It was a violent time.

The Diet of Speer, where the Holy Roman Catholic, Holy Roman

Empire was a city.

They declared a bounty on Anabaptists that anyone could

kill someone who was an Anabaptist.

And also anybody quartering or hiding any Anabaptist could be imprisoned.

And so it was a very violent time.

But the biggest number one thing was the Anabaptists really did not have a confession of faith.

Much like the English Baptist did with the first London Baptist confession and the second London Baptist

confession.

The only thing we can come close to is this lifetime confession.

Sort of authored by Michael Sattler, who later was burned at the stake almost six months after

he published that.

But that was more of defining what an Anabaptist church was.

For instance, it talked about the local church not being part of the state church.

It talked about how to do church discipline.

But it did not go into orthodox Christian faith as we have today.

The London Baptist confessions did that.

They were very strong in that.

It was the particular Baptist movement or what you would say reformed or Calvinistic Baptist movement

that basically saved Baptists in England.

And it was that first London Baptist convention that caused them to sort of come out of the

woodwork and declare this is who we are.

And I'm very strong on confessions of faith because they're historic for one thing.

But also, it gives us a benchmark in who we are and what we do as churches today.

Amen.

I think that's the big difference.

That and the violence that was exerted toward the Anabaptists as

the English Baptist were persecuted.

Make no mistake about it.

Most of their leaders, Knowles and Keech and Kiffin, even

Kiffin, who was very close to the king.

They spent time in prison.

And it's very interesting.

If you study Benjamin Keech, for instance, he wrote a book on the child instructor in which he denied infant baptism.

For that book, he was tried.

And all copies of the book were confiscated and burned.

And he was put in the stocks.

This was in 1670 -something, 76.

And it's interesting.

The people that saw him being put in the stocks and being burned to death, they came to his support.

And afterwards, he was released.

And he wrote the book again by memory of the child instructor.

And so the fact that the English Baptists had the, this is what we believe, the whole order.

Plus that the persecution was not as strong as it was against the Anabaptists.

No English Baptists that I know lost their lives.

Now, Thomas Helwes, he died in prison because he dared to write to the king in his book,

Mystery of Iniquity, and tell him that he shouldn't be the head of the Church of England, which is right.

That's the way the Church of England was started, by a guy that killed all his wives.

He was the head of the Church of England.

So I think the English Baptists came along and went further than

where the Orthodox Anabaptists went to, which is why I believe so many do say, hey,

if we're going to be certain about it, let's start with the English Baptists.

I know Nils does that.

And a good friend of mine, Michael Haken at Southern, he does that, too.

He wrote a little book on Knowles and Keech and Helwes.

The three, Knowles, Keech, and Kiffin.

And I refer to that much in my book, because he did a good job of that.

He's a great friend, and I've interviewed him.

He endorsed my Whitefield book, too.

We had a conference in 2014 celebrating the 300th anniversary of

Whitefield, and Dr. Haken got speakers from all in, Thomas Kidd from Baylor, who is

Reformed also.

And we had guys from England over, and it was just a tremendous time.

So I really like Dr. Haken.

I think he was going to do a review on this book.

He hasn't done it yet.

He's been on a sabbatical for a year, for one thing.

Well, we have to go to our first station break.

And by the way, folks, after this program is over, if you want to look up some interviews that I've conducted

with Dr. Michael Haken and also another name that my guest mentioned, Tom Nettles,

you could type those names into our search engine, and you will find a list, a fairly long list

of interviews by both or with both of these men.

But we have to go to our break.

If you have a question for Dan Nelson, and we would prefer the question be on Anabaptists or

Baptists, the email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I

-S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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

If you live outside the USA, only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Don't go away.

We're going to be right back with Dan Nelson and Early Baptists, a comprehensive study of the Anabaptist and English

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We are now back with our guest, Dan Nelson, and we are discussing early Baptists,

and we do have a couple of questions already that have come in.

One of them is from a pastor who occasionally blesses us

with a question, and they're always good.

He's a man that almost became my pastor, and I think that he is probably sighing with relief that that didn't

occur.

But his name is Josh Fryman, and Josh Fryman is the

pastor of Harvest Baptist Church in Larimore, North Dakota.

And just to give him a plug, the website is

larimorehbc .org, L -A -R -I

-M -O -R -E -H -B -C .org, and he is one of the most gifted preachers I've ever heard, and I'm not

exaggerating or flattering Pastor Josh, so I strongly urge anybody visiting or living near Larimore,

North Dakota, to pay that church a visit.

But the question that Pastor Josh has,

Mr. Nelson, is there any validity to the claim that a Baptist congregation's

record was discovered in Wales and in their records were names of people

found in the New Testament, specifically some of Caesar's household?

Thank you.

Ever hear that story?

I haven't heard that specific story.

I do know that the vein of Baptist group -like doctrines

do go through Wales.

For instance, in my book on Baptist Biographies and Happenings in American History, which is a good book if you really want

to know a continuous strain of Baptist from Roger Williams to the present day, we

talk about John Miles, who came from Wales.

Now, he was Reformed, and he was basically part of the English Reformation, but

there were Baptists already in existence, I think, in Wales when the English Baptist

movement started, and he started another congregation in Swansea, Massachusetts,

just a little bit after Roger Williams and John Clark did that in Providence.

So I haven't heard about the names in the New Testament, but I

do say that there are groups that we could say, if you looked at what they believe,

and it's sort of hard because they didn't have any statement of faith as much.

We're just looking at their practice, basically, that they were Baptists before that time or

Baptist -like groups.

We could say Baptistic -like groups, and definitely Wales does go back a long time in

that respect.

It seems like Wales has sort of been ahead sometimes of England at times.

Whitefield preached in the open air, but he was not the first one to do that.

Howell Harris was, and he was a Welshman.

Whitefield just had more people hearing, but field preaching started

in Wales there during the 18th century, and, of course, he befriended Whitefield.

So I would say there's some validity to that.

I'd like to see it.

In my conversation with people, people say that most of the

history of Baptists that we have in the English Baptist movement and Anabaptists is not all the history, and there's history

still out there.

People have said you ought to go to the Bowdoin Library, and I think it's in Cambridge.

They have a lot of stuff there.

So I don't know.

I don't think we can be authoritative as to these groups, but also we don't have to be

authoritative to say that Baptists just begin with the Anabaptist movement.

Some of the Waldseemans were very close to Baptists, and that was before the Baptists.

Okay?

All right.

Well, thank you, Pastor Josh, and make sure you get me your full mailing address there in Larimore, North Dakota,

because you have actually won a free copy of the book that we are addressing, written by our

guest today, Early Baptists, a Comprehensive Study of the Anabaptist and English Baptist Movements,

and thank you so much for blessing us with your question.

We also have a question from Andrew in Dalton, Georgia.

Hello, brothers Chris and Dan.

A fascinating topic of discussion today.

My question is, did the outcome of the Anabaptist Munster Rebellion

in 1535 and the subsequent torturous executions of the two

Bernards and Jan of Leiden in 1536 negatively

affect the 17th century English milieu towards or the way in which the early

Baptists were viewed in their day and place, at least at the beginning of the English

Baptist movement before doctrinal clarifications were made?

And let me know if you need me to repeat any of that.

All right.

That's the understatement of the year to say that the rebellion there at Munster didn't affect people.

That was used as a crutch to just to hit people over the head with it.

Look, these are really all the Anabaptists were.

You know, similar day when you see some Christian, Pope Christian mess up morally, and you say

that's where all Christians are.

That's sort of the way we have that.

And then, yes, it did go into the English Baptist because they were called Anabaptist

also because, first of all, they rejected the baptism of infants by the state

religion.

And then also, yeah, people have long memories, don't they?

There was a connection there.

Even John Smythe, the first, quote, English Baptist that sort of started a

movement, tried to go to the Mennonites there in Holland and unite with

them for understanding that he felt they were continuous Baptists, the

English Baptists, and they could be a part of.

But, yes, they used it very strongly, and they used it, you know, like,

and really go really a long ways.

And that's what's happening, of course, with salvation.

Many people have opinions about how to become a Christian, but only the Bible says we've got to be born again and

have God regenerate us by what Christ has done for us on the cross.

So, yeah, I just say it's still that way, too, you know.

Anabaptists do not have a strong following among people

who don't want to accept what they aspire to.

Well, I want to thank you, Andrew, from Dalton, Georgia.

Send us your full mailing address because you've also won a free copy of this book, Early Baptists,

by our guest.

And that will be shipped to you compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, who ship out

all the winners in our audience, the three books and Bibles and other things that they win by submitting questions.

And if you are a first -time questioner, I can't remember if you've ever submitted a question, Andrew, but if you are,

you'll also receive a New American Standard Bible.

So make sure we have your full mailing address.

We have to go to our midway break right now, folks.

Please be patient.

The break is longer than the other breaks because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of

us a longer break in the middle of the show because the FCC requires of them to localize this program

geographically to Lake City, Florida, with their own public service announcements and other local things.

While they do that, we air our globally heard commercials.

So please respond to as many of our advertisers as you can and send in your question to Dan Nelson

about Baptists to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence.

And I have to remind my guest, Dan, I wasn't exaggerating before.

You have to remain completely still and silent during the breaks because it sounded like somebody had broken into your home and was

physically attacking you during the last station break.

You were making a lot of noise.

Even if it didn't sound that way on your end, it did in the ears of everybody listening.

So please try to be as still as possible.

I think I was opening a book.

Okay.

Well, everything is exaggerated and amplified.

All right.

Well, we'll be right back after these messages.

So please do not go away.

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Before I return to our guest Dan Nelson and our conversation on the early Baptists we just have a couple of very

important announcements to make.

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Last but not least if you are not a member of a Christ -honoring, biblically faithful

theologically sound, doctrinally solid church no matter where on the planet Earth you live I have

extensive lists spanning the globe and I have helped many people in our audience

find churches sometimes within even just a few minutes from their own homes in all parts of the world.

I may be able to help you as well if you are in that situation or if you love someone who is also

a church without a church without a solid church home no matter where on the Earth they live.

Send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line.

That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Dan Nelson on Early Baptists.

Chrisarnsen at gmail .com give us your first name at least city and state and country of residence.

We have Grady, one of the most faithful and loyal and generous Iron Trip and Zion Radio

listeners that we have had for many years dating back to 2005.

Grady in Asheboro, North Carolina.

He says, Greetings Brothers Brother Dan, like you I too love history and I believe

it's very important that we know church history.

What book or books would you recommend for our youth about Baptists

to get them started learning about our faith?

Thanks for any recommendations you can give.

Dan?

The old book was some of the books that I've used in my bibliography.

Veterans Church History it's pretty old, 1906.

David Beale has come out with a book, maybe the last decade.

He was a teacher I think at Bob Jones and it was starting with the English Baptists, he does not cover the

Anabaptists, but gives a very good in -depth understanding of Baptist groups.

From that point on I used John Christian's History of the Baptists

which is sort of an older version also.

Is he talking about Baptist history or church history at.

Large?

Well he may be interested in information about both but his actual question was specifically about

Baptist history.

Yeah, of course.

Tom Nettle's books are good too.

He's got a three volume series on the Baptists and the first

book is on English Baptists and their biographies.

I'm just giving you stuff.

That I haven't used.

But his books are primarily for adults, although it depends on what child you're giving it to.

He's talking about children.

Children.

Oh boy.

That's an area we need work in, that's for sure.

My publisher had some books on Baptism and the Lord's Supper that published my

book on George Whitefield Lifesong Ministries in

Solomus, California close to where my church was there.

And that was sort of understanding what New Testament Baptism was for children and I would

strongly advise that book and what happens when we take the Lord's Supper, what that means.

Those are very good instructive books.

Lifesong publishers.

And of course, I don't think we should underestimate the intelligence of children because if

you're talking about a teenager or something Dan's book would be completely

fine and when they have questions they can ask you and when you don't know the answers to those questions you can

contact Dan on the internet or some other historian or maybe your

own pastor.

I would say this about my books, I started out with the biographies in both groups because I felt that would be of

general interest to everyone, even children learning about those that have suffered for our

faith and their history and everything else.

I think you can modify that if you're going to share that with children and adults,

you'll learn how to do it, but adults need to read it first.

Okay.

We have RJ in White Plains, New York.

Who wants to know, is it true that Urich Zwingli,

Martin Luther and John Calvin were all almost convinced of the

Credo Baptist position by Anabaptists but out of likely

fear of what kind of anarchy that they envisioned that would create they

stopped pursuing the issue?

Well.

With Zwingli, we know that him and his students they were studying the scripture out of the Greek New Testament, and when they came to

baptism, he sort of balked at that.

He had originally said, yeah, you need to be baptized by a merchant, or be baptized as a believer, and

he really was I think, afraid of what the city council would do.

They still wanted to retain some vestiges of Catholicism, since it was a newly promised

Protestant town.

Under Luther and Calvin I don't know, I

don't think the biggest thing about both of those individuals, although they are huge

with the Reformation, they had no theology of the church.

Dr. Abraham Friesen spoke at one of the first conferences for the

history of the Anabaptists, really ever, at Southwestern Seminary in 2012.

He gave an address at the chapel, and he said, have you ever heard of Luther's ecclesiology?

And there's a silence, because Luther said nothing about ecclesiology.

He basically talked about justification by faith, biblical authority, but not what the church is,

and so they retained the state church.

I would say then, in answer to that question, as far as Calvin, Calvin doesn't address

the nature of the church as much as others, and I would say

Zwingli was the one that almost, he tried to substitute

circumcision for infant baptism, saying that was the Old Testament model, but there's no, there's nothing for

that in the scripture, and the way it was used, it wasn't right.

So I would sort of disagree with, at least Calvin and Luther, that they were close

to becoming credo -baptist.

I just don't see that.

And even Zwingli, the older he lived, and the more the Reformation got, he turned against the Anabaptists.

He called the Anabaptists catabaptists, and said they were drowners.

They drowned people in water.

Which also sort of lets us see that it was the mode was an evolving thing

from pouring effusion to immersion.

So by the time we get to the particular Baptist, they're ducking everybody.

Anyway,.

I have to study that one.

I've never really run across a lot of information that would say they were close to that.

I think they went down other avenues.

That's what we would say, especially Calvin.

He just wanted people to know what the Bible said, and that's why he revised his institutes about 25 times.

He just wanted to get it right.

He never came to Revelation.

Either.

And since George Whitefield is a hero of yours, I have heard that

Whitefield, who was a pedo -baptist and Anglican, that he lamented that his

chicks were becoming ducks, meaning that.

His converts.

Who were baptized as infants by sprinkling, who he referred to as chicks, were

converting to Baptists, meaning ducks who were used to being in a lot

more water than chicks are.

Did he actually say that?

Yes, he said that.

The first time I ever heard that mentioned, Dr. Patterson, who's a friend of Whitefield, a student of

Whitefield, said, yeah, that's what Whitefield said.

And yeah, he didn't really espouse anything about immersion.

He wanted people to know about the new birth and to be saved.

Although I think there's maybe a little bit of a Reformed influence in the Carolinas, especially in South Carolina, First Baptist

Charleston and others, because of maybe Whitefield's emphasis on Reformed theology.

But yeah, he wasn't out to make Baptists or be against Baptists.

He wanted people to be saved.

All right, R .J.,.

Give us your full mailing address, because you've also won the book, Early Baptists, by our guest today.

And that will be shipped out to you by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CBBBS .com.

No charge to you or to us.

And before I take any more listener questions, I want you to give us a summary

of all the essential elements that would be required for somebody,

in your opinion, to rightly and historically be identified as a Baptist, because obviously

it's more than just a belief in credo or believer -only baptism.

Yes.

Well, I'm working on another book, and it's called Baptist Faith and Practice

Analyzed and Explained, Scripturally and Historically.

And I go through what is a Baptist there.

And I see there's really, it's sort of like a sandwich.

The top layer is the lordship of Christ.

He's the head of us.

All that the Bible teaches about him is virgin birth, his sinless life, his atoning sacrifice, his

bodily resurrection, his visible coming again.

And then all that he is and who he is is God in the flesh.

And then the bottom, the foundation, is the word of God.

And between that, we have these four things that sort of stick out with Baptists.

One is believer's baptism.

The person must be a believer to be baptized.

They cannot be baptized as a baby, because they don't understand that.

And they cannot be baptized to be saved, because the Bible doesn't say that you're saved by baptism.

You're saved by faith and trust in Christ and what he did for us on the cross.

The second thing is individual conversion.

We don't believe in coercion or sponsorship, salvation as I call it, that someone

can be sponsored to be saved.

You can be, somebody else's faith can be yours.

It has to be personal.

I think the third thing would be the local church that we believe the church is an assembly

of baptized believers.

We don't believe in the state church as such.

That is important.

And the other thing is freedom from the state religion, the state regulating religion,

and mandating certain religion is the state religion of that

place.

And so with that, Baptists are very much attuned to many groups.

But I would say individual conversion, religious liberty, believer's baptism,

and the local church are the four things that I think the Baptists really do.

We're pretty strong on membership because this comes back from the Anabaptists with this lifetime confession.

They believe in an accountable church membership that was following Christ.

They would discipline people.

Mennonites do that too.

If they were out of touch with God morally, they gave them a chance to repent.

They used 1 Corinthians as part of that.

And they said that can only be done in a local church setting.

It cannot be done in a state church setting.

Christians are held accountable in that way.

So those four things are in between the other.

Basically I think what make people a Baptist, and of course we've defined that in the New Hampshire

Baptist Confession and the Baptist Faith and Message and other articles and stuff.

Anyway, maybe that helps.

And there are some Baptists who I think wrongly add to the list you gave

to as requirements for people to believe to be rightly considered

Baptists.

There are people who had eschatological views, dispensationalist views, and even

something that I agree with that a true regenerate person cannot lose his or

her salvation.

But there are free -will Baptists who believe you can.

The denomination free -will Baptist that is.

We have let's see here, I was just looking at a very good question.

Oh yes, it's an anonymous question.

The anonymous listener says, I'm remaining anonymous due to disputes I am

having with Presbyterian friends of mine.

Sometimes, unfortunately, they get a bit heated.

But I have learned something that my Presbyterian friends seek to refute.

That the Didache, which is the oldest non -canonical document in

the Christian faith that we have in existence, clearly taught immersion

and that the first time infant baptism is ever mentioned in recorded church history

is when Tertullian was rejecting it.

Can you affirm both of these historic facts?

Well, it's hard to document history the first three centuries.

I like to believe that infant baptism basically gained its popularity with Constantine where he

mandated that Christianity was the state religion of Rome now and by coercion

made the pagan priests Christian priests and the pagan temples, Christian churches and

all this stuff.

Some of the stuff Constantine did was good.

325, we have the Council of Nicaea.

I don't have much of a problem with that.

We get the Apostles' Creed, stuff like that.

But other stuff, he was really mixed up on.

He didn't get baptized until his deathbed.

We believe that was settled by sprinkling.

He was confused.

I think this is what happens when you let a governmental leader try to regulate religion and

everything.

What was the other part of that?

Immersion?

The DDK.

Yeah, put her in for baptism.

I've not heard that about Tertullian.

The problem we have with the first three centuries of Christianity is, again, like the Anabaptists, they were on the run

and they didn't have really a chance to basically articulate a

confession of faith.

But we do have the writings of the early church fathers who give us some of that.

I just.

Don't think infant baptism really got its feet, so to speak, until Constantine.

There may have been instances of it in those first three centuries, but not as much as when Constantine came and

basically distorted.

The Scripture about it.

Yeah, the reference to Tertullian, which I've heard, is that he was refuting it.

So obviously, it may have here and there existed, but I have also heard that that was the first time in

recorded history that the subject even comes up.

I read a paper on Tertullian in a seminary, and I did not read anything related to that, but it was not an

exhaustive paper.

And I did also hear about the DDK not

mentioning infant baptism and teaching credo baptism, and it was interesting that

the DDK, and it's not canonical, it's not inspired by God, but it actually teaches triple immersion.

How.

Much of that is a part of Baptist history, the triune immersion?

Yeah, if you.

Try to make a Baptist out of everybody, you come up with stuff like that.

We do see some of it.

I've not seen a lot of it.

Basically, the critics of Baptists have said it's all over the place, but I don't see it as much.

Basically, when you're going through it, like in Martyr's Mirror, you would just see them talking about baptism is only for believers,

and they don't really define the actual mode, they don't really define if they did it three times or whatever.

So I'm not in a position to say this group did this or that.

There's a wide discrepancy from the time of the Donatists in 400 A .D.

to the Waldseemanns in 1400.

And so you have all of these groups that they don't have the organizational

movement the way the Anabaptists and the English Baptists did.

Again, they don't have their confession of faith, so you're still on your own, which is a good thing with the individual groups,

because we don't want people mandating, this is how you have to believe.

It ought to come from Christians gathered together.

But it's good, and that's what our Baptist faith message does.

When churches of like faith and order can basically say, this is what we believe about that.

But I've not seen Triune Baptism in my ministry, and I've been in ministry for 50 years, nor

have I read a lot about it.

That maybe doesn't exist.

Definitely, I'm from Pennsylvania.

Now, I'm originally from New York.

You're where more history is now.

And there's definitely Dunkards, not in great numbers.

They did a little bit of that too, didn't they?

There are Triune Immersionists here in Pennsylvania, and probably other places.

They really get you wet.

And I'm not saying that they are large in number, but they do exist.

One of the things that my deacons used to say, that he heard a pastor say, is that we know that the

Ethiopian eunuch was immersed, and that it was the prescribed method of baptizing, because it pictures the

gospel.

But if he would have been sprinkled, all he had to do was take some canteens of water there in the middle of the desert, and throw it over his head.

But they went down into the water, and they kept baptizing.

Yeah, of course, there's a reference in the New Testament about there being much

water there.

Much water, yeah.

But thanks for the question, Anonymous, and if you give us your full mailing address, and your

full name obviously, and this of course would be by email off the air, we won't divulge your identity, you will

receive a free copy of the book Early Baptists, that we have been blessed to give away

to a limited number of our listeners with questions, and you'll also, if you are a first time questioner, and I don't know

if you are or not, you will receive a new American Standard Bible as well, compliments

of the publishers, and compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania,

who asks how would you categorize John Bunyan, the author of

Pilgrim Progress?

I have heard him called a Baptist, I have heard him called a Fusionist, and I have heard him called non

-committed on either believer only or infant baptism.

Okay, well there was a big debate between William Kiffin and Bunyan over

the ordinances, baptism and the Lord's Supper.

First of all, let me say that Bunyan was baptized in a Baptist church close to where he.

Grew up there.

By immersion.

By immersion.

And so he was baptized by immersion.

However, he did not feel that it was that important as maybe

the other English Baptist leaders at the time did.

A great work on this is from Southern Seminary, Nathan Fins, an article,

you can find it on the internet, was John Bunyan a Baptist?

A test case in the historical method, and he says yes and no.

Yes, because of his stand for religious liberty, he went to jail for 15 years and wrote Pilgrim's Progress.

No, in the sense that his congregation after he died did not remain

Baptist, and Kiffin had said this is what's going to happen.

If you don't start saying that membership is important, he didn't believe much that in membership, and that

baptism ought to be a requirement to be a part of that fellowship, not to be saved, but to be in fellowship

with the fellowship, you're going to lose your identity as Baptist, and that's exactly what happened with Bunyan.

We can admire him for his stand for religious liberty, but he did not believe, he believed

that ordinances were a personal privilege, and it's hard for me to say they're a personal privilege when Jesus gave them as a

command of what to do for the disciples when they found people that accepted him, baptized him, he said,

and teach them all things of humanity.

So, yeah, that's a mixed bag, Bunyan.

I would say in a technical sense, Bunyan was a Baptist, but I would say in

a functional historic sense, he did not really

behave that way, and you know, of course, his classic work, Pilgrim's Progress, is more on

just the journey of salvation and the believer being brought by the Lord through all

kinds of trials and tribulations as he was going through.

We have a Christian in western Suffolk County, Long Island, New York.

Christian asks, how much do you know about the great Baptist from history, John

Gano, who was the first pastor of First Baptist Church of Manhattan, New

York?

Yes.

And his question is, I have heard Calvinist

particular Baptists claim him as their own, and I have actually, believe it or not, heard

Campbellites in the Church of Christ claim him.

Who is correct on this,.

If either?

Okay, I would emphatically deny the last part, that Gano was not a Church of Christ.

It's impossible to do that, because the Church of Christ only began with Alexander Campbell in the 19th century.

How could Gano be a Church of Christ if the group had not been formed yet?

As far as him being a Calvinist, I think Baptists have two streams.

They have the reform stream, which is very strong and very predominant, and was very predominant in New England at that time.

So very, I think, could have been a reformed leader.

We know him as a revolutionary leader.

We have this picture of him baptizing George Washington.

I wrote about it in my book on Baptists.

He's one of the 44 biographies I have, and I've got the picture of it.

Now, some people deny that, and some people accept it.

Stanley Glemmon, who is the historian of First Baptist Providence, denies it.

He says, that's just been a fanfare.

But some of his family members accepted it, and it is a painting at William Jewell University in

Hannibal, Missouri.

They've got that Pitt painting there.

We don't know.

Is there any.

Reference in Gano's own writings that he baptized Washington?

Not that I have come across.

It doesn't say that he was.

That's definitely a good point, because anybody who baptizes the father of our country, I think that would be something that I would

want to talk about.

Unless Washington didn't want to make a big spectacle out of it.

It could have been that he didn't want to make a big do about it, because Washington was Anglican all his life.

The story that I heard, and this may be why some dismiss the authenticity

of the story, is that although Washington remained Anglican

until the day he died, he was convinced on that one issue of credo baptism, believer -only

baptism, by immersion.

And so...

It depends on who you talk to.

Gano went on with Daniel Boone's group to Kentucky.

So there's a lot.

I've talked with the pastor of First Baptist Church of Lexington, Kentucky, and he gave me all kinds of information.

I'm a history collector too.

Of Washington being...

He said many Baptist pastors of that time believed Gano baptized Washington.

Now that wasn't the question, I guess.

But yes, I would say Gano had some Reformed influence in him, but he was much like Schuble,

Stearns, and Daniel Marshall, who started about 60 churches in 10 years in the North Carolina

area.

They had a strong...

For instance, Stearns was saved under George Whitefield's preaching.

Strong biblical basis in the Reformed movement, but they offered the gospel to everyone.

It's much like Whitefield said.

He says, I don't know who the elect are.

I just offer the gospel to everyone.

Yeah, that's what all historic Calvinists do.

There are hyper -Calvinists who have broken from the historic manner.

By the way, folks, I have a gorgeous...

You can look it up on the internet if you want to purchase one for yourself.

I have a gorgeous print of John Gano leading

both colonist soldiers, American soldiers, and

British soldiers in prayer after the Revolutionary War.

Ended.

George Washington is also seen in the crowd in this print.

I am a huge fan of John Gano myself.

He was a pastor of the church in New York, I believe, and he left that church to become a

chaplain and was gone for 10 years and came back and became the pastor again.

How many pastors would do that?

Most of them would be glad to get rid of you.

Well, we have to go to our final break.

It's going to be a lot more brief than the other breaks.

Once again, I have to remind my guests to please remain silent and not make noise.

I want you to send in your questions if you have any.

Listeners, chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Welcome back.

We have returned to our interview with Dan Nelson on Early Baptists, a

comprehensive study of the Anabaptist and English Baptist movements.

And I would like you, before we run out of time, Dan, to summarize some of the primary

things in your book that you believe our audience should be aware of that we have not even

addressed as at this point.

Okay, well, the book is sort of half and half, Anabaptist and English Baptist.

As far as catching people's attention to the movements itself, I've included 10

biographies of the leaders in the Anabaptist and English Baptist movements.

In the English Baptist movement, we divide between General Baptist and Particular Baptist, give more emphasis to

Particular Baptist because of their confession statements and everything.

Else.

Also, I have a section on doctrinal beliefs of the Anabaptist, English

Baptist.

Those quotes are basically on the beliefs that the Baptists were, they

weren't unique, but were noted for, and you get a good wide spectrum.

Another thing, a lot of people are confused about the dates and the time, and each section has

a timeline that gives you when the Anabaptist movement started in Zurich, for instance,

when the Brethren met, when the Death of Spear was, and all these kinds of things.

So you have a pretty good understanding, if you refer back to that timeline, when these things took place.

And also, the book is fully referenced.

I have about over 1 ,000 references from 126 sources.

Believe me, I didn't do it overnight.

It was a pretty long process of about a year and a half.

And it gives you what others have said, and sort of backs up, reinforces some of the things that

we've talked about today.

So that's basically what the book's about.

I think it's inspirational, too, to be anybody that wants to be challenged to stand up for their faith and be courageous in that,

particularly if you look at modern day Christianity and some of the things that pass for what a

committed Christian is.

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who has a question.

He said, I remember hearing long ago on the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program a

debate between a Seventh -day Baptist and a Sunday -observing Baptist.

How much of your book, if at all, involves the Seventh -day Baptist?

Because from what I understand, some of their churches are the oldest still -existing

churches in the United States.

Yeah, I don't have anything on that.

I don't think it was a unique belief, because most Baptists worship on the first day of the week, just like the

Reformers did.

And so I didn't feel like it was something worth going into.

Now I'm on MeWe Network.

I have a group there.

It's called Nelson's Nuggets of Historical and Scriptural Truth, and it's amazing.

There's a lot of people.

There's Seventh -day Adventists, Seventh -day Baptists, Messianic Jews.

They want to argue about the day of worship, and I don't try to do that.

The Bible is very clear that on the first day of the week, all the Pentecost happened, Christ appeared to John,

and we could go on and on.

I don't think that's a big movement within Baptists.

I really don't.

It isn't today.

It's not today.

So I didn't give it a lot of information.

These are about these two specific groups, and that's not one of the things that came out of these two groups.

Okay.

I have mentioned on this program before, it might be of interest to our listener who asked

about this, that John Gill, the 18th century theological

giant of Baptist history, had a very close friendship with Samuel Stennett, who

is known as a hymn writer to many people who are probably not even

aware that Stennett was a Seventh -day Baptist.

They actually conducted pulpit exchange, John Gill and Samuel Stennett,

because of the fact that they worshiped on different days, and it was easy for them to do that.

John Gill is also in my book.

I have a minor, it's not really a minor, but a smaller biography on Gill.

I want to mention that.

Good.

Samuel Stennett actually preached at John Gill's funeral.

So, just to throw that in there, even though John Gill was very strict

about many of his beliefs and unwavering in them, he still had enough

of an accommodating spirit, an Irenic spirit where he had this friendship with Stennett and

allowed him to fill the pulpit, because they were both theologically reformed, or at that time they would have been known as

particular Baptists.

Yes.

Well, I want you now to just summarize the things that you most want etched

in the hearts and minds of our listeners.

I want you to have about three minutes of uninterrupted time before we conclude the.

Program.

Well, one other thing I did mention was that we have, in the book,

influencers.

People have been influenced by these two movements, and especially in the English Baptist, we have Spurgeon, we have Cary, the

modern mission movement, Fuller, and these people.

But yeah, I just think that we are doing ourselves no favor when we do not want to examine

where we have come from in the past, particularly the examples in history where people have

laid down their lives for the cause of Christ, or suffered immensely.

And then we have things today happening still that pertain to history.

We have the government wanting to shut down churches because of COVID, and the pandemic.

And we say, well, we have religious liberty, but we must always guard that, and we can see in history that it has not

always been that way.

So I am excited by the biographies, the people that have stood

against the tides, so to speak.

Someone said any old dead fish can float down the water, but it takes somebody of courage to swim

against the stream.

And that is what a lot of these Baptists have done.

But hey, we are here today, especially in America, as the second largest group,

not withstanding the Catholics, religious group in America.

And it has been worthwhile, all the suffering and everything else.

And if you do not want to read about it or know about it, then you are shutting yourself away from many things that

could shape your life and give you courage, and maybe answer some of the dilemmas that you have in life as they did it when

they stood up for the truth.

And this is why I have written the book, just to give you insight and information.

And I just think if you read it, you will find that and be blessed by it.

Okay?

Well, how do our listeners get a hold of your book?

Well, they do it through me.

I am on Facebook and on MeWe.

I have a Facebook page, a like page, and my profile.

I purchase extra books.

The book was basically self -published, so there is a cost involved, and that is one of the reasons.

It is on Amazon, although I like to try to go around Amazon because they charge me for my author

page and also for the distribution they have outside of the U .S.

It is hard to mail it outside of the U .S. without it costing the price of the book.

So basically, the primary way is through me.

You can look up my Facebook there, or you can contact me at my email at

gospel4u, that is g -o -s -p -e -l, the number four, while you at one,

gospel4u1 at gmail .com.

And the four and the one are numbers, not words.

Yeah.

Gospel4u1 at gmail .com.

And I'm assuming that that is also how our listeners can contact you if they want you to speak at a

conference, if they want you to perform in one of your one -man

plays on Whitfield or any other character from history.

You can see that on YouTube also, if you want to look at that on YouTube, just look Dan Nelson, George Whitfield, you'll get it.

Great.

Well, it has been a fascinating interview.

I really thoroughly enjoyed it, brother.

I want to remind our listeners, please, if you really want to help Iron Sharpens Iron Radio

and bless yourself at the same time, there's a couple of things that I'm asking you to

do, as I do daily.

Go to solid -brown -books .com and purchase a lot of books for your

Christmas list, for those that you love, for whom you give gifts for

Christmas and other reasons.

And go to solid -brown -books .com and remember not only to include on your Christmas giving list

from solid -brown -books .com believers, don't only include believers,

buy Christian books, good solid Christian books for the lost people that you know and love, because the Lord may use these

books to lead them to Christ.

And also, don't forget about royaldiadem .com, who for a limited time, we don't know when the cut -off

date is yet, but for a limited time, they are giving us at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio 100

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So go to royaldiadem .com.

If you want to just purchase something that they already have in stock for $100 or more, we will get all the profits.

And, of course, the much more expensive project, if you want to have something custom -designed

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for instance, into a custom -designed piece of jewelry or any other thing your imagination can come up with,

go to royaldiadem .com, get that project started, and mention that you heard about them from Chris Arns and at Iron Sharpens

Iron Radio.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner.