BBC Elders - Questions & Answers

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All right, does anybody have any questions to start? You can just maybe stand up or raise your hand, just give us your first name and then your question.
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Okay, Wes? That's a great question.
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Wesley asks, what is sacerdotalism? Because you always hear me talk about sacerdotalism. It's one of those words that I just like to say because before I was a
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Christian I never got to say it. It just kind of has a weird little kind of slide to it like propitiation or other words and...
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Do you want me to do this one, Steve, since I'm the one who always says it? Okay, sacerdotalism is a system and it is typically a
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Roman Catholic system, although it could be Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox, Orthodox not meaning sound doctrine, but the religion that centers around the sacraments.
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And so it's the word sacramentalism, but just said a little bit differently. So it's a synonym to sacramentalism that is a system of receiving grace, not necessarily through God, but receiving grace through sacraments and in the
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Roman system that would be seven sacraments in particular. So instead of believing by grace, having
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God justify us with a righteousness that's not of our own, we basically cooperate.
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And so instead of God alone saving us, we would cooperate with God and we would receive grace on a regular basis through the sacraments.
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So I could call that either sacramentalism or I could call it sacerdotalism and so those would be synonyms. You want to say it out loud, you can, sacerdotalism, yes.
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Okay, great question. Yes, Scott.
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You want to just pull that mic?
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I'll just speak up. Okay. Will it be taped well enough if it's the mic there? I don't think so.
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Okay. We're going to... That's a close -talking mic anyway. I think we're okay.
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We can just pass it back and forth. Yeah. Would you repeat the question, please? Okay. The question was basically, what should the
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Christian's view be of current events? Because there are people who they've got their
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Bible in one hand, particularly open to the book of Revelation, and they've got the newspaper in the other. And it is interesting, it is intriguing, particularly if you're of a curious nature anyway, to begin to try to line up current events with the
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Scripture. And it just so happens that Pastor Dave and I were talking about this this morning a little bit.
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And it's very easy to get trapped in that, because we can say, oh, look, this is that, and here's the red heifer in Scripture, and somebody's got a red cow over in Israel that we heard about, and so forth and so on.
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And, oh, obviously, the world's going to end in 366 days at 25 minutes.
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It's easy to get trapped into that. And we have to be very careful when we look at that, because as we begin to look at current events, certainly there are trends.
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There are trends that are evident. We are told that the Middle East is going to be the focus of the end times, and it's certainly the focus of the times now.
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This little tiny country that's, you know, it's like everything in the
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United States revolving around Rhode Island. Well, everything in the
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Middle East revolves around this little tiny sliver of land sitting over there on the side of the
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Mediterranean Sea. And it's very easy to say, okay, national
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Israel, there's a national entity, a political body right now that is called Israel.
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Is that the political body that is referred to in the Scripture? Maybe, but perhaps not.
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What if the madman who's currently in charge of Iran does get his hands on a nuke and manages to wipe out
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Israel? Does that mean that God missed it somehow? No, all that means is that we jumped the gun, that God's plan,
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God has his plan laid out, and it's going to unfold exactly as he intended.
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And what we have to do is, first, number one, trust that he's going to do that.
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And number two, the way that Pastor Day was speaking this morning in Sunday school class, when we look at these prophecies, what our concentration should be, what is the message that the prophet is delivering to the people at the time?
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You know, not trying necessarily to predict the future, because we also, we have warnings in the
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Scripture, don't do that. I've questioned on many times in my own mind, why would somebody write a book predicting that on such and such a date,
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Jesus is going to come back when the Bible specifically says don't do that, and yet we've got to do it anyway.
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And so certainly we want to be interested in what's happening in the Middle East, we want to be interested in what's happening in the world.
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We're not supposed to be hermits wild off in a cave somewhere. But on the other hand, we don't want to run places that God hasn't led us yet.
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And so we watch with great interest what's going to happen, and I personally watch with great excitement, because I want to see how
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God's going to do this. I mean, as I read Revelation, we've got to build a temple on a spot that is currently occupied by a mosque, and there's a whole bunch of people that are going to get very upset if we try to tear that mosque down.
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So God's going to deal with that somehow, and how's He going to do that? I can't wait to see what's going to happen there.
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But that's the thing, you can't, without belaboring the point too much, you can't start looking down through the descriptions in Daniel and in Revelation, and it refers to Gog and Magog, and one dear pastor
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I used to have would say, all right, Gog is such and such a city, and Magog is such and such a city, and so forth and so on.
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And I remember thinking, you know, dear brother, you can't do that. You're going places where the
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Scripture doesn't take you when you start doing that. So other comments? I just want to make one quick comment.
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Remember with eschatology, the real issue is when the Bible brings up eschatology, so we understand the future, so we can plan our retirements properly, so we can, what are the reasons?
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Oh, Steve knows. Run up your credit card balance. Yeah, run up your credit card balance. Eschatology or the study of end times in Scripture has one main thrust, and that is that the people of God will be holy in their living, and we call that ethical eschatology.
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It's a Bible church, so if you have your Bibles, you can turn to 2 Peter 3 just to give you one little hint of this.
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Jesus is coming back soon. How should we act? Well, we should act holy.
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When my father used to go out of town, he'd go down to Tulsa, and when he would return, I would have my chores done,
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I'll tell you that. I'd have everything done around the house. My mom would remind me, Dad is coming home tomorrow night.
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Yikes. And so you see there in 2 Peter, the false prophets in earlier chapter 3 say, you know,
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Jesus isn't coming back. But in verse 11 of chapter 3, since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, in verse 10 with the roar and the elements and the intense heat, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God?
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And that's really the theme of end times, whether you're premill or amill, postmill, panmill, you should say,
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I want to live a holy life because Jesus is literally returning with a literal body for his literal people.
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And so we want to live holy lives. Jesus is coming back. Oh, good, I know the future. Wrong. Jesus is coming back.
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I should live holy life. I want to be the bride that when the groom comes to meet the bride,
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I want to make sure that I'm a clean bride for the groom on that great day. And so remember, end times, whenever you study, it's about being holy.
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And so therefore, to Scott's question, when you study and say to yourself, well, here's the newspaper and here's the
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Bible, if it never translates into, I should be more holy, then it's all a waste of time anyway, and it's just some kind of mental gymnastics.
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So next to sacerdotalism, we have something called ethical eschatology. Live a life of purity before God because we know
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Jesus is coming back. Okay, good question. Make this one a hard one because I think this is
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Dave's turn. Okay, Luke. Oh, where's the cross -reference?
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Dave, why don't you take that one? You can just repeat it. Good question. It's in Matthew 4.
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Matthew 4, 6, And say unto him,
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If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down. For it is written, He shall give His angels charge concerning thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou shall dash thy foot against a stone.
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Is this Psalm 91? Psalm 91. Psalm 91 in verse 11 and 12.
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For He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.
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And, of course, what's interesting here is that when
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Satan tempts the Lord Jesus, what is he using?
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He's using Scripture, which means in a measure he knows the Scripture, but he's going to use the
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Scripture and twist the Scripture. And there are times when he doesn't even repeat all of the text that is there.
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And, of course, in this case here, he's using it in such a way where his desire is, he has such a hatred for God, he has such a hatred for Christ, for what is taking place, and a hatred for the promises that are going to take place when it comes to Jesus Christ, and he'll twist it and pervert it.
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And in this case here, using it like, well, you know, if you cast yourself off this pinnacle, then
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God is going to have to pick you up. And almost using it in a way where he's pushing the limit and presuming upon God and doing it in such a way that is dishonoring to God and is dishonoring to the
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Word of God. And what I like is what the Lord Jesus does is he comes back with Scripture and says to Satan, it is written again, thou shalt not tempt the
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Lord thy God. You've used the Scripture improperly, but let me tell you what God says.
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When it comes to using the Word, when it comes to living before God, never, ever presume or twist the
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Scripture or presuming upon God and do it in such a way that you're tempting God. I don't know if anybody wants to add to that.
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Just one other thing about the temptation of Christ in general. You know, the Bible tells us that Jesus was tempted in all respects like we are.
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And at the temptation, all sin falls into these three categories.
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He was tempted, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. And Satan tempted
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Jesus in each one of those areas. And in all three areas, he had the same answer, which, you know, he was ahead of Billy Graham a little bit, but he came up with the
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Bible says. And that was his answer for each one of those was the Bible says.
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And he used the Bible correctly. Like Dave just said, you know, Satan was twisting the
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Scripture, and Jesus comes back and says, no, the Bible says in each one of these categories.
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When it comes to evangelism, when it comes to answering people's questions, our opinions have no weight.
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Whatever it is, if we've read the latest and greatest book, and we know all the answers that that book portrays or sets forth, we may have some reasoning, and we may have some good answers, but there's no power there.
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And the power comes when we unsheath the sword of the Word of God and use
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God's Word when it comes to speaking to someone who is lost. I mean, we can plead with them and tell them, you know, we can use all kinds of different illustrations, reasoning, logic.
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It makes sense to trust Christ. But if we don't come to them with the Word of God, and that's why as a
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Christian we're to put on the whole armor of God, and part of the armor of God is to take up the sword of the
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Spirit, which is the Word of God. And it's so important when it comes to dealing with the lost and when it comes to ministering.
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In any spiritual capacity, it's not Paul was saying that his desire was, is that the people that he preached to, that what they would have would not rest in the wisdom of man or be according to the demonstration of the power of man, but it would be the demonstration of the power of the
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Spirit of God, and it was the Word of God that was so important to him. Scott's question was, people with a newspaper and people with the
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Bible and they're looking for that. In a measure, you have people who are trying to take the current events and rely upon that, and it's almost like walking by sight and not by faith.
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And the idea when it comes to like prophecy in Revelation, just to kind of put these two together, if you go into the book of Revelation and you're looking for what does it mean for the person to have the ten horns and what are the ten horns and what are these things that are coming in out of the air and the dragon and just all the different imagery that is there and miss the very first phrase of the book of Revelation where it says the revelation of Jesus Christ.
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This book was written so that Christ would be revealed and it's all focused upon him and all prophecy is focused upon the
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Messiah. And when it comes to living the Christian life, when it comes to evangelizing, and when it comes to ministering to other people, the only way that we can really help someone is by using the
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Word of God because it is that which is the corruptible seed by which they'd be born again. It's that by which they would grow in the grace and knowledge of the
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Lord. If we hide God's Word in our heart, we will not sin and on and on. It's the Word of God which is so vital to us, and I would just encourage us as a church to never lose sight of the fact that reason and logic and all that is good, but what is supreme is the power of the
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Word of God. All right, you sound like a preacher to me.
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Bruce. Okay, good question.
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Very good question. Moving right along. No, good question. And what that is, if we understand
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God to be a spirit and those who worship him will worship him in spirit and truth, how then do we even reconcile that with this verse and with the appearances to Abraham with Moses, the
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Old Testament appearances where Jacob wrestled with the angel of the
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Lord. It's the pre -incarnate Christ. These are Christophanies. They're Old Testament appearances of a pre -incarnate
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Christ. He physically manifests himself, and that's what Moses saw.
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That's what Abraham saw. That's who Jacob wrestled with. And so what this then would refer to here, he who is blessed and the only sovereign, the king of kings and lord of lords, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see.
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So then what you're asking is, does this apply to Christ, and how could then this be no man has seen him?
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Is that what you're asking? Okay.
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So then you're just asking the Old Testament appearances of God, and that's it in a nutshell.
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It's a Christophany. It's also called a theophany, but the idea is it's a pre -incarnate appearance of Christ.
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I was going to ask if that's the case. Well, he had a different body when he came in.
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He started as a baby. The pre -incarnate. Wes, did you want to come up here?
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I want you to repeat the question. Oh, the question. 1 Timothy 6. Right. Where were we?
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1 Timothy 6. 15 and 16. 15 and 16. Bruce asked, how do we reconcile this with the
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Old Testament passages that deal with God having a physical presence?
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So that being said, then how would we then look at this? And I would just say that God does what he wants.
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So when we see a pre -incarnation of Christ having a physical form, that is
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God, in essence, breaking the rules of nature, which he's quite able to do.
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He wasn't born yet, and yet Jesus had a physical body.
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How could he do that? Because he's God, and he makes the rules. How does he make a day longer?
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How does he separate water? How does he do all these things? Because he's God, and it's his world, and we're just the pieces on the chessboard, as it were.
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Just to add to that, too, is that the incarnation of Christ, what is implied by that sometimes goes past us.
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When Christ was incarnate, when he came as a form, he became a baby, so that when this baby is carried into the temple on the eighth day, this is
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God. Here's Simeon, and he's holding God in his hands.
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And then this is a permanent thing. The theophanies that occurred in the Old Testament, those were temporary.
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Jesus took on a human form so that he could appear to Abraham. But now, and this is the staggering part, a man sits at the right hand of God.
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He is recognizably a human being, because when the incarnation took place, that's permanent.
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This mystical union between God and man, the God -man, that's a permanent change.
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And so if we could somehow look into the throne room of heaven, there is a human being seated next to the
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Father. That's a staggering concept when you think about it. Well, and it's speculation only on our part, but there could be,
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Bruce, when you look at 1 Timothy 6, where it says that whom no man has seen or can see.
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Could it be possible that even in heaven, glorified men, men and women, still could not see the glory of God?
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It could be possible. When Jesus is in the throne now, and all the fullness of deity dwells in him in bodily form.
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My old professor at Masters used to say, when you're in heaven and you look at God, you're going to see Christ.
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You're not going to see three orbs. Here's the Father, Son and Spirit. You will see with your eyes, with your glorified eyes,
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Christ, because he perfectly reveals all that the Father is. And it could be the case that even in heaven, we will not be able to see with our glorified eyes, the blazing glory and the infinite
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God, the Father, because he has been pleased to cloak his Son with humanity, who then shows this is what
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God looks like. And so everything that God the Father is, is shown in the resemblance of Christ in a body.
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So again, some speculation, certainly back in the Old Testament with Moses, and he was hid behind the crag of the rock there, in the cleft of the rock, and God passed by him.
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He would only allow him to see his back parts, kind of the afterglow, because it was just too much.
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And so this passage in 1 Timothy chapter 6, I agree with you, it's regarding the Father, and no man can see this great
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God, because he is infinite, he is immortal, he dwells in unapproachable light, and so that is either solved by in glory, we'll have no sin so we can see the
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Father, or it will be in glory, we'll have no sin, and we'll see the Son who perfectly represents all that God is, all the fullness of deity in bodily form.
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So if you had to push me, I'd say, in heaven, I'm not so sure we'll see the Father, but we'll worship the triune
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God as we see the Son. And I don't mean in some kind of modalistic, civilian,
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Aryan way. Modalism is basically God used to be the Father, he came as the Son, and now he's the
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Spirit. And that would be hair, that's not hair. That would be horror and heresy put together.
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That would be the heresy, God the Father, Son, and Spirit, has always been the Father, Son, and the Spirit, and he doesn't come in different forms.
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He's the Father, Son, and the Spirit before the world, at creation, at incarnation, and even now.
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And did you hear Pastor Steve read Isaiah 48 -16 this morning, where that is the most succinct,
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I believe, Trinitarian statement in all of the Old Testament, with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, more so than any other, you have
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Isaiah 48 -16. So either one of those would be fine to me, because still I'm in the presence of God, and as Spurgeon would say, there's three wonders of heaven.
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The wonder to begin with, the first surprise is, there are people in heaven that I didn't think were going to be here, but they are. Second surprise is, there are people here that I thought were going to be here, but they aren't.
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And last surprise is, I'm in heaven. So you don't think about the other ones. And so no one still may see
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God and live, even in heaven, and I would find that quite appropriate if I could know the fullness of God because of Christ in human form.
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Okay, good questions. I think Fred was next, and then Brian. Fred. The Younger Christian, the
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Schofield Bible, includes things concerning dispensationalism, which
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Schofield stated that there were seven distinct tests given to man, a couple of them being, man was given a test in the
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Garden of Eden, and he plumped it. Man was given a test in the
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Tower of Babel, and he plumped that test, presumably. What is the dispensationalism of that?
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Okay, that's a good question. Steve, do you want to do it, or what do you want to do? Let me just say a couple of things before Steve gets the mic.
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To reiterate the question, are we still dispensational? Is our hope built on Schofield's notes?
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It's a big question. Of course, every Q &A, the whole covenant theology versus dispensational theology comes up.
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And when it comes to end times, Fred, we are concerned about holy living and ethical eschatology. New or old?
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We as a board do not believe in the seven different dispensations, though we think that they are. But those were placed on Scripture by Schofield.
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But as you know me, there's some leaky dispensationalism in me, and I'll let Steve kind of give an overview if you want.
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Well, I would say this, that much like I've talked about covenantalism, and covenantalism being a system of theology wherein they have a series of covenants, beginning with the covenant of works.
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And just as Mike was saying where the old line dispensationalists maybe imposed their own view, kind of divided up Scripture in a way that they saw fit.
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I mean, you can read several different dispensationalists, and they come up with several different systems.
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There may be seven, there may be 10, there may be 12, but they're always perfect and complete and all that.
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The covenantalists, on the other hand, have covenants that appear nowhere in the Bible, and they're not called covenants in the
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Bible. So we would not say that we're covenantalists. I personally would not say that I am a strict dispensationalist in the old sense of the term.
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I would say that we are dispensationalists in the sense that we believe that there is a future for Israel, that we do not believe that Israel has been forever put aside because the
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Bible doesn't really allow us to see that. Me personally,
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I would tend to see some continuity but not as much as covenantalists, and I would not be as firm a dispensationalist as, say,
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Schofield or some other brothers would be. So to me, it really comes down to one single issue, and that is
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Israel. What do you do with Israel? Are there two peoples of God? Is there one people of God?
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Is the church in the Old Testament? And I don't see the church in the Old Testament. I believe that the church started on the day of Pentecost.
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I do not believe that the Israelites were the church, and that is somewhat of a popular view today, especially among covenantalists, but I just don't think that's scriptural.
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Did you have anything more specific in mind? I know about the board. I would say, do you think you're the most dispensationalist and Dave's the least?
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Would that be fair to say? Probably. And of course with balance, and Steve and I are always in the middle to balance.
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Balance is always good. You don't want to be too extreme here or there.
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And Steve put his finger on it. The real thing is, do you see a separation for national
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Israel? Does God have a political body that's going to be his earthly people?
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And if you see that, and if you agree with that position, you pretty well have to call yourself a dispensationalist of some sort because the other side, the covenantalists, do not see that.
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That's the real dividing line. But even as Steve also said, the idea that there are seven absolutely separate dispensations and on this day we're here and on that day we've crossed the line and we're into the next one, that's pretty much disappeared,
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I think, and certainly among this board. I don't think you would find anybody who sticks to seven absolutely defined, sharply delineated dispensations.
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And sometimes the dispensationalism can get you into trouble if you're hyper -dispensationalist because you believe in two kinds of salvation.
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You have a kind of, here's the old system, here's the new system, and so we would not agree with that. We believe there's one way of salvation.
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Romans chapter 4, Abraham was saved by what? Faith, right? That's just shorthand for he was saved by the finished work of Christ in the future applied to his account by the gracious triune
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God who also gave to him faith that Abraham himself did exercise. And so we believe people are saved one way.
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Many dispensationalists would not. I'm teaching the Sermon on the Mount. Would you guess I'm teaching it in a dispensational way or a non -dispensational way?
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The dispensationalist way would say the Sermon on the Mount is for the kingdom. You are to ask for these things in the kingdom only.
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It has nothing to do with today. And so I do not teach a dispensational view of the Sermon on the Mount. I teach not necessarily a covenant view, but I just teach the biblical view.
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So we are not dispensational there. So I would consider myself, I think Stephen Lewis as well,
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Dave leaks more than we do, but I myself, I'm a leaky dispensationalist, and my dispensationalism is this, that I believe that there is going to be a future return of Jesus Christ in a literal body, returning on a literal
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Mount of Olives, at a literal Jerusalem for a literal thousand years. And so that's pretty much the state of my dispensationalism.
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It's a big term, and it's kind of a bad term these days. And if you believe you're a dispensationalist, somehow you're on the, what are the end times books that everybody is reading?
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Not Frank Peretti. Left Behind. Left Behind. And so, you know, you're Hal Lindsey if you're a dispensationalist, or you're
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Left Behind with Tim LaHaye, and there are grades. So here's what I don't want to do. I really think it's ignorance and pride are a mixture of those.
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If someone says, well, I'm covenant, and you're dispensational like all these other dispensations, and they kind of put you in a box and say, you all believe the same things.
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And it would also be the same true for the dispensationalists who think that every covenant theologian believes in the same thing.
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Even amillennialists, is Christ reigning on the earth now through the church, or is he reigning on the earth in heaven now?
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There's different ways to look at things, and so I don't like to be put on one side or the other. Sometimes I act like I'm a
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Presbyterian, form of government, salvation by grace alone through faith alone.
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Sometimes I act like a Baptist, that communion is just a symbol, it reminds us of Christ, and we believe in believers' baptism.
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And so we don't talk about eschatology that much just because we haven't been in a book in the pulpit that talk about it.
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But if you want to learn a lot about eschatology, you can come to Steve's IBS class to teach you. For those of you that don't know what dispensationalism versus covenant theology is, it's probably too long to explain it tonight.
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But as a board, we are affirming our statement of faith, which is we are premillennial and pre -trib, leakier on the pre -trib side than on the premillennial side.
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But even if you differ, we'd love to have you here, because I think most of the time when we preach, you think we preach like covenant theologians and reformed theologians.
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And so I think the Lord has given us a church where all kinds of people could come. I mean,
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I have friends who come to the church, they can't stand hymns, but do you know why they come? They want to get taught the
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Bible. We have other people that they can't stand the praise songs, but they come, for what reason? Because it's a preference issue, so we want to hear
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Bible teaching. And if I hear somebody who's an honest expositor, who's Amill, I can still listen and learn.
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I can just disagree and not make that the central issue of my whole church life. I would imagine that you would disagree with me on some points of theology, if I ask you.
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You probably do. Almost everybody here probably does. God will sanctify you. I believe in patience. I understand that.
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But my wife disagrees with me on certain theological points. It's not about disagreements, but it is about the unity of the church.
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That's why we have a broad statement of faith, so you know what we believe, and you know what you need to submit to.
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And submission is not, oh, I agree, therefore I go along. Submission is, I disagree, but I'll still go along, because I'm after exposition.
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And if you don't like what I'm talking about this week, well, come next week, because it'll be something different. That's part of the greatness of expository preaching.
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But what we do here have, as a church, I believe, two main issues. A high view of God's Word, and a high view of God's salvation, and what
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He does in salvation. And then we can put up with each other on some of the other things. R .C. Sproul, Post Mill, John MacArthur, Pre -Mill, good friends.
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James Montgomery Boyce, he was historic Pre -Mill. Friends, as well, with other men.
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And so, overall, the church's stance is, we are dispensational, but we are leaky. But I always like to say,
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Fred, but I'm not the kind of dispensationalist that the Schofield folks talk about, or Darby, or some of those folks.
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I would also point out, too, this is a Schofield reference Bible. It's a 1967 edition.
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The reason that there's a 1967 edition is because things changed.
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And Dr. Feinberg, who is the head of the committee for this one in Schuler English, and these gentlemen, they believe in the
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Word, but some of the marginal notes need changing. And so we have the 67.
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And the reason I keep using this is I have 25 years of marginal notes that I have written in my own hand in here, and I can't afford to give them up.
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On the whole topic, two books that I would recommend, if you are interested in this whole debate. One is
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Continuity, Discontinuity, by John and Paul Feinberg. That's a series of essays that will, if you want a book that deals in one volume with both sides of the issue, that's a good one for that.
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And the other one is Dr. Pentecost's book, Future Things? Is that the title of it? Things to Come, by Dwight Pentecost.
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That is also very readable, and it's an excellent treatment of the subject.
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And it's interesting how people just come and go and how we all end up, for instance, Bruce, our brother here is a millennial, but Bruce's view of the law is dispensational, if we had to use categories.
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And I know if I said to Bruce, hey, your view of the law is dispensational, Bruce would go, don't say that. But in terms of just putting people in corners, we want to just try to say what's biblical, and if it's a system, fine, but we're not held to any system.
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If the five points of Calvin are not right, then we don't want to behold them to a system. We want to know what the Bible says.
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And so that's really what we're after. Okay, Luke, you already asked a question, so we better go over to Brian Casey.
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Repeat the question, please. Brian asks, what are the theological differences between Southern Baptists and our congregation?
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And really, you know, that's pretty easy. And the reason it's easy, I mean, we're all kind of like this, but the reason it's pretty easy is because you can go to a
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Southern Baptist church and you can find anything. You can find anything from easy believism.
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Purpose -driven. Yeah, purpose -driven church founded by a guy who has a Southern Baptist background. I don't know if it's a
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Southern Baptist church. I think it is. So, yeah, Saddleback. So you can find that, and then you can find very much more like the
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Capitol Hills Baptist Church with Mark Dever, a church that we would be a lot more closely, you know, in tune with.
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But even there, we would have differences. So, you know, yeah, but it's either malleable enough to where people can fit whatever they want in there or they're willing to just kind of put it under whatever their belief of the day is.
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So, I mean, it really is a loose -knit organization, and there have, over the last several years, been a number of problems where they've had liberal groups who wanted to get away from the denomination because they weren't happy with the way things are going.
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There's the Founders Group within the Southern Baptists, which is more conservative. So there are a number of...
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You know, it's a bit like asking, recognizing that we're not
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Roman Catholic, and I don't want anybody... But, you know, like, is Roman Catholicism the same in Japan as it is in Florida?
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And the answer is no. And Southern Baptists are different all over the place and dependent upon the local church and their own view of the
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Word of God. Some hold it very highly, some do not. And there have been big wars.
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Pastor Mike has a videotape from the liberal side of things when
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Al Mohler took over Southern Seminary in Louisville. And it was a big uproar, and even in the
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Southern Baptists Convention, the meetings they had, and, you know, back and forth because here was a group who wanted to stand up for the
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Word of God, and on the other side you had people who said, no, we like things just the way we have them with all the sin running amok and all the things going crazy, and we like that.
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So don't try to impose your righteous standards on us. And that's the battle.
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That was within the Southern Baptist denomination. So when you say, you know, how would we line up with the Southern Baptist denomination?
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Well, you know, somewhere between almost Presbyterianism and, you know, pretty close to rank liberalism,
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I think we could fit somewhere in there, you know. So some of them are, and some of them are as anti -Reformation as they can possibly be.
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So it's a wide swamp. Well, I'm reading all the right books right now, just by providence.
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Just by providence. I guess you could say by chance. Yes. I'm reading a book by Dr.
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Nettles, By His Grace and For His Glory, which traces the development of Baptist thought.
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And the Southern Baptists were founded by a bunch of hardcore five -point Calvinists.
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No question about it. But it's worth noting that these controversies go all...
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Go back to Spurgeon. The so -called downgrade controversy, it's the same thing.
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It's the same issue. Are we going to stick to the Scripture and what the Scripture says, or are we going to somehow, you know, ease off on it?
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And the Southern Baptists were founded, if you will, because the
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Northern Baptists, the guys up here, were already starting to go astray.
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But like Steve says, now you say what do Southern Baptists believe, and you have to say which congregation, because you'll find
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Southern Baptist congregations that are just as sound as they could possibly be, and you find others that are off in left field somewhere.
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In fact, they're not even in the ballpark anymore. So it's hard to... You cannot characterize the denomination.
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You have to go church by church by church. The Southern Baptists have something called the abstract of principles, and it's like a statement of faith.
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And so if you're a rank liberal, you can't sign it anymore. But if you're an Arminian or a Calvinist, you could sign it still.
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When the Southern Baptist Convention was founded, it was by a group of men who were convinced that God was sovereign in salvation.
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And now you're seeing a resurgence of some of these men, and it's called the Founders Movement, and they're going back to the founding principles of the
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Southern Baptist Convention. And so if you go to the Founders website, you will see us as a church under Founders Friendly Ministry.
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We're Baptistic. We have at times four or five men of the church going to seminary at that Southern Baptist school at Southern.
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So we like a lot of what they're doing. We are not congregational rule like a typical Southern Baptist, but we are
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Believers Baptist, and we think they're doing a lot of good. MacArthur, when I spent some time with him about six or seven weeks ago, he said,
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I think the Southern Baptist Convention is going to split in half due to Calvinism. So when I asked Dr. York, who's my advisor for my doctoral project, and he's the president of the
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Kentucky Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Movement, he said, I don't think that's the case. As long as Al Mohler's around, he'll keep everything together because Al isn't about Calvinism.
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Al is about conservative theology and the Southern Baptist Convention, and he's the president of the flagship seminary,
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Southern. And right now, next to one other situation that I know about, there's never been a case where a place has started off conservative and has gone liberal and has turned around.
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When I said to Fred, I'm going to be studying at Southern Seminary four years ago, he said, why are you going to a Baptist seminary? That place is, they're whacked out liberals.
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And so, that wasn't his exact quote, but that's what he meant. And I said, Fred, I'm a leaky dispensationalist.
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What do you want? And so, Fred was glad to hear, as we are as well, that God can take humans and use them to turn things upside down when you preach the word of God.
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You preach the word of God and who knows what will happen. Places are turned upside down. You can go to countries and preach and the whole people change.
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I'm reading John Payton's biography and he goes to a place where there's cannibals and he just stands up and preaches and God saves them.
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And so, we want the Southern Baptist Convention to really turn itself right side up, not just at Southern, but all the other schools.
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There are five key schools and four are on their way to being solid schools. And so, I could easily be a
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Southern Baptist pastor because the church is so autonomous, you can do whatever you want. I'm not a
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Southern Baptist pastor, but I could go try to be one. I'd probably have to, you know, do the whole altar call deal and all that and try to teach them not to do it.
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But it's too hard now, Brian, to say is that a Southern Baptist church or not because they are everywhere from Jesus isn't
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God and he's, you know, feminine worship of Sophia, the woman goddess, all the way towards, you know,
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Al Mohler style where Jesus is God and if he came and preached here, we wouldn't know the difference if he was on the board or if he wasn't.
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So, I like the direction of the Southern Baptist Church. I'd hate to send money to the missions board because there's still a lot of liberals out there and I think
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I want to give my money to men and women who will say, we believe what you believe versus cutting corners and everything else.
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So, sure. Most of you don't know my history, but I came to know the
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Lord at a Southern Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky called Clifton Baptist Church. That pastor led me to Christ.
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That was a very sound, conservative church. It's where my wife grew up and I won't go into all the background behind how we met and all that, but that man led me to the
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Lord. We hadn't visited that church because we moved back up here soon, right after we got married and I said, what kind of a
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Bible message is that? The pastor wouldn't let us go. We tried to get away from him and he said, no,
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I want you to meet in my office and we go downstairs to his office, which was in the basement and he had crucifixes all over the place.
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I said, what is this? What is this guy? And his collection, his hobby was collecting crosses from all over the world and I said, well, you just came back from a mission trip to South America.
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What did you do there? He said, oh, we built new houses for people. What did you do as far as spreading the word?
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Oh, well, our good works were the word and I left that church. I almost cried. It was so horrible and awful.
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We came back. Two years ago, we went back to vacation in Louisville and Brian Bartlett was going to school there.
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He was telling me, he says, you wouldn't believe Clinton Baptist Church now. He says, they got some men from the Southern Seminary in there.
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They almost closed the doors. Southern Seminary ministers went in there. They turned that place around.
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We went to that service and we clap danced with glee almost. That church had come alive.
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It was preaching the word. They had men from that seminary. It was a whole different church.
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The building was the same, but the atmosphere and everything else was just wonderful.
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It glorified God all the way around. So that's the difference. Some of those churches where Clinton Baptist became so liberal, that still exists today.
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There's plenty of Baptist churches. Southern Baptist churches out there, as Mike was saying, are as left -wing as you could possibly get.
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Then there's others who are really preaching the word. Denominations have formed because of the liberal outlook of Bible Baptist Fellowship.
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There's a church here in Worcester that belongs to Bible Baptist Fellowship. They were so upset with the liberal turn of the
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Southern Baptist, they left. The shoe is on the other foot now. As Mike was saying, some liberal groups are unhappy with the conservative bent of the
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Southern Baptist. They want to leave because they're liberal. They don't like the conservative movement.
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Well, praise the Lord for the conservative movement. Good. Thanks for sharing, Fred. By the way, those two pastors at Clifton Baptist are
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Thomas Schreiner and Bruce Ware. They are preaching the word. How do you change a church? You just preach the word.
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If you're a Christian, you'll stay and grow. If you're not a Christian, you can't stand it. We have people visit here and they say,
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I'm not a Christian, but can I keep coming? And I say, well, you can keep coming, but I have two kind of prophecies that aren't really prophecies.
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One prophecy would be, or one prediction is, God will save you. The other one is, you won't be able to put up with it anymore because the demands of the cross are so high without the
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Holy Spirit. You can't live that way and you're going to have to leave the church. And so I praise God for the turn of many
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Southern Baptist churches. Most in New England are still liberal and think that the way to heaven is social gospel, but there are many churches that are turning around and I love to be a part of a church that is going to preach the gospel.
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We're going to take one more question from Dave and then we're going to have our Lord's table. Sure. Just, you know, when we, a lot of times when we take questions and we think about different topics, it's easy to talk about outside the walls of BBC, but the question should come to us too also is what is our responsibility as a
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New Testament church being watched by the Lord and what is it that we have a stewardship of?
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What is it that ought to be our focus? Should we guard anything? And in these churches we've talked about the full gamut of liberal, conservative, right on with the
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Bible and not, social gospel, preaching the gospel. And we as a church, our responsibility is not to make the world a better place, although that may happen in people's lives when they are saved.
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Our responsibility is not to go about and take care of every single physical need upon the face of the earth, although with a heart that we have for others, we should desire to meet people's needs.
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But our responsibility as a church is we've been entrusted, 1 Thessalonians 2 .4
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says, we've been entrusted with the gospel of Jesus Christ and we are to have and hold that in a high, serious focus that we ought not to ever do anything that would dishonor the
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Lord, that would diminish the message that we're to preach.
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It is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. It is to proclaim that message so that God would be glorified in the salvation of sinners.
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And God's glory is, of course, the focus as you've heard us teach in evangelism.
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It is the glory of the Lord. But if we ever get to the place where we think we must rely upon gimmicks, which some of these churches have done, programs, drama, the purpose -driven mentality to meet people's needs and not be concerned with what
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God says their need is and what we ought to be doing, then when it comes to a liberal church or not having a power or not having testimony, there go we but by the grace of God.
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We would not be able to stand. We would not be able to be a church that has a powerful testimony.
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And I just think it's neat as we look at... I mean, the question is great so that we understand some of these things, but it's great to bring it back home practically too so that we understand that we need to be on guard and that we are...
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the church is the pillar and the ground of truth and we must guard that with every effort that we all have together.
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And if you see any of these men at this table up here getting up in the pulpit or any man that teaches, the ten that were up front that got the gift of the book and thank you for it, if you see any of us going off on a tangent, holding on to some doctrine that is just wild and crazy, it needs to be brought to the attention of the leadership.
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It needs to be brought to the attention of... We can't do this because we're not going to go the way of other churches. We're just going to honor...
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have a high view of God and a high view of His Word. And that was just a follow -up quick question. Let me... I got to add one thing to that.
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Just so you know, this is under the... God always has His 7 ,000 that haven't bowed the knee.
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This comes under that category because... so that we don't think that everything is just going down the drain.
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Dallas and I went to a church up in Vermont to attend a wedding, a congregational church.
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We did not expect to hear anything out of this congregational church. My comment was,
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I bet they have a pipe organ and they probably have a good organist so we'll probably hear some great music, which we did. The pastor comes out in his robes and he starts preaching the gospel.
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And I mean he is preaching the gospel going straight down the line. I found out later this is
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Edward Coop's son, if you remember who Edward C. Coop was. Everett...
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C. Everett Coop, whatever. It gets there. The former Surgeon General. It's his son.
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And this man is preaching the gospel. So God's got His men. They're hidden away in little places in unexpected places, but they're still there.
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God has got His 7 ,000 that haven't bowed the knee. And by the way,
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I already took this off and I've got to do it as well. We are very pleased as an elder board that people attend the church.
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And to me that's just a byproduct because we are going to preach the gospel, preach expositionally, preach with a high view of God and if nobody comes we're going to keep doing that.
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And so we're resolved that if it's the four of us with our children and our wives and that's who comes and no one else comes, that's what we're going to do.
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And so I hope that's encouraging to you because we're not going to back off if a lot of people come or no one comes.
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We have been given a charge by God and we will discharge that duty at the risk of losing the building, losing the land, losing all the people because it's not about any of those things.
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It is about stewardship and being ambassadors and preaching the gospel no matter what the response is.
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And so for people to show up every week and having to order more chairs and have giving up, I'm almost questioning my theology and my philosophy of ministry because lots of times when people preach like Jesus, John the
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Baptist, Peter, Paul, everybody left and they tried to kill them. And so for us to have a prosperous time at the church,
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I'm almost frightened because I know something is right around the corner where we will be tried to make sure we really believe what we say we believe.
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But by the grace of God we are resolved as four men to preach the gospel and nothing but the gospel no matter if you come or whether you don't.
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We're glad you do. Don't get me wrong. We're glad that God has turned your heart to say we want the meat of the word.
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But we're going to preach it whether you want it or not because our job is not to take a poll and see what you want and then we'll preach it.
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Our job is for you to preach it and say by the way we want you to love it but we're going to preach the word of God no matter what and I don't think there should be any other kind of church to go to.
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Right? I want some men in the pulpit who are resolute and they have convictions and they will preach like Jeremiah and they will preach like Ezekiel to dead men's bones and they come alive.
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So I just think it's fantastic and I'm very encouraged by the state of the church the health of the church the maturity of you as Christians the desire for the word increased
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Sunday night attendance increased Sunday school attendance wanting to serve outside the body very encouraged.
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We have not arrived but I'm encouraged by your growth and so as Paul would say to the church at Thessalonica excel still more.
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Way to go. Keep on doing it for the glory of God no matter if people see it or they don't. All right.
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We better stop. It's just good to get together. It's just good to sit around the word and say we have an authority and we aren't it.
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One more question? Okay, come on. Let's say what are we going to do? It's zero to zero right now. The score is still zero to zero.
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Okay, Bill's asking in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 24 to 28 is that text we certainly know
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Christ is reigning in what sense is He or isn't He? Does that text even teach that Christ has stopped reigning?
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Well, I think here's what we're going to do, Bill. I can see the four guys down here we're all looking at the
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Bible and what's going to happen. I will say this. Theologically and exegetically we have two different ways to look at it.
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We as a leaky dispensationalist board would believe that Jesus is not on the throne of David now.
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Covenant theologians and progressive dispensationalists believe that Jesus is on the throne. Do I believe
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Jesus is reigning over the earth and He's king? Do you think I believe that? I hope
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I do. The next trial that comes in your life you better believe it because you have nowhere else to turn.
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And so without the answer because I don't know the answer to your question I know Jesus is reigning theologically.
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I know He's the sovereign potentate of all the universe and I affirm that. But there is a special sense when
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Jesus in the millennial kingdom and we may differ on the kingdom as well but when He's reigning upon the
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Davidic throne in Jerusalem for those thousand years where there'll be a special way that He is having everything subject to Him on a physical way when
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He's on the earth. Now I'm not sure if this is talking about that millennial kingdom and the Davidic throne or not but there are ways that you can think about Jesus reigning in total.
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Theologically He's king over everything and then there's a special reign when He's on earth where the king has the kingdom and the kingdom has people in it.
01:00:05
And so I'm not sure if that's what Paul's getting at. Certainly he's talking about the resurrection. It says in verse 26 the last enemy will be abolished is death for He has put all things in subjection under His feet.
01:00:17
But when He says all things put in subjection it is evident that He is accepted who put all things in subjection to Him.
01:00:28
When all things are subjected to Him then the Son Himself will also be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him so that God may be all in all.
01:00:36
I just have three words. Let us pray. I don't know the answer to the question.
01:00:42
Do you guys have anything off the top of your head where you would know? I think you're right as far as I think it's eschatological.
01:00:48
There's a lot of wills and thens and stuff like that. But you know what? I think this has gone well tonight.
01:00:54
I'm not sure if you all as a congregation have thought it's gone well but I think we'll do that next time. We'll put it at the top of the list and if you email
01:01:00
I'll email my stuff. We have one other option to solve the problem and that's look at the MacArthur Study Bible. Does anybody have one?
01:01:06
Let me just read it. Do you have it? Hayley, quick run it up here. Just for the sake of the tape let's see what
01:01:13
John says. Okay, double speed. All right, thanks.
01:01:20
Serving with joy. I'm just curious to what John says. Actually I went to a Shepherd's Conference Q &A one time and John didn't know the answer to a question so he read his own study
01:01:29
Bible notes. Serious. And he said let me see what I believe. Yeah, what do
01:01:35
I believe about it? Oh, let me hear my last sermon. Okay, we have 15, 20.
01:01:46
Christ has broken the power of Satan who has held the power of death. Hebrews 2 .14 at the cross. But Satan will not permanently be divested of his weapon of death until the end of the millennium.
01:01:55
So it is eschatological according to John. At that point having fulfilled completely the prophecy
01:02:00
Christ then will deliver the kingdom to his Father and the eternal glory of Revelation 21 .22
01:02:05
will begin. Lest anyone misunderstand what should be evident in verse 27. Paul does not mean by all things being put under Christ that God the
01:02:14
Father is so included. It is actually the Father who gives Christ his authority in whom the
01:02:19
Son perfectly serves. Verse 28 all in all. Christ will continue to rule because his reign is eternal but his reign is his former full and glorious place within the
01:02:28
Trinity subject to God in the way eternally designed for him in full Trinitarian glory.
01:02:34
So I think I'm right regarding the Millennial Kingdom Davidic throne in terms of my eschatological views.
01:02:43
And so one thing is for sure when you have a question that you can't answer go with what you know. And we know
01:02:48
Jesus is still God over all. There is a sense that he's under his Father and what will be returned to him so he can be in subjection or that he will have subjection over all that.
01:02:58
And so for those who are pre -mill have a little bit easier opportunity to describe this verse than those who are a mill.
01:03:04
Okay, Luke I know you're raising your hand. What did you want buddy? I'll explain to you when we get home.
01:03:14
I at home he said what's covenantal? I've been explaining to Luke what the five solas are and so Luke now knows the five solas.
01:03:21
He's also asked me what are the five points of Calvinism and so I've been explaining those to him. And then it's interesting because then he asked me do we believe in those things?
01:03:29
And so that's good. You know it's one thing to know what they are but hey dad are we supposed to believe them? That's a good question from a son or a daughter.
01:03:37
All that to say I hope you teach your kids the Bible. I hope you teach them that God is
01:03:42
God over all. That the scriptures are sufficient. That we're saved by grace alone through faith alone by Christ alone to the glory of God alone because if you're not on your deathbed you're going to regret it.
01:03:54
If you're not, you're not obeying God. Teach the kids the Bible and it's amazing when we had the men's breakfast yesterday and Dave Myers said
01:04:00
I've never forgotten what my fourth grade Sunday school teacher has taught me. And even when
01:04:06
I walked away from the Lord I remembered what that fourth grade teacher taught me and God's word does not come back void.
01:04:12
So when you teach the Sunday school kids they might not respond but they won't forget and God can use that reservoir of his word anytime he wants and that's amazing to me.