Open Air Theology -Special guest

What are you doing? What are you doing? You never light a cigar that way. You use a wooden match. Preserves the flavor, you see.

But the worst curse would come upon the one who seduced him, whose head would be crushed by the seed of the woman. And the punishment was too severe?

What's wrong with you people?

Are you ready to get back to work?

With pleasure. So, Senor Kramer, what is this about? I choose to believe the Bible because it's a reliable collection of historical documents written down by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses.

They report to us supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claim that their writings are divine rather than human in origin.

Don't any of you have any guts to pay for blood?

I'm your huckleberry.

But because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began,.

I'm Batman.

I don't know why you're clapping. I'm talking about you. I didn't come here to get amens. I didn't come here to be applauded.

I'm talking about you.

Opening Banter and Show Introduction

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Open Air Theology. I think we have a really great show coming on for you guys here tonight. It's going to be a great blessing as we have a wonderful brother in Christ that we get to have a chat with.

Before we begin, though, let me introduce myself. My name is Brayden Patterson. I'm the pastor of Grace Bible Church here in Moorpark, California. If you live in Ventura County area in Southern California, it would be a great blessing if you joined us for worship on Sundays at 1030 in the morning.

It's a great blessing to be a co-host here on Open Air Theology. And we also have well, we got to throw up some banners real fast. We got to do some quick plugs.

So look at this.

We got Striving for Eternity up in the top right there. Go check out Striving for Eternity. You might be watching this today on Striving for Eternity. If you are, we are asking you to please go to Open Air Theology YouTube channel and go subscribe, like it, share it with your mama, share it with your dada, share it with your cousin, second cousin, third cousin, so on and so forth, even the uncle you don't like.

Share it around and ask them to subscribe and do the same thing. But it's a great blessing to know Andrew Rappaport and to be able to livestream to his platforms as well. So please go and show him some love if you have not already.

We also are wanting to get the word out about this wonderful book. We were originally going to be having Jacob Tanner on our show today. However, I'm going to let Tom talk a little bit about that here in a moment.

But go check out this book, Resist Tyrants, Obey God. Go preorder it from press .founders .org. And also, I'm going to throw this up here. Man, oh man. That looks like a great lineup right there.

That's going to be a fun conference.

Minus maybe one guy on there.

Yeah, you got to watch that shepherd guy.

Well, how about, brother, how about you talk a little bit about that here in a moment and I'll pop it back up for you. But like I said, my name is Bray and it's a great blessing to be here tonight. I think we have a great show.

I'll pass the mic down to our special guest that we have on tonight, the 1689, I don't know, the man, the myth, the legend, Brantley.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm the man behind the screen, I guess, as you could say. Yeah, so thank you for having me on the show. My name's Brantley. I'm here outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. I go to Coram Deo Reformed Baptist Church, a new 1689 or Second London Baptist Confessional Reformed Baptist Church.

And a lot of folks know me for running the 1689 .com or 1689 Reformed Baptist online. And I guess we'll get into more of that as we go on the show. But was that pretty much it?

Yeah, I mean, it's great to have a face behind the whole 1689 Reformed world. If you go to a 1689 London Baptist Confession and Faith Church, that's the guy. That's where you go.

I would just answer to Luke by saying all of them.

So we're going to be asking him questions with regards how the churches got started, how he got started, and actually putting up a website and all that. You actually.

Brantley, yeah, no, I also heard you go by a second name, Stephen Anderson. I don't know if that's true or not.

That is the rumor on the street. I can't confirm whether that's true or not, but a lot of people do say that. So I don't know how they got that idea.

Apostle, Apostle Anderson.

There's an Apostle Greg Locke I saw.

That's right.

That is definitely not me. I don't want anything to do with that.

He is radical. He is radical for sure.

Well, Tom, introduce yourself.

Well, my name is Tom Sheppard. I'm a member of Grace Bible Church out of Burney, Texas, and I'm a co-host here on Open Air Theology. I'm also a co-host with Striving for Eternity via Apologetics Live, and Even If None as well.

So you don't know me any other way except that way, unless you see me on the streets doing some street evangelism. So that's about it.

That's already too much that we know you.

Yeah, that's way too much.

Hey, so tell everybody about this that's going on. Let me pop that back up.

Yeah, so this is Grace and Truth Conference, and you'll notice some great speakers. Kevin Hay this year. Jacob Tanner, he preached last year. John Speed was there. Brandon Scalf was there last year. We have Nick White.

Golly, Alan Nelson Quatro. I mean, this was a conference. Oh, and David Weber, he's actually the pastor and the host over at that conference over there. And Fred Beal, matter of fact, I think he had just gotten his new church right after this last conference from last year in August.

Going to be a great conference. Greg Moring Jr. and Trevor Bates. And then myself, I actually got invited this year. So what this is, Mark Goodson puts on this conference. He started it last year. And there's a group of people who write for Grace and Truth Press.

And anybody who gets to write with that press, small articles ranging from discipleship, evangelism, cessationism. I mean, you name it, it's a good group of people. And so this is going to be in August.

And I'm privileged to be speaking there. Interesting this year. So you noticed that the topic of it was order salutis, the order of salvation. But my topic is the order of salvation and evangelism. So it's kind of, it's going to be a tricky little thing, but hopefully I'll surprise everybody.

And myself, because I don't know what I'm going to do yet. Yeah, it's going to be great. Hey, Georgia, how are you?

It's great to see everybody tonight.

Yeah.

1689.com, Reformed Baptist Churches, and Church Directories

So Brantley. Okay, so I get on Facebook and I see people looking for a good church in North Carolina, looking for a Reformed Baptist church in Minnesota. And the next thing I know, your name pops up with a map of all these churches that go over.

Who are you affiliated with? How did you get this started? And what is the benefit of being able to go to this link that you provide?

Yeah.

So it sort of got started when I began my process of reforming. I found my way into Reformed theology after careful studying of and sitting under some sound Calvinistic teaching and preaching because I hadn't heard books of the Bible preached before.

And I finally found a church that did that. And the Holy Spirit worked in me and began renewing in me. And I basically, you know, was wrestling with everything. I wanted to know just what was true. You know, I grew up in a Baptist home.

That's just what we did traditionally. But I wanted to know everything was on the table. How do we baptize? You know, what soteriology is correct? Everything. And I came out on the end of it still a Baptist.

Praise God. But I discovered Reformed theology and not only studying the Scriptures, but then also taking a serious look at church history, the Protestant Reformation. And that's how I got into the Reformed Baptist camp.

And I connected with a guy who actually is the owner of a site called 1689 .com in one of the Facebook groups. And he wanted to do more with it. And I reached out to him and said, hey, you know, I'm in IT.

That's what I do for my day job. And I'd be willing to help you out with the site. I'm a new Reformed Baptist guy. And, you know, I want other people to know about this, too. So we sort of got on messages and then phone calls and brainstorming what all we could do.

And you can go to the site today to the About page. And there's a hyperlink to what it looked like since he registered it back in the 1990s. And it was basically the confession text with some links to things that are no longer in existence or aren't in use anymore.

So we basically gave it a facelift, an overhaul, if you will. And one thing led to another. And that's where it is today. And when I took over, the website also started a social media presence, too.

Yeah, cool.

You know, I know, like, TMS has, like, the Master's Seminary alumni, you know, where you could go on if anybody here has gone through the Master's Seminary. Is that where you got the idea? Or was there something already planted for 1689 churches?

Yeah.

So when I redid the website, you know, I focused on getting the confession text and then the other documents on there. But then I just naturally wanted to do a Reformed Baptist church directory on there for those churches that align with the 1689 or are moving in that direction or have a pastor that is.

And it's a safe haven for, you know, someone who is, you know, a Reformed Baptist. And I had known of other church searches. So I leveraged, actually, the ReformedWiki .com by Michael Chang and also Johnny Faresa's site, which he has since passed away and he's with the Lord.

And if I remember correctly, it's a Reformed Baptist church, I think Providence, RBC in Indiana or something like that. They maintain his site. So what I did is I went through all of those. And actually, with this directory, sorry, my screen's going to go blank every now and then and I can turn it off if need be.

But I like Five Solas. That's my desktop background.

You got to have that up.

Yeah.

So that's 1689 Designs. And I'll tell you what I did. I actually inverted his design. You can go and download this design, but I inverted the colors. That's all I did. And I like dark schema.

Very cool.

Sorry. Oh, yeah. But in this directory, I actually wanted churches to submit themselves to be listed on there. I wasn't going to go and find churches and add them. What's the strategy behind it? And that's still how it is today.

But since doing that, that's why I actually started a different site, which presents the data in a slightly different way and is both submissions and also what I find from research, and that's ReformedBaptistChurches .com, which is different.

So what is the actual requirements to actually? So we say it's a 1689 church. Can a G3 church be a part of that? Do you actually have to be a confessional church?

Dispensationalist.

That's the question.

Yeah.

So primarily, yes, for 1689 churches. But like I said earlier, we do on the 1689 .com site. I'll go from one site to the next. On the 1689 .com site, it is geared towards 1689 churches or churches that have at least one elder that is 1689 and wants to list the church because they want to be able to have Reformed Baptist guys come there or maybe their church is moving in that direction.

But in order for them to be on there, they need to be Credo Baptist and Calvinistic and elder-led congregational.

Okay.

You do your own investigation to vet that?

I mean, I do as much as I can. But we have a disclaimer on the details. But there is what we get from submissions. That's the information that we put out there. But I do try and visit their website or social media.

And fortunately, we haven't really had to remove any churches as of yet. If there is a church that does put out publicly verifiable evidence or some other means that would warrant their removal, we would definitely do that.

Okay.

That's cool.

I'm filling out my application right now. I messed up. I haven't done that yet, Brantley. I'm ashamed.

But on the reformedbaptistchurches .com site, it's a little different. We actually have a different icon for each confession that they use.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

So like if they're 1644, 1689, whatever?

Yeah.

Or like if they hold to…. What about like New Covenant theology?

Yeah.

So I think some of the NCT guys, some of them are found…. They're found in the first London camps or maybe….

They typically hold to the First Baptist, yeah.

Yeah.

Because I guess it's more looser and allows for that without contradiction, I guess, by the text. But I think we have a Calvin icon as well that we can assign if we're not sure, if they're not really holding to any kind of confession, if we're not sure.

Yeah.

How many churches would you say are total or in the network right now?

Yeah.

So 1689 .com, and I do want to offer a public apology. I have been behind with getting those churches added because I actually spent a lot of time standing up the other site and also some of the other various projects out there that I'm affiliated with.

But as of this week, I've actually gotten caught up. And I think we're at about somewhere under 600 on 1689 .com. And again, that's admissions-based.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

That is really awesome.

But worldwide, thechurches .com, it's I think over 1 ,300 worldwide.

Okay.

So I didn't even know you did worldwide. I thought it was just in the States.

Oh, yeah.

No, we're global.

Oh, wow.

That's pretty awesome. What about you, Brayden? How did he contribute to you getting your job?

Yeah.

So I was going to say, so Brantley holds kind of a him and another gentleman kind of hold a near and dear special place in my heart. 1689 Ministry Search, something along those lines, there was a Facebook page that I've been a part of for a while and saw a post by Benjamin Allen pop up on there.

And he's part of the Fire Network, part of the Fire Association, and saw that there was a church in Southern California and slowly but surely through God's providences and him referring me and just this beautiful answer to prayers taking place.

Wow.

I'm here.

Is that right?

Yeah.

Brother, thank you.

That is huge.

Just amazing on how that all worked out and just really cool how that all took place, seeing it there, then talking with Benjamin and him referring.

Yeah.

So seriously, it's a huge, huge praise for myself, what you are doing.

Yeah.

Praise to God about it.

So how many

Sorry, I brought my kitten's comment.

How many and I don't know if you'll know the answer. I mean this might be kind of a hard question to answer. I know that there's I mean how many different types of reform about these networks are there?

I know there used to be ARBCA. That's no longer, right?

Transition, yeah, to oh, sorry. You cut out. Continue.

Yeah, I think the internet went

Rapture for a second.

But yeah, so yeah, there was ARBCA, and I know that they transitioned to something else. They're like Braden is a part of FIRE. Mark Chansky has the Reform Baptist Network. What other networks are there?

G3.

Yeah, so you can actually find those. We have a on the 1689 .com site, we actually have a whole it's a whole directories area. So a lot of people go to the church directory, but we have directories of seminaries, publishers, and also organizations, ministry organizations like G3 or Founders, so on and so forth.

And, yes, we also have that directory of the organizations that are associations or networks. So if I remember correctly, actually, forgive me, that organizations directory will have a column that says a church association or network, true or false.

And if it's true, they operate a church association network, or that's what it is. Otherwise, it's not like, for example, G3 Ministries. They're an organization on there. True that they have a network.

So, yeah, so there are several different ones globally. I actually edit a lot of have edited a lot of the Reform Baptist and other related Wikipedia articles because they have a Wikipedia article called List of Reform Baptist Denominations.

It's the Wikipedia article, and it separates by each section or region of the world and the different organizations that you would find in there, and it was severely outdated. So I actually went through and cleaned that up and updated it some and also updated the Wikipedia page for, like you mentioned, ArbCaChange to CBA, stuff like that.

So we have quite a few.

I think it's somewhere around 20. Yeah, that is ReformBaptistChurches .com. You got it.

I got your form has been successfully submitted. You need to go and accept my form.

Oh, I see it now. Yeah, nice. Nice. Yeah, there you go.

That's awesome.

But not only do you do that, I've also seen some Facebook posts of some evangelism, some pretty aggressive evangelism. Good thing. I'm all for it. Like at churches like Fertlick Churches. Is it Fertlick?

Is that how you say his name?

Fertlick, and yeah, it's not a church.

Yeah, I would agree. I told you it was aggressive evangelism.

Hey, it's not a church. It's an experience, okay?

That's right.

Yeah, that's right.

They had God Almighty there, so I don't know why he wouldn't go there, but I'm sorry.

Yeah, yeah.

Have you seen much? And by no means do we measure evangelism by fruit. Have you seen fruit by going there? Have you seen much good dialogue and all that kind of stuff?

Yeah, so I'll be honest with you. It is discouraging at times because like you said, you don't see the fruit necessarily or a lot of it. So there might be someone down the road, and my boy Spencer commented, that's the resource site that we have, elevationisfalse .com.

The first Sunday that I went and did evangelism there was actually Easter Sunday, and that was the famous, and I didn't even know it until well after I'd gotten out of there and taken a nap and woken up, that he wore that ridiculous $2 ,000 pink sweater.

I was going to say, is that the pink sweater day?

Yeah, because what had happened was is that there was some controversy that they weren't going to use certain theological or biblical language like the blood of Jesus or whatever have you. But even before that, I actually, so this is now probably a year ago at this point because I actually went to a experience there in February, which is Black History Month, because I knew everything that I needed to know online.

I didn't necessarily need to go in there, but I wanted to see what it was like and what these people were experiencing and what all they did inside. It was honestly, genuinely heartbreaking after that.

I sat in my car crying for about 10 or 15 minutes, and I'm a grown man. But what I experienced there was heartbreaking because one, they spent probably a three or four, maybe even five-minute video on Black History Month and platforming MLK and so on and have you.

But then the conversation was literally him and his wife. I think they were just sitting on chairs on a stage and having a conversation, and that was the message. And at the end, they basically gave what we would say at the end that you would do a gospel presentation.

But essentially what he basically, at the end of the talk, sort of tried to rope in the need that you need to invite Jesus into your heart is all that he said. And that was it. And then cue all the wonderful rock show, exciting music that they have.

And I proceeded to get out of there. So that's really what led me, I guess, to realize these people need the gospel. They aren't even faithfully preaching and teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is primary and most important.

That's central. And then you have all the other issues. That's just on and on and on from there. And that Easter Sunday, we actually, me and my friend who goes to church with me, we made up tracks. Elevation is, you know, I actually have one in my casket here.

Forgive me.

No, you're good.

The nice elevation orange.

Yeah.

So we actually passed out some of these tracks. I kept them, the ones that I had left over. But when they caught on that we were out there before the service started, they actually had their security guy come up to us and ask us and try and interrogate us, what are you doing here?

And fortunately I'm on public property sidewalk. I'm not blocking or obstructing. And then he got the police to come over and they said, hey man, you know, you seem to be within your rights. First Amendment, yada, yada, yada.

We're just warning you and telling you, you know, not to obstruct and anything. We're like, yes, sir. Thank you so much for keeping us safe. Very respectful and all good with the law enforcement officers, which they have posted out there.

But so we were basically trying to hand out these tracks and I actually custom developed this track and I'm trying to develop some more, but essentially what it is, it's a DIY print your own paper track that goes on a three foldable, right?

And I've come up with different ones, but this one that I have is, what is a false church? MIM one, right? And it goes through what the gospel is and markers of a true church and that false churches don't meet those markers.

And also some on the back, you can see some of those helpful ministries to point them to, as well as the elevationisfalse .com site. And believe it or not, when they saw that, realized that we were actually passing out tracks and people were taking them, their staff or volunteers or whatever you want to call them, started taking them from people as they were going or leaving.

Oh, is that right?

Yeah, it would be as literally as, Hey, welcome to church.

Can I see that?

And they take it from them and they just willingly gave it over. So I was having to tell people towards the end, don't let them take it.

Don't let them take it.

Yeah.

It's interesting when we talk about fruit and matter of fact, just in the last conference that we had just listened to it at the Founders Conference, it was talking about the fruit. Some of it you see fruit of repentance and genuine salvation and conversion.

And the other fruit you see is opposition. And, but God is glorified in that you're going out there and praise God. I mean, who else, who knows? Matter of fact, this is the one of the ways that Braden left Mormonism through the efforts of people putting in tracks in a library and planting.

Yeah, evangelism works. Yeah.

So now I hold a sign because of the, they take the tracks and people can see that.

Yeah.

So that's why I hold the elevationisfalse .com.

The Gospel, False Churches, and Evangelism at Elevation

Let me ask you this because you're going there mostly on, is it mostly on Sundays that you're doing that?

Yeah.

So some of them, like in the one I went to, they actually, it was a new location in my town. So I feel responsible to those people because they're in my area, but I've tried to go to other locations as well, but there's a lot of distance between the building and what's public property.

And that's why I have to employ the sign.

So does it affect the times that you're able to go? Does it affect with your worship? I didn't know that it was in the same town that you're in. Does it affect with you attending your church that you're a part of?

Fortunately, no, because we meet in the evenings currently.

Yep.

Praise the Lord.

That's awesome.

Yeah, that's incredible.

How does your, what does your pastor think of you going out and doing that?

Is he giving you a thumbs up.

And supporting you?

Yeah, he's supportive. He's given me advice, helpful constructive criticism, prayer support. He's usually preparing for the sermon during that time as well. And it's usually me and one of the other guys who are out there doing it.

Yeah.

Dude, that's cool to hear.

Do you point people to your local church or pretty much other, just other good ministries?

I point them to several different Baptist or Presbyterian churches in the area.

And you might know a guy.

That knows a lot about 1689 churches.

Yeah, but yeah, on the back of this is a QR code they can scan or type in and it's the church finder too. I'll give a shout out to, there's reformedbaptistchurches .com, but there's also reformedchurchdirectory .com, which has both Baptist and Presbyterian reformed, which is Jeff Brickman's site.

So yeah.

Okay.

That's pretty awesome.

Yeah.

Wow.

Really good. So we have some questions here.

AI generated questions.

Brother,.

Before you jump into that, I got to ask this. So are you doing... Dude, I'm just, I'm blown away with how much that you're doing right now.

Yeah, how many sites do you have?

That is a lot of stuff.

Yeah.

I have a lot of free time outside of work. So I try and commit it to these causes. And once it's built, it's done, I'm good. You don't really have to put too much effort, except like with the directory updates, you have to add a church or whatnot.

But I don't think I ever originally answered your fruit question. What I wanted to quickly comment though, is that I've actually had most of my good interactions with young people. They are just wanting to know, why do you think this is false?

You don't seem to be an angry, shouty man or something like that. You seem to be smiling, you know, nice guy. I want to know,.

Why is this false? Why are you doing this?

The middle aged or older women, totally different story.

Really?

Yeah, they are nasty, man.

So, what would,.

If you were to caution people, maybe what are some of the signs that... So first of all, let me ask you this, Steven Furtick, wasn't he a graduate from TMS? Is he on the TMS alumni? I thought he was.

I don't think so.

No, you're thinking Francis Chan.

Is that what I'm thinking?

Yeah.

I thought Steven Furtick was too.

No, Steven Furtick was Southern Baptist.

Yeah.

Oh, was he? Okay, gotcha.

Oh, man.

Or something, yeah.

Sad to hear that kind of stuff. Well, so I was going to ask you though, is what are some signs that... What would you, if somebody was watching right now, that's a part of something like a Steven Furtick type of church, what are some signs that you could specifically say are, these are things why you should not be going to this church.

Go to a different church if you see these kind of things.

Yeah, definitely. And we actually have those four or five major ones listed on the website. And that's what I start with, is the gospel. They don't faithfully preach a biblical gospel. You need to preach repentance from sin, what that is biblically.

Point people to Christ and Christ alone. That's the central issue.

Wow.

Everything else is just onward from there. So I pointed them like, hey, man, look, you got women pastors. You need to realize we've been doing Christianity for 2 ,000 years and we can see the path of Christianity that's good, God's elect, and sound theology, and these good traditions, right?

Yep.

And that's no question. And now all of a sudden we're doing women pastors and yada, yada, yada. So I usually tell them like, look, this is a new development. Literally in 2023 is when they started referring to Holly Furtick.

Instead of being First Lady of Elevation, now she's pastor.

Really?

Yeah, and they never replied to my email. I asked them, hey guys, would you mind just being able to answer just some very simple, basic questions? When was Holly Furtick ordained as a pastor and who all was she ordained by?

How do you come to that view of women pastors given that the last 2 ,000 years of church history we have long settled the issue that it's a qualified and called man, a husband of one wife, right?

Now was this all going on the same time the whole thing with Rick Warren and his church being disfellowshipped by SBC?

Yeah, I think that was before actually. So that sort of set the stage, I guess. I think what happened was this Elevation, they did the exit out for PR reasons. So instead of getting kicked out, they are exiting, yeah.

Right, yeah.

What a shame too. I mean, when you think about it, not the shame that they left, it's a shame that they exited instead of being booted. I think that's a shame. But you know, in 1 Timothy 4, I was just pulling that up.