October 13, 2017 Show with Gordon Taylor on “What Are Your Church’s Core Values? Suggestions to be Prayerfully Considered for Adoption”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnson. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at Iron Sharpens Iron radio .com.

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This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 13th day of October 2017, and what better day to pick than Friday the 13th when you're having a discussion with Reformed Baptists.

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I'm only kidding. This is Chris Arnson, and I am a Reformed Baptist, and my co -host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor, is with me in the studio, and he is a

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Presbyterian. I am not a Reformed Baptist. And well, you might want to pray about that.

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Reverend Buzz Taylor is a member of the PCA congregation here in Carlisle, the Carlisle Reformed Presbyterian Church, and he is retired from the ministry himself right now anyway.

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Not an active pastor, but he is an ordained minister with quite a number of years of experience as a pastor.

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And today we have back on the program after a long absence, Gordon Taylor. Gordon Taylor, who

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I have had on this program in the past. In fact, I even had his wife on the program when we were broadcasting out of New York on WNYG and WGBB radio on Long Island.

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And Gordon is also a former member of the Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where I am currently a member now.

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He is the coordinator for the Reformed Baptist Network, and we are going to be discussing today, what are your church's core values, suggestions to be prayerfully considered for adoption?

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And we're also going to be announcing the 2017 Reformed Baptist Network Conference, so we'll be giving you all the information you'll need to know about that.

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But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back after a very long absence, Gordon Taylor. Thank you,

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Chris. I'm delighted to be with you again and have fond memories of our time at Grace Baptist in Carlisle as well.

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Amen. And I must tell our listeners that if you ever hear about Gordon Taylor preaching anywhere near you, anywhere that you could get to by plane, train, or automobile,

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I would make every effort to do so because he is an extraordinarily gifted preacher, and I have always been wonderfully blessed and edified every time he entered the pulpit at Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and still does on occasion from time to time, even though he's not a member of our congregation anymore.

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But Gordon, I know that we have had you on the program before, but since it's been such a long time,

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I would like you to give your personal testimony of salvation, what kind of childhood that you had in regard to a religious atmosphere, if any, and what providential circumstances the

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Lord brought about in your life that drew you to himself and saved you, and then later actually placed a call upon your heart to enter into the ministry, if you could tell us about those things.

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Sure, Chris, I'd be happy to tell you about that. You know, I'm a very blessed man. I had a very happy childhood.

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My mother and father were both believers in Christ, and I suspect

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I was in church from my infancy and to all the services on the and Wednesday night, and I was so happy that I really never gave any thought much to my soul until one particular day, and I need to put in parentheses here,

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I did grow up on a farm in north central Iowa, and my father and I worked together from the time

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I was very, very young, and when I was probably about eight or nine years old,

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I'm guessing, while we were cleaning out the chicken house, my father began to talk to me about my soul, and he took me to John chapter 3, verse 16, wonderful gospel verse, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

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Amen. He told me that I could put my name in there, that God loved me,

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Gordon, and that if Gordon would believe, I'd have everlasting life, and that struck a chord in my heart, and I knelt with my father on the floor of that chicken house, and I would add it was the part that we'd already cleaned, and I asked the

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Lord to save me. I've often wondered, I often wondered whether or not I was really converted that day.

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I didn't have any great conviction of sin, necessarily, but I did desire

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Christ, but it was shortly after that that I did have a conviction of sin.

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I was playing with my sister upstairs in the bedroom on a Sunday afternoon when we were supposed to be resting, and my mother and father are resting downstairs, and I suggested she climb in the top drawer of a dresser, or no, the bottom drawer, and I would climb in the top drawer.

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Well, I didn't understand physics at the time, and the dresser came tumbling over and made quite a racket, but she wasn't hurt.

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I told her, quit getting in your bed. I went in my room, got in my bed. My father came up, talked to her, then to me, and said, well, what happened,

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Gordon? I said, well, nothing, and I expected that he would discipline me, as was his practice, to my benefit, but he didn't.

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He just kept talking, and finally, I wept and said I'd lied, and then he assured me that Christ would forgive liars if I confessed my sin, and that was a very important event in my life, where I realized that Christ does forgive sin, and so I think

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I was converted then. It would be years before I came to understand the

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Reformed doctrine of soteriology. That was many years later, and that was such a wonderful revelation to me, but I thank the

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Lord that he put me in the home that he did and gave me a good gospel -preaching church and parents who love the

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Lord and love the gospel as well. Amen. Now, what, if you don't mind me asking, what was the specific kind of a theological background that your folks were from, and then also, how did you eventually, specifically, come to the doctrines of sovereign grace?

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Yes. I grew up in a church that was part of a fundamentalist church.

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The association that the church was a part of had Calvinistic beginnings, but the local church

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I was in, that was not taught or probably even believed until the pastor my senior year came, and then

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I didn't hear it from him. So I grew up in a church where the don'ts of the

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Christian life were greatly emphasized, and I think most people are aware of those.

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Good people, godly people, and I love them to this day, those that are still here on earth and those that aren't.

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But coming to the doctrines of grace happened when I went to what is now Cedarville University. And I had a senior and a sophomore as well as a freshman as a roommate.

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It was a crowded year, and we would often talk theology.

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And one night, my senior and sophomore roommate were talking about unconditional election.

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And I told them, I said, well, I can easily disprove that. They said, well, how? I said, well, the

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Bible says that we're elected according to the foreknowledge of God. And all they said to me, rather than arguing with me, and today

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I'm still amazed at this, they said, well, Gordon, maybe you should just study that word foreknowledge.

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And so I didn't know Greek, of course, but I took out, I don't know whether it was a Strong's or Young's Concordance, and I looked up that word and followed the

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Greek word through the New Testament. And it wasn't, it took me just a short time to realize that foreknowledge there in 1

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Peter 1 that I was quoting really meant foreordained, foreloved. And so quickly, all,

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I mean, just immediately, I saw the truth and I embraced it. And then from there, I went on to the other doctrines of total depravity and perseverance, irresistible grace.

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It took me a long time to come to an understanding of particular redemption, but that came.

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And so the Lord just opened my heart in my freshman year of college. And that's,

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I'm very thankful for that. Amen. And when did you realize that God had placed a call upon your life to enter into the ministry?

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Well, that was a slow development. There was a time in my senior year of high school when I really rebelled against the

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Lord, said I'd never be a preacher. But that was just simply a backslidden state, and the

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Lord rescued for me that after I graduated, before I went to college. And then it was during college that I had a growing interest.

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And my sophomore year, I had to declare what foreign language

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I wanted to take. And I knew that I wanted to know more about the Bible, so I decided to take

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New Testament Greek. And I ended up minoring in New Testament Greek at Cedarville.

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And it was that study of the Greek New Testament where the increasing desire for the ministry came, and especially from Dr.

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George Lawler, who was my Greek professor. And I'll never forget the day when we were in Second Timothy, and translating, preach the word.

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And he leaned over the desk, he pointed his finger at us, and he said, men, preach the word, preach the word.

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And that came to my soul with such great power, I thought, that's what I want. My home church didn't shepherd me like I wish they would have.

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They agreed with my calling. They actually licensed me to preach after I got out of college, before I went to seminary.

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And we're all in favor of it, but they didn't really, oh, test me like I wish

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I would have been tested. So I struggled with the call, even while I was in seminary, and even after I was called to my first pastorate.

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And after a number of years, I thought, you know what, I'm doing this, people are listening, and the Lord's blessing, so I guess this is what the

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Lord had me to do. Amen. And when you entered into the ministry, did your pastoral life begin in a confessional

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Reformed Baptist church, or was it some other kind of a church? No, I began in,

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I was part of what's called the General Association of Reformed Baptist Churches, and that's what

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I grew up in. That's where all my education was, my friendships, and that was my first church.

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And I did hold to the doctrines of grace and taught them. And then in my second church,

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I was there, I was in Calvary Baptist Church, Green Island, for about six years. And the second church,

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Sycamore Baptist Church, East Moline, Illinois, where I ministered for 33 years, was also in that association.

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And by the way, there were some excellent men in that, and some men who really did hold at least very strongly and preached four points, at least, the five points of doctrines of grace.

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But it was while I was at Sycamore Baptist Church that my mind was influenced by reading and talking to others regarding all the matters of eschatology and church life.

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And it's a very long story, but sufficient to say that that church, by God's kindness, we led to a place where they adopted the confessional faith in 1987, the 1689

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Confession, and became a Reformed Baptist Church at that point, officially, at least, in 87.

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Well, praise God. And well, tell us something now about the Reformed Baptist Network.

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What is unique about it? How is it different from some other Reformed Baptist fellowships?

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And I know that there are even some Reformed Baptist churches that have such a strict view of independent autonomy that they take it to the level of not believing in fellowships at all, other than perhaps in some kind of an informal level.

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I mean, outside of their own body, of course. But if you could tell us something about, specifically, the

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Reformed Baptist Network. Sure, I'll be happy to do that, Chris. Yes. We are a network of churches that has a very specific purpose.

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The purpose of our network is to glorify God through fellowship and cooperation in fulfilling the

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Great Commission to the ends of the earth. So we're focused only on missions. We're not doing anything else. There are many other things that are very valid and very good, we acknowledge, but we wanted to form a network that was related specifically to missions.

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And so we are cooperating for that purpose. In fact, we have 26 founding churches, and of those 26 founding churches, there will be 15 missionaries that will be presented to the churches this year for official association or endorsement with the network.

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And then there are many other ministries and some other missionaries that are associated with member churches.

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So that is what has attracted, I think, churches. We have churches that have been in other associations.

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Many of them are in other associations, even as we speak, but desired this kind of association with a robust confessionalism to be able to cooperate in the cause of worldwide evangelism.

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So I suppose that's one way that we differ from others, is that we're very narrowly focused on missions and plan to remain and stay that way.

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And then also, we have attracted a number of churches that were never a part of any association who have become founding members, and there will be more churches, at least six more that will be added this year, and I know there's interest in more churches in the future as well.

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Great. And you have coming up the 2017

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Reformed Baptist Network Conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan. That's November 6th through the 9th.

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Tell us something about that conference that's coming up. Sure, I'll be happy to. We'll have devotional messages each morning.

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We have preaching sessions. We're kicking off on Monday night with Dr. David Murray, who's a professor of Old Testament and practical theology at Puritan Reform Seminary.

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Yes, I know Dr. Murray well, and I've had him on the program a number of times, and I consider him a precious brother in Christ, and he really showed me a lot of compassion, actually, personally, after my wife had passed away and entered into eternity and sent me his book on depression that he wrote, and he's a dear brother.

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Really love him. Yes, he is. I've heard him speak once at a pastor's fraternal in Grand Rapids, and I just greatly profited from his ministry, and we look forward to having him speak on Monday night on how to foster a burden and a vision for missions in the local church, because our theme this year is local evangelism, the foundation for world missions, and we're so glad that he's willing to cross the street, as it were, and preach for us on that Monday night.

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And then we have Jeff Smith, one of our RBNAP founding member churches from Emmanuel Baptist Church in Coconut Creek, Florida.

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We'll be speaking on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. Dr. Jim Adams, Grizzly, we call him.

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I don't know if y 'all know him, Grizzly, but he is just a stellar missionologist.

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Well, if it's the same Jim Adams that wrote the booklet on decisional regeneration,

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I know who he is, and I met him once. Is that the same brother? Yes, it is. Yes, in fact,

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I met him briefly at the Gospel Coalition conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, and I have been discussing having him on this program to actually address the issue of decisional regeneration, which is something that we would deem as a heresy or as a very aberrant understanding of regeneration, and of course,

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Jim Adams' booklet is really a superb treatment of that. Yes, it is, and he is just a fine brother.

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I have—our friendship has grown over the many years that we've been acquainted, and it gets deeper and deeper all the time, and the more

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I get to know him, the more I respect him. He has a huge reservoir of respect in Latin America and South America.

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In fact, he's down in Chile right now. In fact, the last time I called him to be on my show, because somebody had postponed, that's where he was.

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He was somewhere in either Central or South America. Yes, he goes there quite a bit now, since he's been able to—well, they have another man, they've been brought on as the pastor of the church there in Mesa, Arizona.

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So Jim is able to give himself a lot more to the ministry in South America, which is very, very good.

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I mean, he was a missionary in Colombia in his early years, his early years of ministry, but had to come back for the health reasons of his wife, and so he's fluent in Spanish.

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So his advantage is he can go down there and preach in Spanish and converse in Spanish and really link up with those pastors, and they love him, and they love to have him coming.

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So anyway, he's speaking at our conference as well. And really the heart of our conference is the missionary presentations.

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We have five sessions where there'll be missionary presentations. I don't know if you want me to go over all of them or not.

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Yeah, sure. We have a little less than—or should I say a little more than an hour and a half left, so you can definitely do that.

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Great, I'll be happy to do that. Well, I'm going to be speaking with one of these presentations.

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I only have about 20 minutes, but I'm going to give an overview of my mission trips to Italy and Zambia this past summer, and then also highlight the various missionaries and ministries, missionary ministries of our member churches, and this includes ministries in Nigeria, the

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Middle East, Latin America, South America, East India, Barbados, Honduras, Virgin Islands, France, Russia, Far East India, Mexico, Israel, Native Americans, and the inner city of Atlanta.

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I don't know how I'm going to do that in 20 minutes, but I got it. I assume that your trip to Zambia—this is a guess, but I'm assuming it had something to do with my friend

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Conrad Mbewe, a pastor of Kobwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia. Yes, it did.

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In fact, Zambia was just a great, great trip for me, and one of the highlights was preaching at Kobwata Baptist Church on a

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Sunday evening I was there. Conrad wasn't there that Sunday evening, but he was in New Zealand, but I did get to spend some time with him because he came back during the week.

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They asked me to preach an evangelistic message on Sunday night. They said there'd be university students there, and I thought, well, that's good.

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I got to the church, and it was full, pretty much full, and I just thought that probably it'd be the church members and some university students, but much to my surprise,

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I found out that the church people weren't there, and they just simply opened it up to the university students, and there were 300 of them that they came.

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And I said, well, how did they all come? Well, they just put up a notice at some universities close by, and they showed up.

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And I thought, wow, if we put up notices, there might be one or two that come, not 300.

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Wow. But there were 300 that came, and I got to preach the gospel to them, and the singing was just fantastic.

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I mean, it was great. And then afterwards, they gave literature and refreshments to all 300 in the court, and they marched out a side door, and I shook all the hands of all 300 of them as they left to pick up the good literature from Chapel Library and to get refreshments.

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So it was a wonderful outreach that Cubwata had on that. Actually, it was the second

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Sunday I was there in Zambia. He is, Dr. Conrad Mbewe, I believe, is one of the most powerful preachers of the gospel on the planet

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Earth today. I mean, he is just extraordinary. I've known him since 1995 when he first came over to the

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United States, and one of his primary places that he preached was the church where I was formerly a member,

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Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, where I was a member before relocating here to Pennsylvania.

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And I'm so glad that the Lord was pleased to develop a friendship between Conrad and I, and we've kept in touch all these years since 1995, and he's been on this program a number of times, and I just really enjoy his fellowship.

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He's such a humble brother and so extraordinarily gifted at the same time when those two things don't necessarily go hand -in -hand a lot.

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Yeah, I agree with you, Chris. He is a, well, they call him the Spurgeon of Africa, not without reason.

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I've heard him preach as well, and just it's amazing the gifts that God has given him.

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Yes, when I was a member there at Grace Reformed Baptist, I was working for a radio station there that covered the tri -state area of New York, and when we had

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Conrad come to preach at Grace Reformed Baptist, I developed a radio ad campaign, and I put a 30 -second clip of him preaching, this really powerful clip of him preaching about Christ's redemption and the fact that we have been rescued from hell and so on, and it was so powerful that over the three -day period, we had over 500 visitors over those three days, and that is not including the people who are actually members of Grace Reformed Baptist, and a lot of those people that came after hearing that clip of Conrad preaching were

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African -American Pentecostals and Charismatics, and the thing that I kept hearing over and over again because the phones were ringing off the hook for days, but people kept saying, that man has the anointing, and he certainly does, maybe not in the way that they think, but he certainly does have an anointing of God for preaching in the pastoral office.

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He really does, and you know, I so appreciated Conrad. Now, one of the reasons

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I was, well, the basic reason I was there, I gave 15 lectures on the

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Doctrine of the Holy Spirit at two different ministerial colleges, one in Andola and the second one in Lusaka, but, and his church really sponsors the

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Lusaka Ministerial College, but one of the most impressive things about the

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Reformed Baptist movement in Zambia, there are 25 or 26 Reformed Baptist churches that have adopted the

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Confession of Faith, but they have 40 church plants. It's just amazing what the

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Lord is doing with these men, and I appreciated Conrad so much.

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I mean, he made it a point to, you know, to see me, and we had some conversations, but he truly is a man of God who's greatly used, and I trust the

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Lord will continue to use him greatly, and you know, his church isn't even the largest church in Lusaka. Roland Kalafunga ministers at another

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Reformed Baptist church, and I think he has probably 700 or 800 that come, and Conrad has about 300 or 400, maybe 500,

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I don't know, and then there are a number of other, I think there's eight or nine Reformed Baptist churches in the city of Lusaka, plus a number of church plants.

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I spoke at one of the church plants as well, so it's just,

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Zambia is a bright spot in all of Africa. That's what

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I hear, and I believe it. I believe it. Amen. And we also, we have a regular listener in the

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Iron Sherpins Iron Radio audience who's from an area of Africa that is not so rich with Reformed theology, and that's

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Nigeria, Lagos, Nigeria. We have a listener, Osinachi, who sends in questions quite often to our listeners, and he,

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I believe he said to me that he is a member of the only Reformed Baptist church in Nigeria, if I'm not mistaken.

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Perhaps you know him better than I do, if that's the case. Well now, we do have a church, a pastor,

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Nick Kennicott, who has started a, basically a training program, ministerial training program in Nigeria, and he's over there right now.

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And so he just, he'd be a good man for you to interview, because the

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Lord is blessing that work, and taking Pentecostal churches, and wild churches, and these men, some of them have acknowledged they didn't even know the gospel, the

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Lord has saved them, and they're ministering in their churches, so it's, the Lord's working in Nigeria as well.

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Amen. To his glory. We're going to go to our first station break right now, if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for Gordon Taylor.

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Perhaps you have a question specifically about Reformed Baptists, what they are. I know that some of you may be hearing that phrase for the first time, and you don't even really know what that is.

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I can comically remember a friend of mine, Dr. James R. White, was being interviewed on the family radio stations, which are much smaller in number these days because of Harold Camping going through a very serious stage of apostasy that drove that network into the ground, but there was a time when that was a bastion on the airwaves of solid teaching and preaching, and my friend

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Dr. James R. White was being interviewed by one of the local representatives of a family radio affiliate, and he was not himself

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Reformed, which is interesting, and he wasn't really up on the lingo, and when he was interviewing

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James White, he said, so I understand you're a Reformed Baptist. What are you now?

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In other words, he thought he was Reformed from being a Baptist, like a Reformed alcoholic or something like that, so it was quite interesting to see that he didn't have a clue what that meant, but we're going to be coming back in just a short bit, and your questions can be sent to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com, and please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA, and only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter over which you're asking. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

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Don't go away. We'll be right back with Gordon Taylor of the Reformed Baptist Network. Tired of box store

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If you are a man in ministry leadership, we would love for you to join us Thursday, October 26th, 11 a .m.

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to 2 p .m. at the Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall on Carlisle Springs Road in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

35:29

And not only will you be fed spiritually by Pastor Bill Shishko and physically by Firehouse Subs and Wenger's Meats and Ice, you're also going to be leaving with a very heavy sack of free books, brand new free books donated by nearly every major Christian publisher in the

35:50

United States and the United Kingdom. These publishers have been donating to the

35:55

Iron Sharpens Iron Pastor's Luncheon going all the way back to the 1990s when my dear precious late wife,

36:03

Julie, began having these pastor's luncheons. It was her idea that I begin treating pastors that I knew to a

36:14

Christmas meal every year featuring a guest speaker and featuring gifts and so on and it grew to be such an enormous event beyond our ability to afford on our own that we began to get corporate sponsorships for it.

36:28

And after my wife went home to glory in 2011, I picked up the mantle and continued on with her vision of these pastor's luncheons and I am looking forward to meeting many of you for the first time who come to this year's pastor's luncheon and also to seeing some old friends that I've already met.

36:50

And it's free of charge and if you'd like to go, just send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com

36:58

and put luncheon in the subject line. We are now back with our guest today,

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Gordon Taylor, who is the coordinator of the Reform Baptist Network. Today we are discussing what are your church's core values suggestions to be prayerfully considered for adoption.

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If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

37:23

And Gordon, I understand that these core values are the main focus of an upcoming

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General Assembly gathering. Yes, that's correct. The core values document which all the churches have was...

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One of our member churches last year said they thought it would be wise to develop something like this, so a committee was appointed to write it and to look into it.

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And the committee worked for a number of months and came up with this and then submitted the paper to all the churches for comments.

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Very positive. There was some slight editing, no major changes, and now the paper will be put before the churches.

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It's not like a position paper. It's nothing that the church joining has to say, yes, this is it, but it's just an expression of who we are and what we believe as a group of churches, what holds us together, and what promotes the cause of missions.

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Amen, and I assume that since these are core values that you would hope that your member churches believe are very serious and have a high level of importance in their own churches' lives,

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I'm assuming that you would think that these would be important for all churches, because if you believe something is true, you obviously want others to, by God's grace, eventually wind up agreeing with those convictions.

39:02

Am I... Yeah, that's very true, Chris. The paper is divided into three parts.

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The first part is, and it's not a long paper, I mean, we're talking, what, three pages?

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The first part is our theological center, and then the second part, a gracious manner, and then the third part, an earnest mission, which the earnest mission, of course, is what has drawn us together in the first place, but it's spelled out there in some detail.

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So yes, I think this is really an expression of everything we've heard of every church as a member saying, this is really who we are, and this is who we want to be, and at least strive toward these very important core values that are expressed in this paper.

39:55

Amen, and one of the things under the theological identity in these core values is robustly confessional, if you could explain that a bit.

40:09

Sure. We are, unashamedly, those who subscribe to the

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Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, which, as you know, is really in large part a word -for -word, not quite word -for -word, copy of the

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Westminster Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Jews, with the exception, of course, in the area of baptism and church government, and also links us with the historic

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Reformed faith of the Congregationalists, the Samoan Declaration in England.

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So we are unashamedly, we embrace this historic Christian orthodoxy received from our

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Reformed forefathers, and it's not peripheral to our network, it is foundational to our unity and our common beliefs.

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So we wish to express that, and it is our intention to maintain that as a network of churches.

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Now, for those of our listeners who have no experience in being in a confessional church, at least one that identifies itself that way, because I believe that all churches are confessional churches, they're either good confessions or bad, they're either biblical or they're not, because once you start explaining to people what you believe, you're really declaring a confession of faith.

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But the London Baptist Confession of Faith that we adhere to, which is, as you said before, nearly identical to the

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Westminster, this is just a summary of biblical teachings that Baptists in the 17th century gathered around as a hallmark, or as hallmarks of what they believed were a summary of Christian belief.

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These are things from the scriptures, these are not the writings or thoughts of men, although they have been they have been gathered together in a particular confession by men, they are just a summary of biblical teachings, am

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I not right? That is very true. It is a summary of biblical teaching in the 31 chapters,

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I believe it is, of our confession, and so it covers, I suppose many would think that it's a very long confession of faith, but it is just really a brief compendium of the basic doctrinal teachings of the scriptures, and we hold to those, and it's just an expression of what we believe the

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Bible actually teaches. The confession, of course, does not have the same authority as the

42:59

Bible. The Bible is our sole authority, and the confession itself states that, but it is nonetheless what we believe the

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Bible teaches, and an expression of what we do believe. In fact, we have our first listener with a question right now that is asking about confessional

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Christianity. We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who asks, do you ever get afraid that being a confessional church may keep you stuck, frozen in time, and actually rob your church of really pursuing one of the

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Reformation battle cries, Semper Reformanda, always reforming?

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If you're always looking back to a 17th century document as the correct summary of biblical teaching, may this not stifle you in really being

43:54

Berean? Yeah, you know, we actually address this under our theological center, under a heading called

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Intentional Humility, and we do believe that a haughty

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Calvinist is a contradiction in terms, so we embrace what's called Semper Reformanda and acknowledge our need to evermore conform our lives and ministries to the doctrines that we confess, and we also acknowledge the reality and the necessity of the

44:30

Holy Spirit's continuing work of illumination, and since we believe in Sola Scriptura, that is,

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Scripture alone, we want to submit everything to God's Word, and we understand that the confession is our subordinate standard.

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It's not our ultimate standard. It is the Bible, and so we,

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I don't think of it, we don't think of it as being stuck in time. We think of it as, this is what we believe the

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Bible teaches. We understand the Bible is the only authority we have.

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We do understand that there can be more illumination, not more revelation, but more illumination, and so that's the only type of confessionalism that we believe is really confessional, to acknowledge

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Sola Scriptura and always be willing to place everything under the magnifying glass of Holy Scripture.

45:27

We have another listener who has a question about something that you just mentioned in regard to humility.

45:35

We have CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, and CJ says, is a part of your mission to break through the unfortunate stereotypes that surround

45:48

Calvinists? I understand that it seems to be militating against the very teachings of Calvinism to be proud, and yet, if we are to be honest, there are many haughty and proud

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Calvinists among us who belittle others, even other brothers in Christ, not because they have not yet discovered the same theological truths, but because they think that they are somehow intellectually or academically superior.

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Aren't these attitudes something that needs to be repented of as sin, and should we not do everything that we can to overcome these horrible stereotypes that unfortunately have some basis in truth?

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Yeah, we actually address this in the core values doctrine under the section of a gracious manner, because what we want, you know,

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I think, it's my opinion, that sometimes our haughtiness is, or our pride, is a result of doubts whether or not we can defend what we believe, and so we have to sort of lash out, and I don't believe that, and the churches in our association don't believe that as well.

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We want to be by the grace of God, and again, we're all humans, we all have sin, and I'm sure we'll fail like everyone else does, but at least it's our intention to be

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Christ -like in our love for one another, and to express this love, and especially to those who disagree with us, and yet maintaining our common confessional unity, and we want to express our love and admiration for all who are advancing the true gospel of Christ.

47:47

Now, do you think that—oh, go ahead, I'm sorry. No, no, go ahead, go ahead. I was just going to say, do you think that some of what we have experienced amongst not only our fellow

47:57

Calvinists, but even in our own minds and hearts on occasion, perhaps more often than we care to admit, is that, in a positive note,

48:08

Reformed people, Calvinists, they tend to be people that are meticulous about accuracy in teaching and interpretation of God's word, and they do so, they have this attitude very often because of a genuine love for God, and a love for his word, and an anger towards false teaching and false teachers, or a righteous indignation in that area.

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And although those are good things, those are good attributes, those are good thoughts and intentions for any

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Christian, because we are people who are on this earth still veiled in sinful flesh, we still battle with sin, that when you combine that meticulousness with someone who still is a sinner—and

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I know that there's a debate whether we should be calling Christians sinners or not, I understand that—but we are people who sin.

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And when you combine that meticulousness with sin, you get arrogance, pride,

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Pharisaism, and so on. Yes, I think that's correct. And that's why, you know,

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I think we can disagree with people without being disagreeable.

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By that I mean without lashing out at them and making it a personal issue. You know, we even,

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I mean, we agree that the theology of Roman Catholicism is is, uh, is

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Antichrist. It's just simply wrong. And yet at the same time,

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I'm sure that I would hope that all of us want to love those who are caught in this false teaching and to lead them out of it.

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And if that's the case in that way, how much more with those who are true brothers in Christ, who know the

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Lord, and who are involved in some type of error, that we treat them with love and respect, even though we disagree with them, point out their error, but do so in a manner that expresses the love of Christ.

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There may be times when we have to say, like Jesus said to Peter, get behind me Satan, but we need to be very careful before we ever say something like that to another brother, lest we unnecessarily rebuke and show a lack of love and concern for him.

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I know one of the reasons that we, of all people, should be the last to be accused of arrogance and pride, and I said should be,

51:02

I'm not saying that we necessarily have warranted that right or that reputation that we should not be accused of this, but I'm saying that we should, because of our theology, be the last to be accused of it, is because of the fact that we wholeheartedly believe that our humanness doesn't contribute one single thing to our being rescued from sin and damnation.

51:31

It is a hundred percent of God, and therefore it is really insane to have pride and arrogance, especially in regard to our theology, isn't it?

51:42

That's very true. I think if we really apply the truths of grace to our own hearts and meditate upon the cross and God's electing love, and we know, we confess this with our mouths, that our salvation had nothing to do with us, it has everything to do with God, and there's no reason in us why he should choose us to be the object of his special love, that that does, when it's applied by the grace of the

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Holy Spirit, create a humility in us and take away pride, and that needs to be expressed toward our brothers always.

52:24

We don't always do that, but when we don't, we do need to repent of it and seek God's forgiveness and seek their forgiveness, frankly, if that happens.

52:32

Amen. Somebody very aptly put it, I'm not sure who coined this phrase,

52:39

I don't even know if it's knowable who coined it, but the only thing that we as humans contribute to our salvation is the sin that we are being redeemed from.

52:50

Amen. That's true. That's very true. And we are going to our midway station break. This is a bit longer break than the other breaks because Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida requires that we have a 12 -minute break between our hours, our two hours, so if you'd like to join us on the air with a question, why not write a question now and send it to us because time will fly away before you know it.

53:13

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence. If you live outside the USA and only remain anonymous, it's about a personal and private matter over what you're asking.

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Don't go away. We'll be right back with Gordon Taylor of the Reform Baptist Network right after these messages from our sponsor.

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That's liyfc .org. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune into A Visit to the

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Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for A Visit to the Pastor's Study, because everyone needs a pastor.

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Before we return to our guest today, Gordon Taylor, we have some important announcements to make in regard to events that are coming up that you should know about.

01:03:45

First of all, I'll repeat some information about my upcoming Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio pastor's luncheon.

01:03:52

It's Thursday, October 26th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m., at the Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on Carlisle Springs Road.

01:04:03

And it features our guest speaker, Rev. Bill Shishko, retired pastor of the

01:04:08

Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, Long Island, New York. Currently the home regional missionary for Reformation Metro New York.

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He's also an adjunct faculty member at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylor, South Carolina.

01:04:24

And he is going to be speaking at the luncheon on Restoring Reformation Passion.

01:04:30

And that's free of charge if you are a man in the ministry, whether it's pastor, elder, deacon, or parachurch leader.

01:04:37

If you'd like to go, absolutely free of charge. And you'll also be leaving with a ton of free books donated by major Christian publishers all over the

01:04:45

United States and the UK. Just register at chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com

01:04:54

and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line. Then coming up in November, something that we have just heard about during our discussion with Gordon Taylor, we have the 2017

01:05:05

Reform Baptist Network Conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan from November 6th through the 9th.

01:05:14

And the speakers at this conference include David Murray, Jeff Smith, Greg Nichols, who has been also a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio a number of times,

01:05:27

Chad Bennett, and Chris Powell. Chris Powell actually wrote to me recently and told me that a missionary had contacted him after hearing about the

01:05:38

Reform Baptist Network on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And this missionary had come to the doctrines of grace partially by God using

01:05:48

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. I was very happy to hear that news from Chris Powell. It was really an encouragement to me.

01:05:54

But if you would like to attend the Reform Baptist Network conference, go to reformbaptistnetwork .com,

01:06:02

reformbaptistnetwork .com forward slash conference, and you will get all the information that you need on that conference.

01:06:11

Then coming up also in November, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals are having their annual

01:06:19

Quaker Town conference on Reform Theology. That's November 17th through the 18th in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania, and it is being held at the

01:06:32

Bible Fellowship Church there in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania, the

01:06:37

Grace Bible Fellowship Church on Old Bethlehem Pike North in Quaker Town.

01:06:43

The speakers include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant.

01:06:50

The theme is for Still Our Ancient Foe, obviously referring to Satan from that classic

01:06:57

Reformation hymn, A Mighty Fortress, by Martin Luther. If you'd like to register for that conference, go to alliancenet .org,

01:07:05

alliancenet .org, and click on Events, and click on Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology.

01:07:13

And then lastly in January, from the 17th through the 20th, the

01:07:19

G3 Conference returns to Atlanta, Georgia, and the G3 stands for Grace, Gospel, and Glory, and the speakers at the

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G3 Conference include Stephen Lawson, Votie Balcom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .P.

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Charles Jr., Tim Challies, Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Mathenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, Martha Peace, and Justin Peters.

01:07:50

The theme is Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship. The 17th of January is exclusively a

01:07:58

Spanish -speaking edition of the conference, and the 18th through the 20th, the conference will exclusively be in the

01:08:05

English language, and that is in Atlanta, Georgia. If you would like to register for the

01:08:10

G3 Conference, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com. God willing,

01:08:16

I will be both at the Quaker Town Conference and the G3 Conference with an Iron Sharpens Iron radio exhibitor's booth, so I look forward to seeing you there, and I thank my friends at batterydepot .com

01:08:29

and also the publishers of the New American Standard Bible for making my travel to these different conferences possible.

01:08:36

And now I'm going to have to conduct the most uncomfortable portion of my show, and that is to beg you for money.

01:08:45

The sponsors, the advertisers of Iron Sharpens Iron radio for quite a long time were urging me to make public appeals for donations and new advertisers because they know that we are in serious financial difficulties here on this program, and the program is on the verge of possibly going off the air.

01:09:05

Our advertisers don't want that to happen, and if you don't want it to happen either, if you love this program, if it benefits your life in some way, then please go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

01:09:16

click on events, I'm sorry, click on support, and then you will be given an address, a mailing address where you can mail a check for any amount made payable to Iron Sharpens Iron radio.

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And please never, ever, ever siphon money away from your giving to your local church that you are accustomed to.

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If you're not a member of a local church, you are living in disobedience against God, and you should actively be seeking out a

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Bible -believing church to connect yourself with and to submit under their eldership.

01:09:49

But if you are blessed above and beyond your ability to support your local church, and you're looking for other worthwhile ways to spend your money, well, please consider

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Iron Sharpens Iron radio if you do indeed love it and don't want it to disappear from the airwaves. As I said, go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

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ironsharpensironradio .com, and click on support, and you'll have the address right there to send a check made out to Iron Sharpens Iron radio.

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If you'd like to advertise with us, as long as what you are advertising is compatible with the theology expressed on our program, it doesn't have to be identical, but it needs to be compatible.

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Whether it's your church, your power church organization, your business, corporation, professional practice, if you're a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, or it's a special event that you're having that you want to promote, just send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:10:48

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put advertising in the subject line. We would love to hear from you because we certainly could use the advertising dollars.

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And now we are returning to our discussion with Gordon Taylor, coordinator of the

01:11:04

Reform Baptist Network, and we are discussing what are your church's core values, suggestions to be prayerfully considered for adoption.

01:11:12

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:11:18

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And going back to the theological issues that are among your core values,

01:11:27

Gordon, with the Reform Baptist Network, consciously Christ -centered focus is one of them.

01:11:33

If you could tell us about that. Yes, I'll be happy to talk with you about that,

01:11:38

Chris. We do want to be consciously Christ -centered in our focus, and that is critical to our theological center.

01:11:52

All scripture is inspired by God, but we understand that Christ is the

01:11:59

Alpha and the Omega. He's the beginning and the end. The Old Testament points toward Christ. The Gospels tell us of Christ and his history, his life, his death, his burial, his resurrection, ascension.

01:12:12

And then the epistles explain all of that. So while we're robustly confessional, we want to be very, very

01:12:22

Christ -centered and Gospel -centered. So the

01:12:27

Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is central in what we do in our preaching, in our lives, in the ministry, in our churches.

01:12:36

So we wholeheartedly, wholeheartedly, and with enthusiasm, affirm the supremacy of Christ and endeavor to view everything in light of our

01:12:48

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And very closely connected to that, as we move under the heading of a gracious manner for your core values, you have

01:12:59

Christ -like love. If you could tell us about that. Sure. You know, our

01:13:06

Lord Jesus Christ said, by this all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love one for another.

01:13:12

And I know it's a great grief to many of us, and certainly to me personally, that sometimes that love amongst brothers has not been expressed and practiced.

01:13:27

And we want to, with the Lord's help, to be able to do that one with another and not just towards other ones in our network.

01:13:37

Because frankly, if we only express love to those who are Reformed Baptists or to those who are

01:13:43

Reformed, we, I mean, even the world does that. I mean, there are those who are members of clubs who love each other because they enjoy the same thing and have the same values and so forth.

01:13:58

But we want to be able to express this love to all who are advancing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, no matter what their name is or what banner they're under.

01:14:06

At the same time, holding strongly to our beliefs, but to express that.

01:14:14

And we want to do that by, we're willing to use what we are developing to be our news.

01:14:24

We put out news from various missionaries to be able to put out news by those who aren't necessarily a part of our network, but who are advancing the

01:14:32

Gospel. We want to express it in that way. Now, we do have a listener from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, Harrison, who says,

01:14:44

I have heard that there are even some dispensationalist Calvinists and landmark

01:14:50

Baptist Calvinists who adhere to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.

01:14:55

Are they truly being consistent with the confession? Is this actually something that a consistent and logically faithful dispensationalist can embrace as their confession?

01:15:12

You know, I was raised in dispensationalism. And I came out of dispensationalism and then embraced the 1689.

01:15:21

And what I realized was the two theologies are not compatible.

01:15:28

Now, I love my dispensational brothers that I used to be a part of, and some of them are true

01:15:36

Calvinists. John MacArthur is one famous one. Yes, John MacArthur is one famous one, and there were others.

01:15:44

In fact, I had a Calvinistic pastor friend when I was being basically separated from the association

01:15:53

I was in who begged me to stay because he wanted to keep Calvinists in. So we love them as brothers, but they really can't embrace the confession because our confession is covenantal.

01:16:06

And covenant theology is very different from dispensational theology.

01:16:12

And so it would be a matter that the two are not compatible.

01:16:18

They could not embrace the confession. They may embrace parts of it. They may embrace the soteriology, but not the covenantal part.

01:16:28

They would swallow at that, so they couldn't be a part of it. And as far as the landmarks, I actually, my wife and I attended a landmark church my senior year of college, and we loved that preacher.

01:16:43

He did something I wouldn't have ever advised a pastor to do. He preached on one of the five points every single

01:16:49

Sunday. And as he loved to say, he says, we are located at five points geographically and five points theologically.

01:17:05

But he was a wonderful brother. He taught me a lot. He helped me immensely.

01:17:11

But of course, the landmarks do not hold to a universal church. He would want to call some of us invisible

01:17:18

Christians when we walk in in a lighthearted way, a very lighthearted way.

01:17:24

But our confession is very, very clear that we do hold to a universal church. We don't think it's invisible.

01:17:31

Well, it's invisible, I guess, because we're a Saint Geneva we can't see. Right. But a universal church.

01:17:37

So to accept all the doctrines of every chapter of the confession, a landmark really couldn't do that.

01:17:48

Um, although, um, I suppose they they think they might be able to, but they really can't.

01:17:54

But we must love them musically. Yes. In fact, I know of a pastor in Texas that is now on the mission field.

01:18:03

He's retired from the pastorate. Jack Green. Have you ever heard of Jack Green? He was a landmark Calvinist Baptist.

01:18:09

I have not. He was really a powerful preacher. I used to get tapes from him, and it was really gifted and powerful.

01:18:17

Obviously, though, I disagreed with the landmark aspect of his theology.

01:18:24

And now the confession, though, and in fact, none of the Reformed confessions would prohibit somebody from being premillennial, though, right?

01:18:34

I don't believe so, no. You could be historical premill, different from dispensational premill, yes.

01:18:41

Um, and that would be, that would, as far as I know, would fit within the confession.

01:18:48

The confession simply states the basics of eschatology without taking a stand on the various views of eschatology.

01:18:59

Well, now we come under the heading of a gracious manner again.

01:19:04

We have gospel unity, if you could explain that in more detail. Sure. We, as I stated, we have a gospel -focused aim, and we want to be gracious in that, but we also want to maintain the unity of the faith, the unity of the

01:19:27

Spirit, as Paul says in Ephesians chapter 4, in the bond of peace. So we don't want to break unity.

01:19:36

Now, I understand that there are various levels of unity. We have Reformed who are

01:19:43

Presbyterian. We, I greatly value the Banner of Truth.

01:19:48

I've been to many of those conferences, and there's a unity there in the gospel. I know that there are other groups that meet, so we have a unity with them.

01:19:57

So we never want to break that unity that the Lord Himself has placed.

01:20:02

You know, when I was over in Zambia, Chris, I found it very interesting that the Caboada Baptist Church sponsors this

01:20:10

Lusaka Ministerial College where I taught the Doctrines of Grace. There were about 34 or 35 men that were present.

01:20:19

Many of them were older men who were actually Pentecostal, and here I was teaching the

01:20:25

Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. I believe in a closed canon. I believe in the cessation of the miraculous gifts and so forth.

01:20:32

And they listened with respect. Many of them don't believe that, of course, but, you know, we have a unity in the gospel itself because they do believe in salvation by faith alone and Christ alone, only by the grace of God.

01:20:51

And so there's a unity there, even though I believe they're in error, and they believe

01:20:57

I'm in error. But yet we could express that love one for another, even in that setting.

01:21:04

And that's the kind of spirit that we want to have, to maintain unity while maintaining our distinctions and our particular beliefs.

01:21:13

Yeah, before Buzz Taylor has a comment or question, I just wanted to clarify something. Don't you think that though most of our

01:21:21

Pentecostal and Charismatic brethren, even though we don't think that their continuationism is consistent with believing in a closed canon,

01:21:33

I think most of them would claim they believe the canon is closed. Yeah, I think that's right.

01:21:42

You know, one of the questions that arose when I was in Zambia—and by the way, this Pentecostalism is rampant all over the world, not just in the

01:21:51

States. I think it's more rampant in other places of the world. But one of the questions that I pressed on a brother was,

01:21:57

I said, well, he believes that God still speaks to him. I said, what does he say? Well, he really couldn't answer that.

01:22:03

And I think what he meant—and again, I'm probably putting words into his mouth and into his mind—was that he had impressions as to what

01:22:14

God would want him to do. But he wouldn't ever come to the place where he would say that his impressions or God speaking to him had the same authority as the

01:22:25

Bible. He couldn't go there. And I think that's probably true of a lot of our

01:22:30

Pentecostal brothers, that ultimately the Scripture has authority.

01:22:37

There are some, I think, who would—we know there are some on the fringe edges who claim to have revelations equal with the

01:22:44

Bible. There's a lot of extreme heresy coming out of that movement as well. Right, there is. And the

01:22:50

Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to say. I think that a lot of times people get the impression—well, of course, you've heard them say, you guys are not unified because look at all the different denominations you have, and they think that unity means that we're all going to get together and we're going to agree on things.

01:23:07

But I like the way you put it, there's a unity in the Gospel. But by saying that, that doesn't mean we can all worship together.

01:23:13

For example, I know you're not going to agree with me, but as a Presbyterian, I became a Presbyterian while I was attending the

01:23:19

Assemblies of God. Well, I went up to my pastor and said I wanted my children baptized. You can imagine how that went over.

01:23:25

It just didn't happen. And I realized, okay, for the sake of following my own convictions biblically,

01:23:31

I have to go somewhere else. It doesn't mean that I was going to burn the Assembly of God church down as I left, because there still was that unity in the

01:23:39

Gospel. So we can't always worship together if we have differences that won't allow it, but we still have that unity in the

01:23:45

Gospel. And as far as what was just said about the Pentecostals, I will say this. I think that they need to be extremely careful, though, because as we would talk about the solos of the

01:23:56

Reformation, by believing in the extra -biblical revelation, they cannot say sola scriptura, they say scriptura.

01:24:06

Yeah, and I agree with you, Buzz. I do agree with that. I mean, we can't—I mean, you're a

01:24:12

Presbyterian, I'm a Baptist. We can love each other. We can agree on so much. But, you know, if you came to me, if I'm a pastor and wanted your children baptized,

01:24:24

I said, well, I can't do that. You know, we had Presbyterians worshiping with us when I was a pastor at Sycamore Baptist.

01:24:31

There was—they had no other choice. They had to be with us. And we got along fabulously. But when they wanted their children baptized, they told me they were going to another church out of town and doing that.

01:24:43

I said, that's fine. We can do that. And it's right. Pentecostals don't believe in sola scriptura.

01:24:50

And that is a very serious matter. Right. And there are some that would say that their gift of tongues is not an addition to the

01:25:00

Scripture. They would say that some of them would say it's just a private prayer language that is in a tongue that they don't even understand.

01:25:07

So they would claim that they are not adding anything to the Bible or a new revelation. But obviously, as you said, there are all different kinds.

01:25:16

There are people who are Pentecostal and charismatic who claim they're hearing God's voice just as clearly as people listening to our voice.

01:25:23

It isn't just the gift of tongues. It's the gift of prophecy that they also claim. Right, right. And by the way, Buzz, there are

01:25:29

Reformed Baptists all over the world who have their children baptized after they repent and believe.

01:25:37

I never saw a child baptized in the Bible. But anyway. Excuse me? Continue your subject.

01:25:47

The next, this is actually going to have to apply to Buzz and I right now, biblical reconciliation.

01:25:55

Let's wait till this program's over, man. If you could explain that in a little bit greater detail.

01:26:03

Sure. Isn't it wonderful when we can disagree and still love each other? Amen. But there are times, there are times when problems arise that cause suspicion and divisions.

01:26:16

But what we want to be committed to as churches in our network is to the biblical principles of conflict resolution.

01:26:27

And we, again, by the grace of God, what we want to do is to seek understanding with one another.

01:26:35

We want to think the best of each other. And when those disagreements come, to focus on the gospel and to speak with one another with gentleness and treat one another so that we can solve the problem.

01:26:51

And if a problem can't be solved, to at least be able to embrace one another as brothers and to be able to have that fellowship in the gospel, even if we have to worship separately, as our brother has mentioned.

01:27:06

And I really believe this is fundamental to, I might say, the

01:27:12

ABCs of Christianity. It's the spirit that we need to have that needs to be evident to the world.

01:27:21

And one of the ways it can be evident is when there is genuine reconciliation amongst brothers when we work at this.

01:27:29

And I know, I mean, I'm old enough to know that it's not always possible.

01:27:37

It doesn't always happen like we'd like it to happen. But at least by God's grace, we want to be committed to this whole principle of reconciling our differences to one another.

01:27:49

Yes, there are different levels of unity and separation that we have as Reformed Baptists.

01:27:57

Like, for instance, most of us, in fact, I've never met a Reformed Baptist that didn't love

01:28:03

Sinclair Ferguson. And yet, although we love every opportunity for him to preach from our pulpits, our

01:28:11

Reformed Baptist pulpits, he is a Presbyterian. And he, therefore, if he has only been baptized as an infant, we could not accept him into membership in any of our churches.

01:28:23

So there are different roles and different levels of unity and separation that if we're going to be faithful and consistent, we have to follow through with them, even though if it may make us feel uncomfortable, if we may love a man like Sinclair, if we disagree with him on baptism and he has not been baptized, we could not welcome him into membership, could we?

01:28:49

Well, probably not. Although I think there are some Reformed Baptist churches that will accept a

01:28:56

Presbyterian who has those convictions. You know, the church I pastored in East Moline, Illinois, for many years—well, in fact, almost until I left—there was really no other option for a

01:29:08

Reformed church in a community of almost 300 ,000 people. And so by default, we—now, that's not true now.

01:29:16

There is a, I think there's a PCA church just across the river from where I pastored. But so consequently, we got several families that were

01:29:29

Reformed but not Baptist. And what we did to show our love and appreciation for them, we created what we called—I didn't know what else to call it.

01:29:40

We called it like a pastoral agreement of oversight where we extended ourselves to them, they extended themselves to us under our pastoral care.

01:29:51

And although they couldn't be official members and vote, we would go to them privately and say, listen, we're interested in your opinion, especially if we're going to raise up an elder, an office bearer, and we want to know what you think of this person.

01:30:03

So essentially, they had a de facto vote. So de facto vote. So that's how we operated at that time, to express our love for them and embrace them as much as we possibly could.

01:30:19

And at the same time, though, don't we have to be careful that our affections towards someone and our love for them, even as a brother and sister in Christ, doesn't blur what we know what is a biblical command.

01:30:32

And if we let our emotions and our fondness for someone override everything else, we could be actually depriving somebody of being baptized.

01:30:44

Because if we believe that being immersed in water as a repentant believer is baptism, don't we have to be careful that we're not getting too soft on things like that?

01:30:58

Yeah, we do. And I think that can be done in a kind way as well. I mean, I told these people that I would be teaching on baptism from time to time, especially when we had a baptismal service, and that they would hear it, and I preached as strongly as I could about believers' baptism.

01:31:16

And they heard those messages. They knew where we stood, and we didn't give on that.

01:31:24

There was one man that I worked shoulder -to -shoulder with for 23 years at our

01:31:30

Christian school. I couldn't convince him, and he couldn't convince me, but we lived together in peace.

01:31:37

But each maintaining his own convictions. You know, what you gotta do, though, is people have to know that as they're coming up to the building to go to church, they have to read the sign on the front of the church to know what kind of church it is.

01:31:51

Well, the sign doesn't know what you say, though. If it says a

01:31:56

Presbyterian church, it's a Presbyterian church. If it says Baptist, it's a Baptist. You know what to expect, at least. Well, like I just said, not all

01:32:02

Presbyterian churches or Baptist churches say they're Presbyterian or Baptist on the sign. Especially today.

01:32:11

There's all kinds of names that we have. But we are going to our final break right now, and if you'd like to join us on the air before we run out of time with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

01:32:24

chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Please give us your first name, your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the

01:32:32

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before we run out of room for you. chrisarnson at gmail .com. We are back to our final 25 minutes or so with Gordon Taylor, coordinator of the

01:39:42

Reform Baptist Network. We are discussing what are your church's core values, suggestions to be prayerfully considered for adoption, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question before we run out of time, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:39:56

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, and only remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable because the question regards a personal and private matter.

01:40:09

And by the way, our thanks to Kathy in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who actually found the source of that quote that I had read or mentioned earlier.

01:40:22

Jonathan Edwards is the one who said, you contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary.

01:40:30

Okay, well, thank you very much, Kathy, for actually pinpointing exactly the person who at least said it in that clear of a way that reflected what

01:40:41

I said earlier. We are now under the aspect of the core values that the

01:40:53

Reformed Baptist Network seeks to follow and embrace and so on.

01:40:59

We have an earnest mission. If you could tell us about an earnest mission. Yes, Chris, I'll be happy to do that.

01:41:10

We are, as I said, our purpose, the Reformed Baptist Network, is to cooperate together in the worldwide proclamation of the gospel by bringing glory to God.

01:41:19

So we have an earnest mission to proclaim the gospel and strive together to do that, to establish churches as we do that.

01:41:30

So we have two parts under this heading, an earnest mission. First, we talk about a sincere offer of Christ in the gospel and then of his common love for all mankind.

01:41:43

Under this sincere offer, we want to make it very plain that we hold very strongly to the sovereign grace of God in salvation, unconditional election, definite particular redemption, and that we affirm that Jesus Christ and his salvation is determined by God and it is to be preached indiscriminately and freely and sincerely extended to all in the world to the gospel.

01:42:19

The gospel is to be preached to all, invite all to come to Christ. So we reject, on the one hand, hyper -Calvinism and, of course, a lot of people think probably we are hyper -Calvinists, but we're not.

01:42:31

We're hyper -Calvinists because we believe in preaching, don't we? We believe in evangelism.

01:42:36

We believe in sending out missionaries. But we reject the hyper -Calvinists who, on the basis of God's sovereign grace, reject human responsibility and the free and sincere offer of the gospel.

01:42:47

On the other hand, we make it plain that we reject Arminian theology that basically thinks that on the basis of man's decision that he becomes a

01:43:00

Christian and they reject the doctrines of sovereign grace.

01:43:06

So we're willing to embrace this tension that the Bible has, recognize the mysteries of God's sovereign grace on the one hand, of his purposes, of his methods, and on the other hand, we believe strongly in the commands to preach the gospel to every creature.

01:43:24

And I love the paraphrase that the author of this section, who is actually one of our pastors in Florida, Jeff Smith, gleaned from Thomas Watson.

01:43:36

And I want to read this because I just like it so well. He says, "...rather we embrace the tension the

01:43:42

Bible itself sets before us, recognizing there are mysteries in God's person, purpose, methods, and ways that are beyond our present finite ability to fully comprehend."

01:43:54

And then this paraphrase from Watson, "...faith must swim where reason can only wade."

01:44:02

Amen. And the hyper -Calvinist label is often hurled against anybody who is historically a five -point

01:44:17

Calvinist, somebody who believes in the doctrines of sovereign grace. And that is an erroneous label to call someone who adheres to those things a hyper -Calvinist, just because they adhere to those things.

01:44:30

It reveals that the one using the label is misinformed about that historical label of hyper -Calvinism.

01:44:41

And I find it ironic that most people who call all Calvinists hyper -Calvinists have such a disdain for John Calvin, or at least a caricature of him that has never really even existed, that you wonder why do they even bother putting hyper on the word

01:45:00

Calvinist? If they hate Calvinism anyway, and they despise their caricature of Calvin, why do they even use hyper as a way of describing it?

01:45:11

Yeah, that's exactly right. You just say what they hate. But that is a label that's often used.

01:45:20

And there is such a thing as a hyper -Calvinist who doesn't believe in the free off of the gospel and doesn't believe that every sinner should be indiscriminately off of the gospel and told that they may come directly to Christ.

01:45:33

I'm a Spurgeon Calvinist. I just love Spurgeon and his preaching of the gospel with a full, robust belief in all the doctrines of grace and a strong evangelistic desire and a heart to reach all men with the gospel.

01:45:49

And that's what we want to be. Amen. Well, I do know, and I'm not going to belabor this issue because we don't have time to, and it's not the intention of our focus.

01:45:57

But I know of some Reformed Christians who claim they disagree with the free offer of the gospel, but who do indiscriminately evangelize.

01:46:07

They think that those are two separate issues of indiscriminately evangelizing everybody because nobody knows who the elect are.

01:46:14

But they seem to think that there's something uniquely wrong about phrasing it as a free offer.

01:46:20

But we don't have time, obviously, to go into that. But there are people who are

01:46:28

Hyper -Calvinists. In fact, I have come across Hyper -Calvinists on both ends of the spectrum on the largeness or wideness of the gates of heaven and the smallness and narrowness of the gates of heaven.

01:46:45

You have many primitive Baptists who are, I think, correctly labeled

01:46:51

Hyper -Calvinists. Not all of them, but there are many who... Because they don't believe that the gospel, the evangelizing of the lost with the gospel has anything to do at all with their regeneration.

01:47:04

And they believe that the gates of heaven are much wider than we would because they think that even many people who have never come to knowingly embrace

01:47:15

Christ on this earth while alive will still, nonetheless, go to heaven because they were of the elect since they so far separate the evangelizing of the lost with the gospel from regeneration that they don't believe that necessarily all elect people will bear fruit by repenting and believing.

01:47:34

Then you have other people on the other end of the spectrum like the Netherlands Reformed denomination which has a much narrower gate of heaven than we would because they believe that there has to be some kind of a supernatural experience of some kind for somebody to have any confidence that they are one of the elect.

01:47:52

So it's really a strange thing. But you do have those two extremes. Have you come across both those types of Hyper -Calvinists?

01:48:01

Well, I have, not personally with the primitive Baptists, but with pastors who were previously primitive

01:48:10

Baptists and came out of that and saw the error of it, and so they've talked to me about it.

01:48:17

The Netherlands Reformed, I know some people in it. I think this idea of a particular experience is a very dangerous thing because it really shuts the door to the sincere offer and the desire in that sincere offer that people actually come to Christ and believe on him.

01:48:45

Yes, I have friends formerly with the Netherlands Reformed denomination,

01:48:51

Joel Beakey being one of them who left that denomination. Yes, yes. And some of them have said that you could have a congregation with hundreds and hundreds of members, depending upon where you are geographically, how dominant that denomination might be, and yet when they have the

01:49:09

Lord's Supper, maybe four or five people will receive it because nobody else has the confidence that they are of the elect.

01:49:16

Yeah, and that's really sad, isn't it? The joy of the Lord is our strength, and the

01:49:24

Lord intends for his people to know that they belong to him. That's fundamental to the gospel,

01:49:31

I believe. I mean, I went through years of doubt myself, especially after I came to understand the doctrines of grace.

01:49:38

I struggled for seven years, in fact, with assurance, but now I understand that was unnecessary, but nonetheless it was good for me to go through that to understand how it is that a person coming from basically an

01:49:52

Armenian perspective to a Calvinist perspective would doubt whether or not he really believed when he was

01:49:59

Armenian, whether that was just his decision, you know. But the

01:50:04

Lord loves sinners, and he receives sinners, and that I rejoice. Amen. We have a question from Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who asks,

01:50:15

Can you explain how being a Reformed Baptist is not a contradiction in terms or an oxymoron, as some of our

01:50:24

Presbyterian and Paedo -Baptist brethren would claim it is? And even some of our non -Calvinist

01:50:30

Baptist friends would agree with them on that, that you cannot be both Reformed and Baptist.

01:50:37

Well, I guess my explanation would be, look at history. And the fact is that when our

01:50:47

Confession of Faith was adopted, and actually it was published first in 1677,

01:50:54

Westminster, I believe it was 1646, was it, or 47, somewhere in there, that the

01:51:02

Puritans of that age were Reformed, and the Baptists were Reformed, and they had differences regarding church government and baptism.

01:51:11

I think the second London Confession was 1677, wasn't it? 1677, and then published.

01:51:19

I mean, it's called the 1688 because of the Acts of Toleration. But the fact is, historically, we've been

01:51:28

Reformed. And what's in a name? I think the term

01:51:35

Reformed Baptist was coined probably in the middle part of the 20th century to have some way to identify a return to that Confession of Faith.

01:51:44

Some have attributed that very phrase to Walt Chantry, that he came up with that phrase. I don't know if that's true or not.

01:51:50

Yeah, I don't know if that's true either. I know it was coined. So it's not an oxymoron.

01:51:55

We're just embracing the Confession of Faith that was our Baptist forefathers embraced back in the 17th century.

01:52:04

We hold to the same thing, and that's the name we used. I know that there are those who are

01:52:11

Reformed who say, you can't be a Baptist and Reformed. But I would just say, well, we have been since the 1600s, so well, accept it.

01:52:23

Yeah, I actually had an Anglican scholar once mock me when

01:52:29

I told him I was a Reformed Baptist. He said, that is nothing but an invention that came out of American soil during the

01:52:41

Second Great Awakening. And I said, hmm, that's interesting. And this man was from England. I said, well, why is my Confession of Faith the 1689

01:52:48

London Baptist Confession? Right, right. Now, of course, we who are

01:52:55

Reformed Baptists, and no offense to my co -host Reverend Buzz Taylor, who's a Presbyterian, we would say that Baptists took the term

01:53:05

Reformed to a further logical conclusion. Because of our views of sola scriptura, we believe that we broke even further away from the

01:53:15

Church of Rome in abandoning certain things involving church government and the ordinance of baptism that we have abandoned or have not embraced, depending upon when you became a

01:53:29

Baptist. The teaching of infant baptism, which would further separate us from Rome, and also believing in the autonomy of a local congregation with no higher authority other than Christ outside of your local gathered assembly.

01:53:47

Yeah, we do believe that very strongly, don't we? I mean, I believe that. I so much appreciate

01:53:53

Reformed Brethren who are Paedo -Baptists. I really do. I've learned so much from them. But I do believe that the

01:54:04

London Baptist Confession took the Reformation to a further point that is excellent and good and needs to be considered carefully by our

01:54:17

Reformed Paedo -Baptist friends. Well, I want you to have four minutes now to, uninterrupted, just summarize everything that you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before the program ends.

01:54:30

Well, thank you, Chris. I'll be happy to do that. I'm so glad,

01:54:35

Chris, on the one hand, that you really zeroed in on this core values document that we are proposing for our network.

01:54:48

It expresses my own personal heart, and I know the heart of those who wrote it, but also the heart of everyone we've heard from.

01:54:56

In our association. And I want to express that our network is missions -minded.

01:55:04

That is our purpose, to glorify God through cooperation and worldwide evangelism. And to do so on the basis of our confession of faith.

01:55:12

We hold strongly to the confession. We believe every doctrine of every chapter in the confession, and we don't ever want to give that up.

01:55:22

But we want to do so with a spirit of great humility. Knowing that there are those who disagree with us who are good and true brothers.

01:55:32

And we want to express that gracious manner towards all, even if we don't see eye to eye with them.

01:55:42

And we do want to be Christ -centered in our focus. You know, there's a book that I read by Sinclair Ferguson. I've read it twice, actually.

01:55:50

And the second time I took copious notes. It's called The Whole Christ. And I love that book because it deals with this moral controversy.

01:56:00

And it deals with the fact that Thomas Boston and the moral men saw that the center and the core of the gospel.

01:56:09

And the need of proclaiming the gospel to all men in a gracious spirit.

01:56:17

And to do so with a love and consideration while maintaining all the truth of the scripture.

01:56:25

And really, our Baptist brothers had the same controversy in the middle part of that century with Andrew Fuller.

01:56:32

And Andrew Fuller, who B .H. Virgin called the greatest theologian of that century, also dealt with the need of the sincere free offer of the gospel.

01:56:43

And that's what we want as a network in this gracious manner. And, you know, as John Calvin himself said in talking about God's love, he said, even though there is nothing in the world worthy of God's favor, he shows himself gracious toward the whole world.

01:57:02

And he invites all men without exception to faith in Christ. And Owen said,

01:57:08

John Owen, to dwell on the infinite condensation, grace, and love of Christ in his invitation of sinners to come to him that they may be saved.

01:57:17

That's what we agree with, and that's what we want to do. And I just want to say that everyone's invited to come to our 2017

01:57:28

Reformed Baptist Network General Assembly in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Reformedbaptistnetwork .com.

01:57:33

We'd love to see you come. We welcome you. And we do have a lot of missionary presentations, a lot of fine preaching and excellent fellowship, as well as the kind host of Grace Emanuel Reformed Baptist Church in Grand Rapids.

01:57:51

So, Lord bless you, and thank you for having me, Chris. I appreciate it. Hey, my pleasure. And once again, that conference will be held from November 6th through the 9th in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

01:58:01

For more details, go to reformedbaptistnetwork .com, reformedbaptistnetwork .com

01:58:07

forward slash conference. And before I go, isn't the

01:58:13

Reformed Baptist Seminary in some way affiliated with the Reformed Baptist Network? We don't have an affiliation with the seminary.

01:58:22

Dr. Gonzalez is going to be present at the conference, and he'll have a display there, but there's no official connection with Reformed Baptist Seminary, other than that some of our churches are on the board and sponsoring the school.

01:58:43

So we have good fellowship with this brother, yes. And anybody wanting to look up information about the

01:58:49

Reformed Baptist Seminary, just go to rbseminary .org, rbseminary .org.

01:58:56

And it was such a joy to have you back on the program after so many years, Dr.

01:59:01

Taylor, and we look forward to your return again. And look forward to hearing you preach again the next time

01:59:07

God may providentially have you in the Carlisle area, or perhaps I'm going to be providentially in an area other than Carlisle where you happen to be preaching.

01:59:16

I really enjoy it, and I'm greatly edified by the gifts of preaching that our Lord has given you.

01:59:23

Well, thank the Lord for that. I love to preach, and I'm always happy if people can profit from it.

01:59:29

And I want everybody listening to have a great, wonderful, blessed weekend and Lord's Day.

01:59:36

If you don't have a Bible -believing church that you are currently a member of, please seek one out this weekend.

01:59:43

And I want you all to always remember, for the rest of your lives, that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.