April 6, 2018 Show with Fred Malone on “The Baptism of Disciples Alone: A Covenantal Argument for Credobaptism Versus Paedobaptism”

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this sixth day of April 2018.

And I'm amazed that after all these years of conducting Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, that this is the first time I am ever interviewing this guest who I've known about for many years and have benefited greatly, enormously from his writings.

And I'm speaking of Pastor Fred Malone, who is an author and a pastor at First Baptist Church of Clinton, Louisiana. He's also a professor of pastoral theology at the IRBS Theological Seminary, which is going to be launching its first semester this September in Mansfield, Texas.

Fred Malone’s Church and Ministry Background

Today we are going to be discussing a phenomenal book, a book that I'm amazed that anyone could read it and still walk away believing in infant baptism. No offense to my Pato Baptist and other Presbyterian friends out there, but we're going to be discussing The Baptism of Disciples Alone, a Covenantal Argument for Credo Baptism versus Pato Baptism.

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

Thank you for having me, Chris. It's time to interview me about these things. Just to add one thing, I'm also a professor of pastoral theology at the Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary in Owensboro, Kentucky.

Just wanted to clear that up.

Sure, that's great. And before we even go into your own background, tell us a little something about the First Baptist Church of Clinton, Louisiana.

Well, it's a very good church in Louisiana. It was established in 1880 and was the statement of faith of the Louisiana Baptist Association, the Mississippi Valley Baptist Association, way back when. And there are nine articles to that statement of faith, and all five points of the Doctrines of Grace are specifically stated there.

So this church had a historical theology. Now, over the years, it lost that theology in process, but in 1983, the Lord brought Pastor Bill Askell to this church to be its new pastor, and he found those articles and found that the church did have a solid theological foundation and began to preach expositionally and also to teach the doctrines that this church was originally established on.

Then, the church went through a time under Bill of church discipline of those who had been caught in adultery. This caused a great crisis, and the deacons stood behind their pastor and advocated a restoration of church discipline in this church by a resolution that was passed by one vote in the church meeting.

And so from that point, some left this church, some came to believe the thing, but nevertheless, it went through a time of difficulty, and then the Lord also brought others into this church who believed in the things that Bill was teaching and believed in the historic Baptist doctrines of the church, and the church began to settle and grow again.

And then Bill took an opportunity to start a church in Shreveport, Louisiana, which is now Heritage Baptist Church off Shreveport, and the church here in Clinton, First Baptist, called me to follow Bill and to take his place.

So I've been here now for 25 years. The first eight or nine years I was here, we continued to go through reformation with some joys and sorrows, but overall, the congregation accepted the teaching of the 1689 Confession as biblical, and it continued to grow, and for the last 15 years or so, we've had ups and downs on matters that have been difficult, but overall, God has blessed this church, and what's so amazing is it's really in the middle where most reformers of our size are in larger cities, and we're in the town of Clinton, which is about 2 ,000 people, or the county has about 24 or 5 ,000, and yet we are having on the Lord's Day an average of around 160 people attending the morning worship, and God keeps bringing people here.

Now, just a couple of years ago, I asked the church to allow me to step back from some of the primary responsibilities, and the church called Dr. Tom Hicks to be the new senior pastor here, and I'm still a pastor, but not doing all that I did before so that I could teach seminary courses overseas or in other places, and also try to do some writing.

So Tom has stepped in, and he has led faithfully and wisely from the first day he arrived here, so we are blessed all the way around at this church.

So Bill Askell, I'm assuming, is a brother or other relation to my friend Tom Askell, the president of Founders Ministries.

That's correct. Bill is the better-looking and more intelligent.

Well, praise God for that. Well, now let us get into your own personal testimony, starting with your testimony of what kind of religious upbringing you had, if any, and what providential circumstances the Lord used to draw you to himself and save you, and then a very interesting addition to this is how you began as a Presbyterian and became.

Fred Malone’s Conversion, Seminary Training, and Move from Presbyterianism to Reformed Baptist Convictions

A Reformed Baptist. I was raised in Gadsden, Alabama, and attended First Baptist Church, which was a large kind of downtown church in Gadsden, at that time one of those large First Baptist churches of that era.

My parents took me to church, all the services of the church as far back as I can remember, and when I was about 10, I say, something like that, I came under conviction of my sins very deeply and knew that I was on my way to hell, and I continued to hear about the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, and so I was baptized on confession of my faith around that age.

I had many ups and downs after that, including wanting to know more about the scripture and yet not having the systematic teaching that I need, particularly on the doctrines of justification and sanctification, so I had ups and downs in those times, and married when I was at the end of my first year in college.

Both of us felt we were Christians, and we married, but the first couple of years were very difficult, and again I fell into sinful behavior toward my wife, struggling with sin and not finding strength, and then used that revelation of the depth of my sin and anger as a husband to convict me and to help me to search out more thoroughly the work of Christ and what saving faith is, what a godly life is, how to live as a Christian, and so at that point in my life, God worked in me and helped me to start growing, and our marriage was saved, thank the Lord, by His grace, and God put in me a desire to study the Bible that was overwhelming and almost obsessive.

I wanted to know the Bible, read it constantly, always had good grades, but sometimes once in a while a grade suffered because I wanted to read the Bible, not suggesting that to any college students out there, but nevertheless, God gave me this thirst, and I knew then that I had to go into seminary or some school just to study the Bible.

I didn't know if God was interested in calling me as a pastor, and so I delayed my military service and went into seminary, and that itself is a church in Gadsden. I went back to my home pastor and asked for direction, and he recommended a couple of Southern Baptist seminaries, but I also knew that if I was in the Southern Baptist seminaries, and I did not want to go somewhere that did not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, that is something God had brought me to firm conviction about, so I left my pastor's office and I went to the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Gadsden, Alabama, and the pastor's name was Dr. James Baird, who was one of the founders of the PCA.

I went to him because I heard him preach in high school about marriage, and it was the most biblical and wonderful message, and when I went into his office, he showed me all of Spurgeon's sermons. I didn't know who Spurgeon was, and discovered that he's on the board of, he was on the board of Reformed Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, and that was in 1970, and so he persuaded me to at least stop by there and look at the seminary while I was searching, and I did.

I went down there that night, woke the next day in the old White House in the guest room there, and immediately found brothers and companions in the faith on that campus. I never felt so much at home in the doctrines of grace, and I was still learning about the broader Reformed faith, so I went there, and it was a tremendous blessing.

I can never give enough thanks for putting me at Reformed Seminary at such a critical time in my life. As far as I know in 1970, there was not a Reformed Baptist seminary in the United States that I could go to and be taught the things that I was taught there, and I had wonderful teachers like Dr. Morton Smith, who's the president or former president of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

I was blessed to have him as a systematics teacher, and I had Palmer Robertson my first year there, who taught me on the letter to the Hebrews and the life of David, and his imprint on my thinking and my understanding of the Bible is still here.

I had other great teachers like Jack B. Scott, the Hebrew scholar, and Simon Kistemaker, the Greek scholar. I was his great greater or his assistant, I should say, at that time, so my experience with the Reformed world opened, and I began to see that there's a whole history of truth and doctrine that I had never heard of before and came to love the Reformed faith, and at the same time, while I was there, I was on at RTS from 70 to 74 with a year out here in a church in South Carolina, but nevertheless, I was overwhelmed at the Reformed faith and began to have difficulty in worshiping and attending the Baptist churches that I sought out, and began to see that the applications and implications of the Reformed faith necessitated that I find a place where the Word of God was expounded, where sound doctrine was taught, and application of God's Word was needed, and so probably at the end of my first year on campus, I joined Westminster down from the campus and where the chapel gatherings were held by RTS each day, and really had a wonderful time there learning God's Word, and then later went to another Presbyterian church in North Jack.

He formerly served at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Mississippi. He may still serve there, and so I joined that church a clinical year to Rock Hill, South Carolina, where I was an intern, I guess you would say, of the pastor, Dr. Joe Everett, and that year at that church was a confirmation year for me because it allowed me to sit under a sound church for the purpose of examining my character and gifts and to give me advice on whether to pursue the pastoral ministry or not, because I still was not sure what I should do even though I love studying and learning.

So that year under Dr. Joe Everett, I had opportunity to serve in just about every capacity in church life, to try to minister and to preach and to serve God's people, and at the end of that year, the elders of First Presbyterian Church in Rock Hill, South Carolina, at a gathering with them, gave their evaluation of my year there and their counsel on whether I should continue pursuing the ministry or not, and they unanimously encouraged me to continue.

That was a wonderful time in my life where I wasn't just depending upon the desires of my heart or even the concerns of my heart for people, but I had a sound church take a look at me and give me direction, and so having finished that year, I went back and finished my senior year at RTS, and when I graduated in 74, I went to work for my homiletics professor, Dr. Dick Bode, at First ARP Church in Gastonia, North Carolina, and he was very kind to call me there to serve with him, and that was a very helpful time in my life.

There I was ordained as an ARP, an Associate Reformed Presbyterian, and served happily in that church with those people, and then an opportunity arose for me to serve as pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Utah, Alabama, and one of my dear friends, older men in the PCA, wanted me to go there and put my name in, and so I did and served there about three years as a president.

I had plenty of time to study. The church still was in the old former Southern Presbyterian Church, so they didn't have evening worship, they didn't have prayer meeting, and they didn't allow the pastor to teach Sunday school, so I had to wait for one sermon, and then of course I started a ladies Bible study and a men's breakfast and so forth, but I had a lot of time to study, and as I was studying covenant theology and going through those things again, one of my interests had always been the New Covenant passage Jeremiah 31 through 34.

I had been assigned that text by Dr. Jack Scott back in Hebrew and done a lot of study on that, and I wanted to follow through with it. The New Covenant passage, which Christ refers to at the Lord's Supper, which is quoted several times in the New Testament, and as I did that studying covenant theology, I used Berkhoff, Lewis Berkhoff, for my systematic, and I still do, instances in hermeneutics that I recognized that I had not.

I had adopted infant baptism back in seminary, believing the arguments that had been put forth to me of the Abrahamic covenant, and also in Acts chapter 41 about the promise when Peter preached his wonderful message, the promises to you, and that that was seen in the light of the Abrahamic.

Covenant. By the way, brother, can you make sure that you don't take your mouth away from the mouthpiece because you drift in and out. Okay. That's much better. Continue. I'm sorry for.

Interrupting you. I'm very sorry. Thank you for letting me know. But anyway, on the sacraments that I hadn't noticed before, and that led me down a path of studying hermeneutics and approaching the issues of, and again, I'd read probably, so began to see some inconsistencies there, so that led me to particularly a wide research, again, back into the foundations, the hermeneutics, and the exegesis that supported infant baptism, and this time I came out a Baptist, a confirmed Baptist, and so there were many things that went on at that time.

I left the presbytery. My mind had changed, and I'd adopted the baptism of disciples, and when I did that, I had already spoken to Southern Baptists and contacted Reformed Baptists, and there was no place for me to go and serve.

When I resigned, I literally had no place to go, and the very night that I told my ministerial committee that I had changed, I came home, and my wife Debbie told me a man named Ernie Reisinger had called me to call him back.

Wow. And so I called him back, and he had read, I had sent John Reisinger, who always I will thank for passing my little study on to Ernie, but I had sent John Reisinger a study on my change and asked him to comment on it, and he liked it, and he gave it to Ernie.

So Ernie called me, and in a month or two, I was in Pompano Beach, Florida to serve. Wow. And God brought it to pass, and so my life has been bounded by a wonderful process, and I almost live in a dream when I think back of who I was and what I didn't know, and God and His patience and kindness kept teaching me and leading me, and I have been blessed since then.

Working with Ernie in 1980 to a southwestern seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and was without a place, and then a Bible study I met in my home, taking turns teaching, and in two years, that turned into Heritage Baptist Church, which is now located in Mansfield.

And so that itself, in 1992, I started the first of 93. I had known these people and preached here several times, knew Bill, and it was a terrible decision to leave Heritage. The end I came, my life is, in spite of trials, it has been one blessing after the other, and here I am, about 70 years old on my life, and God has guided me a step of the way, I believe.

I'm more convinced than ever, than ever, than in the baptism of disciples alone. My book was challenged when it was printed, and the last edition in 2002, and examined the scriptures, and keep coming back to disciples alone.

So here I am.

Praise God. Yeah, two of those men that you mentioned have a special place in my life. First, John Reisinger is a friend of mine, and as a new Christian, I used to attend the Bunyan Conferences, named after John Bunyan in Pennsylvania.

I probably attended those for somewhere in the neighborhood of eight years, and so I was probably the only Reformed Baptist outside of New Covenant Theology that was in attendance at those events.

And we needed at least one token.

And I used to attend there because my late wife's pastor, who's also now in heaven for eternity with Christ, Don Blend, he adopted New Covenant Theology and used to take me there to this conference, and that was a time for us to fellowship and so on.

And Ernie Reisinger, as you must know, is the founder of the church where I am a member, Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle.

Oh yes, I didn't realize you were there.

Yes, well I did live on Long Island, New York for most of my life, but moved to Carlisle after my wife went home to the Lord, and have been here since 2015, and I became a member of Grace Baptist, the Christmas Sunday service, or perhaps it was Sunday before Christmas of 2015.

I'm sorry about your wife, but I'll continue to minister to you there.

I really appreciate that. And well, we're going to go to a break right now, and I'm going to start off our discussion with the wonderful booklet. I don't know if it's still in print because of the fact that your larger book really grew out of the booklet, but I want you to start off with a discussion on A String of Pearls Unstrung, which I absolutely fell in love with when I read it, and then was very excited when the much larger book came out, over 300 pages of material in the larger book, The Baptism of Disciples Alone, which we are discussing today.

But if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for Fred Malone about baptism, whether you agree with him, whether you disagree, or whether you're just not sure, perhaps you're not even a Christian, well, we would love to hear from you at chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA, and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back with Fred Malone and more of our discussion on The Baptism of Disciples Alone. One sure way all Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners can help keep my show on the air is to support my advertisers.

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We are now back to our discussion with Fred Malone. Fred Malone, who I've been wanting to interview for a long time, and providentially today happened to be the day that God wanted us to have our first interview for some reason.

And he is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Clinton, Louisiana, and a professor of pastoral theology at the IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas. And we are discussing the baptism of disciples alone, a covenantal argument for credo-baptism versus pedo-baptism.

And before the break, I said that I wanted you to begin our next session, this session, with a discussion on how The Pearl of Strings Unstrung came to be, a wonderful booklet that, as I told you, I'm not even sure it's still in print.

It should be still in print, because they're a lot easier and less expensive to give out than the larger hardback book, and they will whet the appetite of people to buy the larger hardback book.

But tell us about A String of Pearls Unstrung. Well, in 1970, I knew then Thomas Watson should infants be baptized. In the 1990s, this was going on, and it turned out that that issue was John Zins asking the question, is there a covenant of grace?

And it began to adopt it, as stated in the 1689 Confession. And that turned into the Covenant Movement in Dallas, Texas.

Yeah, I remember John's periodical, Searching Together.

And at that time, it was Baptist Reformation Review. He had taken it over from an older brother, an 1889 man, so he began to change the theology of 3 and Unstrung. And my premise was that there's scriptures, and my purpose was to examine each of them, and to, with whether or not the Pearls Unstrung was to remove a pearl.

A String of Infant Baptism was no longer. Maybe some had found it. If someone wanted them, I think you could order it from Louisiana. Louisiana would like to have a copy of that. I think I have a box or two.

And then years later, about 1996 or 7. Well, what was the first thing that now I probably, in some way, in some slight.

Way, miscategorized you in my introduction to you as a convert from Presbyterian to Baptistic understanding of the ordinance of Baptism? It's really, you're a revert, because you began as a Baptist, became a Presbyterian, and then reverted back to Baptistic ecclesiology, and especially in regard to the ordinance of Baptism.

What was the initial thing as a Presbyterian that started to give you reason for pause to say, wait a minute, something's not connecting here with what the inerrant scriptures are saying to me?

Well, it was a hermeneutical in 1975, and I heard friends of mine from RTS talking about pedo-communion. And I do not remember talking about pedo-communion in those years at RTS, and so maybe it just slipped up, caught my attention, and I thought, pedo-communion?

I.

Don't think I've heard of that. In fact, let's just clarify for our listeners unfamiliar with.

That term. That means communion for infants. That is correct. And you have admission also to.

The Lord's suffering. And historically, if I'm not mistaken, until recent history, the only individuals or churches within Christendom that did that were the Eastern Orthodox. And then, in more recent history, some professing to be Protestants began the practice.

That's right. I began to serve 38 through 41, or you could include 42, to repent. In fact, I received Peter's word, and that seemed as clear to me as examine oneself and determine, and while it is not the past, so in infant baptism required to repent and believe the gospel and be baptized.

And I began to search through the consistency of my concern and found out that was really, and as I did that, I read, finished reading Marcel, and the reason was because he had things I had never even heard before.

For instance, in his view, when a baby is baptized, an infant is, they no longer carry the Adamic status of whether they're going to cook or not. And that extreme baptism, and I do consider that extreme, there's some problem here.

In fact, that is not even the predominant view amongst.

The more conservative Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed bodies, is it? No, I don't believe it.

And that comes from Augustine in the New, and I'm getting it back, was in the New Revealed, which means that the New Testament fulfilled in it, rather than vice versa, that the New Testament, the Old Testament, it's not fulfilled.

That's what is the foundation of this, how the Old is fulfilled in it. And when I applied that, that the New Testament is the revelation of God, that interprets, I began to see that the ground and principle of infant baptism could not be based as so many have stated, for instance, Charles Hodge and others, that the ground and authority and warrant for infant baptism.

Now, when we trace the history of infant baptism,.

Back to its earliest mention within any historical document, the last I read, and perhaps you have other information that would contradict this, but I had heard that Tertullian was the very first person in history to write anything that mentioned infant baptism, and he was writing in opposition to it.

And I'm sorry, you were muffled, brother. Yes, that's my understanding, too. Now, throughout all of the history of the church, until we reach the age of the Reformers, who most of which would be, and some would say all of which were believers in infant baptism, was there ever taught, even in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, the understanding that infant baptism was the new covenant circumcision?

Was that something that was historically taught that has ancient roots, or was that a Reformation way of explaining.

It biblically, or trying to? I am not sure about that, when it came into the argument, but I believe that it was Zwingli that brought that into the argument for infant baptism.

Really? I mean, you don't know of any other precedent before that?

Not in my knowledge, which is limited, I'm sure, but my understanding was that Zwingli first brought that into the argument for infant baptism. Against the end, anyway, there's also a talking about...

But he was still writing in opposition to it, though. Yes. Well, in any case, so you had to be an adult. But anyway, getting back to what I'm getting at here, is one of the arguments for infant baptism that disturbed me was the argument of silence.

Right. And in the New Testament, there is no mention of infant baptism, and every Presbyterian scholar will, that there's no example and there's no command. Well, that right there should make any of us pause when we're talking.

About... In fact, that's where we have to stop there for our midway break, and that's a good place to stop, because I don't want to interrupt you in mid-sentence there. We'll begin... Yes, we will begin at the fact that the Presbyterian and Paedo-Baptist argument for infant baptism is very often the argument of silence.

And if anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away. We'll be back after this elongated break with Fred Malone, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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