Calvinist History of a Baptist Church

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Alright, that was all my introduction stuff I want to no more delay

I want to bring in my good friend, Dr. Michael Schultz Hey Michael, how are you doing today buddy? I'm alright, how's

Dr. Keith Foskey today? Yeah, I'm doing pretty good, thankful that you're here We're going to be talking about something that is really near and dear to your heart because we're actually going to be talking about your particular church

Now, real quick for the people who don't know you Can you tell us just a little bit about yourself, the church that you're in, how old it is

Just a little history as we begin this conversation Yeah, so my name is Michael Schultz again, you can see that on screen

I came to Antioch Baptist Church in western Kentucky, here in Lewisburg, Kentucky in 2019

And the church was founded in September of 1818

So the church at that point was in their 201st year They had just celebrated their second centennial

And it's a very historical church They've done a really good job of maintaining what they've had

The sanctuary that we currently worship in was completed during the

Civil War So it is not marginal and very few updates and renovations

Things like windows and the insertion of a baptismal pool So there's been some updates in that way

But most all of the sanctuary as far as the bones of it and the general layout is 150 years old

So the church is a very historical church in that way Nice, nice Well, the title of today's show is

Reclaiming Calvinistic Roots in an Historic Baptist Church And the reason why that's the title is because we're going to be talking about How you have discovered in your research of the church's history

And the doctrines and the documents of the church's history That the church was once a Calvinistic Baptist church

And had moved away from that And what caused me to reach out to you on this is

You actually sent to me and a few friends of ours You showed a chart that you had created

And on this chart you showed an evolution of theology Which started with very conservative

Calvinistic theology And then as you showed the transition to the different statements of faith

That had been, I guess, published or agreed upon by the congregation Over the last century and a half

It shows a progression of moving away from Calvinistic theology

And you're sort of, in your heart, because you're a Calvinistic Baptist You're trying to reestablish not something new

But rather going back to what was once there And before we get to looking at the chart

And we are going to bring it up on the screen in a minute I just wanted to kind of talk with you about the reality

That there's a lot of accusations that come toward Calvinists That one of the things that Calvinists do

Is that they come into churches And they come into non -Calvinistic churches

And they, in the language, I'm using the language of those who say this Some people say we come into non -Calvinistic churches

And we steal them That's the language, sometimes very harsh That we're actually taking them, we're stealing them

And I mean, if you I'll bring up Leighton I know

Leighton is a person that you and I have interacted with And have had good conversations with But even

Leighton has said in some of his videos That there are, and for those who don't know I'm talking about Leighton Flier's Soteriology 101

And he would say that there are Baptists who come in Who are,

I'm sorry, Calvinists who come in to Baptist churches Unaware, and they sort of sneak in And they're doing so for the purpose of sort of stealing the church

Have you heard people say that? Have you ever had that accusation made toward you in any regard?

Or have you seen that accusation made towards other people? Yeah, so when I first began at Antioch And I began introducing some of these principles

Maybe for the first time in a long time But definitely not for the first time in our history Even some of our senior most members

These people that were well into their 80s They would actually say to me You're teaching us something that is new

You're teaching us something that we've never heard before This is some new thing that you've come up with And initially what

I was saying was No, it's not that this is new It's that this is so old

Your grandparents never heard of it Like, this is a very, very old thing that I'm teaching to you

It's much older than what you believe And so I'm not teaching some new thing

I'm teaching a very, very old thing But then really what got me across the bridge

Was I'm a historian by training Up through my master's degree

All of my training had been in history I had almost gotten no formal training in theology

Until I started with my MDiv I'd always been a historian And that was actually my aspiration

Was to be a professor of history Not a professor of theology or church history for that matter So I started asking the church

If they had any of their historical documents Just because it's a very cool thing To be at such an old church with history And one of my deacons showed up with this page here

And it's not going to be able to be read on the video or anything Not great, but it's a very old book The cover of it is wood

And it's held together by nails So this is actually the original ledger of the church

And these are the founding documents And it's got the original signatures of the founding presbytery

And so I thought, this is unfathomable That they still have this And when I started looking into their history

I looked at their statement of faith and I thought These guys believed exactly what I do

And so that started this whole process And when I pulled that out and laid it out

On our communion table for service I said, guys, you need to see this

That this is where the church was founded And even at one point This is something that I've pulled back on Because our church isn't ready for it yet But when

I started introducing The concept of a plurality of elders I had people saying to me

Well, no, that's what presbyterians do We don't do that And we've never had elders

And then I look at the documents And I say, well, no For the first, say, hundred years of our church

They referred to the pastor as Elder Conyers Or Elder Tatum This is our history

And so it was a very shocking realization For a lot of the people at our church to say Oh, this isn't something new

It's something very, very old That's really cool And you mentioned in the document

You mentioned the word presbytery Is that a word that Baptists have used?

Again, I'm showing a little ignorance here I've studied

Baptist history a little But have we used the word presbytery? They do use the word presbytery In their founding document

The way that they address themselves This plurality of elders They actually begin by saying

September the 26th, 1818 We the undernamed presbytery Having met to look into the ability of our brethren

At Antioch Meeting House And so they consider themselves As a group of elders to be a presbytery

And you'll see later When we get into the discussion of the statement In their ecclesiology They refuse for anybody to perform

They won't allow anybody to oversee the ordinances Unless they have come under the imposition of hands By the presbytery

So unless you've been formally ordained By this presbytery They won't let you oversee the ordinances

So yeah, they use that word quite liberally Wow, okay Well, that's interesting Well, what

I want to do And we're going to pull this up Here on the screen And I hope that everybody's able to see it

I want to actually show Some of the progression But I guess before we do that Let me just back up before Because I don't want to put the cart before the horse

When did you begin Putting this chart together And how long did it take you

To put everything together And how many statements of faith Are we looking at here In this chart that we're about to look at So kind of give everybody

A little context of the chart Yeah, so this chart that you're about to see To my knowledge These are the three statements of faith

That our church has formally accepted In our 200 -year history The initial one

Is the founding statement of faith from 1818 The second one you'll see in the middle column

Is the first revision ever That was written in 1843 And then the third one is

Wildly recent It was written in 1984 So I started looking for these

At our church I'm doing a history of our church And this is in part

So that people can understand Really where we've come from And how we got to where we were And where I'm hoping that we'll get back to But the 1818 statement

Wasn't written by us In my research What I found is that In 1742

When the Philadelphia Baptist Confession Was formally published And accepted by the

Philadelphia Baptist Association Which for those of you That aren't familiar with all these confessions The Philadelphia Confession of 1742

Was the 1689 But the psalm singing

And laying hands They wanted to add those things in Because that was very important To some of the

Welsh believers That had moved to America And create the Philadelphia Baptist Confession But as the

Revolutionary War ended They start flooding over the Appalachian Allegheny Mountains And all of these frontier preachers

They don't have access to carry A full confession of faith Printing was very rare It was expensive

And they didn't have access to that kind of thing They also didn't have the time to sit and memorize

You know, 32 chapters of the document So what they did in 1791

Was the Philadelphia Association Put together an abstract of principles That was 12 very short statements

That explained what they believed And it could be printed on a single sheet of paper Or it could be written by hand

Or you could memorize it Those 12 abstracts of principles Are the 1818 statement that we have here at Antioch So it is directly taken

From the Philadelphia Baptist Association It's a straight line between our church

And the 1689 And there's a lot of reasons why Is that the same abstract of principles That's used at Southern Seminary That all the professors have to sign?

No, this is much older The abstract of principles that's used at Southern Was written in 1858

So this is almost a century older Well that's helpful, great Because I would have heard the name

And I guess just assumed At least a link there Just historically curiosity gets me

Where do their abstract of principles draw from? Or is it just I know, was it

Boyce who wrote that? That's right, yeah, James Pettigrew, Boyce He wrote that right around that same time

And it's also based off of The Philadelphia Confession But it was original to him

They didn't take it from the Philadelphia Association Alright, well let's look at the first page here

I'm going to bring it up on the screen for everyone And hopefully everybody will be able to see it nice and clearly This is the

Antioch document 1818 The 1843 and the 1894

And as you can see as you're looking at this There are some places where there are blanks

And the reason why there are blanks I'm assuming, Michael Is because there are places where One document says something about a particular doctrine

And the other document simply doesn't say it Or it's in another part of the document maybe

Am I getting that correct? So what I found interesting right away looking at this

Is that the 1818 and the 1843 Have a doctrine of God Both of them have a, what seems to be

A reference to the Trinity So it's not written as in this is our doctrine of God The numbers that are next to them

Actually recognize the way that they were written In that statement So you'll see like in the 1818

Number one and number two are separated The same thing with 1843 But at later points in the document

You'll see they're out of order And that's just because the way that I've arranged them By doctrine it's a little different Gotcha Well do you think

What do you think really happened in 84? Because again when you look at this You'll see that 84 is really quite different Do you think it was really a getting away from Calvinism?

Do you think maybe there was Do you know? I mean maybe in your study of the history What caused this evolution and this shift?

Was there people that were rising up against Calvinism? Was this just an acquiescence to the time? Or I know maybe you can't read the minds of people 40 years ago

But just kind of wondering Because leaving out the doctrine of God Seems odd to me I don't know

Yeah so the big shift occurs Actually with the 1843

They set the church on an entirely different trajectory And so by the time you get to the 1904

The church has followed what we would maybe call Traditional Southern Baptist doctrine Where for the longest time

Southern Baptists They were not Calvinist The original

Southern Baptists Late 1800s were by and large Calvinist But most of the 20th century

They weren't because they came under the influence of E .Y. Mullins E .Y. Mullins was a

By most any reckoning He was a Northern Baptist That ended up being the president of the

Southern Baptist 20th century He was the head honcho That oversaw the 1925

Baptist faith and message And he really influenced that a lot The reason that the 1984

Doesn't have a doctrine of God But it has a rather lengthy doctrine of Christ That doesn't appear in the other two

Is because Southern Baptists specifically Antioch joined the SBC in 1928

Southern Baptists specifically were engaging this Difficult idea That's now called

Christomonism And it was the idea that the entire Bible should be read

In such a way that you're trying to reconcile everything with Christ So we would see types and shadows of Jesus all through the

Old Testament And you'll see obviously the Spirit of Christ running through the New But what it turned into was

If there was something in the Old Testament Or anywhere in the Bible actually That people said didn't line up with the

Spirit of Christ This person that they believed Christ to be They started trying to figure out how to reckon that And it turned into this hyper -dispensational

Well the God of the Old Testament was a God without grace And that's why some of those things looked that way

While the God of the New Testament was a God with grace The most extreme form of it Found its way through in people who said

If passages don't align with the Spirit of Christ Then they're not inspired

Because they don't actually represent Jesus And so you'll see there in 1984

That influence of the Everything has to align with Jesus In that they don't even define themselves as Trinitarian They encompass their entire doctrine of God Around Jesus Himself So yeah, you can see there

They no longer even have a statement on the Trinity They simply believe in the

Lordship of Christ As the Eternal Son of God And they only refer to the Father and the Spirit Insofar as they relate to Jesus So everything's about Jesus And that was a movement in the

SBC That really took a lot of very careful work To find our way out of But that's probably what

Antioch was being influenced by in 1984 Everything has to align with Jesus And it's all about Jesus So that gives at least some explanation to this first part

Now again, the doctrine of Scripture The first two, we believe the Scripture of the

Old and New Testaments Are the word of God And then the word infallible is in the second article

But then by the third, by Antioch 84 We see the Bible to be the inspired written word of God Our supreme and sufficient source of authority for faith and practice

We believe both the Old and New Testaments To be verbally inspired by God and to be without error In the original writings Now I would actually

I'm one of those guys who I like that they actually Use the term the original autographs there

And that's something that our statement references That because of the issues of textual variation

And things like that that are now I guess a little more frequently discussed In the conversation of When we talk about verbal inspiration

And plenary inspiration and things like that So I actually, I'm fine with the 84 So when you redraft for your new

Are you thinking of, how will you redraft that one? Or will that one mention the original autographs?

Or you guys have a different view on that? Or what's your thoughts? Yeah, so their statement on the doctrine of Scripture in 1984

Is probably better than the first two Like you're saying, I'm with that And that's probably, again, the result of Engaging problems and heresies

Please excuse me So they had a better understanding of What they needed to say to specify

In order to battle against these Problems that were being faced A lot of it also has to do with the fact that In 1818 and 1843

A lot of what we would call the ancient manuscripts Were either not found yet Or they didn't know about them

It was not widespread knowledge That we had documents from The 2nd and 3rd and 4th centuries

They were operating with King James Version And that's the Bible So now that we're a little more informed

I think we can make a more informed statement on that Are you guys King James? Not necessarily

King James only But do you guys use the King James As your normal translation for worship? Or what's your tradition on that?

When I arrived at Antioch They used the King James Version And so did I That was actually something that we all transitioned together

Because I had always used the King James Coming out of a more independent

Fundamental Baptist background The King James was just the language that I spoke

But one of the things here at Antioch That was unique is that when I arrived Being out here

And this is going to feed into some stereotypes But it is nevertheless the case Anecdotally in our case

There was a real problem Out here with illiteracy And there still is

Both in young people And in full grown adults And in seniors There was a sizable amount of our community

That fully could not read or write And so using the King James Version Was an active impediment

To getting people to actually Read the Bible Because not only were they not

Overly fluent in reading and writing anyway But when you are Introducing to them a text

That is written in the 17th century It is even more difficult

When they're using words That no one uses today I mean what What does this even mean

Now that I can read it I still don't get it So we transitioned, we spent a year

Just preparing for a transition From the King James Over the English Standard Version Not for any purposes of textual

Preference Although I do have textual preferences The church transitioned

Not for those reasons But just for the sake of understandability So we did transition

From the King James In 2021 Well when we get to page 2

Of the Of the statement here This is where it really starts to hit

On the issues that we would say are Calvinistic in nature And so what

I wanted to do Is to Just sort of read through these and show

How we would understand them Looking at The doctrine of sin It says in the original statement

Which was the 1818 statement It says we believe in the

Doctrine of original sin Now that's a simple way of saying it I mean In the next one it's clearer

What's being said We believe that Adam Our representative by disobedience

Became dead and trespasses in sin Therefore by the offense of one man Judgment came upon all men

To condemnation for all have sinned I actually like that I think that's a little more

Expressive about what was being said But then we get to 84 and There's nothing about original sin

It's just a blank And then again it goes to Salvation being a gift but it doesn't

Reference anything about where sin Came from or what the doctrine of sin What the doctrine of sin is

Excuse me Then you get to the doctrine Of salvation and it's

Interesting that you have a blank on the First but then you have these two spots Where there are blanks and it's like There's no doctrine of Salvation in those because the doctrine of Salvation is going to come in under the doctrine of Election and so it's interesting

It's just I mean if you look at it it's like blank blank Or Information information no information

Then no information It's like they were intentionally One going one direction and the other

And the doctrine of salvation From the 84 statement says we believe Salvation is the gift of God's grace

And is received when one repents of sin And places his faith and trust In Christ Jesus as Lord And Savior I wouldn't disagree with that statement

It just You know I mean it's not like it's wrong It's just It's sort of in one sense

Seems to be Taking out the Necessary prerequisite and that's what are you

Saved from so when you're looking at this What are your thoughts about that part Yeah their movement

With the 84 statements And just try to dodge Everything but when

I don't think that they had any knowledge of Those former statements at all when they wrote The 84 To my knowledge

I'm the first person to go back And try to look at these early statements They're clearly based on what you're going to See at the bottom of that page doctrine of free will

They're very clearly Anti -Calvinist They Have no desire

To be associated with Anything relatively approaching Calvinism And like you said on the

Doctrine of salvation that they define I had to create that category Because like you mentioned

You couldn't call that a doctrine of election But it's Nothing else and the other

Statements just define salvation Under the confines of election That moves very oddly from 1818 to 1843

There's an And it was the fact that here in Logan County Kentucky where we are In 1801 we had what they called

The Red River Revival The Second Great Awakening that's the major revival That really threw all of that To the forefront

That was here in our backyard And out of that movement came Alexander Campbell Who founded the

Church of Christ Although at the time they were called Campbellites And he was Baptistic he was a credo

Baptist But he eschewed any sort of Historical Christian faith

He was one of the first guys to say no creed But the Bible no confession but Christ And so as they're throwing off Historical Christianity They go about rewriting

A lot of statements of faith And evidently Antioch came under The influence of a lot of those guys

And you can see it in a lot of different ways For example in their Doctrine of God They stop referring to The Holy Ghost as the

Holy Ghost They just call him Spirit They don't even call him the Spirit Or the Holy Spirit They move away from Calvinism Because Campbell was not a

Calvinist Their Doctrine of Election Takes out the idea that God Chose the elect before the foundation of the world

Because Alexander Campbell believed That when you got baptized you became elect So that was something that Happened in time

And then in their ecclesiology In 1818 they said nobody's allowed To oversee the ordinances except people

Who have been ordained by the Presbytery Well Campbellites didn't believe that So they took that out

And they said we believe in baptism by immersion And that was it And anybody's allowed to baptize

So they had this big Influx of Campbellites That came in that influenced that statement

And from that point forward They set Antioch On a trajectory that was away from Calvinism But We're very fortunate that we didn't just turn into The Church of Christ Well looking at the page again

Looking at this Second page, let's look at the Doctrine of Election Because the original statement said

We believe in the Doctrine of Election And that God has chose his people In Christ before the foundation of the world

Obviously as a Calvinist I would affirm that But then it says in the second document

We believe in the Doctrine of Election By grace, by grace are we saved Through faith, again that's a very

That's a much different If you will

Much less Stated I think most Whether they're, you know

I think most people would agree with that Whether they're Calvinistic or not Doctrine of Election by grace By grace we're saved through faith

But then there's nothing in the last one But where we see the real divergence

Like you said, is here on the Doctrine of Free Will In the first document it says We believe in man's impotency

Meaning inability To recover himself from the fallen State he is in by nature

By his own free will and ability I like that That's saying what the issue is

The issue is man is in a state Of inability Impotency But there's nothing in the middle

But then at the end we get this We believe that every individual Is responsible for choosing his own

Eternal destiny, man what a statement To say that That just comes out and says it

Choosing his own eternal destiny And is free to make such a choice No person is predestined to eternal life or eternal death

Without his own choosing Boy I have rarely read Such a bold Assertion of the freedom of the will

I mean that's just That's absolutely I mean in my mind it's bonkers

But I don't want to be Too abrasive But I mean just to say

Every man chooses his own eternal destiny I don't even think provisionists Would say that necessarily in that way

Yeah no it's a 100 % reversal From where they were And you'll notice

There I can't fathom even Just saying no person is predestined Just to say those words

Because the You know make what you will Of the doctrine of predestination

I was educated at a Non -reformed, non -Calvinist Seminary and the way that they taught election

Was they said God has Elected people in Christ And so anyone

Who is in Christ will ultimately Be saved, that's God's election But then God has left it up to us

To find our way into Christ And so once we make it into Christ Then we are in the body that he decided

Before the world would be elect That's a very different doctrine of predestination Than what we would hold

But you still have A doctrine of predestination That God has predestined this body

Of people, but this statement They just out and out say there is no such thing As predestination, and I look at that And I go where in the world

Would you justify that Biblically, I mean the Word predestination is a biblical

Word, you've got to do something with it So you can't just say We don't believe in predestination

You cannot be a Christian And not believe in predestination That's a biblical

Doctrine, so you Have to do something with it But to just say no person is predestined

It's like, well that means That's nothing, you have left No room for anything in the Bible To correct what you believe

The doctrine of the free offer of the gospel So this is

The The one where it's The opposite of what just came before Because what came before there was a

The middle was left out, well now The two other ends, there's Nothing on the first or the last, but something

In the middle, it says we believe that Jesus Christ Came into the world to save sinners, and he Offered himself a sacrifice for our sins

And not ours only, but also for the whole World, obviously a reference there To 1

John's Reference that he's a propitiation Not only for us, but for the sins of the whole world And that's

Usually that passage is used As In opposition to Calvinism And I've done videos on that before And how

Calvinists understand it But Do you think in a way, looking back at what came

Before it, that maybe that was Sort of moving toward the free will Position, by saying

Hey, Christ is a sacrifice And he's a sacrifice for the whole world Therefore the whole world is

It's an open opportunity for Everyone, kind of thing, is that what you See there? Yeah, definitely

And at the very best They've moved into a Breed of Calvinism that's much

Closer to Andrew Fuller So for, I'm sure you're familiar with his position But for the audience that may not be,

Andrew Fuller Was what we would call a four -point Calvinist Because he believed in General atonement, he didn't believe in Limited atonement, he believed

In a particular application Of the atonement, and so They seem to be favoring that there

In the 1843 And that is the result of cultural union Between what they used to call regular

Baptists and separate Baptists The separate Baptists largely were Non -Calvinist

The regular Baptists were Almost universally Calvinist And in 1801, those guys came together

And they formed what they called the United Baptists, or the Union Baptists And one of the resolutions that they made to Unite was that you could be a part

Of their group and still Believe that Christ tasted death For every man So that's a recognition of that But it is definitely a move away

From five -point Calvinism At a minimum, and probably a move Toward Arminianism, as I'm going to call it

Maybe not full -fledged Arminianism Now there's a context To this that pertains We were founded in 1818

In 1820, they tried to ordain A deacon named John Driscoll And they got all the way to the

Ordination Council, and They discovered a Statement of Faith And so they refused to ordain him

Now the fourth article of the Statement of Faith Back on the front page Is the Doctrine of Election So this guy

John Driscoll, who they wanted to ordain As a deacon, was probably Not a Calvinist But they wouldn't ordain him, because he wasn't

A Calvinist In 1821, the very next year, there was another Guy named Zachariah Duncan, and they

Wanted to ordain him as a deacon But again, they get all the way to the Ordination Council And they say, he does not believe

In the fourth article of the Statement of Faith And so they don't ordain him So in the early years, they were so thoroughly

Calvinist, that they would not even ordain You as a deacon, if you were not A Calvinist. But in 1843

When the Statement of Faith is The 1843 Statement of Faith, the Presidency consisted of a guy named

John Conyers, and then John Driscoll Zachariah Duncan And one other fella

So those two guys that they wouldn't ordain As deacons, because they were not Calvinists Had stuck around 25 years, and when they rewrote

The Statement of Faith, those two guys Are two of the four presbyters They would take out

Anything that they disagreed with In the original statement And you'll see there, now in the Doctrine of the

Free Offer of the Gospel, probably why they Disagreed with it. Contextually Again, from the

Broader Culture around us The war that was going on At this point, was between What we now call

Missionary Baptists, and what they labeled Then as Anti -Missionary Baptists And it had a lot

To do with Calvinism. There were Some Calvinists who were going into What we call

Hyper -Calvinism They didn't believe in Presenting the Gospel to someone unless they had Already shown that the

Spirit of God was Drawing them, which is A weird thought, but that's a historical Problem that Calvinists have faced

And so, in Kentucky, specifically In our area, there was a Huge falling out between People who believed that you should present the

Gospel And people who believed that you shouldn't And unfortunately, it became Divided on the lines

Of Calvinism. A lot of the Calvinists Were saying, no, you should not present The Gospel, and the

People who believed in presenting the Gospel Took that to mean, if you're a Calvinist You don't believe in missions.

And this is also around the same time as the development Of Baptist Mission Boards, both in England and here

In America, with the Triennial Convention Luther Rice is campaigning For mission funding

Adoniram and Ann Judson Have left to go to Burma Unfortunately, a lot of the

Calvinists of the era Really did not Believe in doing mission work And since then, we don't.

It was You are a Calvinist, and You don't believe in missions, so we reject Calvinism.

And that played a huge Part in the broader rejection Of Calvinism throughout the Baptist denomination

But specifically here at Antioch I think that was a big part of it, because on paper To this day,

Antioch Is Antioch Missionary Baptist Church. We've always Firmly believed in doing missions

And it seems that in this generation, there were Those who said, we are missionary people And we don't believe in not

Doing missions, and if you're a Calvinist You don't believe in missions. So that was A misunderstanding or a misapplication

Of what Calvinism means for evangelism And mission work. Well, looking at this

The document, I also, you know As we're moving down and trying to make our way Through it, the

Next thing that we see on there is The Doctrine of Justification And the

Doctrine of the Holy Spirit right after That, and I noticed right away what you Mentioned about sort of going away from Trinitarian language.

The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit isn't even included in The second two Documents, but looking at Justification, it says we

Believe that sinners are justified in the sight of God Only by the imputed righteousness Of Christ. Again, that's a very

Calvinistic language, the language of Imputation. We're very familiar with what that means And why it's important, and then

When we get to the next document, we believe that Sinners are justified by faith in the atonement Of Christ and sanctified by The spirit and belief of the

Truth, and that is accounted for righteousness. They moved away from the word imputed Used the word accounted, which, again,

Can have a very similar Meaning and Probably is what they were

Going for there, but then Is there no Doctrine of Justification In the 84 at all?

Is that Am I seeing that correctly? I guess Does it all go back to the What was in the...

84 was much less concerned With defining doctrine Than defining...well,

it doesn't Seem like they're overly concerned with defining doctrine It seems like they're more concerned with Fighting fights, and so They come out

Swinging against people who Don't believe in the lordship of Christ They don't have any desire to define

The trinity. They come out swinging Against Calvinism with that doctrine of Free will, and again

Here with the doctrine of the free offer of the gospel But they don't have any desire to Define their doctrine of the holy

Spirit or justification So they Seem to have just a

Really big emphasis On what battles Need to be fought, and they're not

Overly interested in actually defining What they list of statements at the end that have Nothing to do with anything

Separation of church and state, associations Local church autonomy, that has nothing To do with anything. You've not even defined

Your basic ecclesiology You have no eschatology involved whatsoever They didn't even define that they

Believed in the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints Which is a staple Among southern

Baptists So they just have They're just saying, here's where we land on all these

Different fights. And I Think what you just said sort of summarizes the rest Because I was going to mention that if you go down To page 5, you'll see that it's

Or on Mine it's page 5, but I think You're page 4, you'll see That they talk about local church

Autonomy, the statement on the association Separation of church and state But they

Have all that, but like you said, there's no Doctrine of ecclesiology There's No doctrine of eschatology

And their Lord's Supper doctrine is You know, it's Stated there, but going back

Up, it amazes Me, like you said, there's no eternal security Doctrine. There's no

One saved, always saved, which like you said However you state that, one saved, always saved, eternal security Or perseverance of the saints

And I realize there's some distinction there, but When we say as Baptists, that's Fairly ubiquitous Among Baptists is the doctrine there

At least within certain Streams of Baptist theology So I guess as We're getting towards the hour mark here, and I Want to make some conclusions as we've sort of looked

At the document now and seen And I want to say first of all I really appreciate your historical

Overview, because it puts A lot of this in context and helps to Understand why certain

Things are stated at a certain time and why others Aren't, or why others aren't as emphasized Or there's an emphasis given at a particular

Point But my question to you is, okay, now Where do you go from here? What's your

Next steps? Are you rewriting A new doctrine, or excuse Me, a new statement of doctrine and Statement of beliefs for your church?

Who's helping you? And how are you How do you see this going forward?

So right now Antioch is a Southern Baptist church And so as such, our official

Statement of faith at the moment is the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 Which is very brief

I would even at Times call it vague Almost Intentionally vague, because You could say that there was a

Council of people that wrote the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, but almost anybody with any Historical awareness at all knows that there were really

Two men at that table You had Al Mohler, and you had Adrian Rogers And Adrian Rogers Was probably one of the largest

Debaters of Or enemies I don't want to use the word enemy because he wasn't hostile But he vehemently

Stood against Calvinism And then on the other end of the table you have Al Mohler Who is probably In at least the

Southern Baptist world The biggest defender of Calvinism That we've had, ever

And when those two guys Sit at a table and have to write a statement of faith Baptist Faith and Message 2000

Is a statement that It essentially Defines you as Christian and Baptist If you can affirm this, you are a

Christian And you are Baptist But it leaves open the door To people who are Calvinist Or not at all

Pretty much the only point of Calvinism that's really asserted Is preservation of the saints Which is, you know

That's the historic Southern Baptist position One point Calvinist So you have these

Statements Like there is a statement on election But I have guys in my church That are

Calvinist, and they look at that and they go I don't even know that I would Affirm that statement on election

Because it's so vague So where we are right now Is I don't like Coming into a church, and this is probably

One of the more useful things to even say right here at the end Is for guys that are coming into churches That are historically

Calvinist And they're Calvinist, but their church As they look at them right now is not It's a mistake

To come in in your first two or three years And say we're going to rewrite The statement of faith

You've got to stay longer And work with these people And teach them and preach to them

And develop relationships so that they can see That you're a trustworthy Christian And then as you disciple them

To walk them through this So that that change comes from the pews Not from the pulpit That happens through discipleship, it has to happen naturally

And at our church If you get behind the pulpit at Antioch You have to affirm the 1689, period

That's a non -negotiable If you get behind a lectern To teach a class You have to affirm the 1689

And It's very interesting I've had people that come to our church for a few years

And they say we want to join, we want to be members Because we want to become involved You can't teach a class unless you're a member here

And so I say okay, well if you want to be a member You have to affirm the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 But if you're wanting to get involved as far as teaching

I'm going to put a copy of the 1689 in your hand Go through this, let me know I don't believe in election

Or predestination The way that that's laid out there Obviously there's the red come up I don't believe that there's such a thing as non -elect infants

Or I don't believe that the Pope is the Antichrist Those are easy, we can work with you on those But when you're denying whole chapters

So as the pastor I say look If you're going to get up and preach or teach You have to be a 1689 guy

And my hope is that in years to come At some point My congregation will say

We really want To affirm the 1689 as a church We don't want it just to be

What you affirm as the pastor Or what our teachers affirm We as an entire congregation want to say

We're 1689 affirming Or something very close to it There's the Philadelphia Confession that adds a little more

But there's also the New Hampshire Confession That's a little softer on Calvinism but closer So I would be open to the church

Moving and saying this is important We want to define ourselves But I'm not

Right now believe Because right now we're under the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 I'm content with that So guys we had a few technical issues

There at the end and I'm sorry about that But you got to hear what Michael was saying about how he's looking forward to go How he's going to be going forward

With his church and we ought to be praying for him And praying for his church And understand this, that a church that has

Calvinistic roots, that's a great thing And that's something important that should be seen And we should understand that within Especially within Southern Baptist history

There are Calvinistic roots And so we can look to that, we can point to that And help people understand that But we shouldn't go in with a hammer especially

And we should never go into any church With hiding who we are Or not telling people who we are

We should never be Putting our Calvinism under a cloak Or anything If you're

Calvinistic in your theology It should not be something that you hide from people And I think Michael would agree with me on that And so My hope is that this has been helpful for you

Maybe you're a pastor in a church And you're trying to bring Reformation into your church Maybe you've seen what Michael's doing And maybe it's been an encouragement to you

Maybe you know some of my story And how our church came out of the old disciples of Christ And we actually became a

Reformed Baptist church Through a major transition of God working And bringing what we would call legitimate revival

And if you've never heard that story Send me a message and I'll drop you a link I've got an entire series that I gave

On the history of our church So I hope that this was helpful for you If you have any questions, please send me a message

You can go to KeithFoskey .com And you can reach me through there I want to thank you again for listening to Your Calvinist Podcast My name is