Road Trip Two: WLC and Adam, the Baptism Debates Rage On

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We are coming to you from the awesome road trip number two.

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This is the first, it's not the first thing I've done on this road trip, but it may be the first thing you've seen.

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And I imagine it is because the first night after I left

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Phoenix, I had agreed to, hmm, make sure this is not

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Rich sending me something here. Yeah, okay, good. I had agreed to do a program in South Africa.

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South Africa is nine hours ahead of us, but since it's a live radio program, it's on at a specific time in the morning.

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It starts at nine o 'clock in the morning in South Africa. I guess it's happening more and more in media.

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Could never have seen this coming when I did radio back when I was like 19, 20 years old. But you do live radio, but then you also live stream it on Facebook.

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And so the stations need that, they want that, because it increases their audience.

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And so they have listeners in not only South Africa, but New Zealand and stuff like that.

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So anyway, Pastor Mark Penrith down in South Africa, I've spoken to his church a couple of times, always had a great time when we were down there.

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And so I agreed to be live on the program and it worked great.

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We didn't have any issues as far as connectivity, thankfully, the place where I was at had good coverage.

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But I had to get up at 11 .55 p .m. We got done at two o 'clock in the morning.

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For you young folks, there's something you need to understand. When you get past about 50 and you wake up in the middle of the night, it can be very difficult to go back to sleep.

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It's not for everybody, but I've noticed that most of my fellow folks that are over half a century old will testify the same thing.

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So I was a little concerned because I had to drive the next day, but it took a little while, but I did manage to get back to sleep.

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And it was a good program. We covered everything under the sun really. And it was very interesting.

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So that worked out well. Some of you saw the article I wrote last night. We tried to do the dividing line yesterday, had a really bad day traveling.

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There was an accident that closed the freeway and you sat there for over an hour. And getting gas is the one real negative in this way of traveling.

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When you're over 40 feet long, the trucks don't want you over that side.

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And so it can be a challenge. And when you run into jerks, it can be a real challenge.

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So it was a tough day. So make a long story short, we decided not to do it. The internet just wouldn't do it.

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And I went outside, went out the door there. I looked up and realized it was clear as a bell.

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Now, before the first road trip, I bought a four and a half inch Orion reflector telescope.

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That's small, that's very small. So it's how big the hole is. That's how much light a reflector is gonna be able to grab.

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So I have a four and a half inch, a six inch, an eight inch and a 10 inch. And Jason Lyle has a 16 inch.

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And every inch is a whole lot more light, a whole lot more ability to see stuff.

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But I got this little teeny thing, cause it's super light. And I've got to drag this thing up mountains.

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So I was really nervous about that. I stuck it in my closet over in the bedroom and it stays right there.

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And I had never had it out until last night. And beautiful clear night, no clouds anywhere.

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And so I had a theory. And my theory was you set up a telescope and then just be nice, be approachable in an

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RV park. And it's like, what was that field of dreams? Was that the movie?

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I never saw that movie by the way. It was a baseball movie. I know that much. But I never saw it. But I knew if you build it, they will come.

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I think was the line. And by the way, I forgot my webcam. So the angle of the camera looks different.

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And on the way back, hopefully it'll look like it used to and will look better. I'll have a webcam then, but I'm just using my laptop at the moment.

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So anyway, I set up my little table outside. I got the thing out.

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Thankfully, Jupiter and Saturn were up very clearly visible.

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And so I just put that thing out there and it worked like a charm. I had the opportunity to talk to all sorts of folks.

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Kids would come by, parents would bring their kids by and show them Jupiter. They could, even with a four and a half inch, they could make out that Jupiter has color to it.

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Not the bands really clearly, but you could tell. And her moons were very clearly visible.

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And then Saturn, I love when people first see Saturn and like, it's got rings.

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Those pictures, that's where they came from. You could have seen beautiful pictures of the rings of Saturn, but when you see it with your own eyes, it makes all the difference in the world.

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And a father and his adult son came by and asked me to pray with them.

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A bunch of difficult stuff going on in their family right now. And I was kicking myself because I was gonna get some of Jason Lyle's tracks on astronomy to have with me to do exactly that, to be able to give folks.

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Because once they looked through the thing, well, here's a, talk about an easy track distribution line.

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You know, I've got this great friend, man, he's the smartest guy in the world. He's an astrophysicist. He wrote this thing and you might find he's written a bunch of books on,

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I couldn't, I wouldn't be able to keep enough of them to, I'd run out of them every trip.

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Well, if you had clear nights, literally I was one of the first clear nights I've had. Cause when

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I was up North, remember the fires during the summer? I couldn't see anything. It was ridiculous. So anyhow, so who knows?

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Maybe the not having a decent internet connection, maybe the traffic issues

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I had and the travel issues I had was all just so that I could pray with that man and his son, talk to some other folks, who knows?

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But took advantage of it. And that was really interesting. I'm in a park now that all these parks are so close to the freeway that when you open the windows at night, the song of the

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RV park is the semi -tractor trailer going by at 70 miles per hour.

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And the song of the wheels on the road. And yeah, we're still close enough for that, but I'm in a bunch of trees and there's a river.

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I can literally see flowing water from where I am right now. So for those of you, for fellow

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Arizonans like me, there are places where rivers have water in them because in Arizona, they don't.

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You go over rivers and you go, I remember when we first moved there, why did they call that a river?

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There's no water in it. And it's like, eventually you get used to it. But here they actually have water.

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It's very pretty, it's very nice. Trees, it's green. And there, man, I was plugging in and there was a spider on the electrical thing.

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I'd never seen a spider look like that. I mean, we've got black widows and we got scorpions, we got stuff like that.

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But this thing looked like it could jump at me. I was a little nervous. But anyway, so we're on our way.

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For those of you coming down to the mini conference at Grace Bible Seminary in, it's not

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Conyers. Why do I, Conway, Arkansas. Conyers is in Georgia. Anyway, Owen Strand and Jeffrey Johnson and I, of course,

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I'm the oldest of the three, but they gave me three out of the five solos to speak on. So I'm not sure exactly how that works.

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But I'm gonna be speaking on Sola Fide, Sola Gratia and Solus Christus.

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And so Jeffrey Johnson, I think he has Solus Fractura and I think Owen Strand's doing

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Sola Deo Gloria, if I recall correctly. So there we go. A couple of things

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I was gonna talk about last night, a couple of things come up today. First, all the stuff about William Lane Craig and Adam, I pointed out on Twitter yesterday,

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William Lane Craig does not have any concern about the once for all delivered to the saints faith.

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Or if he does, he defines that so narrowly that not even

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Apollinarianism, not even original sin, not even the historicity of Adam is within the realm of the narrowly defined contents of the faith.

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And so all these people are freaking out because William Lane Craig is basically expressing the viewpoint of the large majority of what calls itself

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Christian scholarship today. That's one of the reasons I've, you've never heard me doing, well,

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I have often criticized Craig and Turek and that whole evidentialist classical apologetics realm for doing the, well, you know, the majority of scholars view the resurrection this way, these minimal facts, arguments, and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

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I've never used that because I am well aware of the fact that the majority of scholarship does not believe almost anything that the scriptures teach because they're secularists, they're naturalists, they're materialists or whatever else they might be.

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They don't believe that there was someone named Moses or if there was someone named

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Moses, he had nothing to do with those writings that have his name on them. And most of them believe that there was no, that there may have been a tribal chieftain named

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David, but we don't have almost anything he ever wrote either. And that the

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Old Testament is a cobbled, badly cobbled together, badly redacted, badly edited, mishmash, a mess of stuff, which is taught in the large majority of theological schools whether on the undergraduate to graduate level, that's what you're gonna get hit with.

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And therefore there's really no foundation for the New Testament to be seen as having any kind of consistency to it either.

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And so that's what you have in the quote unquote academy, which is why I've never cared to have a seat amongst the unbelievers.

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I wanna do good scholarship, but I'm not interested in their standards and stuff like that because most of them just simply don't believe that there is a unified, when they look at,

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I have my Jeffrey Rice 1977

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NASB with me, I've got the NA28 too, but I'm going to G3 and Jeffrey's gonna be there, so I wanted to bring these along.

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When I hold this book, I believe that God from the first words of Genesis to the last words of Revelation intends to communicate a seamlessly perfect, but not simplistic message of his will in regards to the creation of the entire universe and specifically for his people so that they may be encouraged and have guidance and know what

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God would have them to do. And so this is not a simplistic revelation, it requires the greatest effort that we can put into it, but it does present a consistent message and that's really a dividing line.

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There are so many theological professors who simply believe that there is no consistent message.

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I remember a fellow student of mine went to the same church

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I went to at the time when I was going to Forerunner Theological Seminary's Phoenix Extension. We took a lot of classes together and we were at some type of a function for the church and he just basically said to me, you just think that the

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Bible has pretty much one message to it and I just can't believe that.

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I just don't think that it's as clear as you think that it is. And like I said, there were a number of people, this wasn't the same guy

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I was referring to and I refer to this other fellow who graduated with a master's degree in confusion, but I saw it happen to a lot of folks.

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And so all that going back to, I guess the reason that Craig gets so much attention is because a lot of folks haven't taken the time to listen really carefully.

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I wonder how many people who responded to Craig's mythological, historical stuff about Adam ever listened to the debates he did with Shabir Ali.

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Now I would, because I've debated Shabir many more times than he has. And so that makes a connection there and I've debated

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Shabir on the same issues that William Lane Craig has. And so there's a real contrast in the answers that we would give, given where we're coming from.

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And so I just wonder how many people have heard him dismiss original sin as mere speculation, chuckle at the concept of inerrancy.

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If they're aware that he's a avowed neo -Apollinarian, did they ever hear him actually likening the doctrine of the

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Trinity to Kerberos, the three -headed dog of Greek mythology?

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Have they thought through what Molinism even means? Most people don't really understand what Molinism means.

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And you put all that together, and obviously from Craig's perspective, he doesn't feel bound to the history of Christian theology in any way.

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But the corrective that he would bring to that is not derived exegetically, it is derived philosophically.

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And since he basically views himself as the leading Christian philosopher, I really do feel that he does, he's told that all the time.

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And so I think eventually he's come to believe that. Then you can see why, given his acceptance of Darwinism and associated concepts that come with that,

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I wasn't in the least bit shocked, surprised, anything.

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I'm glad people are responding, but I think people just need to,

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I've tried to communicate the reality that if you believe that the doctrine of the

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Trinity is true, that it's divine revelation, that it is the coherent message of scripture, that it's true in history, it's true in reality, it's foundational to how we're to view the world, all those things, you are in such a small minority, it's astonishing, because even amongst people who would confess the doctrine of the

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Trinity, many of, a large portion of them would do so out of tradition. Well, it's because it's what my church teaches.

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And that's different than believing it's true because God has revealed it.

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And it's actually foundational to how you understand what God's doing in the world, his relationship to the world, the gospel

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Trinitarian, all that stuff. So if you believe that this is sufficient, inspired, and consistent enough to communicate divine truth across the generations, across cultures, you are in such a small minority numerically today that it's astonishing.

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Now, don't get me wrong, God has his people who believe those things in every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

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And in comparison to the number of people who believe that in the days of Paul, it's exploded all over the world.

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But we are also in a time, I think we might historically be seen to be in a pre -pruning time, where there are a lot of people who call themselves

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Christians who are not. And if the spirit of God has to move in your heart and bring spiritual life to you, regeneration, that's what

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I'm talking about. I'm not talking about an outward commitment or tradition or a culture or anything like that. I'm talking about actually being born again.

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So, all of this to say, you need to recognize that if you believe the things that we talked about on this program, you need to believe them because God has revealed them, not because I said it or Votie Baucam said it or Paul Washer said it or John MacArthur said it or R .C.

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Sproul said it or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Calvin and Luther. No, the firm foundation must be firm.

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It must be that God has revealed these things in reality and that nothing can change that.

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And so, I just have to ask you honestly, I wasn't gonna talk about all this, but I just have to ask each one of you honestly, if 90 % of the people you know, apostatized, gave in, offered the pinch of incense, said

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Caesar is Lord or whatever the demand will be in the not too distant future in Western culture, how would that impact your faith?

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Don't for a second, I'm not for a second suggesting that it would not be a challenge to every single one of us.

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But the real question is, would you stand firm? How much of your commitment is based upon the fact that you know all sorts of other people who believe the same things?

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That really, I think, is an important question that we all need to wrestle with, that we all need to consider.

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Sort of goes back to that sermon that I did earlier in this year, where I talked about things you should be doing now to prepare you if you find yourself alone in a prison cell with people coming in each day telling you that everything you believe was a lie.

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Sort of fits in with all of that. I wasn't gonna do really super heavy duty stuff today, but anyway, so I saw all the commentary going on and heard people doing webcasts and everything else about William Lane Craig.

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And I'm glad, don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing anybody. I'm just sort of sitting back going, yeah, well, it's worthwhile to give a response, to give an answer, know two ways about it.

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But so many of them were like, he's a famous Christian apologist.

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Well, yes, he is. But his approach has been consistent down through the years.

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And I would think that most of us who understand reform theology and the necessity, the important necessity of presuppositions and recognizing that the starting point is absolutely massively important.

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Gotta do something here, I'm sorry. How many of you older folks are sitting around, you're in the middle of something, and then all of a sudden you go, did

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I lock the door? And I'm seeing a lot of people walking around, it's getting dark.

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And I'm not 1000 % certain that I locked the doors on my truck out there.

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There's not really much in there to steal, but the nice thing is

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I have my phone, so that means that I can lock it anyways. And so I just told the powers that be up in the satellites someplace to lock the door, and so it is.

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Anyway, I'll feel better. Okay, putting William Lane Craig aside, and that whole thing, sorry to have spent the first portion of the program and all that.

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Jared Longshore, I asked, I think I asked Rich this morning, I said, are the interwebs still having the baptism debate today?

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Because I was, whether I actually ever look at social media while moving,

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I will not say in public, but I really don't keep up with stuff, I can't. And so when

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I first saw the statement that he had left, and before he explained what it was,

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I told the guys, I said, well, obviously he's become a pater baptist.

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And they're like, why? Who's he hanging around with? So, and that's what it was.

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I don't know, Jared, I'm not actually absolutely certain we've ever met. If we did, it was long, long time ago.

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And I apologize if I don't remember that particular encounter. But part of me is like, guys,

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I understand that people may not have their feet under them on this subject.

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But this debate's been going on for a long time. And there have been lots and lots of books written.

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I do believe firmly, this has been my experience, that those of us who are reformed

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Baptists, and of course, there are many on the reform side that don't believe we are reformed because they would make pater baptism definitional of being reformed.

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I just simply point out that the vast majority of Presbyterians and Lutherans and Anglicans and Episcopalians who are pater

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Baptists are so far away from a believing Presbyterian who believes the

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Westminster Confession of Faith on everything else that I would think that my actually reformed

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Presbyterian brethren would be happy to have us around because the vast majority of the people who use their name don't believe in the

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Trinity or the virgin birth or the supernatural or the resurrection.

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And we believe all those things. So you might be a little slower with the definition of reformed with all the emphasis on that rather than all the other stuff that we happen to all agree on and over against all those folks out there.

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Anyway, but the debate has been going on and in my experience, reformed

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Baptists are 50 times more likely to have read entire defenses of infant baptism from Bavinck and Kuyper and Calvin and Westminster Vines and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and Wilson and everybody else than Presbyterians are likely to have read anything from a reformed

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Baptist perspective at all. And the vast majority of my Presbyterian friends think that our arguments for baptism are pretty much same arguments that the

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American Baptists or fundamentalist Baptists down the road would present.

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That's my experience. Are there Presbyterians who have read those books? Yes. Are they in the vast minority?

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Oh yeah, they are. They most definitely are. So with that said, obviously

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I don't have any problems whatsoever embracing my

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Pato Baptist brethren as co -laborers in the gospel, people for whom

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I have tremendous respect, closest allies we could have, but that doesn't lead me to then decide that this is not an important issue because we all know what it is.

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We all know that it is. You know how we know that it is? Because all of us recognize that it ends up causing ecclesiastical distinction and division.

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So if you're a Pato Baptist, you're not gonna be an elder in a

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Reformed Baptist Church and vice versa. Now the CREC does something that I'm honestly not exactly certain how it works, but I met a number of Reformed Baptists when

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I was in Moscow who are a part of what's going on there and I know others outside of Moscow.

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And so I'm not exactly sure how, ah, got him. Ha ha, I don't know if you heard that, but I have my bug zapper light on because a fly got in while I was loading stuff.

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So I plugged in the bug zapper light and the fly's gone. I love that thing, that's great.

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Anyway, we're in the middle of something important and I just got interrupted by the death of one of God's creatures, but given that he's flown into my eye about two times,

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I'm not really concerned about that. Anyway, so we have division about this.

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It defines how we express certain things. And so on the one hand, we definitely have to recognize that it is not an issue that divides us in the faith in the sense that we're talking about actual soteriological issues here.

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But at the same time, it is not something that can simply be swept under the rug.

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As long as we keep working together, we will have to keep debating these issues.

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And I think everyone should have your convictions pretty clearly laid out.

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I've debated the issue multiple times, by the way, and I saw one guy, someone mentioned something about a debate or something like that.

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It says, well, Shishko already beat him once. It's like, well, hey, everyone's got their opinions. I'm more than happy to allow someone to view the debate with Bill Shishko, the debate with Greg Strawbridge.

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They're very different debates, which is interesting. Got into different areas.

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Partly because the Presbyterian that I was debating would have serious problems with the other

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Presbyterian I was debating. There is no one Pato Baptist position.

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There is no one set of Pato Baptist arguments. You might say, well, there's no one set of Reformed Baptist arguments or Baptist arguments.

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That's true, but this particular issue has created significantly more division amongst

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Pato Baptists than amongst Baptists as to the actual arguments. Now, and a fundamentalist

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Baptist is not gonna make a covenantal argument. I get that. But anyway, so there's just some things

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I wanna point out. Just to remind us, because I was seeing a lot of stuff thrown around and a lot of emotions and I was like, that's just all chill, folks.

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Okay, Jared's made his decision. I didn't talk to me, but he doesn't know me from Adams.

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So would I have? Sure, I would have. Do I think I'm the expert on this?

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No, not at all, in no way, shape or form. But you've debated, yeah? But both times, that's what

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I was about to say, both times I was responding to a challenge to me to debate.

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I did not challenge either one of those gentlemen to debate me. Those came from the other direction and I accepted them, but I'm not running around trying to be the

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Baptist defender. And look, some of my own Reformed Baptist folks would say that I'm allegedly compromised because they would say, well, no, you need to hold this particular form of covenantalism and this, so on and so forth.

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And it's like, okay, whatever. So, but I just wanna remind folks of what some of the real issues are.

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It's a little bit dry here, if you don't mind, I'm gonna wet the old whistle once in a while.

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I just like to walk through the Westminster, a couple of paragraphs, well, more than one, and just make sure we're thinking about the important stuff, not the side stuff that I think is relevant.

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So if you look at chapter 27, I think this is the 1646, so this is original.

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I'm taking this off Ligonier's website. There are a number of different versions. There's an American version and all sorts of stuff.

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So I'll let you all figure that out. Let me just share some thoughts as we're going along and compare them with what you've been thinking over the past couple of days.

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And if it's helpful, it's helpful. If it's not, it's not. Sacraments are holy signs and seals of the covenant of grace.

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Ding, ding, ding, ding. So, key, massive key issue.

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With whom is the covenant of grace made? What's the nature of the covenant of grace? This is why

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I focus on Hebrews 8. This is why I point to the better promises, the better mediator of the new covenant.

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And hence covenant signs have to have a meaning that is consistent with the covenant of grace and how that is expressed as the new covenant, expressed in Hebrews chapter 8, which is made with the least, the greatest of them.

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They all have the knowledge of the Lord. All of their sins have been wiped out.

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Because remember, if you give the covenant sign without faith and repentance, and there is no example anywhere in the

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New Testament of someone being given baptism without faith and repentance.

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There just isn't. I'm sorry, the household baptisms don't work. I'm about, what, six, somewhere between five and seven sermons, lost track, in the series on baptism at Apologia.

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And we've finished with Acts, and we finished with examining household baptisms, including 1

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Corinthians 1. And I stand by what I've said. I just don't know how you can, it just seems to me to be so extremely weak to try to say that unrepentant, unbelieving people were baptized in those situations on some type of federal principle.

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There just isn't any evidence of it. I mean, you just, it's just reaching badly.

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But this is, to me, the absolute key issue. And that's why, especially dealing with the issue of dealing with this from a covenantal perspective, in the past,

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I've really focused upon what is the role of Christ as mediator to those who are placed in covenant relationship with him by baptism, who are not of the elect?

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Or will one go to the point of asserting that infant baptism is a sign of one's election?

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I would, if that's the case, and if baptism is a film and a circumcision, if you can't go back to the old covenant and go, there were a whole lot of people that were circumcised who were not of the elect, does the sameness of the sign go both directions?

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If it only goes one direction, in only one way, why not the other way? There's all sorts of questions that have to be raised this point.

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And I realize a lot of Baptists don't know the paedo -Baptist position, I get it. Just like a lot of paedo -Baptists don't know a covenantal

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Baptist position either, for that matter. But still, and we should know, that's why

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I say you should know your stuff about this before you start running it. Anyways, so it's a sign and seal of the covenant of grace immediately instituted by God.

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Now, down when we get to baptism, which is 28, it's gonna say, baptism is a sacrament of the

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Testament ordained by Jesus Christ. So I know baptism was ordained by Jesus Christ, but I have never seen any credible argument ever, and stuff for little children to come unto me has nothing to do with paedo -Baptism, please, please don't even.

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This is a, I'm just going with the language, ordained by Jesus Christ.

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The only way I could understand that that would make any sense whatsoever is that Jesus ordained that it would happen, but it didn't start happening until at least 100 years after the apostles.

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Because there's just simply no evidence that the apostles ever baptized an infant. There's no evidence that infants were baptized in the infant church.

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And once infant baptism starts to appear, it's not for any reason that Presbyterians and before Baptists together, would ever agree is a valid reason.

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It's for baptismal regeneration. So that's key.

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Sacraments to represent Christ and his benefits. I agree.

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That's why we do not allow unbelievers to partake of the Lord's Supper. And that's why right now, scheduled for mid to late

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April of next year, Pastor Wilson and I are gonna debate that because from their perspective, they try to be consistent and well, be consistent, but have to depart from the

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Westminster at this point. And that is they practice fatal communion. So we would say the sacraments, the ordinances are to represent

40:45

Christ and his benefits. Body and blood. Who's that for, the elect?

40:53

We consistently believe in particular redemption. We consistently believe in the consistency of the triune

40:58

God and the redemption of his people. God elects, the father elects, the son dies in their place, the spirit applies this in their lives.

41:07

There's a consistency all the way along. But if you have, as every

41:15

Presbyterian church in history has had, infants who are baptized who never make a profession of faith, then how did that represent to them

41:27

Christ and his benefits? And that's where they would say, well, it did, but they have sinned against it and have broken the covenant and hence are made guilty of the body and blood of Christ, even though they never professed belief in the body and blood of Christ.

41:52

Whole nother area, but an important one. And to confirm our interest in him, but if you give it purposefully to one without repentance and faith, how do you know there's interest in him?

42:09

As also to put a visible difference between those that belong unto the church. So this places you in the church.

42:17

So now we have to start talking about what is the church and what is the nature of the church and membership in the church.

42:24

And look, this has been a divisive thing amongst

42:32

Pado Baptists for a long time. Just go read the life of Jonathan Edwards, okay? It's just one example of many examples where this has a problematic application and understanding.

42:46

Under the church and the rest of the world, but if they're part of the world, so are you assuming that they're not a part of the world?

42:55

How do you have that knowledge? And solemnly to engage them to the service of God in Christ according to his words.

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So for many, you're engaging an unregenerate individual.

43:06

So some will say, yeah, this means we can assume regeneration. Others will say, no, no, no.

43:12

We call our children to faith and repentance. If they do not repent and believe, they are not a part of the church.

43:23

A lot of the federal vision stuff in the early 2000s was about this and about this distinction and about this issue.

43:32

I would simply say that nowhere in the

43:37

New Testament do we see evidence of the ordinances solemnly engaging us to the service of God in Christ apart from faith and repentance.

43:49

The assumption is that if you're being engaged in service of God in Christ, it's because God in Christ has already regenerated you by his spirit, not the other way around, not the other way around.

44:05

There is in every sacrament, a spiritual relation, a sacramental union between the sign and the thing signified.

44:12

Once it comes to pass, the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other. So again,

44:18

Doug Wilson, folks in Moscow try to be consistent here by engaging in paedo -communion.

44:25

The vast majority of Presbyterians who do not do paedo -communion, how does this work?

44:32

How do you, and of course, I would say to those who do paedo -communion, are you consistently assuming the election and in fact, regeneration, the child to whom you give these things that represent a spiritual relation?

44:52

Whereas that spiritual relation may not exist. To which they say, well, you don't know for certain that anyone who makes a profession of faith, but I'm going with the apostolic example.

45:02

It was when people made that statement of faith that they received these ordinances, not the other way around.

45:09

It's backwards to assume it. The apostles never did. And so there,

45:16

I think for a lot, there's just this assumption. Yeah, but that was just the early church. We're not in the early church anymore. Things have changed.

45:23

That seems dangerous to me for any number of reasons. The grace which is exhibited in or by the sacraments rightly used is not conferred by any power in them, neither does the efficacy of a sacrament depend upon the piety or intention of him that does administer it, but upon the work of the spirit and the word of institution, which contains together with a precept authorized and used thereof, a promise of benefit to worthy receivers.

45:48

Now, there's a whole history. I did five sermons on the Lord's Supper.

45:54

You can go back and I taught our people anyways, that the language that we are using developed over centuries.

46:02

This goes back to the Novatian schism. This goes back to the Donesis controversy. This goes back to Tratators in North Africa, believe it or not.

46:11

And it's fascinating. And I think it's good and healthy to wanna know what the background of all these things was so that you can examine the language and things like that.

46:20

I think that's all really important stuff. But this seems here to be especially relevant to the supper because it's talking about a promise of benefit to worthy receivers.

46:34

What's a worthy receiver of infant baptism? I can understand what a worthy receiver of the

46:41

Lord's Supper is. Someone who has discerned the body and blood of Christ as the commandment is, which a child can't do.

46:50

But same thing with baptism. So how do you put them together?

46:56

Well, you can either become a paedo -communionist or I'll let you answer how you put that together.

47:04

So skipping down to baptism because I'm looking at the clock here. Rich, I'm assuming,

47:12

I haven't gotten any messages from you. I am assuming that even though there may be some max head rooms once in a while that we're doing well enough,

47:24

I got a thumbs up. So that's all I need. So chapter 28, baptism is a sacrament of the

47:34

New Testament. It is ordained by Jesus Christ, most definitely.

47:40

John chapter four. Not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible church.

47:50

Biblically, I would want to come from a different direction because the initial connection of baptism in the

48:01

New Testament is to faith and repentance. Hearing the word, accepting the word, repenting and believing.

48:11

That then becomes later a sign of the solemn admission of the party baptized in the visible church.

48:19

May I suggest that the language of Westminster is first and formally conditioned by the sacral society, church and state in union, out of which the

48:40

Westminster Confession developed. And that's an issue.

48:46

That's a big issue. It's an important issue. We always have to look at our confessions.

48:52

When I look at the 1689, it is an apologetic document.

48:58

Its authors are in constant defense of their position primarily against the

49:07

Presbyterians. And the Church of England. And then behind that with them against Rome.

49:15

So you can't understand our profession of faith if you don't understand what Rome, like our confession of faith, we'll talk about the

49:23

Roman mass. You've got to know what Rome taught about those things. These things did not just float down out of heaven. There's a context to them that must be understood.

49:31

All of us have to do that. And I would argue that the Westminster is speaking from a particular historical position where there was a relationship of church and state.

49:43

That's extremely important to recognize. But baptism, but also to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace.

49:59

And so once again, how to interpret this and apply this is part of the great debate amongst

50:09

Presbyterians. But when you do not limit, when you do not use the limit that is provided by the apostolic example in the

50:25

New Testament and go beyond that, those debates are because you haven't used what is available to you in the apostolic witness.

50:35

And I would argue the apostolic witness is inarguable. Faith and repentance.

50:43

But this is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, which is made only with the elect of his ingrafting into Christ.

50:56

So this is why so many getting into this area emphasize apostasy, the curses coming upon apostates and the whole idea being, yeah, you were literally ingrafted into Christ by infant baptism.

51:23

And if that's why Doug argued, you need to grab them by their baptism. Remember the debate we had in 2004?

51:31

And therefore they're in a much worse position if they do not follow through with faith and repentance, a much worse position than a person who never received baptism.

51:46

And of course they did not make that choice. And they would say, and that's the same thing with the children of Israel who received circumcision.

51:55

And then that raises all the issues about the land promises and the nature of the old covenant and fulfillment in Christ and all those things that come along from there.

52:11

But ingrafting into Christ sounds like salvific language. And the next phrase is of regeneration, of regeneration.

52:25

So again, I'm very thankful for my Presbyterian brothers who do not believe in baptismal regeneration, except the

52:33

Westminster says is a sign of regeneration, to which they then would say, it is a sign of a hope for regeneration.

52:40

Regeneration of an assumed regeneration would be what some others would say.

52:47

Pierre Marcel literally went so far as to say when an infant is baptized, the impact of original sin is removed from them.

52:58

So they are like Adam. They are a new, they have the freedom to accept or reject as Adam did.

53:07

And I'm just like, that's dangerous. That's just really, really dangerous.

53:14

And it is. Of remission of sins, that's

53:19

Hebrews eight. And that means all of them. There's no, you end up having,

53:27

I have argued for decades that you end up having to substantially weaken the case for particular redemption, where it is the elect for whom

53:43

Christ dies and specifically for them to maintain this view of the covenant sign of infant baptism.

53:55

I think you see why, because you start getting into the issues of Christ as mediator. What does he mediate to those who have been engrafted into him, regenerated, but are not of the elect?

54:08

What does he mediate to them? The only thing you mediate them is wrath. How does that work? And I've literally had some say, yeah, that's what

54:16

Jesus says. He mediates wrath to these individuals who were engrafted into him by Christian baptism.

54:26

Not the New Testament anywhere, but. And of his giving up unto

54:31

God through Jesus Christ to walk in the newness of life. These are all descriptions of the work of the spirit, regeneration in someone's life.

54:42

And these are all connected with baptism. You can see how it's pretty easy to take just one step and go, yes, this is how regeneration takes place.

54:51

This is what many Lutherans say. You can go listen to them talking about baptism and that's exactly where they go.

54:57

Exactly where they go. Which sacrament is by Christ's own appointment to be continued in his church until the end of the world.

55:06

It later says that dipping the purse into the water is not necessary, but baptism is rightly missed by pouring or sprinkling water upon the person.

55:13

Even Calvin recognized that's not what the Greek meant, but anyways. And then of course, not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto

55:21

Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing parents are to be baptized. There of course is the assertion of infant baptism.

55:34

And one's decision on these things, I think really has to, if you're going to reject it as I have, knowing what the arguments are from multiple different perspectives, then recognize what flavors you are rejecting and why.

55:57

And what the consistent requirement for your own viewpoint therefore would be.

56:06

I think that will help you in your understanding of why you baptize.

56:11

And some people have asked, and I realized we've gone for an hour as long as I was gonna go, but I'll wrap up here fairly quickly.

56:19

I'm just not sure how long the signal's gonna go for us, but people have asked, so why haven't you addressed a bunch of the arguments that you've actually talked about in this webcast, in your sermon series?

56:36

Because I said at the beginning, I wasn't going to until the end. And it is interesting that,

56:45

I think I can make a pretty strong case for why I'm approaching the subject of baptism in the sermon series the way that I am.

56:55

I've started with the biblical evidence. I haven't started with a highly developed theological system that will tell me what

57:05

I'm supposed to see in the scriptures. I think we need to be very, very careful. I love

57:11

Kuyper, I love Bavinck, I love reading these tremendously gifted brothers in Christ.

57:22

I learn much from them, but I also see that in many instances, they start with the inheritance they've already received.

57:34

And maybe it's because I'm an apologist and I deal with people outside the Christian faith,

57:41

I can't just assume those things, I have to lay those foundations consistently. And so we will get to all of these arguments.

57:49

We will talk about Jesus as mediator of the new covenant. And we will talk about Colossians chapter two.

58:02

And what is the parallel? Is New Testament baptism, the ordinance, the sacrament, is that the fulfillment of circumcision in the old covenant?

58:21

What is the extent of continuity between the covenants and discontinuity? Because everybody has continuity and everybody has discontinuity.

58:28

Well, I guess there might be a few groups that you might wonder about that, whether they have almost any continuity at all, but everybody recognizes that there is connection.

58:41

Where do you consistently draw those lines? We're gonna deal with all those things, but to get there, you've gotta have the right foundation.

58:52

And so what we're doing is we defined the word, we looked at it historically, we have walked through Acts, I'm now gonna look at every place where the

59:03

Bapt root is used in the New Testament outside of the historical instances to see how the apostles, there aren't that many.

59:13

You'd be surprised. There are not that many. I mean, you take John the Baptist out and there's not nearly as many as you would expect there to be.

59:26

And then we're going to look at what the early church did. And I think this is a super, super weak area for my

59:38

Presbyterian brothers. I really do. I think it's a very weak area. There's a tremendous amount, more than I'm gonna be able to fit into a sermon series.

59:54

I may have Chris on with me to talk about some of the stuff he's written on this.

01:00:01

I think he's done a good job to talk about some of the historical material in regards to the wide variety of understandings of baptism practices and the reality that the assertion that infant baptism is the primitive practice of the church is just simply bogus on a level that's hard to imagine.

01:00:27

It's just too easily refuted by the facts. This was not what the early church did.

01:00:37

And when it did start developing, if you'll listen to what they're talking about, they've missed the boat on everything that the

01:00:46

Westminster Confession of Faith says about baptism. They've missed it. They've got other reasons why they're doing it.

01:00:55

And then having done all that, then we're gonna dedicate a few sermons to the key arguments.

01:01:03

And of course, I'm gonna have to present arguments from Presbyterians different than you are, if you're watching this and you're getting frustrated with me because they think you've missed it.

01:01:15

I mean, that's why we had the Strawbridge debates because I debated Bill Shishko and Bill Shishko's Orthodox Presbyterian Church, but he's not a paedo -communionist.

01:01:24

And so the paedo -communionists were saying, well, they're at least inconsistent. So debate somebody on our side.

01:01:30

And so I did. And so you all know you all have differences.

01:01:36

And so I've got to deal with a wide variety of those arguments, but we will.

01:01:43

And it's gonna take time, but it's worth the time to do it, I think, and to do it properly and to do it well.

01:01:50

And so I'm to that age now where I'm just, I'm not gonna be rushed.

01:01:57

Why? We've been debating this for centuries.

01:02:03

There's no reason to rush. There's no reason to, that's why I was watching all this stuff and everybody getting all excited and upset.

01:02:11

And I'm just sort of like, okay, so Jerry Longshore embraced paedo -baptism. I've known all sorts of paedo -baptists that rejected it.

01:02:20

Embraced my viewpoint. Known Reformed Baptists that went the other direction. All sorts of different reasons.

01:02:27

And it's gonna, you know what? It'll happen again next month. One way or the other, somebody.

01:02:33

And it's like, my faith isn't impacted by that. And I think the only people whose faith is impacted by that are people who in their more honest moments will go,

01:02:45

I don't know why I believe what I believe. And if you really push that far enough, what they're really saying is,

01:02:51

I believe what I believe because of the people that I trust to tell me what to believe. And if one of them that I trust to tell me what to believe changes viewpoints, does that mean

01:03:03

I need to change viewpoints? Shouldn't be that way. You say, but everyone's got some element of that. That's true.

01:03:09

That's true. But that's why our goal should be always getting our foundations built out and getting rid of as much of that as we possibly can and getting rooted firmly where we need to be rooted.

01:03:26

Anyway, man, was I gonna, I actually typed something up and, oh yeah, okay, yeah.

01:03:36

Well, I'll leave those, those aren't gonna go away. I was gonna talk a little bit about Michael Fallon's doing a webcast as part of his work with Sovereign Nations, New Discourse and stuff like that.

01:03:55

If you haven't, I tweeted it out this morning. If you haven't subscribed, you should. Today's was especially good.

01:04:01

I listened to it while doing breakfast before taking off, but it was, it really, really made a lot of important observations, definitions, connections.

01:04:12

And one of them was Marcuse's article on the intolerance of tolerance.

01:04:20

And I actually listened to the whole article today while driving, which first part of the article isn't all that exciting, but when he gets to talking about how we need to be intolerant of having tolerance for the expressions of people who are oppressing others, you start seeing exactly what's going on in cancel culture and everything else, exactly where it came from.

01:04:43

And he traces that down to the founding of BLM, which explains, by the way, why BLM doesn't

01:04:49

BLM. What I mean by that is if BLM actually believed what the letters say, they'd be in Chicago, but they're not.

01:04:59

And they want what's happening in Chicago to continue because they exist to create the division that that represents and that that helps to exacerbate and to make greater.

01:05:14

And once you get hold of the fact that the people are pushing all this stuff are the elites who continue to live behind walls with fences and armed guards, all the things they don't want any of us to have, then you start getting an idea of what's really going on.

01:05:33

And it all of a sudden, it's like, hey, that's Romans one. Yeah, you're right, it is.

01:05:40

Ding, ding, ding. So we'll get to that. We'll get to that. So anyways, I'm glad this worked.

01:05:47

I hope it worked anyways. And so, good. So obviously on the road,

01:05:56

I have no way when I figure out the places that I'm gonna be stopping of knowing what the internet's like in that particular spot of the world.

01:06:07

So we do the best we can, but I'm very, very, very thankful to have this beautiful unit and continue to pray for safety.

01:06:18

I mean, you've gotta keep your eyes on the road, man. Let me tell you. Wild and crazy stuff happens out there.

01:06:28

But keep praying for safety. Travel Fund is what helps us to, when

01:06:33

I finally get the thing near enough a gas pump to fill it up. Takes a little bit of fuel.

01:06:40

And you can help us with all of that. And so see you all in Conway this weekend.

01:06:49

Jonesboro on Tuesday night, G3, starting Wednesday through the weekend, then down to Florida, Niceville, Galapagos area.

01:06:59

You'll be there two nights speaking on the Bible. Then Louisiana, Lafayette, Louisiana the next day.

01:07:11

And then off to the Troublemaker in Texas two nights with Tom Buck in Lindale.

01:07:18

And that's it for this trip. After that, there's not gonna be anything of me left. Now I'm not home yet.

01:07:23

I still gotta drive from Texas home. But yeah, I've lined out quite a trip.

01:07:31

Quite a trip indeed. And we're lying out trips for next year. So until the jackbooted thugs are mining the road closures at the borders, looking for your papers, we're gonna do the best we can to continue on.

01:07:52

And then we'll find the back roads and start traveling with a dirt bike. That's just, we all need to go read

01:08:02

God's Smuggler again so we know how to do this stuff. It's amazing. Anyways, thanks for watching the program today.

01:08:08

Thanks Rich for making it happen. And I have absolutely positively no idea when we're gonna get through this again.

01:08:18

Rich is gonna be traveling. We got G3 coming up. I'm gonna be speaking every day next week.