Why we use the First London Baptist Confession (instead of the 1689)

Your Calvinist

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Sometimes I feel the weight of the world fall down on me, so heavy

00:12

And I need a friendly voice with some good theology

00:18

Calvinistic speaking So I mix a manly drink Pepsi Chupacabra And I hit the

00:24

YouTube link Don't say hit, that sounds violent And I feel my troubles all melt away

00:32

It's your Calvinist Podcast with Keith Barsky Beards and bow ties

00:43

Laughs till sunrise It's your

00:49

Calvinist Podcast with Keith Barsky He's not like most

00:57

Calvinists He's nice Your Calvinist Podcast is filmed before a live studio audience

01:07

Welcome back to Your Calvinist Podcast My name is Keith Foskey and as always, I am your Calvinist The keen observer out there may notice that I'm not in my regular office today

01:16

I'm actually in my church office I normally do the podcast from my home office where I have all my movie posters

01:22

But behind me today is not my movie posters In fact, if you look right over my shoulder, you'll actually see my black robe

01:28

I don't use it very much, but I do have one and I do preach from it from time to time So I'm going to be doing the podcast today because I've been out of town for the last week

01:38

And I wanted to come into the office and get some things done today And one of those things was to record today's podcast

01:46

Let me talk for a minute about the conference It went really well I was at the Reformata Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee Where Claude Ramsey is the pastor

01:56

You all probably know Claude He's with the Here I Stand Theology Podcast Wonderful podcaster, wonderful pastor, wonderful brother in Christ And I have to say something about the church there

02:07

Because not only did they host the conference well Not only did they give tremendous hospitality and just do a wonderful job

02:16

But on the last day as I was leaving to come home My wife and I got up at 6 o 'clock in the morning, put the kids in the van

02:23

And our van electrical system began to go haywire Things were just going crazy

02:30

And come to find out the alternator had gone bad And one of the elders from Reformata Baptist Church came to us

02:38

And he replaced the alternator right in the driveway And it was such an amazing thing for me to watch a skilled man

02:47

Doing something he's good at Because I'm not a good mechanic I'm not good at working on cars And I jokingly said

02:55

I felt like a 5 -year -old watching my dad work on a car again Because all I did was hold the flashlight and he did all the work

03:01

But I was so grateful Claude's wife came and brought my kids breakfast

03:07

And they just took care of us while they were working on our car Such a blessing So thank you

03:13

Kenny for doing the work For April for bringing us breakfast And just the sweetness of fellowship that we had

03:19

With the Truth and Love Network brothers that were there The Laborers Podcast brothers that were there Doing the conference together

03:26

And then to have what started out as a really bad day To come to find that it was actually getting an opportunity

03:34

To see someone do a wonderful job And minister to you in a way that was unique And so my wife and I again

03:42

Super grateful for all that we were able to be blessed with by that church

03:48

So with that in mind I want to just mention a few other things Before we get started on today's topic

03:53

Again don't forget 1689 Cigars They are offering a coupon code

04:00

SuperiorTheology If you go and purchase cigars from there you'll get a discount off Also I want to remind you about Fellowship Studios They're the ones who put together our new website

04:10

KeithFoskey .com If you want to go and find information about me And about the ministry And if you want to learn more

04:19

Or rather if you want to contact me You can do it directly through the website Now you don't have to go to an email address You can just go to KeithFoskey .com

04:25

There's a contact form You can send me questions, comments, ideas for videos And I enjoy all of it And I try to respond to everything as much as I can

04:35

Also while I'm mentioning this I want to also just say thank you to all of the supporters From BuyMeACoffee .com

04:42

There's been so much of a blessing Those of you who have been supporting the show Go into BuyMeACoffee .com

04:48

Slash YourCalvinist And I'm just so grateful For everyone who is supporting Some are supporting one -time things

04:54

Some have actually become monthly supporters And that's huge Because all of that just goes to help

05:02

Continue to bless our family As we're making these videos And putting out this content

05:07

And I'm very grateful Most of all I'm grateful for Sovereign Grace Family Church Because this is a ministry of Sovereign Grace Family Church I'm the pastor

05:15

I serve with two other pastors Brother Andy and Brother Mike And I'm grateful that the church continues to support the podcast

05:23

And if you are in the Jacksonville area Please come visit us at Sovereign Grace Family Church And you can find out more about us at sgfcjacks .org

05:33

Now one other thing before I get to the topic I know I've got a lot going through Is at the very end of today's video

05:40

I'm going to include an interview I did While I was at the Laborers' Conference It's an interview with Imago Dei Ministry They are an abolitionist group

05:52

That's seeking to save babies And so if you want to learn more about them And maybe even begin to support them

05:58

There's going to be a 10 -minute video At the end of today's podcast I encourage you to please watch that to the end

06:04

So that you can learn more about them And the ministry that they're doing Alright, well without further delay

06:11

I want to go ahead and move into the topic for today And today's topic really is chosen by you all

06:18

Because last week I did a show On how I was almost fired once for being a

06:25

Calvinist I told the story about how I had written my resignation letter

06:31

I even read the resignation letter to you all Which actually became more of a resolution letter Rather than a resignation letter

06:37

Because I was able to stand resolutely And make a stand for the faith

06:44

And what I believe the Bible teaches And I talked about how Tom Askell Was a blessing in that regard

06:50

And a few of you actually asked If I would be interested in interviewing Tom Askell And he liked the tweet where his name was mentioned

06:57

And so I reached out to him And hopefully that will actually happen soon If you think that's a good idea, leave it in the comments

07:03

Tell me some questions you might want me to ask Dr. Askell If he is willing to come on the show

07:08

And I think he will be I've done some work with the Founders I did a video with them a couple of months ago

07:16

Scott Callaham, who is the leader of the Institute of Public Theology Which is their teaching arm of the

07:23

Founders Ministry So I'm pretty sure he's going to be coming on And I'm looking forward to having him do that So again, if you have a comment or something you'd like me to say

07:31

Or if you just think it's a great idea for me to have Dr. Askell on the show Please leave that in the comments But during that video

07:39

Many of you said that you were very interested In why our church chose to go with the 1646

07:46

London Baptist Confession Rather than the 1689 London Baptist Confession And so what

07:55

I have decided to do Is in response to all of the people who said Hey, tell us that story, tell us why you did that I've decided today to make this show

08:05

About why our church adopted the first London Confession Rather than the second

08:12

And I also want to make another announcement about that David K. Martin is an audiobook narrator

08:19

And he's been on the show a few times Promoting some of the books that he's done And talking to me about them He was on very recently about a book he did by B .B.

08:26

Warfield Well he and I talked this last weekend And he is going to record

08:34

The first London Confession In audiobook format Which it's not really long

08:40

But it's going to be great Because it's going to be something That I'm going to publish on our

08:46

YouTube page And make available to all of you So if you're a person like me

08:51

Who really enjoys listening As well as reading And having the opportunity to hear things

08:58

Maybe while you're driving Or while you're working around the house We're going to be making available for free

09:04

Through our YouTube page The first London Confession of Faith 52 articles of faith

09:10

And it's going to be in just a couple weeks We'll have it done, published, and ready to go

09:15

Really super looking forward to that Because David has that buttery voice

09:20

Golden throat And he's going to be doing that for us

09:26

As a blessing to our ministry And I'm so thankful for him And again, if you're looking for audiobooks

09:32

And you want a great narrator Or if you have a book that you want to get narrated Look up David K.

09:38

Martin And he's a wonderful brother in Christ And a wonderful person to work with Alright, so here we go on to the topic

09:47

Why did we adopt the 1646 Confession Rather than the 1689

09:54

Confession? Well, let's kind of talk about Why we wanted to adopt a confession altogether

10:02

Like, why did our church do this? Because we were not previously a confessional church

10:07

Even though we had identified ourselves As Baptists and Calvinistic Baptists And sometimes even

10:14

Reformed Baptists Even though my buddy R. Scott Clark would say We certainly were not We had always identified ourselves as that Because we held to Calvinistic soteriology

10:28

And we were Baptistic in our view of the ordinances And things like that So we decided a few years ago

10:38

As we were considering updates That we wanted to make to our church constitution And by the way, a church constitution

10:44

Is basically just a document Which outlines how business is going to operate Within the church

10:50

Obviously the governing document of the church Is the Bible And there is no other authority higher than the

10:57

Bible But there has to be rules on how monies handle There has to be rules on how membership works

11:03

And things like that And so the church constitution Typically is a document that outlines

11:08

How the church functions in regard to leadership In regard to choosing its leaders

11:14

In regard to handling money In regard to those things And typically within that document

11:19

There will be some form of a statement of faith And ours did It had a statement of faith in it

11:25

And it was 13 articles Up until I think somewhere around 2015, 2016

11:32

We adopted a 14th article on the subject of marriage It was after the

11:37

Obergefell decision With the Supreme Court And we decided to adopt an article Among those that outlined

11:44

That we believe that marriage was Between one man and one woman

11:50

And was not something that should be seen

11:55

In any other way And so And if anybody wants a copy of our church constitution

12:01

We actually do make it available It is available on our website SGFCJACKS .ORG And you can see those 14 articles

12:07

See how that was outlined And if I remember correctly And I think I do I believe we actually got the wording for the marriage

12:15

One out of the From FIRE Because we're a part of FIRE Fellowship And we have been a part of FIRE Fellowship Since 2015, 2016

12:25

I think Is when we Somewhere around then Around the same time Is when we joined

12:31

FIRE And FIRE Fellowship is great If you are a church that's looking for Fellowship to be a part of It seems like I'm endorsing a lot of things today

12:39

I guess I'm just in the mood to endorse things And I do endorse wholeheartedly FIREfellowship .org

12:44

The men who lead that Brian Borgman is one of them You've heard me talk about him How much

12:50

I love him And am encouraged by him Well Brian's one of the leaders And it's a great fellowship of churches

12:57

And we receive a lot of encouragement from them It gives us opportunities to meet people To learn from them

13:03

To have conferences And also gives us the opportunity To meet missionaries

13:08

That we may not otherwise get connected with So there's a lot of benefit To being part of a small association of churches

13:14

And again FIRE stands for The Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals So if you're interested

13:20

It's FIREfellowship .org So we were part of that We had our own statement of faith

13:26

We had our own constitution But we did not have We were not a confessional church

13:32

Because we did not have a confession That we had adopted And so we decided we wanted to adopt a confession

13:41

And we began to investigate What confession most adequately described

13:47

What we teach and believe Here at Sovereign Grace Family Church And we had elders

13:55

Who had come from other churches Brother Andy, Brother Mike Had come from other churches And they had brought with them Their own experiences from their other churches

14:02

And their own teaching And theology and everything And as we began to grow together

14:08

And learn together Things that we knew we wanted Is we knew we wanted to have A Baptist confession

14:16

And there are several You know a lot of people Are really only familiar with the 1689 And that's the one

14:21

But you know there are other confessions That are available Philadelphia Confession Which again is obviously closely connected

14:28

It's the 1689 It just has some additional articles And then the New Hampshire Confession And some others

14:35

But we began As we were looking at the confessions We began to look a little further back

14:41

And we began to see That there was a confession That is often overlooked

14:47

And it is the first London Confession You'll often If you talk about the 1689

14:55

You'll often see it referred to As the 2LBC Well the 2LBC stands for The Second London Baptist Confession Well if there's a second

15:06

London Baptist Confession Then that means there Obviously was a first one And actually

15:11

The Second London Confession Is really sort of the third one Because the first one

15:17

Was published in 1644 And then almost immediately Had to be edited

15:23

Because there were some pushback There was some issues of Lack of clarity

15:30

There were even some areas Where there were some parts That just did not read correctly

15:37

And so there needed to be Some clarification And even some additions

15:45

There needed to be some editing Some addition to it So in 1646 The second edition of the

15:52

First London Confession Was published And that's the one we have adopted

15:57

As a church And I want to show you Some of the literature That I brought with me today Another reason why

16:03

I did this podcast From my office Is because I have all these books In my office I didn't have these at my home

16:09

The first one is the actual book That we give out to members This is the

16:15

This is produced by Particular Baptist Press And you can order these

16:22

I think they're three or four dollars We order these And we send these out Or we give these out To all of our new members

16:28

Actually you have to read this Before you become a member So we give this to anyone Who's considering becoming a member

16:33

And this is the It's the First London Confession of Faith 1646 edition

16:39

With an appendix And the appendix Is wonderful too Now we

16:46

The appendix is by Benjamin Cox And we teach As we're teaching through this book

16:51

We teach the appendix as well But we do distinguish it From the actual confession The confession itself

16:57

Is 52 articles And there's a tremendous Little bit of history

17:02

In this book I'm going to read to you just The This is the publisher's introduction

17:08

I'm not going to read the whole thing Because it's a few pages But I want to read just the first Little bit of this Publisher's introduction

17:16

What has come to be known As the First London Baptist Confession of Faith Of 1644 Was revised and reprinted

17:22

Two years later in 1646 And followed the same year With an appendix by Benjamin Cox After the publication

17:29

Of the Second London Baptist Confession In 1677 Which was reprinted in 1682, 1688, 1689

17:35

And used as the basis For the Philadelphia Confession of 1742 First printed in 1743

17:40

By Benjamin Franklin The First London Confession Fell into undeserved obscurity

17:46

That was the part I wanted to get to There was a lot of dates there I hope that wasn't too confusing But basically what it's saying is

17:51

As the As there were more confessions And as the confessions began to Spread abroad

17:59

And obviously come to the United States This little confession Fell into obscurity

18:05

In fact, I've talked to a lot of people Who didn't even know that it existed Or have never read it

18:10

Even if they did know They've heard of it But never read it And I really just I appreciate this

18:19

Let me see if I can see this here In speaking of this confession

18:27

It talks about how valuable it is Even though it is Admittedly smaller and less complete

18:34

Than the 1689 But like this paragraph here It says William Lumpkin was of the opinion

18:41

That perhaps no confession of faith Has had so formative an influence

18:46

On Baptist life as this one And this one is referring to The First London And the publisher says

18:52

We would agree We also believe its historical importance Is second only to its Christ -centeredness

18:58

And this calls for its reprint In a new and more familiar format And that's where this book comes from So this little book is helpful

19:05

I encourage you If you do have an interest in Learning more about this confession

19:13

More than I'm going to be able to do In just a one -day podcast I do encourage you to order this book

19:19

From Particular Baptist Press Now there's another book That I want to mention to you as well

19:25

And that is this book right here And this is a little bit more Of a beefier book

19:30

This is James Renahan's For the Vindication of the Truth This is

19:36

Baptist Symbolics Volume 1 A Brief Exposition Of the

19:41

First London Baptist Confession of Faith And what it has in it That's really great

19:47

Is it has actually both Of the First London And the edition

19:53

The 1644 and the 1646 Let's see if I can turn To maybe show this to the camera So right here

19:59

It says, you know In this regard Regarding the doctrine of Christ Which is Articles 9 through 20 It's the 1644

20:06

Confession And the 1646 Revision And you can see both of them On this page And it's like that throughout the book

20:13

He gives a tremendous history Obviously James Renahan Is a historian and teacher Of Baptist history

20:21

And so if you really want to know more About the history of this document

20:27

And the sort of The thoughts of the minds

20:32

Of the men who wrote it And more about them This book For the

20:37

Vindication of the Truth Baptist Symbolics Volume 1 Put out by the Founders Ministries Certainly would be one

20:44

That I would encourage you to get If you look at mine You'll see it's I don't know how to not mark up a book

20:51

So I write all in it The only thing that I would say As a church that adopted

20:56

The First London I would say as I was reading Dr. Renahan on this I would say the only thing

21:01

That perhaps Maybe not disagree But maybe would emphasize differently

21:06

Is that he tends to emphasize the At least in certain portions of this book

21:12

He tends to emphasize the fact that The First London is In some ways incomplete

21:18

I want to see if I can find How he says it here I have it outlined Let's see

21:27

Had it here a moment ago Yeah It's basically what he's saying

21:34

Is that Without the Second London This one isn't enough

21:43

The way it reads Is essentially that If you read the First London And you don't have the Second London There's going to be areas

21:49

Where there are There are just areas that are incomplete And I would give an example of that The First London says very little

21:58

About the Lord's Supper And so if you're wanting to find A more robust doctrine of the

22:05

Lord's Supper Certainly you could look to The Second London And draw more from that Than you're going to get

22:12

In the First London In fact in the First London Really the only thing

22:19

It refers to about the Lord's Supper Is that baptism precedes Participation in the

22:24

Lord's Supper And that's typical in Baptist churches That a person would be baptized first Before receiving the

22:30

Lord's Supper But it doesn't give a doctrine Of what the table is

22:37

And so in that sense One could argue that It doesn't give a full doctrine Of the table

22:43

And I don't think it intended to One of the things that's very clear About this document

22:49

Is just like any other historical document It's written in a time

22:54

In a place where its intention Is to make the arguments

22:59

That it's concerned with And like the Second London Confession It begins

23:06

I'm going to pull up The first article here It begins with the statement

23:12

That we're not Anabaptists I was talking when I had R. Scott Clark on recently We talked about this

23:18

This is the way it opens A confession of faith Of seven congregations Of Churches of Christ That's not the

23:24

Church of Christ The denomination But of seven congregations Or Churches of Christ in London Which are commonly

23:31

But unjustly called Anabaptists And the argument is

23:36

We're not Anabaptists We're Baptists And there is a distinction

23:43

That needs to be made And so again This is a little bit

23:51

Of the history here And a little bit of the time And when these things were given And so what

23:56

I want to do now Is I want to move to the question Of why did we affirm this one

24:02

Why not just affirm the 1689 And I just mentioned We would use the 1689 at times

24:08

Especially if we're teaching On something that the First London Doesn't necessarily address And we find agreement

24:14

In the Second London We might be able to use that In teaching So why not just adopt The whole thing Well we wanted to be able

24:21

To affirm a confession That we could hold to Without any asterisks

24:27

And what we mean by that Is often times what you find In churches that claim to be 1689 or Westminster Or whatever

24:37

That hold to a certain confession You'll find that there are Exceptions within those

24:45

Confessions In fact you can be ordained I believe you can be ordained In the

24:50

Presbyterian Church While still holding exceptions To certain parts

24:55

Of the Westminster Confession And so the same thing Can be said of the 1689

25:03

I know of some churches That hold to the 1689

25:08

Confession But they hold to the 1689 Confession With exceptions And as a church

25:14

They make those exceptions known They put asterisks in Their copy of the

25:19

Confession They say we don't hold To this particular point Or we allow for differences On these particular points of doctrine

25:27

And so we didn't want to do that That was something that The three of us

25:33

The elders who were serving together Decided that we wanted to Have a document that we felt like We could affirm every line

25:42

Of the document Without having to put Any asterisks in Now I'm in no way saying That if your church

25:47

Does hold to the 1689 But you have exceptions That you're in some way wrong

25:52

I'm just saying That's not what we wanted to do We sort of had a concerted effort In the beginning

25:58

We want to find one We can affirm completely And like I said We looked at everything We even looked at The abstract of principles

26:04

We were trying to find something That was concise That was not necessarily simple

26:09

But was able to be Held to without having to have

26:14

Any exceptions And if you

26:21

If you look at a lot of 1689 churches They hold the whole 1689 Without exception In fact some hold the 1689

26:26

So much that I remember recently I had a conversation With a friend of mine And he's a pastor of a 1689 church

26:32

And I asked him I said well what's your position On the millennium You know

26:37

Because we were just talking And he said We believe what the confession says

26:43

So it's like That's fine And that's great If that's A confessional church

26:49

Should hold to the confession And that's what it means To be confessional You're holding to That particular confession

26:56

And so we wanted to Have a confession That we could hold to And not have any exceptions

27:03

And what we found In studying the 1646 Was that we could affirm

27:09

Every line There was no need to add Any exception clauses Or anything

27:15

There was really only one part of it That even raised any questions Among us as to its meaning

27:21

And there's a part in it Where it refers to Of the terrors of the law

27:26

Not using the terrors of the law And so We studied that out

27:33

Agreed that we could affirm What that was saying Regarding the law And so We didn't have to add an asterisk

27:40

To that line or anything We were able to affirm The entire thing So if a person comes

27:45

To join our church That person knows We hand them Again This little book We say

27:50

Here's the book For you to have And read it We affirm the 52 articles

27:56

And the other thing we liked And this may seem like a Kind of maybe oversimplified

28:01

Thing to like But we liked the fact That it was 52 articles Because we are able to Throughout the course of a year

28:09

Read the confession In worship One Sunday One article a week

28:17

For every Sunday So with 52 Sundays in a year 52 articles in the confession

28:24

And we did that We did that two years in a row We're actually taking A little break right now We're doing something A little bit different right now

28:29

We're reading through some We're doing some different Scripture readings That we're doing But we're going to revisit it

28:35

In fact we may revisit it A person sent me A modern version

28:41

Of the confession And we're going to look it over Make sure there's nothing strange

28:49

Or odd about it And if it does We may read through the confession In a modern language

28:55

Because it does use Some older language In the original So I know possibly

29:02

One of the questions That you may have Well what are the areas That you disagree with The 1689?

29:08

And this is Something I've not been shy About talking about In the past And I realize that There are those

29:17

Who might Very vehemently Disagree with me On some of the things I'm about to say

29:22

So I do want to just mention From the outset I believe that what We're going to move into now Are secondary issues

29:28

There's nothing primary There's no primary Point of doctrine That I would Necessarily disagree

29:33

With the 1689 on But issues of secondary Matters Would cause me

29:41

To have some areas Of disagreement The first thing is It's very clear

29:46

That the 1689 Puts forward A covenant theology That is not

29:51

The covenant theology That we would hold to At our church And this is again May come as a surprise

29:58

To some of you But I don't hold to Classic covenant theology Neither do I hold to 1689 federalism

30:05

And so let me give you Sort of the breakdown Of those Classic covenant theology Is what is found

30:12

In the Westminster Confession And it is typically Described as One covenant of grace

30:19

With different administrations And so You have the covenant of redemption Which took place

30:25

In eternity past You have the covenant of works Which was with Adam In the garden And then everything

30:30

After the covenant of works Is a different administration Of the covenant of grace Beginning of course

30:37

With Adam himself Receiving the promise

30:42

That the woman Would have the child

30:48

And he would crush The head of the serpent So When you look at it that way

30:54

The Abrahamic covenant The Mosaic covenant The Davidic covenant All of these covenants

31:00

Are simply administrations Of the one covenant of grace

31:05

And it Including the new covenant They're all administrations

31:11

Of the same covenant And so That is where Like things like infant baptism

31:18

Would draw from that Because the idea Of covenant community The idea of covenant Families Flow out of that view

31:27

Of covenant theology Which is fine That's the view that is held By my Presbyterian brethren And while I would

31:33

Distinguish from some of it I think Much of it is good I would disagree

31:40

With certain aspects of it 1689 federalism And I hope I describe this well

31:45

For those who hold this position If I say anything wrong It's not intentional I'm still learning

31:51

And so as I'm Seeing the different things They would agree with me On this aspect

31:56

That the new covenant Is actually the covenant of grace And the preceding covenants

32:02

All point forward to that And I think the real debate Is over the Abrahamic covenant How it relates

32:08

To the covenant of grace And so that is The distinction

32:13

Between Baptist covenant theology And classic Presbyterian covenant theology

32:19

Is where and how The covenant of grace Is to be understood

32:25

And so you still have Within it the covenant of redemption The covenant of works

32:30

And the covenant of grace The question is Where does the covenant of grace land? And within 1689 federalism

32:40

The view is the new covenant Is the covenant of grace And all other covenants Point forward to that covenant of grace

32:46

And you'll see My position is pretty similar But not exact I would hold to a position

32:53

Our church holds to a position Which would be most in line With what now is called

33:00

Progressive covenantalism Now let me clarify We are not progressive In the sense that you might be thinking

33:06

Because the word progressive Typically has a negative connotation And it's the idea of like liberal

33:11

That is not what this is referring to Progressive covenantalism Is the idea that God has progressively

33:20

Worked with his people Through covenants Down through the ages

33:25

And we are now in the covenant Called the new covenant And that is the covenant

33:32

That God's people are in now But if we back up And we walk through The various covenants of scripture

33:39

We will see that God has worked He has administered his covenants

33:46

With his people And so we could talk about The covenant of Again, the covenant with Abraham And then the covenant with Moses Which included the giving of the law

33:57

And before that The covenant, the Noahic covenant And each of those covenants

34:03

Have within it Their own covenant structures And their own Things that they were

34:10

Accomplishing through that But all of them Point forward to Christ That every one of the

34:16

Previous covenants Have their telos Or their purpose

34:22

In the new covenant That they all point forward To the work of Christ And therefore

34:28

It takes a very Christocentric view Where Christ is the center Of everything And that's the

34:37

More of the view That our church would hold And if you want to know More about that view

34:43

There's a book called Kingdom Through Covenant By Stephen Wellam And Peter Gentry I think

34:50

Yeah, Wellam and Gentry It's Southern seminary professors

34:55

Who explain that position Very well Now that book's pretty thick So there's another one

35:00

Called God's Kingdom Through God's Covenants I think And it's the It's the abridged version

35:05

So if you're Wanting to be introduced to this You can go to the abridged version Now prior to that There was something called

35:13

New covenant theology And new covenant theology Was There was a book by Blake White And there were some other books

35:22

Fred Zaspel did some work on this John Rissinger did some work on that And new covenant theology

35:28

Was distinguishable From progressive covenantalism And there was a time

35:34

When, you know, we would say Here, we would probably be more in line With new covenant theology There are some distinctions though And this is where, you know

35:42

The nuances are sometimes Hard to describe And even define But ultimately

35:49

New covenant theology Is really not Is not used as much anymore As far as the language used now

35:56

Is more the progressive covenantalism Even though there is some distinctions If you read the first edition Of Kingdom Through Covenant though If I remember correctly

36:03

I think Wellam did describe His position as a form of New covenant theology

36:08

But again The bad thing that happened As far as I understand With new covenant theology

36:14

Was there was a lot of Antinomianism creeped in And a lot of what was being

36:20

Pushed online That was considered to be New covenant theology Was actually very antinomian

36:28

Which means against God's law And saying there was essentially No law for the Christian And that's not

36:36

What anyone like John Rissinger Or Fred Zaspel Or any of these guys Have ever tried to put forward

36:44

The idea was that Christ is the standard Christ is the one who shows us

36:49

How we ought to live And he gives us our marching orders Because he is the captain of our soul And so That would be more in line

36:57

With new covenant theology And what was originally being taught And expressed by those men

37:03

And think of his name There's a guy that I've interviewed On the show

37:09

Doug Oh goodness Somebody knows Somebody's screaming it At the screen right now

37:14

I know If you're listening to this It's not Doug Moo Obviously Goodness Doug I'm sorry

37:22

I can't remember Your last name But he has great lessons On this particular subject If you want to know more Another big issue though With that Was the question

37:30

Of the covenant of works And what actually happened With Adam and the garden Could it really be defined As a covenant structure

37:37

Of what he was dealing with In the garden And Was there

37:43

The question of a probationary period Whereby he was kept From the tree of life

37:48

And If he would have overcome That probationary period Could he have gained access To the tree of life And would he have gained access

37:54

To the tree of life Through some form Of his own righteousness So there's a lot of questions And thoughts

38:00

That come into this And if I've left anyone behind I hope I haven't I'm really trying to Do my best to explain to you

38:07

Where all the issues are Because when it comes to The subject of covenant theology I was very thankful When I interviewed

38:13

Dr. Clark A few weeks ago Where he actually said There's various forms

38:19

Of covenant theology I'm glad he recognized that Like covenant theology Is not monolithic It's not

38:24

There's not one type There's obviously I just explained Differing views Of what would all be

38:29

Covenantal theologies So you have Classic covenant theology You have 1689 federalism

38:35

You have progressive covenantalism And normally What that's distinguished against Is like dispensational theology

38:41

And what's happening though Is there actually Is more of a coming together Because within Progressive covenantalism

38:50

You also have Progressive dispensationalism That's also coming together And there are little increments

38:59

Of drawing closer together To kind of find Where the agreements are And where the disagreements are

39:08

So having said all that If somebody says Where's your major issue With 1689 Well the first would be

39:14

We don't hold to the same Covenant theology And this is where Some people would say Well then you're wrong

39:19

For holding the 1646 Because those men held To the same form Of covenant theology

39:26

They may very well have But if you read the document It's not expressed clearly

39:33

The document itself Is what we are adopting We're not adopting All of the things That the men who believed it

39:39

Taught Or the men who wrote it Taught and believed Because when you adopt a document

39:44

Yes it does have a history It does have a context But when you read it It says what it says

39:49

And so this is where Maybe my disagreement Would be with some Because when we hold to this

39:56

We can say We can affirm all 52 of these articles As they are plainly stated Is there a history behind them?

40:01

Is there a covenant theology That undergirds them? Potentially But it doesn't violate anything That we are holding to Nothing it says

40:08

Violates anything We believe or teach And this brings me To my next issue on this

40:14

And that is the issue Of the Sabbath The One of the main differences

40:23

Is Particularly with the 1689 That I would have On a practical level Would be

40:29

How we understand The doctrine of the Sabbath Now if you've never seen My video

40:35

Where I debated Rob Ham Who is a Presbyterian minister On the subject of the

40:41

Sabbath If you want to know my position On the Sabbath Go watch that It's a two hour debate I know that's a lot to ask But if you really want to know

40:47

Why I hold the position I do on the Sabbath I explain it As best as I ever have Or probably ever could

40:54

That debate Sort of solidified Where our church stood On the subject of the Sabbath We do not believe that Sunday Is the

41:02

Christian Sabbath We believe that the Sabbath Pointed forward to Christ That it was a shadow

41:09

That finds its substance In the work of Christ And in Him we find our rest Not in a particular day

41:15

Even though we do hold to What we would call Lord's Day observance Meaning we hold to Sunday As the

41:21

Lord's Day Because this is the day That Christ rose This is the day that Christ His disciples worshiped on We see this in the scriptures

41:29

The first day of the week And so we hold to The Lord's Day But not the

41:35

Sabbath And you say Well what's the difference? Well the difference would be For us The same as the difference

41:40

Between Passover And the Lord's Supper It's interesting There's only two things That have the Possessive Lords In the

41:48

New Testament The first is the Lord's Supper The second is the Lord's Day And there's only two things

41:53

That are mentioned as the Lords With that possessive term And both of them

42:00

Are a fulfillment Or a New Testament example Of something from The Old Testament The Lord's Supper Is the

42:06

New Testament example Of what was done In the Passover You have the Passover meal We don't do the

42:11

Passover anymore We now have the Lord's Supper In the Old Testament You have the Sabbath And in the New Testament We have the

42:17

Lord's Day Which isn't even on the same day The Sabbath was on Saturday And the Lord's Day is on Sunday And I definitely

42:26

I respect men that disagree With me on this I recently had Dr. Sam Waldron On the show We talked about the

42:31

Sabbath He's obviously a godly man I was thankful to hear That he said that I could be A member of his church Even holding the position

42:37

That I hold That we would hold A different position And yet he still Would affirm me In his church as a member

42:43

So that was an encouraging Thing to hear And so on the subject Of the

42:48

Sabbath The one thing I would say Is this I remember one time Being in a meeting

42:54

It was with a group of pastors And I heard a guy say something That was very disheartening He said

42:59

Well the only reason People do People I forget how he said it exactly

43:05

But basically He essentially said The only reason why People do this

43:11

Is they don't want to Keep the Sabbath They don't want to Keep the Sabbath And I thought That's one

43:17

That's assuming That you know someone's heart This is not

43:23

My position on the Sabbath Is not because I don't want to keep the Sabbath My position on the Sabbath Is not because I mean basically

43:30

I treat Sunday The way most Sabbatarians do I worship I don't do a lot of Extra work

43:35

Or extenuating work I don't do Much of anything Except for go to church Eat together

43:42

And go home And rest So I treat it In very much

43:47

The same way A Sabbatarian Would treat it I just don't think It holds the same Laws as the

43:54

Old Testament Sabbath And again If you want to hear Why Go listen to the debate But to assume

43:59

That it's just because I just don't want to Keep the Sabbath Is why No I have a different Doctrine My doctrine of the Sabbath Is that the

44:05

Sabbath Points to Christ And Christ Is our rest And so That's where Really what

44:14

Was very important In when we were Adopting a document We wanted a document

44:20

Not for me But because this Is what we teach This is what all Three of our elders Agreed to This is what our

44:26

Church teaches And this is what And we wanted a document Which would affirm That and so We found

44:32

In the 1646 Confession A document That we believed We could affirm From the top down And again

44:39

If someone came To me later And said well I argue with you Because The men who held it

44:45

Held to the Sabbath I would say Okay That may very well Be true I don't know I know that There have been

44:52

Various views of the Sabbath Historically Even within Reform circles There has been The continental

44:58

Sabbath view And different things So Saying they Absolutely held To the exact same view And you know that For certain

45:05

I think is a little Hard to say But even if they did It's not in the Confession We can affirm

45:11

All 52 articles Of the Confession And we can do so Without having to Put any asterisks

45:16

Beside it And that was what We wanted To be able to do It wasn't about Not wanting to Keep the

45:23

Sabbath It wasn't about that And it wasn't about Necessarily The Um Things in the 1689

45:30

That we would Hold to different Views on We just wanted to Hold We wanted a document We could hold to Because there are

45:35

Other areas of the 1689 Confession That we would Disagree on Um There's views on Like for instance

45:43

The Pope being The Antichrist Is one that Many people Provide an exception to Because That view is not as As popular as it was

45:51

During the time When that document Was written As far as being The you know Antichrist The capital

45:57

A Antichrist And if you want to know More about the 1689 Confession I do happen to have

46:03

I grabbed it While I was Looking at my books Today Uh this is a A new exposition Of the London Baptist Confession of Faith Of 1689

46:10

So if you want to Learn more about What it means You can look And get a copy

46:15

Of a confessional Commentary And that's This is one here That was edited By Rob Ventura Um And there are

46:23

Other ones Dr. Waldron has one I believe Dr. Renahan I'm not sure I'm pretty sure There's a

46:28

Volume 2 of Baptist Symbolics Is the second London Confession So you can get Those as well But again

46:33

I'm pointing you To resources today Trying to say Hey here you go Here's why We did what we did And again

46:39

You may disagree With why we did What we did But this is This is the conviction That our elders Came to This was the desire

46:45

Of our hearts Was to hold a confession That we believed We could affirm And again I can't

46:50

I can't help But point to this Little book As a huge resource And very helpful Um in that This little book

46:56

Has a short history Of the confession And has the entire Confession written

47:01

Within it As well as Again the Um The appendix

47:06

By Benjamin Cox Alright So Uh Just want to make sure

47:12

I'm looking over my notes I did make notes For today's show Um So Why did we

47:18

Adopt the confession We agreed with it 52 articles It's clear It's true It's not exhaustive

47:24

It gives room To breathe a little Uh But what it says It says well And so That was our reason

47:30

For doing it Arguments against it Well it's incomplete We know that it's incomplete We still hold the

47:36

We still have the 14 articles I think I remember this I think If I remember saying this earlier We still have our

47:41

Original confession of faith Which was 14 articles Remember the one I mentioned That has marriage in it Because this document

47:47

Doesn't say Anything about that So we wanted to keep that And Hold to this as well

47:52

So we We are Confessional in that We We tell people We hold to this The First London Confession But we also have 14 articles of faith

48:01

That clearly Express some things That are That are That are not in the confession And And say we We hold to these things

48:07

As well We also tell people And And we try to be very clear About this That all of these things Are subservient to scripture

48:13

The The confession will never Rise above scripture No No other document No constitution in our church Ever will rise above scripture

48:20

Scripture will always be Paramount And Uh Everything that we do We try to Do Because it's what the scripture says

48:28

Not because it's what the confession says Even though we believe the confession agrees with the scripture, we want to do it because that's what the

48:34

Bible says. And we want to focus on saying we believe this confession because we believe that it agrees with the

48:42

Bible. So let me just make sure

48:48

I have all my notes here. One last thing. When we adopted the confession, we adopted the confession with the idea that we were going to put in our

49:01

Statement of Faith, or rather not our Statement of Faith, our Constitution, that we hold this confession with it being something we subscribe to but not absolutely.

49:16

And that even though we agree with all 52 Articles, we endorse all 52 Articles, and we preach and teach and say these things are true, ultimately the authority is in the scripture.

49:26

And I've already, I guess I've already said that, but I just wanted to clarify again that when a church becomes confessional, we still have one governing document that is above all, and that is the scripture.

49:38

The only absolute authority is scripture. We are sola scriptura.

49:44

Scripture alone is the only infallible rule. That's key, and I just preached on this at the conference this last week.

49:50

It's not that it's our only document that we look to. We look to history books, we look to confessions, and we look to things like that.

49:58

But there's only one infallible rule. There is no infallible confession, not even this one. There is no infallible creed, but there is one infallible theopneus scripture, and that is the

50:11

God -breathed Word of God, the scriptures. And so that is our standard.

50:17

I hope this was helpful for you. I hope that by walking through our reasoning and what we did, and again, you can disagree with us, that's fine.

50:24

We still be brothers in Christ and come to differences on certain things. But if you have a question or a comment or something you want me to expand on in a future episode, please leave your comments below, and I will try my best to to do that.

50:41

So now, as we are finishing up today's show, I left a little bit of time here at the end because I want to introduce you to the

50:49

Imago Dei ministry and what they're doing to help save babies. So once that ends, this episode will end.

50:56

I want to thank you again for being a part of your Calvinist podcast. My name is Keith Foskey. I've been your Calvinist, but don't turn it off.

51:02

Watch this interview. Please, may God bless you. Hey guys, it's Pastor Keith, and I am here at the

51:08

Laborer's Conference in Knoxville, Tennessee, and I'm sitting down today with Jeff and Sammy, and they are talking about, at their booth, they are focusing on the subject of abolition.

51:22

But the reason why I wanted to sit down with you guys is just kind of talk about what got you started doing this, what is the ministry about, and I was hoping that maybe in this conversation we might could define the difference between pro -life and abolition.

51:39

Typically, when you talk about the subject of abortion, it's the subject of you have the pro -life and the pro -choice, and that's the only two sides that people really understand.

51:50

So you guys are abolitionists. How did you get started?

51:55

How long have you been doing it? And then we'll talk about what it means. So we got started back in 2019 when

52:02

I started going to the abortion clinic in Tennessee and Bristol. It was on the corner of Slaughter Street.

52:09

So is that literally the name of the street? It was literally the name of the street, Slaughter Street. Wow. So we're still on the corner of Slaughter Street, and I found out about abolitionism through the people that we talked with there, and it was 2020,

52:21

February of 2020 is my first abolitionist conference, and then that's after that conference, remember, we launched the

52:27

Imago Dei. And that's what this is. This is the Imago Dei ministry. So initially it was just sidewalk slash like doing online outreach through the moms who are posting in abortion support groups, and now it's more sidewalk, online when we can, and doing conferences to engage and educate other

52:47

Christians. Now I want to ask a quick question because you guys are obviously married. How long have you been married? I think we're doing the lottery.

53:01

Okay, so who got into this first?

53:08

She did. I did. I thought I was crazy. Okay, well that's kind of what I was gonna ask is, all right, so you came along after her.

53:16

Yes. But what made you, and grab the mic, what made you catch the passion?

53:23

Because you're here, you're wearing the shirt, you're sitting behind the booth. Oh, I was, you know, I had to repent of what

53:29

I thought was right, you know, and it wasn't. And she kept talking about the difference in abolitionism and seeing it in the

53:42

Bible, you know, just that it coming straight out of God's Word. And there's no denying, you know, what it says.

53:50

But yeah, she's pretty much wanted to turn me on to it. Well let's talk about the, so the ministry started out of your going to the abortion clinics, and that was something that you started with, and then that affected you, and you both started doing it together.

54:07

Imago Dei came out of that. How long have you been now doing this? 2021 was our first conference, and it was at Abolitionists Rising.

54:15

We were just doing the Abolitionists Rising conferences, but then I started going other places.

54:21

We've been G3, we've been here at the Y Calvinism Conference, deeply rooted. We tried to get into the

54:27

SBC conference, and they denied me twice. Really? Yeah. Any reason why?

54:33

Did they tell you why? They wouldn't tell me why the first time, and the first time whenever I applied, we were actually members of an SBC church.

54:40

I think it was, I'm not, they have an application, and I put what type of a ministry we were, and I think it's because of the ministry is why.

54:47

And we're very vocal about some of the things in the SBC and the URLC, so that might be some of it.

54:53

Oh, okay, okay. So when we talk about the subject of abolition versus pro -life,

55:01

I'm going to give you my, when I'm teaching, and you tell me, since you guys are the experts,

55:06

I'll let you tell me if you think I'm, tell me if you think I'm explaining this correctly. The pro -life movement has for, you know, decades been what we would call the anti -abortion movement, but the issue is there have always been exceptions, and there have always been particular exceptions in regard to, like, issues of the mother's guilt.

55:33

And I see that, and I even see, it's not on the camera, but on your poster over here, there's a question, should moms who willingly abort their babies be charged with murder, right?

55:42

That's, I've seen a lot of people, especially, you mentioned the SBC, I've seen a lot of leaders come out and say that should never happen.

55:49

The mom should never be charged. But that's not the only distinction. That's one distinction.

55:55

But I think that's the one that tends to get the most, like, the most vitriol.

56:01

People don't like it. People don't want the idea of the mother being, they want her to be a victim, not to be an accomplice to the crime, and we believe that abortion is a crime.

56:10

So outside of that major distinction, what are some of the other distinctions between, because I would say things, like I said,

56:18

I was going to say what I said, but I want to hear you guys too. I would say things like the, like heartbeat bills and stuff like that.

56:26

You're still dealing with a living being. Right. So another, another difference between the pro -life and the abolitionism, it seems like they are more incremental.

56:35

They have, like I said, like it was six weeks for the heartbeat, the heartbeat bill. And now, it seems like since Trump has came out with the whole 12 to 15 week thing, a lot of your, some of your pro -life organizations, like governors, are now wanting to be like, well, maybe we need to relax a little bit more on these abortion bans and do a 12 to 15 week.

56:56

So incremental, and then charging the mother, and then also life of the baby.

57:02

They think that if there's something going on with the baby, that the baby may or may not live, you should be able to abort your child then.

57:12

I think the biggest pushback we get is the criminalization of the mother. And I honestly think when you call somebody a victim, what do they have to repent of?

57:24

You're denying them the gospel, which is what they need. They need the gospel more than anything.

57:30

And Jesus can save, and he does save, even murderers and liars and thieves. And that's what

57:37

I would think. And then IVF. IVF in the abolitionist movement, pro -life, is very different.

57:43

IVF is very much condoned and supported in the pro -life movement and in most of your church circles.

57:51

There's a lot of wickedness and evilness in the IVF as well. A lot of children are murdered through that.

57:58

Okay. Did you have any thoughts, brother, you want to add? Yeah, just as she was saying, it's gospel -centered.

58:07

Everything we do has to be gospel -centered. If we don't put the gospel out in front, the woman that chooses to not abort her child this time might choose to abort the next baby.

58:24

You know, we can't just put a band -aid on and talk her out of something. We need to share the gospel, you know.

58:31

And I think that's probably the biggest difference between pro -life, is it's not as gospel -centered.

58:38

If it is gospel -centered at all in pro -life. You have to be a Christian anyways to be an abolitionist.

58:45

One of the top things of being abolitionist is you're gospel -centered and Jesus is the head.

58:51

So it's church -driven. And you can't say that a lot with all these pro -life movements who are predominantly

58:56

Catholic and stuff. And so it's very important to us, especially in who we partner with, that they have to know the gospel.

59:05

If they're not Christian, like if you want to volunteer for our ministry, you have to apply. And part of that is you have to tell me what the gospel is.

59:12

Are you a Trinitarian? I want to know what church you go to, and who's your pastor, and can I call them to make sure that you know that you're on the up -and -up.

59:19

Because if I can't stand beside you or trust you to get the gospel, I don't want to do ministry with you. Yeah, I can't be unequally yoked.

59:26

We take that very seriously. Yeah, okay. All right, so last thing, and I know people are starting to come back in, so we'll finish this up.

59:36

If people want to get a hold of you guys, if people want to reach out to you, if they want to support what you're doing, or like you said, partner with you, how do they get in contact with you?

59:45

And what can they do? You can go to theimagoday .com. Can you spell that for everybody?

59:51

T -H -E -I -M -A -G -O -D -E -I dot org.

59:57

I said dot com the first time. Or you can email us at hisimage at theimagoday .org.

01:00:05

Perfect. Which I think all that's on the website, too. Well, great. That is something we're striving, if it's

01:00:15

God's will, we would like to be missionaries for the pre -born, you know, steady, every day, full -time.

01:00:26

But as of yet, that's not happening. Yep. All right, well wonderful.