Open Air Theology "What is a Reformed Baptist?"

Assign seat to sit in. My theology don't fit in. Black sheep of the Reformation sheep pen. Reformed. I'm just another Baptist. Baptized again. The bastard child of Anabaptist. Hostage child of Reformation society.

Bookshelf of dead men. Cigars, bourbons, and beer cans.

Bow ties, tattoos, and bearded men.

Hi, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Open Air Theology Show. My name is Jeff. I'm one of the co-hosts of Open Air Theology. And I'm also one of the elders at Covenant Reformed Baptist Church in Tallahoma, Tennessee.

If you're ever in this area, please come check us out. Also, if you like the song to that intro, the single drops the 22nd of this month. And I'm going to need y 'all to go check that out.

We almost might need to do that song again. I'm just saying. Yeah. All right. One of y 'all go. Go ahead, Tom. Okay. Yeah. My name is Tom Shepherd. I'm with Grace Bible Church of Birney. I'm a member there, and I head up the evangelism team that goes out every weekend to Fredericksburg, San Antonio, Birney.

All over the place, making much of Christ in the open air, knocking on doors, having gospel conversations, and telling people to repent and believe. And I am blessed to be a part of the show with Open Air Theology and these yahoos.

Pass it down to that guy.

Hi there. I am Braden Patterson. I'm the pastor of Valley Baptist Church as of right now. Come December, though, I am having the great blessing of being called to be the pastor of Grace Bible Church of Moorpark, California.

If you live in Southern California, I would love to see you in December. Go check out Grace Bible Church in the meantime, but it'd be a great blessing. If you live in Southern Idaho, come worship God with me until December, until my family and I move.

I have a YouTube channel called ReformedXMormon, and it's all right being a co-host with these yahoos.

It's a great blessing. I'll tell you what, man. Sometimes I'm telling you what. What? Yeah. I'm just saying. Y 'all get on my nerves a little bit. Oh, Braden here, he can only talk for an hour tonight, so we can't get too crazy tonight.

We got to give him some grace. What are we talking about? Well, first we got to go through how our day was, right? Oh, yes. Yeah.

Did y 'all have a Lord's Day today? Yes, every day was set apart. As Reformed Baptists, we do that day and seven.

For sure. So how was your Lord's Day, Tom?

Man, it was really good. So this weekend we had Dr. John Streep, who is an ACBC counselor. Matter of fact, he's the president of ACBC Biblical Counselors. And he came and he did a conference on marriage.

And I'm telling you, I mean, the first day, you know, he set everything up. The second day, it was just ouch. It was not the big hurdles that we have, the big sins that we see in our life that mess us up, but the little things like irritability and it was convicting.

It was really convicting, but it was wonderful. I got to meet him and our whole church was a part of it. And then he preached today on bitterness, which was another ouch. It was just, it was so good. And then we went out both days doing evangelism in Bernie still, which made for a long day.

Latter, what was going on, but it was fantastic. And God is good. Good.

What about you, Brayden? How was yours? It was good. My co-elder here at Valley Baptist, he preached today. And so he preached on Galatians 3 verses 10 through 14 and just brought some interesting insights on how today, some things that are outside of religion, some cultural aspects of what people say.

You can't be a Christian and do X, Y, or Z things that are just not biblical. And so he really pulled that in and showing how we have modern day Judaizers that are both religious and non-religious Judaizers that that just make different classifications on on what a Christian is.

So it was, it was good. It was a blessing just to be able to worship with the saints here at Valley Baptist was awesome. And just to sit here to preach was good. How about you, Jeff?

Yeah, it was good, man. I feel like it started yesterday. Me and Red, we went out and evangelize. And man, I tell you what, yesterday was truly a blessing to be out there. It was raining here. So we preached in the rain for a little while.

And man, just we had a ton of people stopping, able to have good gospel conversations, was able to help a woman get into a homeless woman, get into find shelter and get into a rehab program. Like the Lord was just doing some some work out there.

And a lot of people heard the gospel and then come home, hung out with the family. And today I woke up for the Lord's day and it was really good, man. I preached on on John chapter 13, talking about washing feet and got the pail and water out and and wash some clean feet.

Now, I'm just playing. But I mean, like, you know, like the way that it presents itself, it seems like it's a positive wall. Right. Jesus tells us that this is something we should be doing. If we're not doing it, we need to understand why we're not doing it.

And I'm kind of touched on that a little bit today. And I'll get back into it next week on why it is that we do not wash feet. But other than that, it was a fantastic Lord's Day, man. It was truly blessing.

Had a lot of different people from my congregation walk up to me and tell me how much they really was blessed by the message. Although whenever I was preaching it, I felt off. I didn't feel like I was there.

So but I haven't I haven't heard it yet. I didn't feel like it was flowing well, so it was good to hear people say that it was.

Amen. If you or Tom ever try to greet me with a holy kiss, you're getting a holy fist, right?

And that little fist will slip underneath my glasses and poke me in the eye. I'll punch your eye out.

With those big hands. I heard a rumor that that that Pastor Braden Patterson might be coming to Texas here soon. Oh, yes. Going to hang out the old gray haired man. Yeah.

I figured it was time I spent some time with you before we we put you out.

Oh, you're not allowed to eat. You're not allowed to kill a deer in my yard.

Yeah, there's going to be at least three dead deer by the time I'm gone. You're going to wake up and there's just going to be a slit deer's neck right in front of the door. It's going to be great.

We're eating good in Texas. Let me catch someone up. So someone just asked about Jackson, just asked about the church building. We still haven't heard anything new. We're just waiting. I did speak with one of the well, the president of the.

The Duck River Baptist Association here who talked to the main guy over the church that we're getting it from, I spoke with him, had breakfast with him, and he mentioned that that they're not going to they're not trying to make money off of the building.

So that's a good thing. And so it looks pretty good. It looks like we're going to get it. And so when? I'm not sure. I was hoping we'd have it in October so that we could do some kind of outreach at that time, nearing the Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas to try to reach out to the neighborhood around us in a way to bless them.

But we'll see. That still can happen. I'm in the process right now of building me a new pulpit. And you got all the wood and everything. The legs for the pulpit will be here tomorrow. I had some handmade legs for it.

Yeah, it's not. It's going to be nice.

I heard you were standing on your last one and that's why it broke. Yeah, well, it is what it is.

Standing on a stump, standing on a pulpit.

Pulling the Steven Anderson on everybody. Yeah, for sure.

We are doing the show on what is a Reformed Baptist today, right?

Yeah, so the first thing that we got, so we are talking about what is a Reformed Baptist. And I'm going to name off because a lot of people, they just talk about the three C's. I'm going to name off my list.

And if y 'all have some other things, that's fine. We'll go over it, but we'll just go ahead.

Let me just say, point something out real fast, though. The reason that we want to do this, because being a Baptist really means that you believe in believers baptism. That's what qualifies you as being a Baptist.

And usually that you hold on to some form of congregationalism. Or yeah, being a congregationalist in some form or fashion. But there's a lot of people today that use the term Reformed Baptist who are not Reformed Baptists.

Stop using it, bro. Stop it. So many come at you. Look, if your Facebook profile has Reformed Baptist on it. And you're dispensational. Hang on. No, no, no. Stop, stop.

Listen. I'm going to blind you, Jeff. I know.

Before we hit the Cs and the Ds and the Ps, before we go through that. Y 'all about to Ps me off. One of the qualifications to be a Reformed Baptist is to learn how to toast a cigar. And what you want to do as a Reformed Baptist.

Pay attention, yo. You don't want the flame to touch the end of the cigar. Okay, so you have your cigar. And you kind of want to lightly just toast. This is the Reformed Baptist way to toast a cigar. No, no, no.

A Reformed Baptist way is the Zippo. No, it's not. Yes, the Zippo.

Old faithful. There we go. And now we get that started, you see. There's your C. There's your Calvinism. Right there.

See, I'm going to have to check the confession. I don't know if either of you are right on that.

Well, also, one of the things about being a Reformed Baptist. This goes for women, too. You can have a beer. Okay?

Oh, man. Oh, no, no. I've met some. I've met some. They need to shave. Y 'all women need to shave. This has gone sideways real quick, guys. Oh, boy. I mean, what do you expect? What do you expect?

Okay? What do you expect? We are the black sheep. The black sheep of the Reformation sheep pen. Okay, let's go. Okay, I got a list here. And this list is going to piss some people off. Okay? And that's okay.

Because if it does, you're just not a Reformed Baptist. Take it off your Facebook profile. Take it off your Twitter handles.

Take it off your YouTube stuff. You ain't a Reformed Baptist. Stop it. Look, you're just muddying the water. And we live in a culture that shouldn't be muddying the water any more than it already is. Stop it.

We baptize in clean, clear water. That's right. That's right. All right.

Let me get to my list. And y 'all can add. But we'll go through and talk about it. Right? First one is Catholic, credo, creedal, confessional, covenantal, Calvinistic, long gospel distinction. And we host the means of grace.

That's my list. Cessationist. Well, yeah, but we have to define.

I'm a neo-cessationist just so everybody knows. Neo.

I would call myself a biblical cessationist. Because we're not in agreement on cessationism, I kind of did not put that in there. However, we can talk about that. And we're going to be doing a show on cessationism in the future.

How about this?

Cessationism in the sense of the close of canon and that there's no more apostles that are speaking authoritatively for the church. For sure. That's cessationism. Close canonist. I'm going to go with that.

Yeah, we're close canonist. But cessationist, though, is one of the C's is all I'm trying to say. Yeah, for sure. For sure.

He's only got an hour. There's two C's in there. I'm just saying there's two C's in close canonist.

There is. There's more C's in close canonist.

Michelle, we were wondering about you, girl. Who we got? We got Michelle. We got Melissa.

Oh, we got Red. Got Nathan. We got a good man. Please be sharing this around with everybody. We really want to hope. We hope that this creates a little bit of a wave amongst those that are claiming to be a reformed Baptist.

That shouldn't be.

Sharon. We're 16 minutes and we haven't even started yet. Get back to your list. What was number one? So the first one. Catholic. We are a reformed Baptist. It's Catholic. Now, what do we mean by Catholic, Brayden?

Not Roman Catholic. Yeah, for sure. I had a witness. We was talking to one of those the other day, but also met a really good gentleman. Really nice gentleman who's who's a Catholic that seems to. Well, I feel like he lied to me for a second because but then I had to show him that he's conflating some things.

However, I don't think he actually realized he was lying to me. And so I'm hoping to have some continual conversation for him. But what do we mean by Catholic?

It means the universal universal body of Christ. So if you are a part of the body of Christ, meaning Christ paid for your sins, you're in the left person. You are a sheep. You are a part of the Catholic Church universal.

Right. So we would also say that that the Catholic Church is made up of of everybody that is in Christ. They are professing believers. They are not only professing believers, but they are actually in Christ.

They are true believers in Christ. Absolutely. All right. Are we good there?

Yeah. All right. So then the next one. Prado. This is where we're baptistic, right? We believe that only believers are baptized. Now, this separates us from Roman Catholic as well as other Protestant denominations that are a part of the reformation.

Right. So this is a this is distinct for us who come out of the reform movement. Right. I was about to say something else. I better chill out because I about jumped over to another one. It's really hard to keep this in order.

Right. Right. So we believe that, you know, that a person has to enter into the new covenant, which is the new birth. I mean, they enter into the kingdom and that in the kingdom of God, the covenant that surrounds the kingdom of God is the new covenant.

And in order to enter into that kingdom, that covenant, you must be born again. And then when a person is born again, they receive the sign of the covenant. Right. Continuity with the old covenant. When someone entered into the old covenant, the earthly kingdom, people of God, the Jews, they had to first enter in by birth.

And if they were a male child, they partook in the sign of the covenant, which was circumcision. Translate that over to what we're saying in the new covenant. A person is to enter this new covenant kingdom of God by being born again.

And those who are born again, male and female, receive the new covenant sign, which is baptism. That's right. Amen. All right. Y 'all have anything y 'all want to add to that? Let's talk about it.

Nope. I would just say to Jackson, somebody that commented on our YouTube, we did do an episode on R. Scott Clark, because he does argue that Baptists shouldn't be using the word reformed. Yeah. The whole confession, the 1689, it was written to show commonality and trying to show unity along with the Presbyterians and the congregation lists.

Right. And so just because the term particular Baptist was being used back then, it was distinguished. It was to distinguish yourself from the general Baptists, which was trying to show association with the other reformed groups.

And so just because that term wasn't being used in that that time period doesn't mean that they weren't arguing that they were to reformed, reformed. Typically, reform means the three C's, which is confessional, Calvinistic and covenantal.

And so that's what reformed Baptist you're going to see here in a moment are. And so that there is such a thing as a reformed Baptist. Sorry, R. Scott Clark. You're wrong.

That's right. That's right. Yeah. And so the particular right there, when they called us particular Baptist, it was just pointing out that we hold to particular redemption. We hold to limited atonement.

Right. The general Baptist for going astray. And actually, if you if you extend that out, it was turning into universalism that got everyone.

So which are Calvinism in that time, because there are Calvinistic Baptists that come to the same conclusions regarding doctrines of grace as reformed Baptists do. But back then to be coming to the conclusion of Calvinism was meaning that you were a confessional Calvinist, that you held to the confession.

And because of covenant theology, you were swated to believe in Calvinism. And so by saying that you were a particular Baptist, you were saying, I believe in covenant theology like my other Presbyterian brothers and sisters in the faith do it with some some nuances here there.

But there was unity with that reformed. Yeah. But Credo, yes. Amen. You said, Jeff. Amen. A hundred percent. The sign the sign does not come before birth. It's birth entrance into the kingdom and then sign taking.

That's that's how we always use.

You know, I've said this before on here. I don't mean to be grotesque, but but the Jews did not enter into the mother's womb before the child was born to circumcise them. Right. Nor should we baptize anyone who has not come out of the canal of the new birth.

That's right.

But also in in in Genesis, when it's talking about the the covenant with Abraham, the the old covenant, even people that were Gentiles that would come in, it says if you purchase a slave, then you're to circumcise them.

But the question is, is what came first, the circumcision or the purchasing? Yeah. Purchasing and then the circumcision. So it's still that continuity and discontinuity that we see between these two things.

First, you are born again. You are partakers of Christ and then he purchases with his blood. Then you receive the sign. It's it's this clear, clear line between both Jew and Gentile be born again.

Yeah. Baptists are not big on putting carts before the horses. That's right. We want we want the horse to pull the cart. And so that's where our Presby brothers and sisters fall off the wagon. They fall off the wagon because the wagon is in front of the horses.

That's right. It doesn't work. All right. The third one. We're cradle. We're cradle. What does that mean, Tom? Well, we hold to a creed. We hold to a creed. I don't like doing the creed. I wanted to do the Calvinistic one.

OK, I'll skip you then. You know, you can handle the cradle. All right. Well, that just means that we hold to the historical creeds of the church, particularly myself. I hold to the four ecumenical creeds.

So so each each month at our church, we read for a whole month, one of the creeds. Right now, we're going through the Nicene. Next month, we'll read through the apostles. Then after that, the cost of the Chalcedonian definition.

Then after that, the alpination. And that's how we begin our service. We begin our service, aligning ourself with one of the four ecumenical creeds, which points us back to Catholic. Right. So essentials of the faith.

The essentials of the faith, right? The I believes or the we believes. Right. And so we would say that we are cradle. We align with the historical four ecumenical creeds.

And that that just goes to show that we believe in solo scripture and total scriptura. But we don't believe in solo scriptura, meaning that we don't ignore what Christians have taught on the subject. We don't want to be independent in our faith away from the church at large.

And so the if you are a Baptist and you are trying to claim the title of a reformed Baptist, but you're walking around with the saying, I have no creed but Christ. Right. Stop it. Yeah. You ain't a reformed Baptist and you should have all the creeds.

Creeds are a good thing. In fact, that statement, no creed but Christ is a creed because of creed. That's a creed. Right. We don't believe about Christ. Who is he? What is he doing? Yeah. And I want to be in harmony with all other Christians on these things.

I was just to say, Keith Foskey actually had a had a question. You know, he said, he said, you know, when people come up, when you ask a person if they're a Christian and they would say they're a Christian, you know, you still have a lot of questions.

You know, regarding what they believe. When you're creedal, it kind of answers those questions. When you say that you're a Calvinist, it also answers a whole bunch of questions of actually where you stand and what you believe.

That's right. About those people. That's right. It's a creedal.

Are we good? Yeah. All right. We're rolling through them. I didn't think it was going to do it. It's going to be an hour. We might even get done in 45 minutes. What else are we going to talk about? Well, if so, I'll pick on you.

I would also say that the creeds are something that also distinguishes us from false religions, too, real quick on that. Mormonism, as we talked last week, Joseph Smith, the way that the church, the way that the LDS church, the latter day, the latest day saints, as we called it last week, how they've gone about showing what Joseph Smith said in the 1800s was that supposedly he was told that all our creeds are an abomination.

And the side of the Lord. And so that's talking about the Nicene Creed. I would also say that that's talking about specifically the confessions, because that's what I remember learning a lot on when I was LDS.

But also, I mean, the creed, like, I believe that I'm saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, according to scripture alone, all for God's glory alone. That's a creedal statement. That's the creeds from the Reformation that we hold to.

And Joseph Smith said, no, creeds are abomination lies of the Lord. And so being creedal is important beyond just the title of being a reformed Baptist. You should be a reformed Baptist. But creeds are particularly important.

All right.

What was next? Next is confessional. You have to be confessional. You have to be anchored in the 17th century with a confessional document. Right.

Right. Now, why is it important to hold to a confession? Tell everybody why.

What is it? Let me name some of the confessions, and then I'll stop talking for a minute and let someone else take the mic. But I can do whatever. But I was just so. So. So whether you're First London.

So if you're Baptist, you can go to the First London, which which has a update. So the First London is 1644, but it was updated in 1646. And then the one that we hold to was written in 1677, but wasn't published till 1689.

As for the Presbyterians, they would hold to the Westminster, which is also produced in 1646. But also, I think it was actually published in 1647, if I'm not mistaken. But depending on what website you get, you get a different year.

I was told that truly true Presbyterians hold to the say that it's 1646, no matter what it says. And then you have the Savoy decoration. Written by John Owen. Yeah. I mean, I mean, yeah. So to be rooted and found it in a confession.

Brayden, if you want to kick off why we hold to a confession, I think it's the question you asked, correct?

Yeah. Why? So I think it goes back to that same argument of creed. So in 1 Timothy 3, Paul writing to Timothy in the first century, he says,. And so this is a first century creedal statement that was already in circulation in the early churches before this Holy Scripture was written.

And it made its way into Holy Scripture. So creedal statements are totally OK as long as they're in harmony with Scripture. In fact, I think Paul is actually encouraging common confession with one another.

And so when we add more, so it, as Tom already said, if somebody said, I'm a Christian, I have a lot of questions regarding what they believe, right? A lot of questions because anybody can LDS are claiming that title.

However, if somebody came up to me and said, I'm a Christian who believes in the five solas and I hold to the 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith and I go to and I'm a part of a crack church, right? Immediately my mind's popping in with definitions of what they're talking about, who they're a part of, what they associate with, where their theology is landing.

I can almost assume insinuate that they're most likely post post millennial without them even saying it. Right. And so being a confession, having a confession is a document that's well worded, that shows your unity with other believers.

And listen, when, when I sign my name to the 1689, for example, and I'm not saying I literally signed my name to the 1689, but when I say I'm a 1689 reformed Baptist, my name is sitting next to hundreds of thousands of other Baptists who said, this is what we see in Scripture as well.

And so great, great is the common confession amongst brothers. And so that's, that's the point that I would say what's being confessional is it clearly defines what we believe. If I go and talk to somebody on the street and they want to know more about my beliefs, I can just hand them a book and they can take it home and know exactly what I believe and they can use it as a ministering witnessing tool to themselves.

Right. It's one thing to say, I believe the Bible, right? I believe the Bible. Amen. I believe the Bible, but I believe the Bible doesn't tell me what you believe about the covenants. It doesn't tell me what you believe about what Christ did.

It doesn't tell you what justification.

It helps keep Christians aligned into a faith. You know, when you go to an orchestra and you hear everybody playing a sheet of music and everybody's playing in the same melodic line, it keeps us in guide right here.

As soon as somebody goes outside, the confession helps us stay inside about what it is that we believe. And so when you just look at the chapter titles in the 1689, what is, what is the 1689? What do we believe about the Holy scriptures?

Well, it's based on what the Bible says about itself. What does the Bible say about the scriptures? What does the Bible say? And what do we believe about God's decree? What do we believe about sanctification, justification, God's covenant, all these things.

So it helps us from, from going astray outside the faith, uh, into some heresy. That's the importance of a confession.

Another thing that I find that is quite remarkable that I've seen amongst those that claim the title of reformed Baptist. They typically love C .H. Spurgeon, which everybody loves C .H. Spurgeon, right?

You can't, you don't ever really find somebody that doesn't like Spurgeon. This is what the Spurgeon, this is what Spurgeon says regarding the 1689, but the confession, he says, this ancient document is the most excellent epitome of the things most surely believed among us.

It is not issued as an authoritative rule or code of faith whereby you may be fettered, but as a means of edification and righteousness. It is an excellent, though not inspired expression of the teaching of those Holy Scriptures by which all confess that confessions are to be measured.

We hold to the humility, humbling truths of God's sovereign grace and the salvation of lost sinners. Salvation is through Christ alone and by faith alone. So Spurgeon was a reformed Baptist. He was not just a Calvinistic Baptist, right?

He was a reformed Baptist.

Amen. Yes. So again, for all y 'all people out there who claim, notice the word claim, claim to be reformed Baptist. In order to be reformed Baptist, you have to be confessional. You have to hold to a reformed Baptist confession of faith.

And now I say that not trying to be mean, it's just spitting, spitting truth.

I like definitions. And one of my biggest pet peeves is when definitions get stolen and then muddied and then changed and then adapted and then lowered. And then it just fits more and more people.

It's so frustrating. Which we would see that kind of in the Baptist faith and message in a way. It's a light interpretation of the 69. And it strays. It's a watered down confession. Whereas it makes it more plausible.

It makes it more easy to believe. It's more inclusive. And so if your whole idea is to grow the church in numbers, one of the best ways to do that, humanly speaking, is to be inclusive. So there's a distinction.

A reformed action has a distinction. Yes, we want to include all those who think rightly, who divide the scriptures rightly by what it says. So it says to study, to show yourselves approved unto God, a workman meaning not being ashamed rightly, accurately handling the word of truth.

And so that's what the confession does. It accurately handles the infallible word of God.

Yeah. I would say that if like a reformed Baptist church, if you were to go to a truly reformed Baptist church, what I'm saying is that all the elders and maybe even the membership hold to the 1689. And that just brings about unity.

That just shows a harmony. I like that illustration you did, Tom, with the art orchestra. Like it would be not good if you had somebody playing jazz music and someone doing the piano and somebody doing Beethoven and like all these different things going on.

It wouldn't sound good. Right. And so that's the whole point of this is that this is this is showing that we have unity in the in the deep matters of God and scripture. Right. All right. Are we ready for the next one?

All right. Covenantal. We're not only confessional, we are covenantal. By covenantal, we mean we hold to Baptist covenant theology, also known as 1689 federalism. Now, can you be a reformed Baptist and hold to the Presbyterian classical covenant theology?

Yes. Yes.

We ain't happy about it, but yes.

We got some problems with you and we ain't afraid to talk about them. Right. Y 'all can do y 'all's little, you know, messages about it all you want, but you're not bringing it to the forefront. You're not bringing it to those that have an issue with it.

Right.

And you. So here's another question that people aren't going to like. Can you be dispensational and hold to the 1689? Absolutely not.

Nope. Because the chapter seven of the 1689. No, it's seven. What are you talking about? Oh, sorry. Seven. Sorry. My fault. My fault. Listen, in order to be a reformed Baptist, you got to know where it talks about covenant theology.

Shush. Shush.

Shush. How dare you? The other day I corrected you on a chapter and it was a deep chapter.

It was like chapter 24. You did, but here's the difference. We don't open our theology. Yeah, we were. People saw it. It was at the end of the show. I don't believe it. Listen, I got to see some document proof.

Here's the question, Jeff.

Answer this question. Why is it? Why is it that the confession, the London Baptist confession of faith will be inclusive? Why is it acceptable to include Presbyterian covenant theology and Baptistic covenant theology?

What about the confession makes it loose right there, but yet a dispensational wouldn't be included in there?

Well, it's only loose in chapter seven. As you keep reading chapter eight, chapter nine, chapter 10, so on and so forth, it strengthens chapter seven, that covenant. And it distinctly puts it in the position of Baptistic, that the covenant that we hold to is Baptistic.

It's been coined 1689 federalism. I'm not really big on that name. I call it Baptist covenant theology. And so. Now, I think we have our own form of covenant theology in which in which I would like if I was around a Presbyterian and he was arguing with someone about a dispensationalist about covenant theology.

Or if I was around a Baptist that was arguing with a dispensational about covenant theology, I would align with him at that moment and help him in that argument. And then after we defeated that person, we'd go toe to toe on what it really is.

Right. Because covenant theology, even if it's Presbyterian covenant theology, is better than dispensationalism. Right now. Tell us why. Why would you say that? Why would I say that?

What what does it do? There's there's two extremes. You have Presbyterian covenant theology, which would be all which would expand the covenant of grace over all covenants. Right. Dispensationalists would be totally distinct from the New Testament.

Right. To me, it's two sides of it's a road with two sides of a ditch. Right. And I'm trying to stay on the main highway. The main highway to me is Baptist covenant theology. And if I gear off at any side, I'm going to be falling off into error.

Right. And it's two sides of the error. Right. There are two extremes. Dispensational on the other side. Correct. And I see reformed Baptist covenant theology being on the road, driving the car, the vehicle on the road.

And particularly like like if I want to be. I want to be specific. It has to do with the covenant of grace. Right. I want to I want to make sure that I'm that I'm saying something clear. That's clear me.

It's intelligible. You understand what I say. Like, I don't want to conflate anything. And so when I say that when I talk about the covenant of grace, I am particularly talk specifically talking about the new covenant.

Amen. The new covenant is the covenant of grace. Amen. And so that would that's what makes Baptist covenant theology different than Presbyterian covenant theology, because they would say that the old covenant is the covenant of grace.