G3 Conference Special Episode I: Reformation Heritage Books | Behold Your God Podcast

Welcome to another episode of the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Matthew Robinson, Director of Media Gratiae, and this week we're live from the G3 Conference 2019 here in Atlanta, Georgia, and I have a special guest with me, my friend David Woolin, who is the Sales and Marketing Manager for Reformation Heritage Books in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

You hear about RHB books all the time, we talk about them, we recommend them to you, but we're here with our friend David, and we thought it'd be a great time to snag him to talk about some of the books that RHB have produced and that he might want to tell you about, and then we also want to talk about the project that he and I have been working on together for the last couple of years, the Puritan film.

So David, welcome, and.

Thanks for sitting down with me for a few minutes. Oh, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

So tell me, first of all, where you're from. You're not from Grand Rapids, right?

No, I've been in Grand Rapids six years, 363 days. So I did my MDiv at Puritan Seminary. Seven years ago, my family and I landed in America from Yorkshire, England, North England, and did my MDiv for four and a half years, and then I've been working with Dr. Beakey at Reformation Heritage Books and at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary for all that time, but full.

Time for those last two and a half years. Yeah, and I see David all the time when I, you know, this is conference season. Conference season is a season of my life that starts in January, and it goes all the way through to about the summer, and it's, you know, you develop.

I've been doing this for seven years now, I think, and you begin to develop friendships with guys that you see in each one of these conferences, and so especially, you know, like-minded, warm-hearted, experiential, doctrinal men, and so that's happened with us.

That happened with us over the course of several years when we would see each other in Minneapolis at the Bethlehem College and Seminary Pastors Conference. We'd see each other at Shepherds Conference in LA and the different conferences, and talking about books, talking about different things.

We got to be good friends. And discussing ideas together that we could possibly do. Ideas, and one of those ideas was a film that was sort of like Logic on Fire about Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, but dealing with the Puritans.

So, talk about that process. How did that come to be?

Yeah, we saw the work that Media Gratia was producing, and we're thrilled by it, and sell it on our website, in our bookstore at the Seminary, and we really felt this compulsion. Well, I guess it started with, I really felt this compulsion to tell the story of the Puritans, not just historically, but also theologically.

Who were these people? What did they believe? Why were they willing to give up their lives? And how can we get that across in another medium? We're doing books all the time, 40 books a year, but there's a whole other group of people.

Some don't read books, some there's overlap, of course, but how do we reach people in another way, and encourage, motivate people with the message of what the Puritans did, but the bigger picture of what God did through the Puritans?

That's right, yeah. And so, that started a process, I don't know, we probably talked about it at multiple conferences, and then I brought it up with Dr. Beakey saying, look, I'd really like to officially propose this.

Can we actually do this? And he's a book man, and he told us that multiple times during the filming process, and the process of designing the whole thing, planning the whole thing, but he understood and was fully behind the concept of introducing the Puritans through the medium of film, and then using that as an on-ramp to people reading them, engaging with them, and living like them in as much as they follow Christ.

And so, that was the beginning of the process where I started to think this could happen. Yeah, it needs to happen. It needs to happen. Somebody's going to do it. That's right. And we should be the ones to do it, to get that experiential, biblical tone across, that right message that everybody who hasn't engaged with Puritans has a sadly lacking life, and really needs to see what they had to teach, and from their circumstances, relating that to our generation today, what can we learn from them?

How can we live like them? What does that look like today? Because that's where we want to end.

In the film, anyway. Yeah, and with all due respect, it can't be a History Channel documentary. It can't be a National Geographic documentary. It can't just be educational, although it has to be educational.

It has to be factual. We have to have the scholars who know these things back and forward, so that we're thinking rightly about what happened. But the bigger story, as you said, is not what did these men do, but what did God do in His church using these men, and using this.

Period? Why were they willing to risk, and many give up their lives, for this truth that we've got in our hands in church every Sunday, and hopefully every day? They had that mentality that there are truths worth more than my life.

Now, how do we do that today? Do we do that today? Do we have that same conviction in our minds, in our souls, that this Word of God, these truths, are of ultimate importance, and of ultimate urgency, like the Puritans?

Do we value it like them? They made mistakes, but let's pick up on all the multitude of positive points. How do we live like that today in our generation? I often wonder, you know, you transport a Puritan into today.

I just dread to think what they would think when they look at us, and how we live our lives in our country club-style churches, hardly going beyond the doors. That was not their mentality. They saw the never-dying souls of men walking around, all around them, and they knew that they needed to spread that gospel, and they were confident in the God of that gospel that He would work when they did that.

How can we just have one percent of that today? What God would do. Anyway, sorry.

No, amen, and I think that part of the answer, well, the answer to that is we need to pray that God is capable and able to restore to us men of that caliber, men who are given a measure of His Spirit to that measure, to accomplish that sort of work.

Spurgeon's famous quote, that He's able to restore to us a generation of men like that, so we pray that that happens, but I think we also need some help to see what does that look like in a life? What does it look like?

You guys publish books, and our other publisher friends publish the books that these men wrote, but getting people to read those books is sometimes hard. They think, well, that's either going to be too academic, and I won't be able to understand it, or it's going to be cold and scientific, and it won't do much for my heart, or how would it possibly be practical for me and my life in 2019, whatever it is.

Our hope for this film is that it can be an on-ramp for people to be captured by that same vision that those men were captured by, to know something about where the Puritans fit in history, what they did, why they did what they did, and what was it about their view of God and their view of the gospel and their understanding of the gospel that so gripped them to make those kinds of choices that you were talking about just a minute ago, and if we can do that through a film, someone who may not sit down with an ancient leather-bound Puritan book or even a republished paperback version, they might sit down with a couple hours worth of movie, and if that film grips them and captures their imaginations, then they're going to say, well, let me go pick up one of those Puritan books and read what those guys said, and so I think it's worth pointing out, we need to say it again and again, that our goal is not to point to men, but our goal is to point to the Lord Jesus Christ, and it's to value the work that the Holy Spirit has done in His church over the last 2 ,000 years, and especially in this little epoch of time when these men lived called the Puritans.

Yeah, and John Piper,.

In some of his opening comments in the movie, talks about, okay, well, these type of men and women are in every century, you know, even beyond, so we're not just talking about the Puritans, we're talking about Puritan-like people as well, and so we need that next generation to be coming because, you know, you and I aren't going to be around forever, and we want to light a fire under that next generation that these truths are of eternal importance.

This is your soul and the souls of your family and friends and co-workers and people at school that are at stake here, and we need to take this gospel message out to people, but then also the message of discipleship and growth, not stagnation, but fullness in Christ that the Puritans had as well that we need to strive for.

There's a picture of that in Scripture. There's a striving, there's a growing, there's a deepening when we get that assurance, and these men, like I've heard it dozens of times this week, they weren't writing their books, sipping a latte is the phrase that I'm hearing in Starbucks.

They were doing it in the midst of the fire. That's right. This is reality to them. You know, you look at the Reformers where they had a graduation service at Calvin's Seminary in Geneva, and as they were graduating, these men knew that the average life expectancy of a preacher going out of there into France was about 13 -14 months.

Wow. That focuses the mind. Yeah. And it was the same with Puritan preachers, with Mary and others who would persecute them for what they believed and what they were preaching,.

And there's gold in them, their hills. Yeah, that's for sure. It dawns, you know, that the reason we may not see men of the same caliber as the Puritan giants that we look to is because we have not seen the kind of persecution that they lived under and that they dealt with and that caused them to wrestle with their own mortality and to live in light of eternity and to be gripped by the realities of eternity.

Yeah. But that may not be our experience in the West for long. I don't mean to be alarmist. I don't think there's much value in trying to but just watch the news. Young man or young woman who may be watching this or who may be listening to this, you need to understand that it's not just about reading church history.

We are living in church history. The church exists, and God is working in her. And we still.

Have all these promises. That's exactly right. But even in, I don't know, we could pick some specific countries in Asia or some in Africa, I wonder in eternity what stories will come out of those places of men and women that were persecuted and yet God used them tremendously.

And we know, we don't even know the half of what God has done in church history. There are no t-shirts with those.

Guys' faces on them. Right. You know. No bobble heads. Yeah. No leather bookmarks. Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, we are so comfortable. We are openly here at G3. Right. Almost 5 ,000 people talking about mission work within America and all over the world and what that should look like.

And yeah, it's, we have freedom. We do. And praise God for it. And what I want to say to our listeners is, if a harder time is ahead of us, where would we look to be able to understand what should we do?

How should we live? What, is there an example that we can look to to know how Christian men and women and children can face persecution and honor the Lord Jesus Christ? And yes, the Puritans there are very helpful to us.

So this is not history class. This is being a Christian class. And we just want to be able to give examples so that we don't have to reinvent the wheel. We don't have to make the same mistakes over and over again either.

So listen, that's more sermonic than maybe intended. But I mean, look, we're passionate about this issue and that's why we're making a film. It's not so that we can have another cool thing to sell somebody.

This we pray is used by God in your life to strengthen you and to put steel in the spines of young Christians for whatever is ahead, whatever God calls us to. Yeah. On a micro level.

Within your own family or in a macro level with governments and other people that there's all those different gradations of persecution and we need exactly the backbone. God-given backbone. Yeah. Scripture-rooted backbone to know why we deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him.

You know, there's an enormous set of cosmic scales and we're told by Christ to do those three things. But then we're told the blessings of following Him in that context. It's not going to be an easy life.

But look at the blessings that we have now and blessings ahead. And you look at those Puritans who I believe they would say have, we're in January still, so I can still say it. They wouldn't say have a happy new year.

They would say have a blessed new year. And there's a difference there. Whatever comes to you this year, Matthew, be blessed. Whether your head will be on the block or you'll be tied to a stake and burned.

You remain blessed. Maybe not happy in the world's eyes. And that's the weight of my burden that I want to get across in the smallest contribution I had to helping in this thing is that we need to have our minds calibrated, our expectations set in this Christian life where we live in relative ease and comfort here.

That we need to fully follow Christ like Caleb regardless of the cost because we understand, like Calvin said to one of those widows of the men, that we need to live life with one foot raised, he said, with our heel ever so deftly raised off the ground with the expectation that we're taking the final step.

We're just about to take that final step. We have an eternal mindset and the Puritans had that. And that's what I wanted to get across in that project. This is big time. We need to be looking at these guys, engaging with them.

Start with Puritan paperbacks. Start with simplified books, but get deep into them. Understand what this means to your own soul. I've gone simonic again. Yeah, amen. Well,.

You can find out more about the film at puritandocumentary .com and take a look. You watch the trailer there. We're going to release the extended edition trailer for the first time tonight. We're at least going to play it.

I don't know if we're going to release it yet or not. We may be doing that in two weeks after the Bethlehem College and Seminary conference, but we will be playing right before Paul Washer preaches tonight.

I'll get up and play the extended five-minute trailer. Soon, you'll be able to go to puritandocumentary .com and watch that. You can see the first trailer we've put together. You can find out what the package is.

It's not just a film. It is a feature edition film, but it's also a study. There's a book. There's a workbook. Go there. You can learn about the project. David, tell us, again, you are sales and marketing manager for Reformation Heritage Books.

What are some titles that you guys publish? You said you publish about 40 a year. What are some.

That you're excited about? Yeah. We publish a series called Christian Biographies for Young Readers. We've probably got 12 or 13 in that series now from Simon Etta Carr. That's an important series for us because not only does Simon Etta wonderfully tell the biographical stories, but her intention in every single book is to teach children an important point of theology.

The next one that we have coming out, we rotate between ones you'd recognize and ones you might not. We just did John Newton.

Yes. 101 and 303. Newton is here. Then who's the 303 guy?

The next one is a woman this time. This will be our third woman. We did Lady Jane Grey, Nine-Day Queen of England. We did Marie Durand from the French Huguenots. This next one is the third woman in the series called Julia Gonzaga.

I think it's Gonzaga or Gonzaga. I'm not sure. I'll have to ask Simon Etta because Simon Etta is Italian. This is an Italian lady in the 1500s. She was a heroine for the faith. We really want to get these books, beautifully illustrated books, into the hands of children.

Read about true heroes and see how this woman lived in the 1500s trying to follow Christ in such difficult circumstances. You're in the hornet's nest there in Italy. That's a wonderful book to tell you about that's imminent.

We have an intellectual biography of J .C. Ryle coming out, the old Bishop of Liverpool. If you've never read his expository thoughts on the Gospels, that's a great place to start with devotions. Banner of Truth have an edition of that.

Then we have the collected prayers of John Knox coming. Again, lived through tremendous times. He was one that went to Geneva and met with Calvin and Beza and taught those refugees who then went back who were hugely influential on the Puritans.

We have his.

Collected prayers. Let me ask you this. What did the most powerful world leader at his time say.

That she feared? The prayers of John Knox more than all the assembled armies of Europe. He made her cry. She at any time could have finished him off. He went to her with boldness. If you go to Edinburgh, you can see the Royal Mile and you can go visit John Knox's house.

He only stayed there a small time. He was there long enough. You can also see his church and you can see the cobbled street, the Royal Mile down to Holyrood Palace where the Queen was. He was right in her face opposing her.

We're doing.

Church history again. You can read a collection of the things that made the world leader, most powerful world leader, arguably at that time, quiver because she knew that John Knox knew that there was a great God.

That's going to be a wonderful book for us.

One that I want to jump up and down about, he's a local pastor to me called Mark Chansky. He's at Harbor Reform Baptist Church in Holland, Michigan. I'm in Grand Rapids. He's written just a wonderful entry-level book on the subject of encouragement.

Now, Dr. Joel Beakey, my boss, says that Mark Chansky is my Barnabas. He's an encourager to me. This just reads so easily. We need to be encouraging others and how that can help us in our Christian lives.

I can't wait to see what God does with that book. He's just a firebrand. He's waiting to explode with anybody who wants to talk to him and tell them about the truth of God's Word. I really want to see how that impacts people.

Maybe just two more. Very quickly, we have Bill William Bockestein, who's done an introduction to eschatology. What I like about that book is he originally designed it for the younger generation. We've actually called it the future of everything.

We've avoided that word. The future of everything. We've avoided eschatology. We want people to not just argue about the thousand years and who's right and who's wrong. All right, well, like Paul Walsh has said, we'll know that within 10 minutes of getting into eternity.

This shows the practical application of eschatology. Throughout the New Testament, it's saying, well, therefore you live a holy and godly life. You know, and all sorts of other. Therefore, you be ready.

Those kind of things. Matthew 24, 20, 25. So, I really hope that many people grab hold of that concept. Why we study eschatology. It's not to argue about minutiae. It's to be ready. It's to grow. It's to work for our Lord and Master whilst we remain here.

Yeah, that sounds exciting. And then finally, we have a children's storybook Bible coming out. Bible stories for children. Beautifully illustrated. It's a big thing. It's, you know, it's really thick and what it does is it deals with those younger children, tells them the Bible story, gives them a reading, but then gives heart-searching experiential questions and application at the end as well.

So, really want to see young people engaging with biblical truth through RHB. That's been a neglected area of publishing for us. So, we are intentionally, proactively getting young children into reading and parents into reading to their young children.

I think that's a great place to start. We have a huge emphasis on family worship and we really want people to be doing that, but also storybooks, history books, really providing those good books for every generation.

That's great, David. I appreciate.

You sitting down with me for a few minutes and being willing to share this stuff with the people who listen to our podcast. I appreciate your friendship and I appreciate the kindness that you have shown personally to Medi Gratia, myself, and the relationship that RHB has been able to have with Medi Gratia and pray for us if you're listening or if you're watching that God will make that relationship bear fruit and that it will count for God's glory on the great day.

Amen. Maybe we can do other things together later. Sounds good. We'll see. Thanks, brother.