Revivalism (w/ Ken Jones) | Theocast

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, our friend Ken Jones is joining us for another conversation, and the topic for this episode is revivalism.

And we had talked to Ken about having this conversation and recording this episode weeks before the

Asbury revivals were a thing, and so we trust the Lord in that. And the conversation today about revivalism, we have it from a historical perspective and help try to delineate the two distinct traditions that exist in American Protestantism, one that is confessional and grounded in the ordinary means of grace, another that is revivalistic and pietistic.

If you don't know what all that means and you've never thought about these things before, this episode today is for you. And we, just because we like to do this on occasion, give you a taste of what the

Semper Reformanda episodes are like, we're going to leave that on as a portion of today's recording where we talk with Ken about the

Puritans. What do we make of the Puritans? And when people ask us, hey, what do you guys think about the Puritans? How would we answer that?

You'll get to find out today. And we also do a little bit of more church history and talking about the Mero controversy. We hope you enjoy all of this content.

Stay tuned. We are excited to announce we have a brand new podcast available called the

Kingsmen Podcast. It's where we are reclaiming biblical manhood by training and equipping men for the work of the kingdom.

You can find it anywhere you download a podcast. You can also watch it on YouTube. We have new episodes that come out every

Monday. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

Conversations about the Christian life from a confessional reformed and pastoral perspective.

What we're trying to do here at Theocast is clarify the gospel and reclaim the purpose of the kingdom of Christ.

We are excited to be joined again today by our brother Ken Jones. So we're going to introduce him first before I even introduce

John and myself. Ken is the pastor of Glendale Baptist Church in Miami, Florida, and he is also the co -host of the

Saints and Sinners Unplugged podcast. So Ken, thank you for your time and your generosity and being with us yet again today and joining

Ken around the virtual table today to discuss some theology and to discuss the gospel of Jesus Christ.

John Moffitt is already talking, and he is the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

I'm Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. We've met today to podcast, and we are excited to have another conversation with you,

Ken. A few weeks ago we talked about Christ -centered preaching, and our conversation for today is another very important and relevant topic.

I'm going to hand it over to John in just a second to tee it up for us in more detail, but I want to go ahead and tell the listener that we're going to talk about revivalism today, and we plan to have this conversation weeks before the

Asbury revivals occurred. We have the testimony of three witnesses here to confirm that that is in fact true.

So don't ever think that the Holy Spirit can only work in the moment. He also works in planning and preparation.

John, let us know a little bit more, but let the listener know I should say a little bit more about the conversation topic for today.

You always like to make announcements. I don't know if you want to make any. People live for those things. They absolutely love your announcements.

I know. There's a couple of new stuff out. There's a new podcast out

I'm doing called Kingsman. So John, what you're saying is that you're becoming a professional podcaster.

The funny thing is I do this for my church, and the moment they're no longer beneficial for them, they're all going bye -bye.

So just pray that it keeps being beneficial for them. I do want to say this before we jump into this subject, because a lot of what

I have to say and the things I've been saying for the last, I don't know, seven years that we've been doing a podcast, I have ripped off and stolen from White Horse Inn, both

Michael Horton and Ken Jones. So just if you don't like what I have to say and you think

I'm an antinomian and I'm kind of messed up, you're going to blame Mike. I was going to say, blame

Ken Jones. So you shoot at him first. His email is Ken Jones. But for those of you who don't know,

Ken's going to be speaking next week. So this will be in the past, but at Ligonier Conference. And what's your subject, brother?

Justification by faith alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

The common theme is stand firm. So I get to talk about standing firm on the doctrine of justification.

That's awesome. Well, speaking of, this is a podcast about revivalism.

And we announced last week, so Justin and I did a podcast, if you didn't hear it, we were kind of pointing the gun at our self and some of the problems in the reform world.

And Justin and I recorded that weeks and weeks ago. It's been a while ago now. Yeah. We are typically way ahead because Justin and I, we only record twice a month.

And so we try to get really ahead just for our own schedules. And that was recorded before the whole

Osbury thing happened. And we had already twisted the arm and bribed Mr. Jones to do a podcast with us on revivalism.

And then that happened. So it was ironic. And then we tried to record it a couple of weeks ago and we had some technical difficulties.

So we're here. We're not going to waste any more time. Let's jump into it. I want to tee it up this way.

This is not necessarily a podcast that's going to be designed taking down one particular event, which has been recently here in Kentucky.

We wanted to talk about the movement in general. And the goal of this is to equip you with some discernment, some historical understanding, so we don't repeat history.

And then using the Bible for discernment moving forward so that we aren't quick to judge, but we're also not fooled by the wiles of Satan, which both of those can happen.

I've seen it where we are not gracious and kind towards our brothers. And then at the same time, we are easily led astray.

And then that causes a lot of pain and suffering. So my own personal experience, and I know

Ken has experienced this as well. I grew up where there was a scheduled revival every single year and fiery preaching would come in.

And it was very much in the line of Charles Finney, which we can talk about that a little bit. But we're really going to be talking about the first and second great awakening and specifically more the first one.

Now, a lot of people do see the errors and the problems in the second great awakening and what kind of birthed out of that.

But we also want to talk about the first great awakening and where that might also have had some bits that may not have been as helpful as well.

And then we're going to look at scripture, things like Jesus' conversation with a woman at the well, worshiping God in spirit and truth and using discernment.

So that's the start. Justin, I'll let you kind of take us into the first. Yeah, go ahead. Let me just put something in here,

John, to what you said. There is a tendency to kind of evaluate the different things, but I think in the moment and especially in the moment, there are two things that we always have to be careful of in the moment of one of these events, whether it's

Asbury, because as you said, we initially started talking about this during the Asbury thing.

Number one, trying to evaluate something that we ourselves are not a part of.

That's not a healthy thing. And then secondly, the urge to go and experience it regardless of what you've heard.

So for instance, rather than saying, hey, something happened at this particular campus,

I guess it looks like a move of God. Then people start trying to evaluate, especially we see in this day where we have access to immediate communication and so forth.

So we try to evaluate whether it's good or bad, which you can't do in the moment. And then secondly, we have to go there just because something is good doesn't mean we have to go there.

So it becomes our own pilgrimage. And I think of the

Mount of Transfiguration, when Peter is so in awe of what he's experiencing, he wants to build three tabernacles for Jesus, for Moses, and for Elijah.

And the Lord says, no, no, just this is my beloved son, just listen to me. That's right.

That's so good. When we in the moment, now what we're going to be doing obviously is looking at that which has happened in the past.

But in the moment for what's going on at Asbury, we pray that these are genuine believers and something is positive happening for them to God be the glory.

But we don't need to leave where we are in order to go experience it and to try to determine whether or not it's legitimate.

Yeah. And I want to jump on that real quick too. And then I'll hand it over to you, Justin, in that those of us who are trying to, when we say that, in other words, we're not affirming it or denying it, we get criticized for using discernment.

And I just want to say, Scripture is very clear that there can be false worshipers and there can be false evidences of the

Spirit. This is why Jesus even tells, I'll just jump into this now, the woman at the well, you don't even know what you're worshiping. You think you're worshiping

God and you're not. And then 1 John says, hey, test the spirits to see if they're actually of the Lord. So using discernment is a part of the

Christian practice. This is what we're supposed to do. Sorry, go ahead, Justin. No, yeah. I want to reiterate because I think this is really important.

I think we should be charitable always towards our brothers and sisters in the faith. And we should not presume to know the sovereign hidden will of God and immediately make pronouncements like, well, this clearly is this or it's clearly not that.

We don't know those things. And so I think we would all be helped to slow down and not be so quick to comment and to be charitable and to assume well of our brothers and sisters.

Use discernment, as we've said. Ken, I echo everything that you said, my man, and I think the listener would profit if we would put these things into our practice and not feel the need to speak on everything and also not feel the need to go and experience it and be a part of it, which leads me into the first comment that I would want to make to anybody that's trying to assess

Asbury specifically or who is trying to assess revivalism in general.

Revival, the idea of it and the methodology behind it. It's important that we understand in American Protestantism, historically speaking, there are two distinct traditions.

One of those traditions is the revivalistic and pietistic tradition, and we'll talk more about what that is.

The other tradition is the confessional ordinary means of grace tradition.

One of the things that we would say, because truth in advertising, the three of us would all understand ourselves to be a part of the latter, the confessional ordinary means of grace tradition.

What that means in part for us, to your point, Ken, about not having to immediately get in the car and drive to Kentucky to experience a work of God, we ought not feel that need because we understand that in the tradition in which we find ourselves, we gather every

Lord's Day in the church, and the ordinary means of grace are administered.

The Lord is faithful to meet us as we gather in His name and as we sit under the Word of Christ preached, as we come to the

Lord's table, as we observe baptism, as we sing, as we pray, as we hear the

Scripture read. We believe that the Lord ministers to us through those means, and He revives us every single

Lord's Day. Corporate worship is our lifeline. It's where we come to receive from the ministry of Christ, and so we ought not feel the need immediately to go do this thing, this very subjective experiential thing, in order to be legitimately

Christ's disciples. That's something we want to set people's consciences free and understand these two traditions.

Revivalism and pietism go together, historically speaking. In one sense, revivalism is just a uniquely

English -American expression of pietism, if we observe this historically.

What revivalism and pietism represent at the most basic level is a subjectivizing of religion, where everything becomes about the subject's response to the preaching, or it becomes about the subject's experience of the divine.

It becomes about conversion experience, internal fervor, internal discipline, transformation of my life, etc.,

rather than the emphasis being on the objective work of Christ in the place of the sinner.

That subjectivizing of religion has not borne good fruit, and that's some of what we're going to talk about today.

Yeah, and at least for the first Great Awakening, Edwards, for one, was conscious of what he perceived to be a deadness, that there was something lacking, whether it's in practice or piety amongst the colonists.

And so he was concerned that true religion was declining, or at least it wasn't,

I guess you could say, didn't see enough fruit or whatever. And so when he started preaching in a particular vein, it wasn't with the intention of starting this whole movement, but he was reacting to what you guys have called in the past dead orthodoxy in the moment.

And he seemed to feel that the practice and the practice of religion had declined within the colonies.

And so he was, therefore, that's usually the backdrop. Now, I don't know about the current situation, but that's usually the backdrop.

So when you say pietism, that becomes a way of measuring one's spirituality by subjective internal things, feelings, etc.,

actions, or whatever. But yeah, so that's where, again, dead orthodoxy holding to sound doctrine, maybe they didn't feel it was playing itself out in the life of the church and the life of the people.

Yeah. Yeah. I think revivalism has a history and pietism too, but revivalism always has a history of seeing either dead orthodoxy or a deadness of spirituality or a presence of evil, because like in the second great awakening, it feels like they were going after everything, just to tear it all down.

And what's interesting is that we would agree, all three of us, that even in our present age, there is sin that's being promoted in churches and that there's not a clear distinction between the law and the gospel.

And there's not, I would even call it law light, right? It's law achievable.

And we're even questioning on the sufficiency of Scripture. We would agree with all of that, but coming in and using law only, or I would even say to use moralism, because if you preach the law rightly, you're left desperate not for moral change, but for gospel life.

You're desperate for Christ for you. That's right. So my first assessment when

I look at this is that, and we can unfold this, and some people may have a problem with this, but it seems like throughout history, every time there is a proper assessment, there is a problem.

And we would agree there is a problem in America. There's always been a problem in America because there's always been a problem in the world, but there's a problem, right?

And let me just pause for a moment, because the way you express that, when it comes to a lot of America, there is an assumption, a presupposition that this is a

Christian nation. So what we have a tendency to do is look at the problems in America and then assume it's because of a failure of the church.

I think if we want to analyze and assess the state of the state, that's one thing, but then we need to assess the state of the church.

That's a whole different issue. And so therefore, when I hear things like, we need to pray for the nation, etc.,

we should pray for the nation. Always. But my goal is not to revive the nation.

The nation is the nation. That's right. Exactly. I was saying this on a phone call the other day, and we don't need to get completely derailed in our conversation, but the mission of the kingdom of Christ is not in any way tethered to the stars and stripes.

We can all talk about the country in which we live, and there are good things.

There are bad things. I think we all acknowledge this. We can be thankful for some of the freedoms that we have and all of that.

We're not disparaging our country in saying this, but this is objectively true that the mission of the kingdom of Christ is not tethered to any nation.

It's not tethered to any geopolitical entity. We need to be thoughtful about that. That's why

I just want to make that distinction. I think that was part of the problem even at the first Great Awakening.

There was such a presupposition of a presupposed notion that this is the city on the hill, that they were analyzing the condition of the church based on what they were seeing in the culture.

Even the subjectivizing of religion and the methodology of revivalism is so concerned with the transformation of individuals and the transformation of society through the individual.

We've got to make Christianity incredibly practical in how it manifests itself in the culture.

It has always been an emphasis of revivalism. Even as we assess history, revivalism and pietism are the reasons why the evangelical church in the

States has always hitched its wagon to social and political concerns. We can see this historically, and it's not been good for the mission of the church in preserving it and keeping it pure, which is the salvation of God's people through the proclamation of Christ and the administration of the sacraments.

I think it's important that we understand. I'm going to conclude my own thoughts on the distinctions between a

Reformed theology, piety, and practice and a revivalistic theology, piety, and practice.

Those things are antithetical to one another. They are not the same thing. They're different.

This is where I want to go with the First Great Awakening and make this comment. The reason we're talking about the

First Great Awakening in more specificity is most serious -minded evangelicals in America, the

Gospel Coalition, Together for the Gospel, anybody who's going to the Ligonier Conference, anybody who's a

Calvinistic, serious -minded evangelical is going to have serious concerns with the Second Great Awakening.

The new methods introduced there, Charles Finney, all of the Pelagian doctrine that characterized that, the burned -over district, it's terrible.

We all can agree on that. But most Calvinistic evangelicals would champion the

First Great Awakening as this undebatable great work of God, and everything about it was excellent.

We would absolutely acknowledge that the Lord clearly did things in and through those people in that period of history.

We would absolutely affirm that the doctrine, in particular the soteriology of the

First Great Awakening, the preaching of Whitefield, for example, was excellent in terms of justification by grace through faith in Christ alone.

Amen. We affirm all of that. At the same time, the three of us and confessional

Protestants of that era have concerns about the methodology wholesale, because the methodology even of the

First Great Awakening was extra ecclesiastical. It was outside of the local church, and it was outside of the ordinary means of grace the local church gathered to receive from the ministry of Christ and the means of grace.

It becomes about this personal experience. It becomes all about a fiery preacher, and my own feelings, and my experience of the divine, and all of this stuff, and my commitment, my fervor.

That's the emphasis. Then that conversion experience is the starting point, and then it's about moral transformation thereafter.

What gets assumed and obscured in all of that is the ordinary faithfulness of the lives of the saints in the community of the church and the objective reality of the fact that Christ did this for you.

The gospel is news about something that's been done. There's nothing we contribute. There's nothing we add to it.

It simply is news to be believed, received, trusted, rested in. That gets obscured in the whole methodology and project of revivalism.

from a Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org slash primer.

Means of grace are undermined in terms of being totally sufficient for the health and well -being of the saints, as well as the vitality of the church.

You know, the importance of the church gathered in its ordinary gathering, rather than gathering outside of the church for an event.

Those become the building blocks for what would become the

Second Great Awakening. It starts in the First Great Awakening, these meetings.

It did actually start in the churches, but then Whitfield, by the time he came over from England, he was no longer part of the

Church of England, or sort of, and he's preaching open air, and he's going into areas that are not necessarily in the church, whereas with Edwards, it starts with a series of meetings in churches, but with Whitfield, it becomes a non -church event, and then he becomes the center of attraction.

Great preaching, but he becomes, some say, the first American celebrity because he's doing it outside of the church, and then when you counterbalance what's going on in Europe at the time, even with problems in France and humanism on the rise, and there was sort of a rebellion against the authority of the church, it's sort of the individualism that is promoted by the

First Great Awakening kind of tracks with them. Yeah, I was going to say real quick, what's interesting, if you go throughout history, you can see pendulum swings based upon bad theology.

I've experienced this in my own life. Grew up in a very legalistic home, kind of swung over the other direction.

I never became like antinomian, but I was affectionate towards it because I was so appalled by legalism, and then this happens even, so you got bad theology, dead orthodoxy, or kind of the church has lost its way in a sense, and so it swings over to every day needs to be

Christmas. That's the experience, euphorically, whereas in our culture, that wouldn't even work.

We would fall apart just as a human being. Every day can't be Christmas, but having it once a day is great, and having a moment in your

Christian life where there might be this celebration or the Holy Spirit works in a certain way, that's great, but when you are told that every day must be that way, it creates a false relationship.

Every teacher must be equally dynamic and charismatic. Yeah, and it makes sense when you're talking about how it starts with Jonathan Edwards in the church and then

Whitefield is outside the church. Whitefield is responding to the Church of England, he's like, I don't like that, and if you'll notice, anytime you see a movement and it's disconnected from the church,

I don't know if it can be sustained because historically it hasn't because God moves through His church.

It's fascinating to me, even with Osbery, it's going to be fascinating to watch that because it's not necessarily a church movement.

I hope it moves into the church because that's where the authority of the elders and the Word of God and the sacraments and preaching and teaching and the one another is supposed to take place and the

Spirit can be seen there. That's where I would agree with you guys that the revivalism was more of an entertaining experience than it was

God moving His church to advance the kingdom. Even in the First Great Awakening, even with Whitefield, Ken, you basically said this.

The way that this went down, and I think a lot of the concerns of confessional Protestants of the day, were that Whitefield's methods, of course, are outside the local church, but they're also dependent, at least in part, on drawing crowds and keeping crowds via excitement and energy.

A couple of comments here. I think that one of the bad fruits of revivalism is even how we think about the measure of ministry.

The measure of ministry was no longer faithful proclamation of law and gospel in the context of the local church, no longer just faithful administration of the sacraments, no longer was an ordinary

Christian life just faithfulness in the context of the local church, no longer was that sufficient.

The measure of ministry became really how much religious enthusiasm and how much religious experience are you creating.

That's a successful ministry or basically a level of religious enthusiasm or religious excitement or a personal experience of the divine became the measuring stick of a faithful Christian life, a good

Christian life. I'm thinking about Ian Murray's book, Revival and Revivalism, right now.

Ian is really dear brother in Christ and has written a number of wonderful things, but he is going to be very sympathetic toward the

First Great Awakening and how he writes about it. One of the things that even he acknowledges is that, of course, sound doctrine is necessary for revival.

Sound soteriology is necessary for revival, but what gave the First Great Awakening its power was the personal religious experience of the revivalists.

That's problematic because now the tie that binds is not doctrine.

The tie that binds is not right practice. It's a common, heightened personal experience of the divine.

Justin Perdue Yeah, can I make a point biblical to that? It's like if you want a case study in the

Bible, it's like, let's interview Jonah. So, Jonah, talk to us just about how you got this whole city to repent here because his experience, he was angry and he did not want to be there.

That's what you call the work of God because in spite of Jonah, the city was saved, right?

It seems like the experience is the opposite of like, look what's happened to me. This should happen to you as well.

Yeah, ordinary churchly devotion, it doesn't sell in a revivalistic context.

Everything has to be individualistic, like you said, Ken. It's very subjective, and it's about experience, and it's about intensity, and all these things.

No wonder two or three centuries removed from these movements that we're discussing.

If you were to talk to the average American evangelical, they're not going to be certain as to whether the preaching of law and gospel and the real presence of Christ in the

Lord's Supper or their own personal quiet time and going and serving at the homeless shelter downtown are more important.

They're not going to know which is more primary to being a Christian. Yeah, that's what ends up happening when these extraordinary things, these extraordinary moments, even if it started in a legitimate way, there is this internal subjective feeling, overwhelming feeling of joy, whatever.

But when you have these things, when they become the standard, then if that's what draws the people, then that becomes what people try to replicate, and they try to replicate it for themselves, or that becomes the new norm.

And so everyone is being held to that standard. Every preacher is being held to the standard of this professional evangelist, this itinerant evangelist in terms of passion or emotion.

And we evaluate the legitimacy of the message and the worship experience based on whether or not you give me the same feelings.

Exactly. No, that's right. You're chasing those goosebumps. Yeah. If you look at the

Reformation, what's interesting about that is that there was a movement there, and there was an excitement there too, because it was an excitement about the liberation of assurance and the gospel.

We were separating the law from the gospel. Luther had a fascinating experience through that.

He wasn't trying to create a revival. He was trying to pull the gospel out from underneath the law, and it just liberated so many people.

Calvin had a massive church planning movement that came out of that. And so to say that Reformation or to say that Orthodoxy, true gospel preaching, creates boredom and creates people who care less about holiness or the advancement of the gospel is to deny the

Reformation and its history. And I would say that we don't need revivalism in order for the gospel to be advanced around the world.

We need to use God's word as it was designed. In other words, America, and I think any country that has been influenced by revivalism, needs a reformation, which is what

I think we should probably talk about a little bit, just about how a lot of what ends up happening in revivalism is so close scripturally, and it sounds so close, but yet if we don't use discernment, we can easily be duped.

I just have to read a couple of passages. I did a sermon on this recently, and there's a reason why

Peter and Paul say things like this. For instance, we'll just do 1 John.

He says, Beloved, do not believe every spirit. What he means by that is somebody who's saying this is a work of the

Spirit. This is definitely a work of the Spirit. But test the spirits to see whether they are from God.

In other words, examine them along with Scripture and say, all right, let's see if this lines up.

Or 1 Thessalonians 5 .21, when Paul says, but test everything and hold fast to what is good.

I think there's nothing wrong. Sometimes people say, well, how can you deny this is a work of God?

It's like, listen, it is incumbent upon believers as what Justin said, with gentleness, meekness.

James describes that as wisdom. Meekness, gentleness, and open to reason. We do need to test everything because if it seems extraordinary and maybe outside of the normal sense, there should be a little bit of a caution.

If someone comes running into my church and tells me, I died in the parking lot and now I'm alive, and I'm like, great.

Let's talk about that for a moment before I'm just going to accept that carte blanche. Justin Perdue Great observation.

I'm even thinking about 1 John, testing the spirits and all. In the context of that letter, what does

John start with and what does he say throughout? He emphasizes that Christ came in the flesh, that He didn't just seem to be human, but He came in the flesh and that He is the propitiation for our sins.

Also, we are testifying that sins committed in the body really matter. This kind of inner enlightenment is not just the spiritual plane and all this kind of stuff is all that matters.

No, that's not true. We really are sinners. We all have sin, and the things that we do are really sin.

It matters how we live, but we're confessing that Christ came in the flesh, that He's the propitiation for our sins, and that because we're sinners, we need

Him. We've got to test the spirits. If anything that's being said is contradictory to that, we've got a problem.

Dr. John SantaLucia The flip side of that is second Thessalonians, when

Paul writes about lying signs and wonders, which he says

God puts them under a strong delusion that they would believe the lie rather than the truth, and here's the reason why, because they don't have a love for the truth.

This is one of the problems that we get with these extraordinary experiences and movements.

It's what I call signs and wonders, period, even in the life of Jesus. What's the purpose of the signs and wonders performed by Jesus?

They are not sins in themselves. They are to testify that He is the Christ. He demonstrates that the

Spirit of the Lord is upon Him. He is the promised, prophesied Messiah. He is the resurrection and the life.

Let me prove it. I will raise Lazarus from the dead. By the way, Lazarus is dead again. The purpose of raising him is to confirm that Jesus is who

He says He is. In a similar way, when we see these extraordinary movements, the end result should not be the movement itself.

It should be a greater knowledge of the person and work of Christ. But the more we are drawn to or defined by the experience or the movement, the less important the real things are.

That's right. If we could just capture one part of the entire podcast, that would be it.

Because in the end, if it's not Christ and the glory of Christ and the person of Christ that we are in love with more and have a clear sight of and are driven by, then whatever it is we're experiencing is probably a complete distraction.

Yes. If it doesn't help me see Christ more clearly, love

Him more dearly, and demonstrate my love to Him more pragmatically, then what good is it?

This is warned to us in Scripture. How many times have we been warned about false prophets and false teaching?

Ephesians talks about how we can be tossed about or even shot out by Satan. The concept of it is that we just don't think

Satan would use godly means to deceive us, but he absolutely will.

He can't get us to lose our salvation, but he can get our eyes off of Christ.

That's what Hebrews says, right? Looking unto Jesus, the author, and set aside the weight and the sin. Satan's really good at throwing stuff at us that may not even be sin, but it weighs us down.

I would say pietism isn't always necessarily sin. Revivalism isn't always sinful, but there are weights that our hearts are now weighed by.

Instead of being freed to look to Jesus, we're looking to ourselves, and that's distracting us away from Him.

Justin Perdue I agree completely.

Anything that is a work of God legitimately always centers on the person and work of God the

Son Incarnate. It is the emphasis, the beginning and the end, the warp and the woof of the entire thing is the person and work of Christ and what

He has accomplished for sinners. Ken, you said, what was the point of all the miracles and the healings and the signs and the wonders of Jesus' ministry on earth?

It was to testify that He is the promised one, the one the prophets had spoken about. Luke chapter 7,

John the Baptist is in prison, and he sends messengers to Jesus, effectively saying, are you the one or should we look to another?

John the Baptist is a really interesting case study in the Gospels because he's just like us.

He is a prophet who is obviously given things from God to be able to speak and say and do, and yet he's a man and he doesn't understand everything exactly right.

There are times where he says, no, I'm not Elijah, and Jesus will then say, no, but he is. He clearly knows on the one hand who

Jesus is, behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. I shouldn't baptize you, you should baptize me, but then he's in prison and it's like, hey, bro, are you really the

Christ here? That's another conversation. Justin Perdue Well, you have to give the answer to what Jesus says, right?

Justin Perdue I'm going to. I mean, that's the point. Are you the one? Then Jesus says, go and tell

John what you have seen and heard. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear.

The dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them, and blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

But that language is straight out of Isaiah 35 and Isaiah 61 in terms of what the

Messiah, the promised servant of the Lord, would come and do. So even there, just like what we've just been discussing, anything going on in the church today, any movement in the church today, the end game is not the extolling of Christ for sinners and the imploring of sinners to cast themselves wholly upon the

Lord Jesus Christ. Then it's off. Justin Perdue And the sufficiency, because that's what's underlined, the sufficiency.

You are complete in Him. You don't need anything else. You don't need another experience. Jon Moffitt You don't need an emotional experience because He's sufficient.

That's right. Justin Perdue And this whole business of your emotional experience or even this obsession with power and movements of God, all these things that we have to be participants in and experience and all this stuff, and we're chasing after it all the time, that is completely misguided if the emphasis is not

Christ for us and that He's enough and He's done it all. Amen. So we have more to say.

We didn't even really talk about the Puritans. I know this is something that we have gotten asked about before.

Ken, I know you and I've talked about this on the phone in the past. People will say, guys, what do you think about the Puritans?

As though that's just some simple question to answer. The Puritan movement is massive in scope, and so some nuance is required in order to answer that question.

We're going to talk about that and some other things in the Semper Reformanda portion of the podcast. This is a separate podcast that Jon and I do each week for members who have partnered with Theocast financially to support the work of the ministry.

We're going to have this conversation with Ken over there. Being a part of this extra pod every week, it gives you access to an app and a community of people who are processing the same things that you are.

It's a safe space like Facebook, but better. You can go in and ask questions and interact with one another. There's some other content available coming down the pipe too, just Theocast use and some additional educational material.

All kinds of good things we have in the works. So if you're interested in what it would be like to become a member of Semper Reformanda, you can find all the information over at our website.

There's almost 20 classes uploaded to that, but it's not live yet. Not live yet. They're coming.

So it's an already but not yet reality. Ken, thank you again, brother, for your time and just your friendship, your encouragement in the gospel.

Man, you do. You bless Jon and myself. It's always great to be able to have conversations with men who are going to encourage and extol all of us in the

Lord Jesus Christ. We're grateful for you, bro. Thank you, Jon. Thank you. I really appreciate you guys' work.

Likewise. We're going to continue this conversation. If you're going to make your way over to SR, we'll talk with you there. If not, we'll talk with you again on The Regular Show next week.

Grace and peace to you. Welcome to Semper Reformanda.

I know Jon is relatively excited to be here, and Ken is thrilled to be here to talk about the Puritans and some other things.

We left off. We were talking about a lot of good stuff and how any movement of God legitimately has to be centered on the person and work of Christ.

We may say more about that, but initially I want us to go ahead and answer the question. We like to do what we say around here, so we toss it out.

What do we make of the Puritans? This is a question that I've gotten a lot from congregants, people who come and attend services at Covenant Baptist Church.

We've gotten it at Theocast before. Ken, I know that you get asked these questions quite a bit, given the platform you have.

How would you begin to answer that question? What about the Puritans go?

First, I would try to recommend a few things that would give a historical backdrop to what we call

Puritanism, because a lot of times it's just used in a pejorative way.

Culturally, you're Puritanical. Then in the church, we have a tendency to look at it as all things

Puritan are all pure and good. In actuality, it's a whole system of thought, a certain branch of Evangelical or Protestantism at the time, and they are not monolithic.

There are some that wrote in the Puritan period that are not even sound.

They're not Orthodox. Richard Baxter being one of them.

Look out. He has a good book, or there's some good things in the book, the Reformed Pastor, but people assume

Puritan to mean or Congregationalists that were

Calvinistic, and they are all the same, but they're not. They're all over the place. It's not a monolithic system of theology.

There are Puritans that I think are more consistently healthy than others.

Very tenuous kind of writing. It's tedious work, but it's good stuff.

When you read guys like John Owens, John Flavel, those guys, Thomas Boston, that's solid stuff, but Puritanism, Thomas Watson, a lot of his stuff.

You don't want to put them all in the same bag, and it depends on the issue and the topics they're discussing.

Yeah. I think we talked about this when we did Christ Center preaching and commentaries. One of the things

I try and teach people that you have to learn, you can't rest and just grab something and just read it and say,

I can trust everything that's in here. You just can't do that. Look, we all love

Michael Horton. We would say it doesn't matter who the man is, you should always use discernment just because they are a man.

This is one of those things from my tradition as an independent Baptist. You're kind of trained and taught.

These are the heroes and you trust everything they have to say. I've had to teach people throughout the years that that's just not how it works.

The Bible warns us to use discernment and we should do that. When it comes down to Puritans, we can gain the bruiserie.

It's like everybody should have that book. It's amazing. I would even say

Walther's book on law and gospel is good, but there's some sections in there that you're like, yeah, use some discernment because I don't know if we can lose our salvation here.

It's funny you mentioned that years ago on Whitehorse Inn, we were promoting Walther's law and gospel.

Basically, we were sending it out from CURE, Christians United for Reformation. We had her on file.

That section, man, I got feedback from a lot of Reformed Baptists.

Well, not a lot, but I had some guys that called me up and said, hey, Ken, look, have you read the rest of that book? I agree, dude.

There's some really good stuff, but there are some very troubling chapters in that book. I want to maybe just reiterate a little bit of what you guys have said.

We're talking about an era of history. You're talking effectively the English Reformed tradition in many ways, as opposed to the

Continental Reformed tradition. The English Reformed tradition, characterized by the Westminster Confession of Faith, the

Savoy Declaration, and the First and Second London Confessions, that's a massive amount in terms of just the scope of it, and it spans centuries.

It would be just like saying, well, what about evangelicals? That's a historical period, and it's a huge tent.

Three hundred years from now, if the Lord tarries, you wouldn't just look at somebody and say, yeah, go read any evangelical author, and it's going to be helpful.

Not true. Same is true of go read any Puritan. It's not helpful necessarily.

We need to use discernment, as you brothers have said. A few of my favorites have already been mentioned. John Owen, excellent. Thomas Boston, excellent.

Any of the Mero brethren, John Calhoun, the Erskine brothers, any of those dudes are going to be helpful, but you're going to get a lot of inconsistency from others.

Even John Bunyan, very famous for Pilgrim's Progress and All Love's Excelling and other things.

Not all of his works are equally helpful, and he's a very mixed bag. Can we say there are men who were in transition theologically?

They were forming. Yeah, and so I think that's what we would say about the Puritans. A lot of good, some very unhelpful stuff, and yeah, just use discernment.

And there is a Puritan theology, especially among the

Anglicans or the Congregationalists and the Presbyterians.

There is a theology that they hold in common, but there's also a Puritan methodology.

And I think that method of writing and method of preaching is probably where you can really get into problems, potential problems.

You have to have uses, 25 uses of this. Here's the doctrine, here's the uses.

Exactly, yes. Yeah, I agree. That's very formulaic and unhelpful. Do you guys want to talk about Merrow controversy at all?

That's fodder, man. That's easy. I think it's very... I'll say this, and I'll see what you guys think.

I think to say that our current moment in the American church, to compare it directly to the

Reformation, I think is a little bit of an overstatement. To say that we need Reformation like was needed in the medieval church,

I don't know that that is quite where we are. I think the Merrow controversy in the Church of Scotland is a very apt comparison, though, when we're talking about the kind of Calvinistic evangelical world.

Folks that are unfamiliar with the Merrow controversy, this is the early decades of the 18th century in Scotland, and there is a controversy sparked from a ministerial examination in a rural presbytery, the

Octorator Presbytery. There's a question posed to ministerial candidates that is effectively this, must one forsake sin in order to come to Christ?

The answer to that question, yes or no, effectively split the Church of Scotland. The ministers who answered that question, albeit acknowledging that the wording is a little bit tricky and maybe not the most helpful question, said the answer to that is clearly no.

We don't need to do anything in order to come to Christ, because if we need to do anything in order to come to Christ, we're all damned.

It's receiving the Lord Jesus Christ that's the call. We preach Christ to all men, and we implore people to trust him.

Those guys that took that position all had an affinity and an appreciation for a book that was written in the 1640s and 1650s called

The Merrow of Modern Divinity. They became known as the Merrow Brethren. Thomas Boston is maybe the famous of them.

He has footnotes in the modern publications of The Merrow of Modern Divinity that are worth the price of admission themselves.

All this to say, I think that what you had in the Church of Scotland was a disagreement amongst

Calvinistic quote -unquote reform types. It's a Presbyterian church, but you have this kind of hyper introspective perspective.

You have a like, we need to be looking for fruit. We need to be looking for evidences of regeneration. We need to be looking for evidences of election.

This kind of hyper Calvinism stuff that Spurgeon railed against is happening. Then you have guys coming in saying, no, we need to herald

Christ for sinners, and they're called antinomians. I think that's very similar to where we find ourselves today.

I don't know if that's something you guys want to interact with. I realize I spoke for a long time, and I apologize. No, that's okay. I think that's where we get, and you guys have done a pushback on historic teaching on the doctrines of grace, particularly justification.

You guys have even named some names who have parted from that, whether it's intentional or unintentional.

John Piper with his final justification. That's similar. Even though it's on the back end of it, it still comes out in the same way.

We have to trust the gospel. That's right. This is where, even with the

Merrill controversy, does one have to forsake sin in order to come to Christ? Technically, theologically, we would say that genuine repentance and turning to Christ is turning away from sin.

Of course. But it's not because you have forsaken personal . . . that you've purified yourself.

Exactly. That's where it gets a little loosey -goosey because you say, well, if you say that, and people hear that to mean, in the same way with Galatians, that you have, in addition to faith in Christ, now you have to forsake all unrighteousness and fulfill all of the requirements of the law, that's not what they're saying.

In the Merrill controversy, if you're saying, is there a preliminary work? We've been talking about revivalism.

That was one of the things that certainly came out of the second great awakening or the second period of revival is the preparationism.

The whole sinner's pew and the whole thing. Anxious bench and all that. Exactly. Anxious pew, walk in the aisle, all of those things to demonstrate one's genuineness in their conversion.

I do think that certain elements of that Merrill controversy, because the Merrill brothers, they were adamant that God saves sinners.

That is the gospel. That's right. Amen to that. Your point is really well made because even when

John and Jesus are calling for repentance, sometimes people think that's morality.

Without faith, it's impossible to please Him. Without faith, one cannot be saved. Faithlessness is sin.

Stop trusting in yourself, that's sin, and repent of that and trust in Christ.

The Merrill men would agree with that, but if you're saying that you have to, even that's a work of the

Spirit. Praise be to God for my capacity to stop trusting myself and trust in Christ. That's a work of the

Spirit. But this concept, and this even goes into lordship salvation, the idea that you have to turn away from all of your sin.

Listen, the greatest sin you have against God is not loving Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

There's never been a moment you've ever done that, even to this day, not even for a fraction of a second.

So, if full repentance is required, you have to lower that standard of the law, which is the greatest commandment, and we just don't do that.

We love to get the easy ones, can't murder, sex outside of marriage, all that kind of stuff.

We think it's easy until we understand what it's saying. Exactly. Matthew chapter 5, the heart of the issue.

This is why this stuff is important, because it does directly change how you preach.

It changes how you preach. If you listen to all three of us, and when we preach, we are absolutely going to call sinners to repent.

Two ways I'd describe it. One is about God, about yourself, about what

He says about you in His law, what you need, what Jesus has provided and accomplished for you.

You're agreeing with God on all those things. Whereas you used to not agree with God's testimony, you now agree with God's testimony on all of it, and you're trusting

Christ. Another way we would talk about repentance is a turning. The emphasis there is, can you set it this way?

It's a turning to Christ in faith, which necessarily, along with that, incorporates and entails a turning from myself, a turning from my own works, and a turning from my sin to Christ.

Even there, when the three of us are preaching, and we are calling all of us week over week over week to turn from ourselves and look away from ourselves and trust in the

Lord Jesus Christ, that's a call to faith and repentance. Those things go together in that regard.

We'll call it an SR episode. Ken, thanks again, brother. I know that everybody is going to really enjoy the contributions that you've made today and in the previous recording that we had with you.

If time allows, Ken is an incredibly generous man, and he has said that he might hang around and talk some more with us.

You might get yet another episode, a third episode from Ken and the three of us for the triune

God we serve. Let me take a look here. We're grateful for you guys, our members and our listeners who support us and encourage us in ways that you might not even understand.