Romans 3, Steve Lawson Issues, Pietism, Anabaptism, Sacralism

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line.

I'm not having to run everything today, so we actually had music.

I did fix that, by the way.

It's El Media Player.

I couldn't remember that name, but it's now in the doc, so I can get to the music real fast now.

Anyway, I have a feeling that for the next couple weeks I might be doing a few of those programs again,

and hopefully I will do a better job than I did last time.

Start off with a little look at a biblical text and then

talk about some of the current events going on.

I haven't, I don't know how long ago it was now that we, because I know we

were in the other studio the last time that we

talked about the two -part Romans silliness.

That's what it is.

It's just silly.

We haven't heard anything from anybody.

Nobody cares.

But if you weren't listening, there's this wild -eyed,

let's find a way to get around Calvinism.

There's a lot of wild -eyed, let's find a way to get around Calvinism stuff out there from Molinism onward.

But it's this idea that Romans is only written to the Jews in the first part and

then switches over to the Gentiles.

And it's just so disconnected from the text.

It's the classic example of taking a lens

and creating your own narrative and then reading the text of the Bible through it.

It's eisegesis on steroids from people who should know better, but

the drive to avoid what scripture

teaches about man's nature and God's nature is very, very strong.

And the traditions of men that go along with that.

Anyway, the only reason I mentioned this, I have not looked at any of

the videos.

I think they're up to like eight now.

I think I saw on Twitter eight videos promoting this

stuff.

There's no reason to.

We refuted the first two, mainly the first one, which was the foundation.

So without a foundation, the building can't stand.

It's been refuted.

There's no reason to waste further time on it.

But you can't help having encountered stuff like that to keep

running into the refutation of such foolishness when you're just reading scripture.

And I was considering, I was thinking,

looking at Romans chapter three and how important this text is.

And I fear that because it is

so important and it's been addressed so many times that people stop

thinking about it deeply.

And that becomes dangerous.

We all know Romans 3 .23.

I remember, wow, I don't know how many years ago it was, but we had this

little teeny Baptist church out in the West Valley and we were doing this

vacation Bible school thing and memorizing scripture.

Romans 3 .23.

Everybody knows Romans 3 .23.

But I really wonder how many people know Romans 3 .23 in its actual context, what it's actually

talking about.

And one says, for all of sin, it's talking about Jews and Gentiles.

That is one of the dangers in memorizing singular texts that are one sentence

in the middle of a paragraph type of a thing.

We should, I think, in our scripture memory, make sure we understand what the text is saying.

At least read what comes before and afterwards so you have an idea, because

sometimes we memorize a traditional interpretation with the text without even

realizing.

And then we struggle when we encounter information

against that interpretation because we have somewhat in our minds coalesced

the interpretation with the text itself.

I'm going to pull this up just a little bit more and I'm going to back off on the volume a little bit.

I'm still getting used to the hearing aids.

And sometimes I'm just loud.

There's even a thing in my app, sort of like, too much me,

which is the exact opposite.

I think it was Scott Johnson in Twitter.

He had said something about it.

I said, the divine line's coming up in six minutes.

He says, I was just getting ready to watch Tuesday because I couldn't watch live without helping a friend.

I said, well, it's Rich's fault.

And so he responded, as a fellow sound guy, I have much sympathy for Rich.

Well, look, I was a sound guy.

When you're running sound at Southern Baptist Church, in fact, I think my

sound days were already done when you first met me.

Oh, yeah.

You did sound long before I came along or I'd ever touched a soundboard.

Your dad taught me a lot of what I learned.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Because when my dad taught me stuff at the radio station, he had actually built the equipment I was working on.

I mean, built it from the ground up, designed it.

So keep on going here because you're just letting people know how much more sympathy I actually deserve from you.

You almost have a little cult following of people, but I have had other people say to me

recently, they go, look, we get it.

We understand what you're putting up with from that guy.

And so we have competing little groups out there that talk about what's going on,

the dividing line.

It's lots of fun.

Anyways, what were we talking about?

Well, Moses was in the bulrushes.

That's how Dr. D .C. Martin would express the fact that he just chased a rabbit

off into the woods someplace and he got back to where he was supposed to be talking about.

I'm just going to get back to Romans 3.

I don't know where all the rest of that stuff was going.

I lost the plot as it was going off into the woods there someplace.

Anyways, back to Romans 3.

I was talking about the memorizing scripture, and sometimes we memorize an interpretation

along with it.

And then when we see evidence against that, it's harder for

us to process it.

And so it's important, I think, when you're memorizing scripture to do so with a proper

interpretation of it, or at least recognize that you are memorizing an interpretation as well.

All this takes us back to Romans 3.

After talking about the advantage of the Jews, they had been given the scriptures.

Because remember, Romans 1, universal, Romans 2, all here included as well, Jews, Romans 3.

Well then, if that's the case, what advantage they have, they were given the scriptures, promises, so on and so forth.

So 3 .9 then brings all this together, which is one of the real problems with that silly, silly,

eisegetical theory, is that Paul, very

purposely, brings everybody together.

Romans 3 .9, what then?

Are we better?

Not at all, for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all

under sin.

So here's, you're about to get what's called a catena of Old Testament passages,

primarily from the Psalter, beginning in verse 10 and

going down through verse 18.

And I think it's always good that translations give you some indication

when you're reading an Old Testament passage that's being quoted in the New.

LSV, NASV, put these in all caps, which, you know, in the modern age is yelling and

screaming, but it actually is indicative of an Old Testament citation, it's

important to see.

But the whole point of this text is to demonstrate

that scripture has always been consistent in its message of

man is universally fallen.

Jews or Greeks, there's no difference.

And when you read through it, it's somewhat depressing, but it's realistic.

There is none righteous, not even one.

And you can always tell when you're talking to a Pelagian, um, people like that,

and there are Pelagians out there, they will, there's always exceptions,

there's always exceptions.

And the point, you know, Paul's going to give his own interpretation down

in verse 19, so that every mouth may be shut, and

all the world may become accountable to God.

That's his own interpretation, that's his intention.

So if your interpretation of him turns his own conclusion on

its head, you might be misinterpreting

what's going on here, that's most probable.

But there is none righteous, not even one.

There is none who understands.

There is none who seeks for God.

There is no God -seeker, literally.

There is no God -seeker.

And it's not as much of a phrase today as it used to be.

You know, seeker -sensitive churches and stuff like that.

But it's always struck me, there is no seeker.

If someone's seeking, it's because they have already been sought.

It's the response to God's grace.

There is none who seeks for God.

All have turned aside.

Together they have become worthless.

Not exactly propping up exaltation of humanism there.

There is none who does good.

There is not even one.

Their throat is an open tomb.

With their tongues they keep deceiving.

Being truthful has something to do with fundamental sinfulness.

Yeah, yeah.

Boy, there is so little truth.

Truth -speaking today, it's astonishing.

The poison of asps is under their lips.

Their speech destroys those who are hearing it.

God takes seriously what we say and the worldview from which we say it,

which is something that we need to be telling the entire ruling class.

Today it is a given.

You expect any politician to lie.

You expect politicians to lie.

Now, I would say that if you hold to

an ostensibly conservative worldview that continues to claim to have at least

some level of fidelity with the Christian worldview, that there should at least be some guilt in

your lying.

But the progressives, the leftists, the Marxists, lying is considered a good

thing as long as it promotes the narrative.

In fact, you can't really define lying because there is no objective moral ethical truth.

There is no objective truth at all.

So you can change facts, you can change numbers, you can claim.

In this current election, there are people, Kamala Harris' representatives.

As another interview has demonstrated, this woman can't do interviews.

In fact, I'll be honest with you.

After the debate, I started seeing those images of the hearings.

And I thought, oh, come on, come on, come on.

And then I watch her in any other context.

And I have to go, yeah, I think so.

I think so.

Because she is a word salad.

She cannot possibly formulate rational thoughts.

So yeah, that really makes me wonder about that particular thing.

But her representatives, we inherited

disinflation.

It's 1984 all over again.

Take the newspaper, edit it out, change it, remove the numbers, put new numbers

in, whatever.

It's amazing.

But when you think about it, most of the time we read the last portion of verse 13,

the poison of asps is under their lips.

And we're just like, ah, poetry.

It's a poetic way of saying, what?

What are you saying?

Because you 13 and the first and 14 are

about speech.

Their throat is an open tomb.

Now you got to understand from the Jewish perspective, an open tomb, dead bodies, ritual uncleanness, it's impurity.

Okay.

So there's no, there's no, an open tomb is a horrific thing.

The smell, the degradation of the body, et cetera, et cetera.

Their throat is an open tomb.

I mean, that's a pretty intimate part of your body.

That's where the breath is going in and out.

It's where you eat.

And that's where the speech originates from.

And their throat is an open tomb.

With their tongues, they keep deceiving.

Falsehood, lack of truth.

This is descriptive of the fallen man's speech.

So the poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.

So destructive speech, speech that does not seek to

honor one's creator is destructive speech.

And I've heard lots of good sermons on the tongue,

James's discussions in that fine work

that we should read very regularly, extremely convicting.

But we also need to make the connection in our thinking that

when you put your fingers on these buttons, which again, make

an interesting clicking sound.

Some of you don't know why I said that.

Once I got my hearing aids, it's like, I had forgotten there's a little clicking sound.

Little things.

Hey, at least I'm joyous about little things like that.

I'm not sitting around, oh man, I've got hearing aids now.

Who cares?

I'm thankful that the technology exists.

When we put our fingers on these keys, it's still speech.

And I think for a lot of us, we don't see it that way.

I mean, there is definitely a stronger control

on what I say to people than when you're sitting alone in a room

and you're typing something.

I think that's, I think we will find out someday, the day of judgment, just how

real that is.

Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.

I was raised, someone said something, oh man, I wish I had,

I wish someone had, I had written this down.

Someone, I had picked up a saying a long, long time ago.

Profanity is for those who lack the intelligence to express themselves by any other means.

But someone gave me, someone posted something that was very similar to that, but it was better than mine.

And I've already lost, I could probably scroll back, but it would take forever.

It was on Twitter.

And it wasn't so much a lack of intelligence as it was a

lack of, not energy, but just a desire to speak correctly and to

express yourself.

But yeah, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.

That is, that is a universal condemnation here.

That today, my goodness, I watch videos, I

hear things on TV and it's just, the foul

language is just so, it's just natural to people.

There's just some people that they, they don't know how to say a sentence without dropping an F -bomb into it.

Starting with it, put in the middle and put the end too.

It's just, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood.

Well, we certainly see that all around the world.

We see that on our streets.

But today it just seems like, or we see it so blatantly,

given how much we know now, is in the murder of unborn children.

And it's just, their feet are swift to shed.

Kamala Harris is so dedicated to the murder of unborn children that it's just,

I cannot imagine the judgment that is going to be heard.

And the entire mechanism that

murders unborn children.

The judgment that is coming cannot be imagined.

Cannot be imagined.

Destruction and misery are in their paths.

They don't, sin does not build.

Sin destroys, sin breaks down.

Sin does not end misery, it creates misery.

And the path of peace, they have not known.

You want to see peace in our day?

We're talking about peace accords, Ukraine, Russia, Lebanon, all the rest of stuff.

The path of peace, they have not known.

And I have to sadly make the application today.

It just, you can disagree all you want.

It just seems to me that from what I have been

reading and the people I've been listening to, it really does seem like

much, certainly the Ukrainian conflict.

It's all on us.

It's all on us.

Look at a map.

Most people didn't do well in geography class, if they even

have geography class any longer.

That was not emphasized even in some of the good schools that I went to, public

schools back in the, you know, 50 years ago.

But look at a map sometime.

Ukraine is, it's right, it goes into Russia.

You know, I mean, it's right there.

And turning that nation into the CIA depot that we did.

And it's very plain that we did.

I mean, people, the media doesn't want to talk about it.

But we had biological labs there doing

probably gain of function research.

And you know, we had every kind of listening station, probably still do, on the planet there.

And now talking about making that NATO, that is how you start World War III.

It really is.

And we almost started World War III a long time ago.

The Russians almost started World War III a long time ago, when they tried to put nuclear missiles in Cuba.

And we said, we ain't going to do it.

We will go to war with you.

Well, Ukraine's closer to Russia than Cuba is to the United States.

So, because it's right there.

We don't know the path of peace.

And only the king of peace can introduce the world to the path of peace.

So much of the foolishness that takes place internationally would be

destroyed if there was the slightest respect for God's law.

But there hasn't been for a long time.

We pray for that day.

Path of peace, they have not known.

There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Man, that is, just be honest with me.

Look at our culture.

Look at the West.

Look at Europe.

Look at Canada.

Look at Australia.

Look at the United States.

Would it ever cross your mind to say, oh my, there's so much fear of God

represented in those nations?

Now, look, I remember when I first started going over to Europe about 2005.

One of the things that people would say when they would visit the United States and visit Europe, you've got a church, you've got three

churches on every corner.

There was such a vast difference back then.

Well, okay.

But how many of them are gospel preaching churches would be another question one would have to ask.

But the idea of the fear of God, this is the essence of why I say

secular humanism is the greatest enemy we're facing.

I know somebody said, oh no, it's sin and death.

Christ has dealt with that.

I'm talking about the enemies to be put under his feet.

And secular humanism removes all reason,

all foundation for having a fear of God.

There's no judgment.

See, all this stuff, if there's not going to be a day of judgment, who cares?

Who cares?

There is no fear of God before their eyes.

That is a universally condemnatory statement,

which would mean that to fear God, well, that's the beginning of wisdom.

So, man in his secular rebellion demonstrates his utter lack of wisdom.

So, having said all those things, now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are in the law so that every

mouth may be shut and all the world may become accountable to God because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his

sight, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

So, we need to know, we need to have the knowledge of sin.

And what we've just discovered is that law of God, not necessarily just the Mosaic code,

but the law of God that's been written on the conscience that will tell even the Gentile who has

never encountered the Old Testament scriptures that they are not to lie, they are

not to kill, they are not to rape, they are not to murder.

That has been revealed by God.

The reason for this, the reason for the clarity of Revelation, Romans chapter 1,

the content of that Revelation, even the conscience, Romans chapter 2, is

so that every mouth may be shut and all the world may

become accountable to God.

I have preached on this text a number of times because the picture that it presents, the picture that

it paints, is so vitally important.

A person standing before God, still making excuses for

their own sin, is not ready to hear the message of the Savior.

We see it all the time.

We see it in the court of law.

We see these people, I'm not as bad as that guy, and I didn't do this, and they're just making excuse, excuse, excuse.

This is not the person who's ready to hear the message.

So, every mouth may be shut.

Finally, the excuses stop.

The head goes down.

I acknowledge your authority.

I acknowledge my sin.

Whatever you say is appropriate and

needs to be said.

So, there's where Paul's going, and only then do you

then get justification by faith.

Righteousness of God, Romans 321, and so on.

So, two and a half chapters of the

bad news necessary to be dealt with before you deal with the good news, and

I've said it for years, that's the problem with evangelicalism.

We don't want to deal with the bad news.

We don't want to proclaim the bad news.

All we want to do is proclaim the good news, but the good news without the bad news isn't really the good news

anymore.

That's the problem.

That's the problem.

So, anyways, a little bit of biblical material there we wanted to look

at.

It may have been the same day as the last program.

I'm trying to remember exactly.

Everybody knows that last week the Steve Lawson story broke,

and I have been conflicted a great deal

by this entire thing.

On the one hand, as a pastor,

serves as pastor in two different local churches, I know

how very, very, very complicated

and challenging these types of situations are.

There's always more to the story than you can possibly reveal to the public,

because there are other people, there are innocent people in situations that if you

talk about their role, non -sinful roles, you may be bringing great destruction to their

lives.

You can't explain that.

You can't talk about that.

A lot of these watchdog discernment groups out there

that have never been involved in any of that, they will just

come down on everybody.

Automatically, the elders of the congregation are assumed to be bumbling fools, so they don't have any idea what in the world they're

doing.

And these accusations are normally made by people who have no idea what they are actually doing.

And so I recognize all the complexities.

If Steve Lawson was a bricklayer there in Dallas,

it wouldn't be anybody's business.

The church would need to deal with that and deal with it biblically

and properly.

That's not really even a question.

But he wasn't a bricklayer.

And so I forget which day it was.

I think it was Tuesday.

Al Mohler, without mentioning his name, which

I'll be honest with you, only makes it all the louder.

Everybody knows who you're talking about, but we won't talk about it.

Al Mohler commented at the end of a chapel service at Southern Seminary about

the situation.

He said a lot of really good stuff and encouraging stuff, but that's how I was listening.

At one point, he said something.

I forget exactly how he phrased it, but I'm sitting here going,

oh brother, there's more coming.

Because nothing else had come out.

But the way he said it, he also indicated that he had talked to some students

on that Thursday and was walking on the campus and said to some

students, how are you doing?

Well, actually not real good.

That was on Thursday.

And he indicated he already knew.

So the way I understood it is he had been informed on Wednesday.

So my guess is that

the big organizations that Lawson was involved with, that he either was on

staff with or had

taught for them, lectured on their campuses, whatever, published with them,

he was a busy guy.

So he was a regular at the Ligonier Conferences.

He was a regular at the Shepherds Conference.

And so I think my recollection was he headed up the

DMIN program at Masters.

He had some official capacity with Ligonier as well.

And so he was on the road pretty constantly.

So what my guess is, I

thought of another situation where I had spoken with Steve since the last program.

He was at the 2017 German Shepherds Conference, which always sounds so funny.

The German Shepherds Conference had nothing to do with canines.

But in May of 2017, which of course was the 500th anniversary,

there was a conference in Wittenberg that

was a Shepherds Conference.

So it was the German Shepherds Conference.

And I spoke there and Steve Lawson spoke there.

And my normal recollection of that is all the stuff that happened to him

on his way over.

He lost his wedding ring.

He lost his Montblanc pen.

He writes all his books on yellow pads of paper and all the rest of this stuff

that had happened.

And my recollection that whenever I saw him, there was this one guy,

I think it was a student, that had been assigned to him.

And his whole job for days was to take care of Steve Lawson.

Now I was a plenary speaker too, but nobody was assigned to me.

I'm not saying that as a complaint.

I'm saying there's no reason to.

There's no need to.

And so we did do, and I'd forgotten this, but I have a picture because

I remember the hat that I was wearing.

At one point, he and I did a Q &A session and it was just two

of us.

Well, it wasn't two of us.

There was a group of people there, obviously.

But I mean, we were the only people doing the conversation.

I forget who it was who was asking the questions.

I think it was one of the staff members.

But I'm not sure if it was a breakout or what it was, but

I did remember that.

And so there have been all sorts of, almost every Q &A session at G3

that I've ever been involved with had Steve Lawson involved with it, if he was there.

And he's been there for the vast majority of it.

So anyway, obviously they were informed

before the letter went out on Thursday.

Now, I'd be really concerned because I've been told, I haven't listened to it,

and I've been told it's been deleted, but he preached, I think, the Sunday before this

broke.

And what I've read is that there was a section in there about not judging someone

based upon a hiccup in their life, but judging them on their whole life's

work.

That concerns me if that was the Sunday before.

So the big, I think, you know, Masters, Ligonier, G3, I

think the big groups were given a heads up, which is perfectly appropriate.

I mean, if you had the guy in over and over and over and over again, and no one, you know, everybody said the same thing,

you know, didn't see this one coming.

I was even surprised to find out how old he is.

He's 73.

I wouldn't have guessed that, to be perfectly honest with you.

I was guessing maybe late 60s, but I stink at guessing people's ages.

So I gave up on it a long time ago.

And don't do it with women.

Be wise.

Don't even, or if you do, take 20 off just for the fun of it, because you'll,

it's just wiser.

Anyway, so I think

there was, and my concern is then that I think that these further details

are now coming out, which who can confirm, but if they're coming from

reliable sources, may have been included in that information that may explain why

Moeller said what he said.

And I'm sitting there going, it sounds like there's more coming.

There's more to this than meets the eye, because in my opinion, there's a vast difference between

a moment of passion with someone of your same age,

one time fall, and a five -year -long

relationship that would require a purposeful

travel and utilization of funds.

I mean, that just, is a completely different genre.

And then the information I've seen, late 20s or 25.

I've seen 25 as a date, as a specific age, late 20s in what other people have

said.

25 is not late 20.

So anyway.

And part of me wants to go, just leave this as a church.

But the other part of me is, but he wasn't, he didn't do this just as a member of that church.

He took leadership positions in major, major organizations.

So what do you do about that?

How do you handle something like that?

And so I've seen the entire spectrum expressed

from burn everything he's ever written, and delete

every sermon, delete everything, just absolutely memory hold it.

Make sure that no one two years from now can discover anything about who Stephen

Lawson ever was.

There are people that are on that side of things.

And then I read a publisher, a book publisher this morning saying, I'm not going to do

that.

I refuse to do that.

What he said that was true is still true.

And then they'll make the argument about David and the Psalms and stuff like that.

And most of us are just left sitting in the middle going, I'm not really sure what's really

going on here.

I'm concerned that right now anybody

could put almost anything out there on the web and it might be believed,

even if it doesn't have any basis in reality.

That's troubling.

That's really troubling.

Because that can be done to anybody.

And there are people out there that are just, oh, and then the anti -reform folks that are just having themselves a

grand old time, see this Calvinist, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, it's a royal mess.

And now that this other information has come out

from sources in the know,

that has to be addressed.

I just can't see how anyone could

say that, well, let's just stop talking about it and let it go away.

That's going to fester.

That's going to encourage people to speculate further.

And I just don't see how that works.

Obviously, the best way, I would think, would be actually a statement from Steve Lawson

himself.

And I know I'm being

somewhat naive here.

There's probably money involved here when you think about contracts

and publishing and morals clauses and non

-disclosure agreements.

And people sometimes wonder why I have always been

so difficult when it comes to people who wanted us

to do more, be more involved in networking and stuff like that.

And I just, A, I stink at it.

And B, I just don't want to be a part of it.

I don't want to have to sign stuff.

Yeah, but that means you're not going to have as big of a platform.

Yeah, well, okay.

I'll live with that.

We'll let the Lord take care of getting the word out to the people he wants to get the word out to.

But I, yeah, no, there's probably a lot more to this than

meets the eye that I could even know.

But the fact of the matter is,

truth is truth.

And if a Muslim says the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, that doesn't make it wrong, right?

So, yeah, but how can he say one thing and then do something?

Hey, you know what?

Every preacher does that every Sunday because he's that guy up there's a sinner.

And if he applied perfectly everything he's saying, then wouldn't he live a perfect

life?

He doesn't.

So, you've got to

find a balance.

And unfortunately, situations like this, that the two sides

are so extreme that staying in the middle, very, very difficult to do.

It's very, very difficult to do.

Okay.

The other thing I wanted to talk about today briefly is on

Friday, a webcast dropped

on many different topics.

Very, very long webcast.

And I'm saying that as someone that does the normally much longer than most webcasts.

And I was discussed in it.

And two of the terms that were used to describe me, I want to talk a little bit

about.

The two terms are pietist and Anabaptist.

Now let's start with Anabaptist because there's nothing new about that one.

Baptists, including Reformed Baptists, have been

painted with the term Anabaptist since

the early 1500s.

And then painted as Anabaptist by the Reformed from

the Zwickau Prophets on, I guess.

You know, Luther at first was a little more open to

conversation, but that changed rather rapidly, especially after 1525.

So, I've been called an Anabaptist many, many times.

And when I became a Reformed Baptist in the 19,

late 1980s, because of that, I spent a lot of time, you know,

with, you know, the Radical Reformation and books like that

on the Anabaptist movement.

And of course, there are Southern Baptists, Ergen Kanner, who, by the way, someone sent me a link to

a talk he gave last Sunday at a church.

I hadn't heard much about him for a long time.

And I was clicking through it real quick.

I haven't had a chance to finish it, but still doing the,

I went to Denny's and ate all the bacon I could find thing

about his conversion from Islam and all the rest of that stuff.

It's just sad.

It really, really is.

But anyway, um, how in the world did we

get onto that?

That's a, that's a major shift, but Kanner and certain people at

Southern Baptist seminaries have promoted the idea that the Anabaptists are their actual

forebearers.

Not that, that they're not, that they're not, they didn't come out of the Protestant Reformation.

Now there are groups that did not come out of the Protestant Reformation.

Um, you know, the Mennonites and people like that, they can make a good argument that

they were not ever a part of the Reformation at all.

But the fact is that Reformed Baptists, the English particular Baptists, plainly

came out of the Reformed movement and purposefully

attempted to defend the propriety of their being identified with that

movement.

And the term Anabaptist, unfortunately, because of the Munster Rebellion

in the middle 1530s, simply became a conversation ender.

All you had to do to make sure someone would not be listened to at all

was to call them an Anabaptist.

So, you know, that's one of the reasons I can read Calvin

and go, man, it would have been wonderful if the Munster Rebellion hadn't taken place and he had

actually sat down with an Anabaptist

of some standing and theological training to listen to what

their issues and concerns were.

Of course, by the time that would have happened for him, most of the original Anabaptist or Baptist

leaders were dead.

Killed by Zwingli, or by the Lutherans, or

by the Catholics, by everybody.

It's just the best way to die in those days.

Make sure you're going to die being Anabaptist.

So, and then once Munster took place, and the funny thing is

I've not done the Munster story on the dividing line.

I've done it, you know, I taught Baptist church history earlier this year at the

seminary, and we went through it then.

And of course, I did two hours on Sheologians, my daughter's and her

friend Joy's webcast.

Still available.

You can look up the bloody streets of Munster on the Sheologians website, and I

highly recommend it.

It is without a doubt the most amazing story in all of church

history.

I can't think of anything that is wilder than what took place in the Munster Rebellion.

But anyway,

because of what happened there, people like Calvin and everyone

who followed them, using the term Anabaptist

was like what using the term racist used to be.

Now it's been so overused, it's not really relevant anymore, but still.

And I just noticed a comment from one of our folks.

See, I can see some things.

I'm just not in the thing.

1644 London Confession started out talking about being unjustly called Anabaptist.

That was Chris telling me that.

And that's, yes, there was a deep sensitivity to that

unfair use of that term because it was so vaguely broad.

I mean, Anabaptist simply means re -baptized, Anah, baptized,

baptized again.

So if you live in a culture where everybody

was baptized as an infant, then to receive believer's baptism would be to be an Anabaptist.

Well, how useful is that in describing anything?

If you can use a term that can describe the pacifistic

Anabaptist, and there were a lot of pacifistic Anabaptists, and

also apply it to Jan of Leiden, and the Munster

Rebellion, and the violence, and the beheadings, and the polygamy,

and just the insanity that takes place at Munster, if you can

use the same term of those widely divergent things, then the term's

meaningless.

It has no meaning at all.

So what that means is you're just reading whatever you want into it and saying, I disagree with these

people, and so I'm going to just simply throw them into this category.

And you're literally putting yourself in the position of getting to redefine terms, redefine the language

based on your own predilections.

I mean, there are Anabaptists today, but they're almost all way, way left.

I mean, they tend to be as woke as the day is long.

So I don't know what anyone could possibly mean by calling me an Anabaptist.

It's just, it's historically laughable.

It's really bad for your

reputation to say something like that.

I don't get it.

And then the other term was pietist, and you know, pietism has a

lengthy history to it.

At least in history, probably German pietism is the most famous form.

But there have been pietistic sects

all over the place.

And again, it's extremely malleable about the only thing that you

can say, and when you look it up in a dictionary

of church history or ecclesiology or whatever,

generally pietists are individuals who focus upon inner

life topics and eschew

interaction with the world, certainly politics,

military.

It's an emphasis upon the internal and the spiritual

with the idea being a total separation from what goes on

in the world, politically, culturally,

things like that.

So today, I see a lot of people using this term.

And in general, what I'm seeing is if someone

is less focused than you are

upon making political statements, standing, maybe even standing for Christian truth

in the public square, if they aren't as dedicated as you are,

or this is the most important thing, if they criticize what you do

in that area, they're a pietist.

Whether they actually believe that there should be no

involvement in the political realm or

anything like that, that's generally not taken into account or consideration.

Now, I suppose

if you're the head of a supposed Christian militia

in the mountains of West Virginia or something, and you're getting

ready to launch attacks on the US government, everybody's a pietist to you because you're doing

it for Jesus.

So I suppose you could identify me as a pietist if that's what you're doing.

But all somebody has to do is look at my public ministry

forever.

I mean, you can go on YouTube and watch me addressing the Phoenix City Council

and reminding them of what happened at Weimar and the Buchenwald concentration camp, and that

they, as the leaders of this major city, fifth largest city

in the United States, will be held accountable for the murder of unborn children that's

taken place under their watch.

In the same way that the people of Weimar were marched out to the Buchenwald concentration camp to

see what they had allowed to happen right up on the hill, right outside their city, and close their

eyes to it.

You can go watch that.

It's on YouTube, unless they've taken it down.

I haven't looked in a while.

A pietist does not go to the Phoenix City Council and call

them to repent for their being complicit in the murder of unborn children.

That's not what a pietist does.

I'm a part of a church that's the home base of end abortion now.

This coming Sunday, for example, my son -in -law is going to be

preaching at Apologia on covenant theology.

Part of the reason is Jeff is in Kentucky, Ohio, places like this,

bringing pastors together and seeking to have bills of abolition put in

to the legislatures and testifying in

the political realm to the lordship of Jesus Christ over all things.

I would have to be complaining about that to be a pietist.

I've never heard anyone call Apologia a pietist church.

I can go all the way back.

I was arrested, the only time I've ever been arrested, outside Brian Finkel's abortion clinic in

January of 1989 as part of Operation Rescue.

Now, I am very proud of the fact that it was not very long after that that Brian Finkel was arrested,

if you recall, for sexually abusing his patients.

I think he died in prison, if I recall correctly.

I know if he's not dead, he's in prison, but I think he died in prison.

Just one of the most demonized men I've ever seen in my life.

I'm rather proud of the fact that we closed him down that day.

I got to testify of the trial.

Pietists don't do that.

That was 1989.

The only way I can understand someone calling me an Anabaptist

pietist is if they're a Pato -Baptist, because they're the ones that generally use the word Anabaptist.

They feel like I am criticizing their level of

not so much political activity, but their level of

teaching concerning how the church should be involved with the state,

I think, in this situation.

Another term that came up within a sentence or two was sacralism.

I'm going to go a few minutes long here.

Just looking at the notes here.

Sacralism has been mocked by Stephen Wolff, because Stephen Wolff is a sacralist.

Stephen Wolff's view of Christian nationalism is

fundamentally and foundationally different than my

conversations with Doug Wilson on Christian nationalism, where Doug admitted, unless the Spirit of

God moves, unless the post -millennial hope is fulfilled, this can't happen.

Stephen Wolff says, baloney.

Stephen Wolff says, we need Christian princes.

And he keeps pointing back, and that's what this crusader stuff is.

That's why I do not understand this crusader stuff at all, because if you are a presuppositional,

theonomic, post -millennial Calvinist with the Puritan hope,

Stephen Wolff is not on your side.

He specifically says, regeneration is not required for Christian nationalism.

So we're talking the sacral state of the medieval period that was

inherited.

And he'll argue, this is what the reformers believed.

Yes, they did.

Just like they believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary.

It took a few decades to get rid of all of the garbage.

And some of us argue, some people didn't get rid of all the garbage.

But I don't believe that's what defines the Reformation.

And if it is, the Reformation's irrelevant.

Forget about it.

Forget about the term reform.

Just get rid of it.

If the Reformation was about the gospel, post -Tenebrous Lux,

if that's what it was about, then it's as relevant as ever been, and always will be.

That's a huge divide.

That's a massive chasm.

Massive chasm.

And so sacralism is the confusion of the sovereign spheres of church, state, and

family.

I'm so thankful for Joe Boot and his book, Lord of Kings.

I don't know why I can't remember the title of that book.

I can see the cover of it, but I've certainly recommended it.

And look it up, you'll find it.

Where he works very diligently to make sure we see what those various spheres of authority

are, and the danger of confusing them.

But that's what Stephen Wolfe does.

And that's what happened in the sacralism that led to,

well, I'll give two examples.

We've told the story.

The video I have out on it is less than five minutes long, if you want to look it up.

But I told the story of Fritz Erba.

And just the massive contrast that struck me when I visited the Wartburg Castle

seven years ago this week.

I'm seeing all the stuff coming up on Facebook.

This was seven years ago.

Preached at the castle church in Wittenberg and stuff like that.

And had an incredible, incredible dinner at the Wartburg Castle.

Fairy tale type stuff.

Just wonderful.

I'll always remember all of that.

And my thanks to Michael Fallon for all of that, because he arranged it

all.

And Kathy with Sovereign will tell you, because she was with me.

I went with her early to the Wartburg Castle because I wanted to see Fritz Erba's

place of imprisonment and death.

And so she and I, we go up to where it is, halfway up the fire type thing.

And I'm just, I'm looking down this thing.

I'm looking down through that terror hole into this windowless,

doorless pit that this man lived in for seven years.

Now, first we visited, first we took the tour.

And I visit the room where Luther translated the New Testament.

He's hiding out from the state.

It's a sacral situation.

He is now a heretic.

So he's hiding from the state.

And it's only a hundred meters maybe

from that room to where Fritz Erba, only a few years later, now

under Lutheran political control, Fritz Erba is tied up and lowered

down that hole to die in that hole.

Why?

Because he read the translation Luther produced and became convinced that

baptism is for believers, which it is.

He was right about that.

But in the sacral state that made him a danger.

And so he's stuck in that hole and Luther knew he was there and did nothing to save his life.

That's sacralism.

That's sacralism.

That's not something to hold on to.

And the reformers in the future generations, just as

they didn't touch the Marian stuff, Luther believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary,

not because he did any major study on it at all, but because that was

the tradition that they inherited.

Well, there's a reason to actually believe in Semper Reformanda and no, Barth didn't

make it up, doggone it.

Stop with that foolishness.

There's a reason to believe Semper Reformanda.

And history shows that the reformation continued.

It didn't just stop when Calvin died.

It needed to continue.

And sacralism was one of the reasons it needed to continue.

The other example, of course, is Servetus.

I had one of our church members ask me last night, how do you process the

Servetus thing?

Because there's a lot of people running around going, you know what?

That was a good, just, righteous thing that they did.

I mean, it was a heritage.

Yes, he was.

And I suppose you're going to be hunting down the Jehovah's Witnesses tomorrow.

Hope not.

But I have defended Calvin only insofar

as saying he was a part of a sacral system and did nothing

outside of what everybody expected everybody to do at that particular point in time.

That doesn't mean it was right.

That doesn't mean that I think it's appropriate to take a heretic

and surround him with green wood and cook him.

Because that's what it is.

You don't die very fast when the wood doesn't burn hot and fast.

You cook.

You can be there for an hour.

Your skin falls off.

Your muscles fall off your body like meat.

It's horrible.

That's why, for example, with Tyndale, there would be

holes in the steak and you'd put a leather thing through it and around the person's neck.

And before you lit the fire, you'd choke them to death.

You'd suffocate them so that when it was lit, then you were just burning a dead body.

That was considered significantly more merciful than the thrashing around and screaming of someone

being cooked slowly over time.

That's not how you deal with heresy.

And you can say, but it was a Christian society.

Well, Calvin certainly tried to make Geneva as Christian as possible.

But it didn't fit with his theology because you can't demand

God's electing grace to make the majority of a particular

culture, city, state, whatever.

Now, they were much smaller back then, so at least you could try.

But you'd be demanding that God's purposes right now was to make this particular place

Christian.

And not just Christian outwardly.

And there's the problem.

Because once you make it Christian outwardly, now you're making nominalism your goal.

Nominalism in name only.

And there are a few things that have brought more disrepute, the cause of Christ, than nominalism.

But that's what you end up getting.

And that's what the discussions are about today.

Well, nominalism is better than this wacko craziness we're dealing with.

Better in what way?

Is the gospel more clearly proclaimed

in the contrast to the darkness of today?

Or is it better to just have a bunch of people who claim to be Christians but never live it out?

These are things that should be being discussed.

So, sacralism, yes, the reformers were sacralist.

Taught that forever.

And that was one of a number of issues that needed to

continue to be examined in light of scripture, sola scriptura, semper reformanda,

that led to the rejection of that type of thing over time.

I've said many times, Calvin's writings laid the foundation for the overthrow of his own view of political authority.

They did.

They had to.

Because fundamentally, if you're going to have a sacral state, you're going to need a

politically oriented church like Rome.

Like Rome.

And that's all roads lead back to Rome.

If you're going to be a sacralist, I don't see how you avoid.

And so, it's not overly shocking to me that Wolf's also a Thomist and a natural law theorist.

That doesn't, again, like, yeah, this all fits together.

But that ain't my view.

I ain't going there.

And I think there's grave dangers there.

And that's what that's really been all about for a while now.

So, there's a conversation, a little bit discussion about pietism, anabaptism,

sacralism, and why it's being discussed these days.

And hopefully done without

too much in the way of swords and torches and burning anybody at the stake or all the rest of that stuff in the process.

So, hopefully that will be useful to folks.

Thanks for watching the program.

Like I said, I get the feeling next week, I'm probably going to be,

yeah, I know, I know.

But I think you need to have that freedom.

And it had been a while since I had done it.

And so, this time I'll make sure that I've got everything where it needs to be.

And in fact, while I'm thinking about it, make sure to disconnect the hard drive down there.

Let's put it back where it belongs.

Anyways, thanks for watching the program today.

We will see you next time.

God bless.