Open Air Theology -Special guest

What are you doing? What are you doing? You never light a cigar that way.

You use a wooden match. Preserves the flavor, you see.

But the worst curse would come upon the one who seduced him. Whose head would be crushed by the seed of the woman.

And the punishment was too severe. What's wrong with you people?

Are you ready to get back to work? With pleasure. So, Senor Kramer, what is this about?

I choose to believe the Bible because it's a reliable collection of historical documents written down by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses.

They report to us supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claim that their writings are divine rather than human in origin.

Don't any of you have the guts to pay for blood? I'm your huckleberry. But because of his own purpose and grace which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.

I'm Batman. I don't know why you're clapping. I'm talking about you. I didn't come here to get amens.

I didn't come here to be applauded. I'm talking about you. Welcome to Open Air Theology.

I think we have a really great show coming on for you guys here tonight. It's going to be a great blessing as we have a wonderful brother in Christ that we get to have a chat with.

Before we begin though, let me introduce myself. My name is Braden Patterson. I'm the pastor of Grace Bible Church here in Moorpark, California.

If you live in Ventura County area in Southern California, it'd be a great blessing if you joined us for worship on Sundays at 10 .30

in the morning. It's a great blessing to be a co -host here on Open Air Theology. We also have...

We've got to throw up some banners real fast. We've got to do some quick plugs. Look at this. We've got Striving for Eternity up in the top right there.

Go check out Striving for Eternity. You might be watching this today on Striving for Eternity.

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We also are wanting to get the word out about this wonderful book. We were originally going to be having

Jacob Tanner on our show today. However, I'm going to let Tom talk a little bit about that in a moment.

But go check out this book, Resist Tyrants, Obey God. Go pre -order it from press .founders .org and also

I'm going to throw this up here. Man, oh man. That looks like a great lineup right there.

That's going to be a fun conference. Minus maybe one guy on there. Yeah, you've got to watch that Shepard guy.

Well, how about brother, how about you talk a little bit about that here in a moment and I'll pop it back up for you. But like I said, my name is Bray and it's a great blessing to be here tonight.

I think we have a great show. I'll pass the mic down to our special guest that we have on tonight. The 1689

I don't, the man, the myth, the legend, Brantley. Thank you.

Yeah, I'm the man behind the screen, I guess, as you could say. Yeah, so thank you for having me on the show.

My name's Brantley. I'm here outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. I go to Coram Deo Reformed Baptist Church, a new 1689 or Second London Baptist Confessional Reformed Baptist Church.

And a lot of folks know me for running the 1689 .com or 1689 Reformed Baptist online.

And I guess we'll get into more of that as we go on the show, but was that pretty much it?

Yeah. That was perfect. It's great to have a face behind the whole 1689

Reformed world. If you go to a 1689 London Baptist Confessional Church, that's the guy.

That's where you go. I would just answer Luke by saying all of them. So we're going to be asking him questions with regards to how the churches got started, how he got started, and actually putting up a website and all that.

Brantley, I also heard you go by a second name, Steven Anderson. I don't know if that's true or not. That is the rumor on the street.

I can't confirm whether that's true or not, but a lot of people do say that, so I don't know how they got that idea.

Apostle. Apostle Anderson. There's an apostle, Greg Locke, I saw.

That's right. That is definitely not me. I don't want anything to do with that.

He is radical. He is radical for sure. Well, Tom, introduce yourself.

Well, my name is Tom Sheppard, and I'm a member of Grace Bible Church out of Burney, Texas, and I'm a co -host here on Open Air Theology.

I'm also a co -host with Striving for Eternity via Apologetics Live, and Even If None as well.

So, you don't know me any other way, except that way unless you see me on the streets doing some street evangelism.

So that's about it. That's already too much that we know you. Yeah, that's way too much.

So tell everybody about this that's going on. Let me pop that back up. Yeah, so this is

Grace and Truth Conference, and you'll notice some great speakers. Kevin Hay this year, Jacob Tanner, he preached last year,

John Speed was there, Brandon Scalf was there last year. We have Nick White, golly,

Alan Nelson Quatro. I mean, this was a conference. Oh, and David Weber, he's actually the pastor and the host over at that conference over there.

And Fred Beale, matter of fact, I think he had just gotten his new church right after this last conference from last year in August.

Going to be a great conference. Greg Moring Jr. and Trevor Bates, and then myself, I actually got invited this year.

So what this is, Mark Goodson puts on this conference. He started it last year. And there's a group of people who write for Grace and Truth Press.

And anybody who gets to write with that press, small articles ranging from discipleship, evangelism, cessationism,

I mean, you name it. It's a good group of people. And so this is going to be in August, and I'm privileged to be speaking there.

Interesting this year. So you noticed that the topic of it was order salutis, the order of salvation.

But my topic is the order of salvation and evangelism. So it's going to be a tricky little thing.

But hopefully I'll surprise everybody. And myself, because I don't know what I'm going to do yet. Yeah, it's going to be great.

Hey, Georgia, how are you? It's great to see everybody tonight. So Brantley, okay, so I get on Facebook, and I see people looking for a good church in North Carolina, looking for a

Reformed Baptist church in Minnesota. And the next thing I know, your name pops up with a map of all these churches that go over.

Who are you affiliated with? How did you get this started? And what is the benefit of being able to go to this link that you provide?

Yeah, so it sort of got started when I began my process of reforming.

I found my way into Reformed theology after careful studying of and sitting under some sound

Calvinistic teaching and preaching. Because I hadn't heard books of the

Bible preached before, and I finally found a church that did that.

And the Holy Spirit worked in me and began renewing in me.

And I basically was wrestling with everything. I wanted to know just what was true. I grew up in a

Baptist home. That's just what we did traditionally. But I wanted to know everything was on the table.

How do we baptize? Soteriology is correct. Everything. I came out on the end of it still a

Baptist, praise God. But I discovered Reformed theology and not only studying the

Scriptures, but then also taking a serious look at church history, the Protestant Reformation. And that's how

I got into the Reformed Baptist camp. And I connected with a guy who actually is the owner of a site called 1689 .com

in one of the Facebook groups. And he wanted to do more with it. And I reached out to him and said,

Hey, I'm in IT. That's what I do for my day job. And I'd be willing to help you out with the site.

I'm a new Reformed Baptist guy, and I want other people to know about this too.

So we sort of got on messages and then phone calls and brainstorming what all we could do.

And you can go to the site today, to the About page, and there's a hyperlink to what it looked like since he registered it back in the 1990s.

And it was basically the confession text with some links to things that are no longer in existence or aren't in use anymore.

So we basically gave it a facelift, an overhaul, if you will. And one thing led to another, and that's where it is today.

And when I took over the website, I also started a social media presence too.

You know, I know TMS has the Master's Seminary alumni, you know, where you could go on if anybody has gone through the

Master's Seminary. Is that where you got the idea? Or was there something already planted for 1689 churches?

Yeah, so when I redid the website, I focused on getting the confession text and then the other documents on there.

But then I just naturally wanted to do a Reformed Baptist church directory on there for those churches that align with the 1689 or are moving in that direction or have a pastor that is, and it's a safe haven for someone who is

Reformed Baptist. And I had known of other church searches, so I leveraged, actually, the

ReformedWiki .com by Michael Chang, and also Johnny Faresa's site, which he has since passed away, and he's with the

Lord. And if I remember correctly, it's a Reformed Baptist church, I think Providence, RBC in Indiana or something like that, they maintain his site.

So what I did is I went through all of those, and actually with this directory, sorry, my screen's going to go blank every now and then, and I can turn it off if need be.

But I like Five Solas, that's my desktop background. You gotta have that up.

Yeah, so that's 1689 designs, and I'll tell you what I did. I actually inverted his design.

You can go and download this design, but I inverted the colors. That's all I did. And I like dark schema, yeah.

Sorry, but oh yeah, so but in this directory, I actually wanted churches to submit themselves to be listed on there.

I wasn't going to go and find churches and add them, was the strategy behind it. And that's still how it is today.

But since doing that, that's why I actually started a different site which presents the data in a slightly different way and is both submissions and also what

I find from research, and that's reformedbaptistchurches .com which is different. So what is the actual requirements to actually so we say it's a 1689 church, can a

G3 church be a part of that? Do you actually have to be a confessional church?

Dispensationalist. That's the question. Yeah, so primarily yes for 1689 churches, but like I said earlier, we do on the 1689 .com

site, I'll go from one site to the next. On the 1689 .com site, it is geared towards 1689 churches or churches that have at least one elder that is 1689 and wants to list the church because they want to be able to have reformed

Baptist guys come there, or maybe their church is moving in that direction. But in order for them to be on there, they need to be credobaptist and Calvinistic and elder -led congregational.

You do your own investigation to vet that? I mean, I do as much as I can, but we have a disclaimer on the details, but there is, what we get from submissions, that's the information that we put out there, but I do try and visit their website or social media, and fortunately we haven't really had to remove any churches as of yet, but if there is a church that does put out publicly verifiable evidence or some other means that would warrant their removal, we would definitely do that.

Okay. That's cool. I'm filling out my application right now. I messed up. I haven't done that yet, Brantley.

I'm ashamed. But on the reformedbaptistchurches .com site, it's a little different. We actually have a different icon for each confession that they use.

Oh, wow. Okay. So, like, if they're 1644, 1689, whatever? Yeah.

Or, like, if they hold to... What about, like, New Covenant Theology? Yeah, so,

I think some of the NCT guys, some of them are found, they're found in the first London camps, or maybe...

They typically hold to the First Baptist, yeah. Yeah, because I guess it's more looser and allows for that without contradiction,

I guess, by the text, but I think we also have, we have a

Calvin icon as well that we can assign. If we're not sure, if they're not really holding to any kind of confession, if we're not sure, yeah.

How many churches would you say are total or in the network right now? Yeah, so, 1689 .com and I do want to offer a public apology,

I have been behind with getting those churches added because I actually spent a lot of time standing up the other site and also some of the other various projects out there that I'm affiliated with, but as of this week,

I've actually gotten caught up, and I think we're at about somewhere under 600 on 1689 .com,

and again, that submission's based, yeah. That's incredible. Yeah. But over at BaptistChurches .com,

it's, I think, over 1 ,300 worldwide, yeah. Okay, so I didn't even know you did worldwide,

I thought it was just in the States. Oh yeah, no, we're global. Oh wow, that's pretty awesome. What about you,

Braden? Is this, how did he contribute to you getting your job? Yeah, so I was going to say, so Brantley holds kind of a, him and another gentleman kind of hold a near and dear special place in my heart.

1689 ministry search, something along those lines, there was a Facebook page that I've been a part of for a while, and saw a post by Benjamin Allen pop up on there, and he's part of the fire network, part of the fire association, and saw that there was a church in Southern California, and slowly but surely through God's providences and him referring me and just this beautiful answer to prayers taking place.

Wow. I'm here. Is that right? Yeah. Brother, thank you. That is huge.

Amazing on how that all worked out, and just really cool how that all took place, seeing it there, then talking with Benjamin and him referring, and yeah, so seriously, it's a huge, huge praise for myself, what you are doing.

Praise to God about it. So how many, and I don't know if you'll know the answer,

I mean, this might be kind of a hard question to answer. I know that there's, I mean, how many different types of reform about this networks are there?

I know there used to be ARBCA, that's no longer, right? Transition, yeah, to...

Oh, sorry, you cut out. Continue. Yeah, I think the internet went, raptured for a second.

But yeah, so there was ARBCA, and I know that they transitioned to something else, like Braden is a part of FIRE, Mark Chansky has the

Reform Baptist Network. What other networks are there? Yeah, yeah, so you can actually find those.

On the 1689 .com site, we actually have a whole, it's a whole directories area, so a lot of people go to the church directory, but we have directories of seminaries, publishers, and also organizations, ministry organizations like G3, your founders, so on and so forth.

And yes, we also have that directory of the organizations that are associations or networks, so if I remember correctly, actually, forgive me, that organizations directory, it will have a column that says a church association or network, true or false, and if it's true, they operate a church association network, or that's what it is.

Otherwise, it's not like, for example, G3 Ministries, they're an organization on there, true that they have a network, but so yeah, so there are several different ones globally.

I actually edit a lot of, have edited a lot of the Reformed Baptist and other related

Wikipedia articles because they have a Wikipedia article called

List of Reformed Baptist Denominations, it's the Wikipedia article, and it separates by each section or region of the world and the different organizations that you would find in there and it was severely outdated, so I actually went through and cleaned that up and updated it some and also updated the

Wikipedia page for like, you mentioned ARBCA changed to CBA, stuff like that. So we have quite a few, it's

I think it's somewhere around 20. Yeah, that is reformedbaptistchurches .com

you got it. Yeah, I got your form has been successfully submitted. Oh, I see it now, yeah, nice.

Nice. Yeah, there you go. That's awesome. So, but not only do you do that,

I've also seen some Facebook posts of some evangelism, some pretty aggressive evangelism, good thing,

I'm all for it, like at churches like Fertlick Churches, is it Fertlick, is that how you say his name?

Fertlick, and yeah, it's not a church. Yeah, I would agree. I told you it was aggressive evangelism.

Hey, it's not a church, it's an experience, okay? That's right. Yeah. That's right.

They had God Almighty there, so I don't know why he wouldn't go there, but I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Have you seen much, have you, and by no means do we measure evangelism by fruit, have you seen fruit by going there, have you seen much good dialogue and all that kind of stuff?

Yeah, so I'll be honest with you, it is discouraging at times, because like you said, you don't see the fruit necessarily or a lot of it, so there might be someone down the road, and my boy

Spencer commented, that's the resource site that we have, elevationisfalse .com, and the first Sunday that I went and did evangelism there was actually

Easter Sunday, and that was the famous, and I didn't even know it until well after I'd gotten out of there and taken a nap and woken up, but he wore that ridiculous $2 ,000 pink sweater.

I was going to say, is that the pink sweater day? Yeah, because what had happened was that there was some controversy that they weren't going to use certain theological or biblical language like the blood of Jesus or whatever have you, but even before that,

I actually, so this is now probably a year ago at this point, because I actually went to an experience there in February, which is

Black History Month, because I knew everything that I needed to know online. I didn't necessarily need to go in there, but I wanted to see what it was like and what these people were experiencing and what all they did inside, and it was honestly, genuinely heartbreaking after that.

I sat in my car crying for about 10 or 15 minutes, and I'm a grown man, but what

I experienced there was heartbreaking because one, they spent probably a three or four, maybe even five minute video on Black History Month and platforming

MLK and so on and have you, but then the conversation was literally him and his wife,

I think they were just sitting on chairs on a stage and having a conversation and that was the message, and at the end, they basically gave what we would say at the end that you would do a gospel presentation, but essentially what he basically at the end of the talk tried to rope in the need that you need to invite

Jesus into your heart is all that he said, and that was it. Then cue all the wonderful rock show, exciting music that they have.

I proceeded to get out of there, so that's really what led me

I guess to realize these people need the gospel. They aren't even faithfully preaching and teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is primary and most important, that's central, and then you have all the other issues, that's just on and on and on from there, and that Easter Sunday we actually, me and my friend, who goes to church with me, we made up tracks.

Elevation is, you know, I actually have one in my casket here. Forgive me.

No, you're good. Nice Elevation Orange. Yeah, so we actually passed out some of these tracks.

I kept them, the ones that I had left over, but when they caught on that we were out there before the service started, they actually had their security guy come up to us and ask us, and try to interrogate us, what are you doing here?

Fortunately, I'm on public property sidewalk. I'm not blocking or obstructing, and then he got the police to come over, and they said, hey man, you seem to be within your rights,

First Amendment, yada, yada, yada. We're just warning you and telling you not to obstruct and anything.

We're like, yes sir, thank you so much for keeping us safe. Very respectful and all good with the law enforcement officers, which they have posted out there.

We were basically trying to hand out these tracks, and I actually custom developed this track, and I'm trying to develop some more, but essentially what it is, it's a

DIY print your own paper track that goes on a three -foldable, right? I've come up with different ones, but this one that I have is, what is a false church?

Am I in one, right? It goes through what the gospel is and markers of a true church and that false churches don't meet those markers, and also some on the back, you can see some of those helpful ministries to point them to, as well as the

Elevation is False .com site. Believe it or not, when they saw that, realized that we were actually passing out tracks and people were taking them, their staff or volunteers or whatever you want to call them started taking them from people as they were going or leaving.

Oh, is that right? It would be as literally as, hey, welcome to church, can I see that?

And they take it from them. They just willingly gave it over, so I was having to tell people towards the end, don't let them take this from you.

It's interesting when we talk about fruit and matter of fact, just in the last conference that we had just listened to at the

Founders Conference, it was talking about the fruit, some of it you see fruit of repentance and genuine salvation and conversion, and the other fruit you see is opposition.

But you know, God is glorified in that you're going out there and praise God. Who else?

Who knows? Matter of fact, this is one of the ways that Braden left

Mormonism through the efforts of people putting in tracks in a library and plantings.

Evangelism works. Absolutely. So now I hold a sign because they take the tracks and people can see that.

So that's why I hold the elevationisfalse .com. Let me ask you this, because you're going there mostly on Sundays that you're doing that?

Yeah, so some of them, like the one I went to, it was a new location in my town, so I feel responsible to those people because they're in my area.

But I've tried to go to other locations as well, but there's a lot of distance between the building and what's public property, and that's why

I have to employ the sign. Yeah. So does it affect the times that you're able to go?

Does it affect with your worship? I didn't know that it was in the same town that you're in. Does it affect with you attending your church that you're a part of?

Fortunately, no, because we meet in the evenings currently. Yep. Praise the Lord. That's awesome. What does your pastor think of you going out and doing that?

Is he giving you some thumbs up and supporting you? Yeah, he's supportive. He's given me advice, helpful, constructive criticism, prayer support.

He's usually preparing for the sermon during that time as well, and it's usually me and one of the other guys who are out there doing it.

Yeah. Dude, that's cool to hear. Do you point people to your local church or pretty much just other good ministries?

I point them to several different Baptist or Presbyterian churches in the area.

You might know a guy that knows a lot about 1689 churches. Yeah. On the back of this is a

QR code they can scan or type in and it's the church finder too. I'll give a shout out to reformedbaptistchurches .com,

but there's also reformedchurchdirectory .com, which has both Baptist and Presbyterian Reformed, which is

Jeff Brickman's site. Okay. That's pretty awesome. Really good.

We have some questions here, AI -generated questions. Before you jump into that,

Tom, I got to ask this. Are you doing...

Dude, I'm blown away with how much that you're doing right now. Yeah. How many sites do you have? That is a lot of stuff.

I have a lot of free time outside of work, so I try and commit it to these causes.

Once it's built, it's done, I'm good. I don't really have to put too much effort except with the directory updates, you have to add a church or whatnot.

I don't think I ever originally answered your fruit question. What I wanted to quickly comment though is that I've actually had most of my good interactions with young people.

They are just wanting to know, why do you think this is false? You don't seem to be an angry, shouty man or something like that.

You seem to be smiling, nice guy. I want to know why is this false? Why are you doing this? Yeah. The middle -aged or older women, totally different story.

Really? Yeah, they are nasty, man. If you were to caution people, maybe what are some of the signs that...

First of all, let me ask you this. Stephen Furtick, wasn't he a graduate from TMS? Is he on the

TMS alumni? I thought he was. You're thinking Francis Chan.

Is that what I'm thinking? I thought Stephen Furtick was too. No, Stephen Furtick was a southern

Baptist. Oh, was he? Okay, gotcha. Sad to hear that kind of stuff.

I was going to ask you though, what are some signs that...

If somebody was watching right now that's a part of something like a Stephen Furtick type of church, what are some signs that you could specifically say are these are things why you should not be going to this church?

Go to a different church if you see these kind of things. Yeah, definitely. And we actually have those four or five major ones listed on the website.

And that's what I start with is the gospel. They don't faithfully preach a biblical gospel.

You need to preach repentance from sin, what that is biblically. Point people to Christ and Christ alone.

That's the central issue. Everything else is just onward from there.

So I pointed them like, hey man, look, you got women pastors. You need to realize we've been doing

Christianity for 2 ,000 years. And we can see the path of Christianity that's good,

God's elect, and sound theology, and these good traditions. Right?

And that's no question. And now all of a sudden we're doing women pastors and yada, yada, yada.

So I usually tell them like, look, this is a new development. Literally in 2023 is when they started referring to Holly Furtick.

Instead of being First Lady of Elevation, now she's pastor. Really? Yeah, and they never replied to my email.

I asked them, hey guys, would you mind just being able to answer just some very simple, basic questions.

When was Holly Furtick ordained as a pastor and who all was she ordained by?

And how do you come to that view of women pastors given that the last 2 ,000 years of church history, we have long settled the issue that it's a qualified and called man, a husband of one wife.

Now was this all going on the same time, the whole thing with Rick Warren and his church being disfellowshipped by SBC?

Yeah, I think that was before actually. So that sort of set the stage, I guess. I think what happened was

Elevation, they did the exit out for PR reasons. So instead of getting kicked out, they are exiting.

Motivating people. What a shame, too. I mean, when you think about it, not the shame that they left.

It's a shame that they exited instead of being booted. I think that's a shame.

But, you know, in 1 Timothy 4, I was just pulling that up. It says, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching.

I heard Bodie Bauckham in one of his sermons in this last conference talk about that.

Why does it say that? You know, because they were talking about how they're building the new seminary for Founders Seminary, which is a really awesome news.

Yeah, Bodie Bauckham is going to be moving to Florida to help out with that. And they were talking about that they need 1 .3

million dollars or whatever the number was. I can't remember. It was in the millions. It was a lot of money. And he was talking about, you know, but look at these churches right around the corner that just,

I mean, they have it. They have that money. And he quoted this verse and he was saying, you know, because people ask the question, well, how is it that you can just go all over to these charismatic churches and see them grow and grow and grow?

Why, why, why? And he said, because the Bible is true. The Bible is true.

They will not endure sound teaching. Amen. And so they will look for themselves, men who are going to give them exactly what they want to hear.

And so, yeah, what a hard work to go in there to point them to the real gospel.

Yeah. Good stuff. Amen. That is great. So, any other questions on that,

Braden? I'm trying to know what we had. We had some, I want to say don't we have some

AI generated questions tonight? Yeah, I think so. Audience, if you don't throw in your own questions, we're going to have to go to the

AI questions and they're pretty good questions. So you guys, yeah.

So Vody was, yeah, he was actually at a church. Matter of fact, it's probably on one of your network shirts.

What's the name of his old church in Houston? Grace family. Grace family. That's right. Matter of fact, they just had a conference, didn't they?

Yes, Semper Reformanda. So that's another thing I got to do is keep up with all the events because we publish the events to our website calendar and also the social media calendars as well.

That's awesome. Okay, so I'm going to go on to chat GPT. You guys start asking us some

AI questions, but I'm going to go ahead. Matter of fact, if you guys have AI at home, ask yourself so we can actually...

What's up, Aaron? Yeah, you got to say hi to everybody. Hey, Tom, you want to hear something? I'm going to make you jealous real quick.

What? I got to hug Aaron today. You got to meet Aaron? You got to... I got to hug him today.

I got to see him and say hi to him. Well, isn't that special? That's what

I'm saying. In the comments, I did want to say he was recently on, but I think he debated someone recently on X, right, on Christian nationalism or something.

Who? Oh, really? Ken Little in the comments. I think he commented Grace Family Baptist. Oh, yeah. I actually saw something about that.

Did you watch that? Yeah. I don't think I watched. I don't think I saw all of it. I know I saw some parts of it, though. I know exactly what it was, though.

Or was he debating somebody else? Has he done multiple debates here recently? I never knew of the guy who he was doing.

I just knew he... Kenton, you'd have to comment, but I can't even remember who hosted

Kenton on that one. It was on X, I think. Was it

Greg Moore on the Dead Man Walking? That's it. Oh, man. I wasn't lying.

I saw some of it. That was with Andrew Rappaport then, right? Andrew Rappaport and Greg Moore just did an interview

Thursday. No, I think this was like a month or so ago when he did this. Okay.

What does the AI have for us? I can't remember. I'm asking right now. We got one question from Aaron right here for Brantley.

One question. How often is he able to articulate the full gospel to these people case -by -case basis, or are you intermittently also doing open air for the gospel?

When you're out there with a sign, are you proclaiming the gospel at the same time?

Yes. Gospel is key and important. It's central to everything as a

Christian, so that comes first. Unfortunately, I will admit that is why

I have to hold the sign and hope that they see the gospel presented on the website, that they go to the website and see the gospel because a lot of their locations,

I can't interact with them. They're just cars going in and out of a parking lot and there's not really any foot traffic.

That's the hope there, is that they would understand that Elevation is a problematic church, that we're trying to tell them that, and that there's a gospel presentation,

I think Paul Washer's video, and also American Gospel, the free documentary on YouTube. But when

I am able to interact with people, yes. Proclaiming the gospel out loud, open air preaching, and also when

I'm in conversations with people, that's the first place I go. Yeah. Good stuff.

Amen. Cool. Alright, you guys asked your questions, but I did get some here. Okay, let's go with number two here.

How would you balance a biblical call to be holy with the reality of indwelling sin?

Yeah, so we're actually doing a book reading on our Discord community through J .C.

Ryle's Holiness, and it's really difficult to read because it's like,

I mean, I've been convicted of my sin and repented the initial repentance, right?

And then there's also the repentance that we continually do as a

Christian from that point onward, and just realizing that because personal holiness is very crucial to the

Christian walk in your Christian faith, and I think we see what happens when we neglect that.

Situations like Steve Lawson and others who have fallen unfortunately, and that's why we should be praying for our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, praying for ourselves, praying for our pastors in their holiness, and I would say that just the reality is that it's

Christ in me that is renewing me and transforming me, and helping me as I am being conformed into His image.

It's a work of the Spirit, and it's that sinner -saint duality.

So hopefully that answers your question. That's right. Yeah, good stuff. Yeah, so putting off, putting on.

Putting off the old man and putting on. So I had recently, and I had no idea that question was going to come up, but I recently posted a post regarding that.

A guy was actually watching the show. I don't think I see him on here today, but he had asked the question.

He messaged me after watching the show. Oh, really? Yeah, I was pretty interested. As a matter of fact, this was my response to him, and then

I ended up publishing this on Facebook as well, with his permission. He will keep his name quiet.

But I said, this might be helpful for anybody struggling with a pattern of sin. You need to ask yourself, is it true repentance, or is it just changed behavior?

There is a difference. Romans 6, 16 says, do you not know that when you go on presenting yourselves as someone of slaves of obedience, or slaves of the one, you are a slave of the one who you obey, either of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness.

The question you need to ask yourself every time you're about to sin is, do you love your sin more than your

Savior? It's a constant fight. So how do you guard yourself to make sure that you're in the faith?

It boils down to a heart change. The affections of your heart. Does your sin grieve you?

And so one way to guard against our sin in falling back into the world is, how much time do you actually immerse yourself in the world daily?

How much time do you spend in the Word with God? In other words, how much are you filling up your mind with Christ?

And I told him to read Colossians 3, Romans 6, and Romans 12. Then I asked the very means of grace.

Are you a faithful member of a local church? Are you regularly hearing the Word of God preached on the

Lord's Day? This is the very means of grace. Listening to the Word of God preached from the pulpit by a man under submission of the elders.

And I went on to talk about who are you surrounding yourself around with? Christian friends for accountability.

To be able to hold you accountable. I mean, we need those people around us.

We cannot be lone rangers, right? Amen. Yeah, my pastor does hold me accountable. He's held me accountable more than once.

That's good. That's good. You want to add anything to that, Brayden?

No, just amen to it. You know, something

I would just add on to it. Tomorrow's message that I'll be preaching, the text

I'm going to be preaching from, my message is on James 1, 8 through 12. In that text, it's a really beautiful text, but in there it talks a little bit about the humble man that boasts in his exaltation.

Should boast in his exaltation, the rich man and his humiliation for the rich man will fade away like the beauty, and da -da -da -da -da, and it goes into this beautiful thing, and something that I'm seeing in there is that it's on the it's that, those statements are right after for he is a double -minded man.

That person is a double -minded man, unstable in all his ways. And so it's really what I think is going on there.

Well, okay, let me go to the verse before that. The verse before that says let him ask in faith with no doubting for the man who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven by the wind and tossed.

And then it says that man, so it's referring to the man that goes to God in prayer without faith, that's doubting, a .k

.a. no faith in there. And so this is,

I think, a big concern for many in the church or that attend churches. Are we putting up this front that has this appearance of holiness externally, but we don't really possess faith on the inside of us?

And so we're just an extension of what Pharisees are. And so is even our attempt to be in different behavior, is that being done in faith?

Because the Pharisees, they were fasting, they were in prayer, but it wasn't in faith. And therefore, it says that person should not expect anything from the

Lord. And that thing, going back to the previous verses, is that it's a testing of the faith that produces steadfastness.

That person that doesn't ask in faith that's doubting, that doesn't actually have faith, he's not getting steadfastness from the

Lord. So when it goes to repentance on that, don't be...

You can't have one foot in the world and one foot on Calvary. You need to have full devotion to Christ, and I think that's a symbol of it, if you're in the faith or not.

Yeah, Humble Clay said, whitewashed sepulchre full of dead man's bones. I think about that as, who are we trying to fool?

Who are we really trying to convince? You're trying to convince all the people that are around you that you're hiding your sin, the deep dark secrets of your sin and stuff like that.

You need to go to these great lengths to be able to hide this, but in reality you're really trying to convince yourself.

You know, God sees everything. He sees everything. It's like, stop it.

Just stop it. Listen, so I don't want to give away all my spoiler alerts for tomorrow.

It's good stuff, but in Revelation, Revelations, chapter 3, the church that's lukewarm, it says that God's going to spit you out.

Man, oh man. If you're a lukewarm believer today, God's going to spit you out.

Be hot or be cold. Be in the world or be of Christ. Don't try to be of both. That's right.

Can't have, yeah, Debbie says, let me go ahead, but this is my wife right here,

Brantley. She says, you can't have Jesus and your sins. She is like not only

Tom's better half, she's like 75 % better Tom's half. I'll take his word for it.

I mean, you know, there's times when, you know, if you have a spouse, your helper that's with you and stuff like that and you're following,

I mean, if there's one person who knows you better than you know yourself, other than God, it's your spouse.

They know all the dirt about you. When Debbie tells me you can't have your sin in Jesus too,

I know exactly what that means. I need to get on my knees and repent. It's like, you know, sometimes when you're going down that wrong path or you're prone to wander and your wife lovingly reminds you, it's like, man, just stop it.

You don't want to face your sin, but you got to bow the knee and submit. Do you love

Jesus more than your sin or do you love your sin more than Jesus? Which one is it? And the insane thing is

I always feel so much better when I've gone, you know, into the word or in prayer, spent time in prayer, and it amazes me when

I'm in my sin, I'm like, why am I not just doing those things instead?

Because I'm not getting any kind of satisfaction or joy out of this. Yeah. I like that.

What does Aaron say? Without the love to Christ, we are as much without spiritual life and dead carcasses without a natural life.

Absolutely. Amen. Amen, Aaron. Guess what? I got to hug Aaron today. You didn't,

Tom. Yeah, but is he going to your church? That's the question. Oh. You know what,

Tom? You're uninvited. He's going to a dispy church. You're uninvited. You're uninvited.

I'm not hanging out with you anymore. Okay, let's see here.

That's funny. Quinton did have a question. I'll answer it briefly. I don't know if anyone has gone to a church as a result of the evangelism effort.

I don't know if that's what his question was getting at. If his question was getting at, I do know,

I've actually ran into people just when I was traveling for a conference or something like that and attended the

Lord's Day and talking with some of the congregants there. They're like, yeah, I found this church on a site called 1689 .com.

Oh, that's great. I did that. I mean, you know, definitely, just to be able to have a website or a link available handy on Facebook, I'll post it all the time.

Yes, we know they're very leaky. The leakier the better, by the way. The more leaks you have, the more you are likely to go back into covenant theology.

Grace Bible Church ain't leaky. We have a running faucet. That's what we are. We have the water on.

Running faucet of living water. Listen. That's right.

Hey, there we go. Hey, so Aaron, real quick, I want to ask Aaron, did you happen to listen to any of the sermons

I sent you on Baptist covenant theology by Jeffrey Johnson? Go ahead and type in yes or no.

Cut me off if you haven't listened to any of those. Cut me off. We might even mention his

Bible binding business. Let's see here. I never listened to it. We were going to mention his

Bible rebinding, but we're not now. Go check out

Beacon Hill. Oh, look at that. I can't wait. It's Beacon Hill Bible rebinding, right?

Go check that out. Beacon Hill Bible rebinding. He's doing some good work over there, so go check it out.

Go support him. Let's hear another one. This is question number 10.

This is on evangelism and witness. What does faithful Christian living look like in a world that rejects biblical morality?

Yeah, definitely not participating in, even if it costs you maybe some of the worldly relationships.

That's not the goal is to necessarily destroy a relationship, but you can't be caught up in some of those worldly things that are sinful and debauchery, right?

If it's a context where there's heavy use of alcohol or drugs or something like that, you wouldn't want to be caught up in that.

I've been in those situations before in my younger days, and I realize that there's nothing godly that comes out of this and so on and so forth.

Then the other thing, too, is you know, you see it in the news with the people and the services,

I guess, for weddings of same sex, holding to those convictions. I'm not going to aid and abet you or celebrate you for this sinful relationship that god abhors, that is destructive and so on and so forth.

There's sacrifices that inevitably are going to be made and things that are going to be pruned and cut off if you're going to remain faithful in this world as a

Christian. Let me restate the question for Aaron. What does faithful Christian living look like in a world that rejects biblical morality?

You want to try that before I do, or do you want me to give it a shot? What does faithful Christian living look like in a world that rejects

Christian biblical morality? Living biblically.

That's what it looks like. It looks like what God's Word tells us that it is. Different. What's that?

Different. Going to church. I was just about... Tommy interrupted me.

That's what I was going to say. Going to church and going to church at Grace Bible Church in Moorpark, California.

That's what it looks like. When the government says no church, you actually go and still assemble.

You can arrest me. I'm fine if you're going to arrest me. That's right. We'll just assemble in prison.

That's the way it'll go. You know, when you look at... Are you done? I'm sorry. There was a lot more, but you're good.

Go ahead. I'm done. Go. You know, we've been doing a podcast for almost a year now, and I still cut off people.

I'm sorry. It's messed up. At least you got a hug from Aaron. I did get a hug from Aaron.

You didn't get a hug from Aaron today. I know. I didn't even get to see him. I don't even think he texted me today. Morality.

What about the old lady that lives down the road or down the street?

The sweet old lady that doesn't know Christ, but she seems to still be like a good person.

So, I live in a place that's kind of uppity. We do evangelism out in Fredericksburg, Texas, where everybody's doing very well for themselves.

They're living right. They pay their tickets on time. They really don't need

God, but if you look at their life, in human terms, they're good people.

Roughly. How do I live in front of them that's going to make a difference?

That really is going to look different from them. Other than going to church, my entertainment is going to be different.

The affections of my heart are going to be different. If you are living a life that's going to be pleasing to Christ, you are going to look totally different than the world.

You are not going to take pleasure in the same things that the world takes pleasure in. You're not going to immerse yourselves in recreation.

You're not going to immerse yourself. There is a sacrifice. There is a cost of being a Christian. It's not burdensome at all, but the affections of your heart,

I would rather go to church than go to a football game. I'm not going to miss church for the

Super Bowl. I'm not going to miss evening worship service for a soccer game or a soccer tournament that my kids want to play, and neither are my kids.

What if it falls on December 25th? You've got to open up the gifts. We're not going to have church on Christmas because it's the same type of thing.

If you're going to look different, if you're a Christian, you will look radically different.

You won't look anything like the world. I was going to say, too, I waited for you to finish so I didn't interrupt you.

That's very kind of you. You got a hug from Aaron. That's right.

I did get a hug from Aaron. I think one way that you'll look different is that the world won't accept you.

They'll reject you. They first rejected Christ. They first hated Christ, and so they will also hate us. You've got to remember that.

No matter how much culture looks great, it should still always despise the

Christian. Oh, yeah. The world, no matter how pretty makeup it puts on it, still is hating

Christ. Yeah. Hey, Michelle, how are you? I didn't see

Michelle up there earlier. Okay, another question. This is a good one here. I like this one.

Let's see here. Find it. Okay. Where did it go?

It was regarding the church. Did it go to the cloud?

This is your chance to keep talking without me interrupting. I saw that Georgia in the YouTube chat at least put a good...

I don't know if we addressed that one. Engaging in gossip. Yes. Oh, yeah. I assume

Georgia's a girl, so amen, sister. Amen. Okay. Here's one.

How important is the local church in the life of a believer, and what does meaningful fellowship look like?

Yeah. This is one of the things I think... I see it online.

I see it on threads or whatever have you. We're also in my interactions out at Elevation.

There is just because of the crap that's been put out there over these last few decades or in more recent years that have really subtly attacked the necessity of a

Christian being part of a local church. I even dealt with a quote -unquote, and I'm not going to say her name or where she's from, but she is quote -unquote at a

Reformed Baptist church somewhere in the middle of the country. I can tell you afterwards privately, but she is not a member there.

She's been there for three years and does not feel... She says there's not a Bible verse that says that I need to become a member of a local church, and she started an argument in the comments.

I think it resulted after me sharing Josh Bice's recent post on Facebook into our group for Reformed Baptists.

We said, hey, if you think that, that's up to you. I'm not here to change your mind, but in this group, this

Reformed Baptist group, you can't really argue and contend for those things. We've given you articles and scriptural evidence and stuff like that.

I would say that it really is disregarding the explicits and the implications of different scripture passages about being accountable to the elders or overseers that God has in His sovereignty.

He has put those as under shepherds' right to care for their soul.

Why would you not want the other people that are also

Christians to recognize that you are also in the body? Aaron, I see that he missed this.

Wow. I'll do it again. Aaron, if we're grading this class, you're getting a

C for not paying attention. Okay, so you're getting a mark, but how important is the local church and the life of a believer, and what does meaningful fellowship look like?

I like that question. You were talking about the implications of Scripture and what the

Scripture says about it. Church discipline does not work if you're not a member of a church.

Explain Matthew 18. It doesn't make sense. The Scriptures imply that there is accountability.

It implies that you have covenant to get together, that you are submitting to elders, that you are surrounding yourself around believers.

It's like a Lord's table. Oh man, the Lord's table. Now that can look different if you're not a 1689

Lenten Baptist Confession of Faith church. Communion can look way different. I think one of the big things, though, for me is the membership is a greater and deeper sense of accountability.

Because when you understand what the church is, that it is the covenant people of God that are meeting together.

Are we members of the covenant? Yes. And so part of the 21st century church looks vastly different than the 1st century church.

The 1st century church, if you're a guy in the Corinthian church who is committing sexual immorality and the church kicks you out after reading the words of Paul, you ain't gonna find another church nearby that you can go join.

Well, all you need is some biblical counseling for a little while and you're fine. But listen to me on this, though. Seriously, when you were disciplined in those days, that was the one church in town.

You couldn't just go hop, skip down the road to your next Starbucks church, right? And so now we have so many churches that you get offended at the slightest thing and we, in our mind, in our commerce, just quick generation, tick -tock, scrolling,

I'll just go to the next church. And it's just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, when in reality church is being a part of the members of the covenant, the new covenant, the covenant of grace, is something that's supposed to be intimate, it's supposed to be accountable, it's supposed to be together, and there's a certain level of dedication that should be there.

And I think naturally, the natural flow of that, the first century, you were baptized, and that said something to the world.

It did, yeah. That said something to the world. There was a cost, wasn't there? There was. And so now,

I think the greatest cost that we can be demonstrating in the church, of course, still get baptized, of course, still be taking up the

Lord's table, absolutely, but church membership is one of those ways that you are saying, I want,

I'm dedicating in a more formal sense, I'm wanting to be a part of this local body.

Yeah, and I don't know if we addressed his question in Matthew 18, but I mean, it should matter that there are people who recognize that your credible profession of faith, and also on the other end,

God forbid that it happen, but you do be excommunicated from the body.

Like you said, the guy who got kicked out in the Corinthian church. Who was brought back in?

Sorry, what? He was brought back. Yes, he was. And he didn't go and join another church.

He got brought back to the church that he was with. Which I think that just shows a great demonstration of the importance of that local body that you're a part of, instead of just going and joining another one.

And that's where... Yeah, yeah. Aaron, he's being facetious here.

But yeah, that's... So let's talk about this, because there are disagreements sometimes in church.

Sometimes you belong to a local body, and there are some people that you get along with, people that you don't.

There are some disagreements in the church. The question that AI has given us is how should

Christians handle disagreements within the church while maintaining unity in Christ?

That is a good question. Small or big, or anywhere in between, I can tell you that there are...

It's a matter of when, not if, right? Disagreements, misunderstandings, and stuff like that.

We live in a sinful world. We're sinful people, right? So we need to be prepared typically how we deal with that, right?

I would say that one, we need to remind ourselves that both ourselves and this person are bought by the blood of Jesus Christ.

They are image bearers first and foremost, and that they're bought by the blood of Jesus Christ.

And we should deal with them in a way that is honoring and pleasing to the

Lord, right? We shouldn't assume that they have intentions that we couldn't possibly discern, right?

And assume this or assume that. But also,

I would say that reminding each other of the gospel, right? We all know guys like Paul Washer and so on and so forth.

In churches today, it's like, we're believers.

We're good. We don't need the gospel, right? But no, we need to be reminded of the gospel. Amen. Yes. If there's a disagreement,

I would say, guys, remind us of our status before God, remind ourselves of the good news of the gospel, and also remind ourselves of this shared faith that we have.

In local churches particularly, right? There ought to be a shared confession of faith like, what do we believe?

What is the Christian faith? How do we define that? And of course, we're second

London guys. We confess to the 1689, that body of divinity. And we also recognize that there are brothers and sisters in Christ out there that are in different groups that have different beliefs.

We have differences on these secondary and tertiary things, but at least they're able to have unity in their group and in our churches, right?

So I wouldn't, for example, I wouldn't go to a Presbyterian church and cause controversy over the issue of paedo -baptism, right?

Right. Yeah. You can't expect that. Yeah. You pretty much understand what they're going to teach, the position that they're going to teach.

If you're going there, gotta be good. So if you, let me ask you this,

Brantley, if somebody lived in a town 10 minutes away from a 1689 covenantal

Reformed Baptist church where the person just so happens to be friends with the pastor, or drive 50 minutes to a church that's not 1689, what would you suggest that they do?

And one 1689, but not only are they not 1689, let's just throw in that they're leaky dispensationalists.

So I was typing a response to, I know there's some sort of catch with the 1689 church, but I didn't quite hear it over my keyboard strokes because I was replying paedo -baptism paedo -reformed.

His name is Carson, by the way. I'll call him that. He's with me over in North Carolina.

We've actually evangelized in his hometown of Hendersonville, which is near Asheville. We were getting coffee catching up and we were walking around town and we came across some

Jehovah's Witnesses, so me and him have evangelized together actually. So what was that qualifier for the 1689 church?

There's a 1689 church 10 minutes away from you that you can be also blessed by and or go further distance to a non -1689 church.

I didn't hear any downside to the 1689 church. There is none. I thought there was a downside there.

I thought you said something like the pastor had something negative going on. No, no, no. No downside.

I'm giving Aaron a hard time right now. I will back up to Carson you said on this.

Carson, Baptists baptize more babies than Presbyterians because we're baptizing newly born again young believers in the faith.

So we're actually... I'm willing to debate anybody on that topic right there.

The continuity and discontinuity between the covenants is that every single time somebody was receiving a sign in the

Old Testament, whatever sign that was from covenants and even in the new covenant it was always after they entered into the covenant.

I'm the potato Baptist now. Listen. You were first born into the

Abrahamic covenant or if you were a slave you were purchased into the Abrahamic covenant. Then you received the sign.

You did not receive the sign before the purchase nor did you receive the sign before the birth. The new covenant is you must be born again.

Once you're born again you receive the sign. If we're given the sign before the birth again we are going completely against how all covenants have worked all throughout the

Bible. Absolutely. Where is the good continuity? Where does the discontinuity happen?

The discontinuity I would argue, so you look at the 1689 and I think what it's demonstrating there is that the covenant of grace is seen in the

Old Testament through what the promises were there in the old covenants. The old covenants in and of themselves were covenant of works that man broke,

Christ Jesus taking the curse of those things establishing the covenant of grace. Anybody that was saved in the

Old Testament was saved based off of credit from that covenant of grace but not through the covenant of works.

Nobody was saved through the covenant made, not through the covenant of works such as the

Abrahamic covenant. It was only through having faith. Listen, Galatians 3 says that Abraham had the gospel preached to him beforehand.

It's all in language of the promised seed. Not his obedience, not his him receiving circumcision.

Go read Romans 4. Romans 4 says that Abraham was saved before he was circumcised.

Yeah, it's always been through faith in the gospel and that's the covenant of grace, the mediator of the covenant of grace,

Christ Jesus. And of course the end all, whenever you're to conclude the argument just go to pedobaptism .org

and you're good to go. Boom. Alright, here's a good one here.

How can parents teach their children to live as Christians in a culture increasingly hostile to biblical truth?

That is a good one. Definitely I think it's common that we catechize our children and we're training them up in the faith and just telling them that your mommy, your daddy, we love you.

We love you because God loved us. We are Christians.

We have our faith in Jesus Christ and that you, speaking to the child,

Jesus, God, wants us to live this way. And everybody else, they're being disobedient to him, sort of like how when you disobey to me as a parent.

Giving them that illustration and telling them that because these people are disobedient and doing this and doing that, you need to stay away from that or you'll get in trouble.

And it's not in trouble with me at the end of the day. It's God who you're dealing with.

Just reminding them of those basic scriptural truths made easily accessible and understandable to them in their level of understanding in their language.

Yeah, I would agree with that. We have the scriptures and the scripture is sufficient to point.

As you talk about it, when we even talk about sharing the gospel and a person says,

I'm afraid to go share the gospel. I don't know what to say. You just tell that person, do you know your mom?

Tell a person about your mom and they can tell everything about their mom. How she cooks, what time she gets up, what she wears, what she gets mad, what displeases her, what pleases her, all this.

Do the exact same thing about Jesus. How well do you know

Jesus? If you don't read your Bible, if you don't listen to sermons, if you don't do anything, if you do everything to avoid the scriptures, how can you know

God's will for your life? We have to get into the scripture and it is sufficient for Christian living.

That's right. Anything on that one there, Bredo? I think you guys nailed it.

Okay. We have, okay. Let's see here.

Want to do one more question or how many more questions we want to do? We have 21, but we don't have to do that many. So we could go, pick a number between 1 and 21.

Guys, my favorite number, believe it or not, is 19. Is it really? Dude!

Is that something special? Why? You guys both have the exact same favorite number, 19.

What are the odds of that? That is kind of weird because that wouldn't have been mine. I was born on the 19th day in the 1900s.

Believe it or not, a lot of times in class, I was kid number 19 for the seat or the calculator.

What? No way, dude. Time out. That's the whole reason

I love the number 19 is because I was born on the 19th.

All throughout elementary school and middle school, whenever they were assigning numbers, I always got number 19, dude.

Man, we're doing numerology on your show. This is great. This must be a sign.

Yeah. Let's go to question 19. Oh, it's a sign. Question 19. Question number 19.

Are you ready? Question number 19. How can Christian engage the world without being conformed to it?

Oh, that is a good one. Engage the world without being conformed to it.

Yeah, so... Because, let me put a caveat there. I want to... Paul says,

I am all things to all people. That's what I was about to go to, that verse. There we go. Let's do it.

I feel like we've seen abuses of that passage in recent church history to, you know, be to the point of sin, right?

Seeker -sensitive and stuff like that. Whereas, we all here know the biblical context of what he's trying to get there is that I don't want any barrier necessarily or stumbling block between me and the gospel, right?

So, if I'm going to be evangelizing and building the church, if I'm a church planner, hypothetically, sent to Africa, I might not necessarily be doing a lot of the same cultural things that we do here in America.

And so on and so forth. But, yeah, and at least here, to answer your question, engaging the world while being faithful or committed to Christ, is that the second part of the question?

Yeah, so by not being conformed to it. Engage the world, but not being conformed to the world.

Yeah, so like, for example, in our online interactions with this, and you know, I've been guilty of this in the past and had to repent.

And, but I think that, like, one, you know, it is the public square.

I think we can all agree with that. There is a way that we as Christians can be on there.

And if you don't want to be on there, that's great, more power to you. But some of us are pretty sociable, myself included.

I can't take a... I can't take a social media break, unfortunately, because of all the stuff that I do on there.

But I try to minimize just the mindless scrolling through Shorts or Reels and stuff like that.

But I think the problem that we get into is that we might, for example, behave and interact like the world,

I guess, in our interactions online with others. And even those who are claiming Christ, but they're behaving and acting a certain way online, and I won't name any names on this show.

We all might have some examples that immediately come to mind. We might be attempting to...

They, in their mind, they might be attempting to engage the world for Christ, so to speak.

But the way they go about it, they're being conformed to the world in the way they're doing that. So that's just one example that I think we could all identify with.

And there's others, but yeah. I agree with you on that, though, brother. There is a lot of that that goes on.

I think it goes on on social media. I think it goes on in private. It goes on in workplaces, and so on and so forth.

You know, one thing I did, just thinking on that question a little bit, Tom, when I was LDS, I did a lot of actions, a lot of living my life that Christians would say was morally correct or morally good, right?

But my intention in my heart was always that I was going to be exalted as a God one day, that I was living a good life that would merit me

X, Y, or Z things. And so I think the Christian, to engage the world and not be conformed to it doesn't mean that you and I – it means we're not of the world.

It doesn't mean that we are taken out of this world. And so you and I should still go to the coffee shops.

You and I should still go to the car washes. You and I should still go to X, Y, or Z things, the things that the world is in and is around us.

But we can now have it with a mindset on making much of Christ, glorifying

God in the process, placing and exercising faith in Him at all times, trusting in His sovereignty, not looking at our own works in the midst of those things.

And so I think there's a lot of ways that we can engage the world in very minor ways, in very extreme ways, and everything in between in a way that we don't have to be conformed to the world in the process.

Yeah, I like that too. So in 1 Corinthians 9, and that's what the passage we were talking about, where Paul said that I am going to be like a

Jew if I want to win Jews. In verse 19, 1 Corinthians 9 .19, it says, For though I am free from all,

I have made myself a slave to all so that I might win more. He made himself a slave.

He made himself of no reputation. He was serving them. So it's always talking about being a stumbling block.

We don't want to go out there and cause someone to stumble before we've even gotten the gospel out.

We know the gospel's offensive. We don't want to be the one that we don't want anybody to be offended at me before I even get to share the gospel out.

So I'm going to be all things to all people so that I might win some. In other words, so I'm going to basically submit, even though I'm free, even though I'm free to eat this hot pork right in front of a

Jewish person that would totally, he's not even can consider anything that I have to say. What are you doing eating pork?

I don't want to have anything to do with you. No. You know I'm free to eat that pork.

I'm going to put it away so I can share the gospel with you. So it's about loving the people that you're playing with.

Is that it? Yeah. Who do you need to get on here next?

Do you know Conley? Conley Owens? Conley Owens? I don't think

I do. You'll have to get him on here at some point as a guest as well in the future. Yeah, so a lot of everything that I do,

I try it because I work in a secular job and that's how

I support myself. But a lot of the stuff that I do that you might see online, my goal is to provide those things freely and accessibly right through the internet and not charge for those things.

So freely giving I think is one of the areas that we need to consider that Christian ministry should be supported.

We need to pay our pastors. We need to support them and the work of ministry and give that ministry freely.

So that would be a very excellent conversation and other special guests in the future for you.

That's great. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for giving us a heads up on that. You do this ministry all on your own?

You provide your own time, your own dime, basically everything that you do?

So I'll give you the, there's some new things coming. So the guy who runs 1689 .com

or who owns it, he pays for the hosting of that. But yeah, as far as my time,

I give all my time and labor for that and then, but as well as with some of the other stuff out there that I do, one, a lot of the content that I'm trying to do is in the public domain content so that it can be freely shared, copied, modified, however you want to do.

So one of the things that we're in the process of doing right now is starting a ministry called 1689

Ministries, which will be fully accountable to our local church and under the oversight of the church and its elders for accountability and also to provide freely accessible public domain resources for, and I'm doing a lot of it, but there's also a lot of other folks that are pitching in as well.

So like, for example, we're doing baptisthymnal .org that for example is one of the basically one of the projects under that umbrella in addition to some other things.

Well, praise God for that. I mean, that's just awesome. You know, look at everybody. Look how you can contribute.

There are so many ways that, you know, God has gifted you. You know, a lot of people would say, well, you know,

I don't know if I'm not going to be the one that's going to go out there on the streets and all that. There are so many ways that we can further the kingdom of God and the talents that God has given us, and whether it's through our work, through our service, through our time, and that's what

God's going to look at. What has He given you, and how are you going to further the kingdom of God with what

He's given you? That's right. Be faithful in doing that, guys. Amen. Now, praise God for you,

Brent Lee. Thank you for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor and I enjoyed it.

Yeah. Absolutely. Love you, brothers. Love you, too, man. Love you, too, man.

Seriously. Yeah, real quick, before we sign off, I get to say, well, let's, okay,

Brent Lee, you get to do your final last words, then I'm going to do it, and then what's your name?

Brayden. Braydo. Braydo. So I'm going first?

Yeah, you'll go first, then Joe Biden, then myself. Yeah, Joe Biden. Guys, man, praise the

Lord that we have a president in the office, that there's actually a guy actually doing the presidency here in America.

Can actually get out a sentence, yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so for my final words, guys,

I would recommend if you aren't part of the local church yet to find a church that is nearby to you, consider using my site, 1689 .com

or reformbaptistchurches .com, either of those. Try and find a local church that faithfully preaches the gospel and will give you

Christ and has elders, a plurality of elders that will care for your soul.

And then after that, I guess I would say, you know, focus on your personal holiness.

We've talked about that in this podcast episode. You're going to have to give an account to God one day.

So focus on your personal holiness. God loves a repentant center. So keep that in mind.

That's all I have to say. Well, I don't know that I could approve on that. Not at all. I mean, so we all have our marching orders.

There was one line that Bode Bauckham said at this last conference, at the Founders Conference.

And I believe it was man your post. Whatever God has given you, whatever talent

He's given you, whatever gift He's given you, don't covet anybody else's gift. Stay in your lane and do it to the glory of God.

We're all not going to get the pulpit. We're all not going to get the 50th Street microphone.

We're all not going to get to be the big givers. But God will bless you with what

He's given you. Yeah, I am in that. I mean, for example,

I'm not the kind of guy who's going to get up behind a pulpit and preach and speak and whatnot.

That's just not the gifts that I have. I'll do it if I absolutely have to. But man, there's much more talented guys than me who could do that.

Yeah, sure. And even if you have a big pocketbook and everything, a lot of people don't.

Give it to a person who can. There's many ways to further the kingdom of God.

But we all can do one thing. We all can go out and share the gospel. And so when you see somebody, all you got to do is walk out your door, your neighbor, shopping center, wherever you're at, strike up a conversation.

It's as easy as saying, Hey, if you were to die today, do you know for certain you'd be in heaven with God?

It starts off right there. I have a Bible with you in your arm, too. Absolutely. Or a track. I mean, be evangelistic.

We have our marching orders. That's all I got. Boom. 1689 all the way, all day.

Yes, sir. Let me give some shout outs real quick. Well, first of all, it's been a blessing to be able to hang out with you guys.

Again, if you live in Southern California in the Ventura County area, I got to throw this plug in again.

Come check out Grace Bible Church. It'd be a great blessing to see you here on the Lord's Day Sundays at 1030 in the morning.

We also have a midweek Bible study that we have on Thursday at 7 p .m.

So come check out that. We're currently going through the confession. We have a pause going on to talk about some evangelism, but we are currently going through the confession, and it's been a great blessing.

We haven't even made it through chapter one yet, so please come hang out and check out the Bible study.

Michelle, we will definitely be praying. We'll be praying. Let's do that real quick.

Send it up, Tom. We got Victor. All right. All right, guys.

Everybody, let's pray. We could do this corporately. I'm going to pray for my son

Joshua, too. Victor. Dear Father, we just come to you, and we want to ask that because you are our

Father, we have the privilege of being able to approach your throne and call you Father because we are your sons.

You are so good. You are so holy. You are so righteous. You are omnipotent. You are all powerful.

You are the creator. You are the sovereign over all things. And so we come to you and we ask for the salvation of Victor, that you would intervene in his life and send an evangelist.

Send somebody over there and make him alive. See his condition.

Cause him to repent of his sins and give him faith and belief, Father. We know that you can do it. You've done it in each one of us.

I pray for my son Joshua, who does not know you. I pray, Father, for his sake and for your name's sake that you would make him alive.

That you would make a rebel and an enemy of you to love you with all their heart.

That you would create in them a clean heart. That you would cause them to live again and that they would see you and glorify you.

Let us go to church tomorrow and praise your name cause you are worthy.

In Christ's name, amen. Amen. Good stuff.

Well, if you are watching us on Striving for Eternity, even if none, or somewhere else, if you're seeing this

YouTube channel or this show on whatever platform you're on, go check out YouTube, Open Air Theology.

Subscribe, like, and share. We really appreciate the support. We really want to keep on doing this and so every time you subscribe or get the word out to somebody so that they might subscribe, it really blesses, just encourages, makes the show...

It's always more when more people are interacting and can throw in questions and comment and whatnot and so it's a blessing to get to know people.

I mean, praying for Michelle, seriously, that's such a blessing. It is. Get the word out. Also... Thank you,

Nate. Resist tyrants. Obey God. This is a book that Jacob Tanner has written, so please give some love to him.

Go check the book out. You can preorder it. We're currently going on right now at Founders. I'm actually giving this book away.

If you want to my Discord, discord .gg slash 1689 or if you're in Discord and asked for the invite code, just punch in 1689 and we have a giveaway for that and some other books on Christianity and government.

Boom. Real quick to say about that, we were planning on having Jacob on tonight.

I don't even think we said that earlier. So you might have seen this thumbnail. Oh, did you already mention that,

Tom? I don't know. I think, well, we had already had the thumbnail, but...

Anyway, we changed it over because he's not feeling very well tonight and so we got

Brantley on at the last moment. Thank you very much. Brother, thank you.

It's been a blessing to have you on tonight. God is sovereign. That is right. Also, go check out Grace &

Truth Conference. Go ahead and say where to find this one at. Golly, I don't have it with me.

I mean, there's plenty of time. It's in August. It's going to be Google Grace & Truth Conference 2025.

It's going to be in August 27th through the 30th in Tyler, Texas. I believe it's

Tyler, Texas. East Texas. I can't believe they're going to let that Tom Shepard guy. I know. You've got to watch him.

Listen. Yeah. I heard... I might have to reach out and tell him a little. I heard that Tulsa Spurgeon is going to be there.

Brandon Scalf is going to be there. Tulsa Spurgeon. Who else is going to be there? I don't know.

I heard your son's going to be there. Hey, you know, I'll tell you, this is the reason why I am getting to preach at the conference is because Kevin Hayes is going to be there and I just happen to be

Kevin Hayes' dad. Longview, Texas.

There we go. See? This is why you need a wife. They will help you out and tell you what to say when you mess up.

Longview, Texas. That's where it is. That's right. That's the 75 % better half, though, that's just popped on there.

Yep. Maybe even more. Hopefully I'll get to plug you.

I'm going to get her. Maybe she'll help me with the sermon. Well...

I'm just joking. Brothers, it's been a great blessing tonight.

Thank you, everybody, for tuning in. Again, go show us some love on Open Air Theology and exalt

Christ tomorrow in your worship. Do not neglect the assembly tomorrow. God bless.