April 2, 2018 Show with Jason Montgomery on “What 21st-Century Christians Can Learn From 18th-Century English Baptist Pastor & Hymn Writer Benjamin Bedomme”

The Program Opens With the Show’s Mission and a Scripture-Based Greeting

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris.

Arnzen. Good afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this second day of April 2018, day after Easter Sunday, and I hope that you all had a blessed time celebrating the resurrection of our Lord God Savior and King Jesus Christ yesterday and all weekend, in fact, and I hope that you had also a time to rekindle old relationships and start new ones and have precious memories in the making for many decades to come with your family, friends, and loved ones, and I just glad, I'm so glad that we are back now on the air and I'm so glad that we also have a first-time guest on Iron Sharpens Iron today.

We have the honor and privilege of interviewing Jason Montgomery, who is an adjunct professor of church history at the all-new IRBS Theological Seminary, that stands for Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies Theological Seminary, soon to be launching its first semester in Mansfield, Texas, and today we are going to be addressing what 21st century Christians can learn from 18th century English Baptist pastor and hymn writer Benjamin Bedom, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron for the very first time, Jason Montgomery.

Jason Montgomery’s Background, Church, and the Baptist View of Associations

Very exciting, it's good to see you very much down here. I do at church, sometimes I've worn out my welcome with some. Oh, he's going to talk about Bedom again.

Well, I'm enthusiastic about today's program because I have never until yesterday even heard of Benjamin Bedom, and I'm glad that you are going to be introducing him to me and I'm sure many others in the Iron Sharpens Iron radio audience who have also never heard of him before, but is a valuable enough figure from church history that you would even choose him as the subject of your doctoral dissertation.

So he must be someone significant and worth our learning about, and before we go into our subject at hand, first of all let me give our listeners the email address for Iron Sharpens Iron radio. It's chrisarnzn at gmail .com.

Chrisarnzn at gmail .com. Please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter.

And in addition to being on the faculty at IRBS Theological Seminary, Pastor Jason, I understand that you are a pastor. If you could tell us something.

About the church where you are the under-shepherd. I am. Community Baptist Church, 1998, for many years.

Well I am assuming, since you are on the faculty at the IRBS Theological Seminary,.

It is a Reformed Baptist Church. Reformed Baptist Church. That's right. I believe we meet one another on original churches and that's been a great thing. In fact, I hope at some point in.

The near future to interview the president of IRBS Theological Seminary, Dr. Jim Renahan, on his book that contrasts associationism with.

Denominationalism. Yes, so your book that he came out with several years ago? Yes. Where he talks about the consensory ideation? That's actually what I was speaking about, yes. Okay, well that's a good point.

I believe so. His name is prominent in my memory in regard to that book. That's very helpful. And for those.

Of you who are clueless as to what we're talking about, there are many people automatically assume that every Protestant Church that comes by a different name, such as Baptist, is in a denomination. But that is not the case.

Baptists historically have not believed in or participated in denominations, although there are denominations today that are Baptistic and Baptist, I guess you could say. But we do not believe, historically as Baptists, that there is any hierarchical structure of authority outside of the local congregation other than Christ himself and his inerrant word, that the local elders of a church, as far as human beings are concerned, is the highest level of authority in a local congregation, and that each congregation is autonomous and independent.

But if they are wise, they will be in some way involved in associations with like-minded churches. Have I adequately summarized this.

Situation? I think so. I mean, the 17th century Baptist original model, it's always the economy of the local church, but I can say certainly from my understanding of the Confession and my own experience, being a part of an association like ARBCA, or like, incredibly refreshing, and, and so...

Well, we don't want to steal too much of Jim Renahan's thunder for a future interview. And by the way, if you could try to keep in mind to keep your mouth as close to the mouthpiece of whatever instrument you're using, whether it's a phone or a microphone, because sometimes you seem to fade away.

So try to make sure that you don't turn your face away from the mouthpiece. Okay. Okay. And by the way, just so our listeners know, in case they have to leave the program early, I intend to repeat this information, but if you want more information about the Faith Community Baptist Church in West Fort Worth, Texas, where our guest is the pastor, go to faithcommunitybaptistchurch .com.

Faithcommunitybaptistchurch .com. It's amazing that you were able to get that URL. It's pretty... I'm sure that there are Faith Community Baptist Churches all over the United States that would love to have that URL.

And also, for the IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas, you may go to irbsseminary .org, irbsseminary .org. And we actually have a couple of exciting pieces of news in regard to IRBS Theological Seminary.

The first is of which, and I think that my guest may have heard this news just as recently as I did, but I am so delighted to hear that there is a new partnership between IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas, and Puritan Reform Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Puritan Reform Theological Seminary is under the authority of the president, Dr. Joel Beakey, who is the founder of this seminary, and I have known Dr. Beakey long before he even founded this seminary.

And my friendship with him goes way back to the early 1990s, and I was among the first people to get Dr. Beakey on the radio, and we have had him on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio many times, and I also have had David Murray, who's a faculty member there at Puritan Reform Theological Seminary, on this program, and other faculty members, and so I'm very excited about this.

I don't know, as far as this specific new detail about IRBS Theological Seminary, I don't know how knowledgeable you are in this regard, but.

There isn't anything that you can say about this. Amen. Yeah, well I'm excited.

About it too, and I'll be delighted to eventually get all of the faculty members interviewed on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I know that you folks are also having an inauguration celebration in regard to IRBS Theological Seminary on September 11th in Mansfield, Texas, and I have been invited, I received an invitation from Judith Rogers to conduct on-air interviews, on-site, on the new campus of IRBS Theological Seminary.

I am hoping that I can get enough funds to afford to pay for that travel, and to be able to join you on that very special day, but then this also may be out of your orbit of specific knowledge, but what can you tell us about this event?

Just out of curiosity, do you know how close Mansfield, Texas is to Justin, Texas? The reason why I'm asking is if the Lord enables me to get out there, I would love to see my oldest brother John, who lives with his wife Jan in Justin, Texas, and my brother is getting on in years, and is in critical stage emphysema, and I appreciate our listeners praying for him.

He is not a believer, and I would love to see him come to saving faith in Christ, and hopefully that will happen before he departs from this earth, and only God knows when that will be, but I know that he is 73, I believe now, and so do you not know how close Justin is to.

Mansfield? That's pretty good. That doesn't seem like it'd be out of the.

Realm of possibility of being able to be in both places, if the Lord enables me to get out there. Of course, if he does enable me to get out there, I'm gonna make every effort to see my brother, but I appreciate all of you praying about that, because I would not want to miss such an important event in the history of the IRBS Theological Seminary.

Jason Montgomery’s Conversion, Call to Ministry, and the Discovery of Benjamin Beddome

Well, before we even get into the topic at hand again, what I usually do when I interview a first-time guest is I have them give a summary of their testimony of salvation. I'd like to know what kind of religious upbringing you had, if any, and what the providential circumstances were in your life that the Lord used to draw you to himself and save you, and then how you realized you received a call from God to enter into.

The ministry. It would be great to have a connection against God, but when I was around 10, I began to get involved, and I got into college, very involved with the college minister we had. At 21, I began to sense myself in the college that I was in, a lot of navigator stuff.

By the way, you.

Can look up on my website in the archive for at least one of the several interviews I did with Jerry Bridges. I surely enjoyed interviewing him, especially on his book, Trusting God Even When Life Hurts, and I've given that book away to many people who have suffered loss of any kind, whether it be their own personal illness, or the death of a loved one, or any other thing that comes into their lives.

That's a tragedy, and we hopefully will get the old Iron Trump and Zion Radio program's archives from when I was broadcasting it of New York all included on the new or the current website. Right now, we only, I believe, go back to 2015 with programs on our current website, but.

Anyway, I interrupted you, I just love the late Dr. Jerry Bridges, and there's still there's still a lot of five-point Calvinists I wish I'd ever met. So we went to that church for about a year for ministry, and he said to me, I hadn't even joined the church, he said to me, you don't even have to come and commit to come to our church, he said, and I thought, why would anybody want to give me time out of their busy life to work with me on preaching?

So we ended up joining John Stott on Between Two Worlds, preaching various... No, no, you were.

Telling, I was asking you about not only your testimony of conversion to Christ, but also the transformation that went on in your theological journey to where you discovered the the doctrines of Sovereign Grace.

So you were right on.

Track there. Well good, well that you just remember, of course I was nowhere when Kennedy was shot, but the doctrine of the limited atonement was in the middle of a sermon. Wow. And... Yes, I did hear that.

I would love to have been there. Do you have a.

Recording of it? Because I would love to hear how the inflections in your voice.

Change and all that kind of thing. Well, I'd still be fascinating to hear. Praise God. Wow, and by the way, Fred Malone is gonna be my guest this Friday to.

Discuss his book on Credo Baptism, The Baptism of Believers. Alone, I believe.

It's titled? Oh yeah, it's a masterpiece. I'm sorry? Amen. And by the way, just.

Before we go to the break, when you were talking about limited atonement before, I immediately began to remember an excellent quote by an old friend of mine who I have some disagreement with on certain areas of theology, but John Reisinger, who is a fellow Calvinistic Baptist, I remember him saying at a conference, everyone who believes in hell believes in limited atonement.

You either believe God limits it or man limits it. And that's really stuck with me because it's very, very true. Those who believe in hell who are anti-Calvinists have no business really saying anything in condemnation about limited atonement when they have to limit it unless they believe everybody is going to heaven.

Absolutely. We are going to our first break right now, and if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, go send us an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com, and please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And Christopher in Suffolk County, New York, just corrected me with one word that I got wrong on Fred Malone's book title.

It's the baptism of disciples alone. That's the actual, and the subtitle is a covenantal argument for credo-baptism versus pedo-baptism. Fred will be our guest, God willing, this Friday. But don't go away, we are going to our first break and we'll be back momentarily with our guest today, and I'm sure that that we will be in store for a lot of new material from Jason Montgomery on the pastor and hymn writer Benjamin Bedham from the 18th century.

Sponsor Messages and Program Promos During the First Break

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More Sponsor Reads and the Return to Benjamin Beddome

Well, we are now back with our guest today, Jason Montgomery, who is the adjunct professor of church history at IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas. We are discussing what 21st-century Christians can learn from 18th-century English Baptist pastor and hymn writer Benjamin Bedham.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state and country of residence.

If you live outside the USA and if you could now, Pastor Jason, if you could let us know what it was that or should I say how it was that you first came to discover Benjamin Bedham because he is, at least today, a fairly obscure figure from history.

I'm sure that a lot of Reformed Baptist history buffs are not completely familiar with him. I know that I wouldn't call myself a historian, but I had never heard of him until I learned of your doctoral dissertation.

But tell us how you first came to discover him and what led you to be so excited about this figure from the 18th century that you said, I am going to write my doctoral dissertation on this brother from the 18th century.

Right, but he wants to talk. Well, you got you got to tell me though, I know that our our two.

Friends, Dr. Tom Nettles and Ian Murray disagree on whether or not Gil was a hyper-Calvinist. What is your opinion on that? Just very briefly, even though it's not the same. Well, he certainly isn't now.

I said he certainly isn't now.

Working on the issue of hyper-Calvinism, I believe it's always used pejoratively. Although he doesn't use hyper-Calvinism, he caricatures him. I had not heard of Betham. And so Pierce was really the guy I was interested in.

And this was before I was, this was back in 2013. And in 2014, I believe that was the year that the ARBCA had their general assembly in Gilbert on the Ph .D. program. In fact, we have to we have to stop right there.

And pick up where you left off about the Ph .D. program when we return from our midway break. It's a long, it's a longer than normal break because Grace Life Radio 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida requires of us a 12 minute break between our two major segments.

So please be patient and take this time to write down information that our advertisers give you so you can patronize them and also take the time to write questions in for our guests. And our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

Chrisarnson at gmail dot com. I am sure that Jason Montgomery will be more than delighted to answer any question that you have to the best of his ability. Try to keep it within the realm of church history, if not specifically the main topic, Benjamin Bedham, the 18th century Baptist pastor.

But it can be broader than that. Any subject on church history or Reformed Baptist distinctives will be fine. And that email address is chris arnson at gmail dot com. Chris arnson at gmail dot com. Don't go away, God willing, we will be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

Midway Break Sponsor Messages

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Tune in to A Visit to the Pastors Study every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am .com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the Pastors Study by calling in with your questions.

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If they don't have it in stock already, they will certainly order it for you, but The Cross of Christ is such a classic that they would readily have a book like that in stock at cvbbs .com. And thank you, Linda, from Long Beach, Long Island for listening to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio today.

And by the way, a little bit of trivia, that is the hometown of Don Corleone, Long Beach, Long Island. And before we return to our guest, Jason Montgomery, you just have a couple of more very important announcements.

The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is delighted to announce that they are once again conducting the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, which is held in two locations, neither of which are Philadelphia.

They call the conference, the Philadelphia Conference, out of love and tribute to the late Dr. James Montgomery Boyce, who held these conferences in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the 10th Presbyterian Church for many years until he went home to be with the Lord.

This time around, this year, the conference will be held first at the First Christian Reform Church of Byron Center, Michigan. That's April 13th through the 15th. And then secondly, the conference will be held at the Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, which is the one I plan to attend, April 27th through the 29th.

The theme of the conference is the Spirit of the Age and the Age of the Spirit. The speakers include Daniel Aiken, Richard Gaffin, Daniel Hyde, a man that I believe is the most powerful preacher alive on the planet Earth, Conrad M. Bayway, pastor of Coboata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa.

Richard Phillips, who is my friend from South Carolina, pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina. Jonathan Master, David Murray, who's on the faculty at Puritan Reform Theological Seminary, now in partnership with IRBS Theological Seminary on the doctoral program.

And Scott Oliphant from Westminster Theological Seminary. They are on the roster. If you'd like to register for either location or both, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org, click on events, and then click on Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, the Spirit of the Age and the Age of the Spirit.

Please tell the folks at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals that you heard about the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Last but not least, this is my least favorite portion of the show, my most uncomfortable portion of the show, and that is where I have to ask you for donations.

I have refrained from doing this for many years until my advertisers, who spend harder money keeping the show on the air, urged me to make these public appeals to the point where I broke, realizing that I was broke, and realizing of the urgent need for finances.

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That's click to donate now, and you can instantly donate with a credit card or debit card. If you prefer the old-fashioned way by snail mail, you can send a check to the address that you will see when you click support, made out to ironsharpensironradio .com, and please give us as often as you can, and as much as you can, with this caveat, never ever ever siphon money out of your regular giving that you're accustomed to to your local church, never take food off of your family's dinner table, or put your family in financial jeopardy by giving to ironsharpensironradio .com, providing for your church and home are commands of scripture, providing for ironsharpensironradio .com is not a command of scripture, obviously, but if you love the program and you are blessed financially above and beyond your ability to obey those two biblical commands, then please consider supporting Ironsharpensironradio with your donations.

That is ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, and click click to donate now. If you'd like to advertise with us, just send us an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and put advertising in the subject line, no matter what it is you want to promote, whether it is your church, your parachurch ministry, your business, your professional practice, special event, as long as whatever it is that you are promoting is compatible with the theology we express on ironsharpensironradio, you don't have to believe exactly as I do, but you do need to be promoting something compatible with what I believe, then please send us an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and I would love to help you launch an ad campaign because we really could use the advertising dollars.