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

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, 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'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 Bedlam, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron for the very first time,

Jason Montgomery. Well thank you Chris, it's good to be with you all and it's very exciting, it's good to be able to talk about Bedlam.

I don't get the opportunity very much down here, I do at church at times, but I think sometimes

I've worn out my welcome with some. Oh he's going to talk about Bedlam again.

Well I'm enthusiastic about today's program because I have never until yesterday even heard of Benjamin Bedlam 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 chrisarnsen 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, yes Chris, that is a great privilege and honor to pastor the

Lord's people and I pastor the Faith Community Baptist Church in West Fort Worth.

We are a small congregation of folks, we have been together since 1998 when we started the church so we're looking at our 20th anniversary this coming

December and we run about 30 to 40 folks

I suppose and I guess if everybody was there we might bust 40, but so it's a small flock, we've been together a long time, they are precious people, they are faithful people, they are hungry people and they are patient people as they have dealt with me for many years and so I'm grateful for them and I have been full -time with them and then you know sometimes it goes full -time, you know it always seems like it's full -time, it's ministry,

I've been bi -vocational at different times, pretty much the last four years

I've been you know full -time with the church but full -time student as well back in the in the doctoral program.

Well I am assuming since you are on the faculty at the IRBS Theological Seminary, it is a

Reformed Baptist Church. It is a Reformed Baptist Church. Back about five years ago,

I suppose it is, four or five years ago, 2014 time frame, we joined up with ARBCA, the

Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America of which the church you're a member of is that's right

I believe and Grace Baptist there in Carlisle and so this is our first time

I guess here in the last couple days to kind of meet one another on the radio but our churches have been an association for several years now and we are also connected with the

Texas Area Association of Reformed Baptist Churches and have been a member of that association about three to four years now and so we're very thankful to be a part of both of these associations of churches and we'll talk here a little bit hopefully about Betham and one of the wonderful things about Betham was his strong commitment to associationalism with other confessional churches and that's been a great thing to learn from him and be encouraged by him about and so we kind of share that commitment to associationalism which

I'm happy to see is a commitment that is growing amongst the

Reformed Baptist community. 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, you're probably referring to Jim's book on edification and beauty that he came out with several years ago where he talks about the confession and the 17th century context and background to our confession and that is an excellent book.

I think that is a book that should be read certainly by every Reformed Baptist pastor but it is a it's a rich book for any church officer or serious student of history and there was another book that came out several years ago

I think Calvary Press put it out that Mike Gaydosh sold many of denominations versus associations.

That's actually what I was speaking about, yes. Okay, well that's a great little book as well.

That's kind of a multi contribution book, an edited book, I guess. I'm not sure who edited it.

Did Jim edit that book? I believe so. His name is prominent in my memory in regard to that book.

Yeah, I have not. He has a chapter or two in there, I believe, as does

I think Dave Dykstra and some other men. Earl Blackburn, I think, has a chapter in there as well.

It's been several years since I've looked at that book but that's a very helpful helpful book too. 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 the local elders of a church as far as human beings are concerned is the highest level of authority in a local congregation and 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 origins were very committed to associational type life as as they grew and as they progressed and their numbers grew and certainly by the time of the formation of the

Second London Confession of Faith, which is our confession, there is a strong commitment to associationalism amongst the particular

Baptist churches and amongst general Baptist churches as well during that time. Their structure is a little bit different.

They do have the general Baptist who have some hierarchical type commitment and what they would often call messengers who would be specifically appointed men who might take some type of leadership and authority in particular geographical areas but the particular

Baptists specifically in our confession were very committed to an associational model.

It's always sad to me today to hear Reformed Baptist brothers who are striving to be confessional as well to be leery of associations because they think that somehow they will be, you know, controlling or will not honor the autonomy of the local church but I can say certainly from my understanding the confession and my own experience being a part of an association like ARBCA or like the

Texas Area Associations it's been incredibly refreshing and protective of the authority of the local church and so I have not found that controlling aspect in my own life and in the life of our church.

We have seen a great honor given to the authority of the local church and so...

Praise God. Well, we don't want to steal too much of Jim Renahan's thunder for a future interview.

No, he would do a much better job than I. 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, let me work on that. 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. 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 is there anything that you can say about this?

Probably not. I mean I know what you know. I did get an email at the end of last week about this issue that they wanted us to hold off until today.

They sent out an email I think to the faculty and some other folks. But this is very exciting to think that a young man that gets a master's somewhere else from an accredited institution could come here and pursue doctoral studies in conjunction with PRTS and or a young man graduates with their master's from IRBS in a few years, they could stay and work on PhD work.

That's very exciting. 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 to be able to join you on that very special day.

And then this also may be out of your orbit of specific knowledge, but what can you tell us about this event?

As you say, it's a little bit out of my orbit. Yeah, it's probably above my pay grade somewhat. I have heard about it.

I believe, I think it's Dr. Kim, the new president at Westminster Theological Seminary, I believe he's coming to speak at this event and I hope that's correct.

But this should be a great time. I think they're still in the planning stages for some of it and I have not received an official announcement about it as of yet.

I've just kind of heard in different meetings a conversation going on about it. 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 know how close Justin is to Mansfield? Justin is about 45 miles.

That's what Google tells me and I think it's about an hour drive. We used to have a family in our church living in Justin.

So it's about a half an hour from here to Justin and a half hour to Mansfield from here. So it's about an hour.

Oh, 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 going to 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. 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 the call from God to enter into the ministry.

Well, that'd be great. I'd love to talk about that. I grew up in a

Christian home. It was, in many ways, like a Baptist bubble. Dad was a deacon.

Mom was a faithful member of the church, choir, Sunday night there all the time kind of a thing.

We moved around a lot. My dad was in the Army, so moved 10 times,

I think, before I was 10. So we just kind of bounced all over between New Jersey, born there,

Fairfax, Virginia. Dad was at the Pentagon, moved over to Europe, lived in Germany for a while.

When we came back, I was about 10. Somewhere around that time, 10, 11, began to just fall under a conviction of sin and had always known that I had done bad things, but sin was just kind of a bad thing

I did. It was not understood in my mind as some sense of transgression against God and His law.

But when I was around 10 or 11, we were in a Baptist church, a

Southern Baptist church, and I don't remember specifics at that age about the preaching, but I was exposed to preaching from an early age.

Through the preaching weekly of our pastor, I began to have an increased sense and awareness of my need for Christ and my need for forgiveness.

It was a fairly typical, traditional Southern Baptist church, so we went through the agonizing altar calls at the end.

I kind of felt my way through that for a month or two. Somewhere in there,

I spoke with the pastor about conversion and about the gospel. One day,

I cried out to the Lord, and He mercifully saved me. And over the next several years, just slow going, slow growing in the grace of Christ.

Again, I was a boy in a fairly protected Christian home. There were no radical things.

I didn't have to quit running with the biker gang or horrible type things.

But my conversion was just as much a work of God and just a wonderful work of grace that I began to grow in my understanding of as the years went by.

When I was in high school, I was very involved in my church.

I got into college, very involved in the college ministry. It was a large church, but we had kind of the graded everything for everybody kind of a thing.

I began to have a desire to teach. My mother always thought

I should be a music minister. She'll probably listen to this later. I was a singer.

I loved to sing, and so people thought, oh, he needs to go in music ministry. I really had no desire for that.

And in college, I was given some opportunities to do some teaching and working with the college minister we had.

And through that course of a year or two during that time, when

I was about 21, you know, of course, growing up in a

Southern Baptist context, the idea of being called to ministry was rather subjective.

It was rather personal and individual where, you know, my understanding of God calling men to the ministry is much more refined now, and I hope and trust much more biblical.

But I had a burden on my heart in those days. I began to have a desire to teach, to study, to give my life to full -time

Christian service. I didn't really know what that was at the time, but I kind of did what some others did in the college that I went to and the church

I went to. When you began to sense the Lord doing things in your life, you kind of went down for it.

It was almost like a second altar call experience where you go down and you tell folks you want to surrender to full -time

Christian service, not really knowing what that is. You know, I just want to love

Jesus, and I just want to serve Jesus. I didn't know, you know, but I had some leanings toward ministry, didn't really know really what that was, you know.

But I continued to kind of pursue that and take opportunities to teach in the college that I went to, in the church that I was in, teach

Bible studies. I did a lot of Navigator stuff back then. Back then it was kind of Jerry Bridges time, you know, the pursuit of godliness or the practice of godliness and the pursuit of holiness.

I remember reading a lot of Jerry Bridges books, memorizing a whole lot of Navigator Bible verses out of context, but I used them for everything.

By the way, you could 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 programs archives from when

I was broadcasting out 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. No, yeah,

I'm very thankful for him and his writing. And I've read many, many beneficial things for him growing up.

And, you know, not to speak ill of the Navigators or whatever,

I mean, they were very influential in my life. The Lord used that. And I accumulated all kinds of bullets like Barney Fife, and I could put them in my pocket.

But, you know, as I grew, that those, I don't know how many hundreds of verses, thousands just stuck in my mind, wedged down in my heart.

And the Lord has used those over the years. And so I went in the

Air Force when I graduated college in 1989 and served in South Dakota for about four years on a missile crew, an old

ICBM missile crew up there that's now deactivated. And during that time, again, just got more involved in my church.

I got married, my wife and I, my wife Janice, we kind of took over a single

Sunday school class where I taught. And around the age of about 25 or so,

I was ordained in the church that we attended there. And through a series of events, we left that church and went for about a year to an evangelical free church where I met a man who introduced me to the

Doctrines of Grace. I had never really met a five -point

Calvinist. I don't think at that point I ever wanted to meet a five -point. Well, there's still a lot of five -point

Calvinists I wish I'd never met. Yeah, there was a time

I was a five -point Calvinist and I didn't want to know myself. So I understand that.

But I remember sitting down for lunch with this guy one day at like a Denny's or some kind of pancake house, and he is explaining to me the doctrine of the limit to the thoma.

And I just thought, you are a nut. And I thought that's the craziest thing

I've ever heard. And well, lo and behold, he made another nut and here

I am. And we went to that church for about a year and it was a great experience for me in preparation for ministry because what he did is he knew

I was going to seminary at Southwestern the next year. I was getting out of the Air Force. 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, but if you're interested, I would love to meet with you a couple hours a week and work with you on preaching.

And I thought, why would anybody want to give me time out of their busy life to work with me on preaching?

And I'm not even, I don't even know if I'm going to join this guy's church. And I thought that was incredibly gracious and sacrificial.

We ended up joining the church. He met with me for the next year, had me read, you know, just books on preaching,

Haddon Robinson on preaching, John Stott on Between Two Worlds, John MacArthur's book on expository preaching, various,

Martin Lloyd -Jones on preaching. And I'd never heard preaching like this.

I'd never heard expository preaching, really. I'd never sat under it. He's preaching through Romans, Romans 4, first week we got out there.

And it opened up a whole new world for me. So I think

I've probably gotten off book from your question, but... 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 doctrines of sovereign grace.

So you were right on track there. Well, good. Well, that's when I kind of became, you know, your five -point

Calvinist, wanting to plant a tulip in everybody's garden. And I got all excited.

I came to Southwestern in 1993. I was there for four years. I started pastoring in 1994.

I still had not bought into the limited atonement idea. And it was actually in 1995,

Easter of 95, I preached a series of sermons on the cross.

One on ransom, one on substitution, one on propitiation.

Anyway, in the middle of one of those sermons, literally, you know, it's one of these things, you know, where were you when

Kennedy was shot? Where were you when the Twin Towers fell? You know, some things you just remember. Of course, I was nowhere when

Kennedy was shot. But when I came to understand the doctrine of the limited atonement was in the middle of a sermon.

Wow. And, you know, maybe you've heard the story, I think it's Elias Keats, the son of Benjamin Keats, who got converted in the middle of one of his sermons.

Yes, I did hear that. I came to Christ. I didn't come to Christ, but I came to the doctrine of the limited atonement in the middle of my sermon.

And it may be the only sermon that ever changed anybody, but it changed me. That was an amazing moment.

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.

No, I'm sure it wasn't nearly that good. Well, I'd still be fascinating to hear. Yeah, it's a great memory.

It's just kind of etched in my mind. I'm thankful to the Lord for just, you know,

I've been studying for two or three months the atonement, I'm sure, in preparation for those sermons. And here it comes.

And I'd say one of the most influential books in my reading in those days, and though I probably would not agree with John Stott about everything, his book on the cross of Christ was very profound in my life, on the doctrine of the cross.

And it was during my time in seminary that I was exposed to the confession, the

Second London Confession. And I would imagine shortly after graduation in 97, that I really would have considered myself to be confessional.

But probably it wasn't until around 2005. In 2005, we had a

Founders Meeting at Heritage Baptist Church in Mansfield. And Fred Malone and Jim Renahan were the preachers that week.

Wow. And by the way, Fred Malone's going to be my guest this Friday to discuss his book on Credo Baptism, the

Baptism of Believers Alone, I believe it's titled? Yes, that is the title. Excellent. That sounds great.

Fred's book is very helpful. Oh yeah, it's a masterpiece. I'm sorry?

No, I was thinking you have Fred coming after me, you have Jim coming after me, your show is just getting better.

So yeah, well, Fred and Jim both were the speakers in 2005, and the subject was

Baptist Covenant Theology. And I wore those

CDs out, I think I went through like two or three sets of them over the next year.

And you think of those transformative moments where the

Lord grows you in your understanding, and that was one of them. And I'm very thankful to both those men for their labor on Baptist theology.

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 -Calvinist 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 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 vs. Pedo -Baptism. And 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 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. So don't go away. We'll be right back,

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solid -ground -books .com. Please always remember to remind Mike Adosh of Solid Ground Christian Books when you order from him that you heard about his ministry,

Solid Ground Christian Books, from Chris Arnzen and Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. 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'm not, 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.

Well, I would gladly talk about that. He is somewhat obscure, sadly.

And he is, part of the title to the dissertation, at least at this point, refers to Bedham as a forgotten village preacher.

He was well -known in his day in the 18th century, but he has, yes, fallen out of the conversation often amongst, even amongst many

Baptist historians, and not just church historians in general. Usually 18th century studies kind of focus on John Gill earlier in the 18th century, who everybody wants to talk about as a hyper -Calvinist.

That's a whole other issue. Well, you got to tell me though, I know that our two friends,

Dr. Tom Nettles and Ian Murray disagree on whether or not

Gill was a hyper -Calvinist. What is your opinion on that, just very briefly, even though it's not the same?

Well, my opinion, briefly, I can see my wife laughing now as you brief about Benjamin Bedham, or about John Gill, or anything for that matter.

So, yeah, the short take is, I would not see John Gill as a hyper -Calvinist.

It's a lot of things hinge on how you define hyper -Calvinism.

You know, we live in a day where terms are very flexible, it seems, and the

English language can be sloppily used in different ways. My take would be, no, he is not what we typically think of as a hyper -Calvinist.

Well, he certainly isn't now. I said he certainly isn't now.

No, he certainly would not be now. We often read history with kind of our present -day glasses on, if you will.

We can read our present understandings of things back into history, and that's unfortunate, rather than reading situations and people from historical situations on their own terms and assessing them in their own context.

And so this is one of the important things in my dissertation that I'm working on. Actually, right now,

I'm working on the second chapter. We're still waiting on some of the prospectus fully approved, but in working on the second chapter in my dissertation,

I'm working on the issue of the 18th century context of Bedlam, just trying to understand what it was like for a pastor in those days, a particular

Baptist pastor specifically. But so, yeah,

I would take Gil to not be a hyper -Calvinist. I believe he's very committed to an evangelical understanding of the gospel.

He certainly had some affiliations with some men who I would see as a hyper -Calvinist, men like John Skepp and John Brine, who certainly fall in line theologically more so than Gil with the

Congregationalist pastor Joseph Hussey, who wrote in 1707 a book entitled

God's Operations of Grace, but No Offers of Grace. Hussey was clearly a hyper -Calvinist.

Although, when we use the term or the phrase hyper -Calvinist, it's often used rather pejoratively, isn't it?

I mean, always used pejoratively. They're the bad guys, and the evangelical

Calvinists are the good guys. What's interesting, when you go back and read the 18th century documents, and you read in that particular period, the relationship between these men who would have fallen on two sides of the issue, their relationships were rather generally cordial.

They respected one another. The big gaping hole between the hyper -Calvinist and the evangelical

Calvinist that we often want to put there really wasn't there. These men would serve on ordination councils together.

These men would be in the same association with one another. I mean, today, if you would think the way people talk, if we found out somebody was a hyper -Calvinist in the association, at the next meeting we would build a gallows.

It'd be like the Book of Esther all over again, and you'd find a place for Haman to swing.

So there was not this deep animosity between these brothers who both fell within the framework of a

Calvinistic understanding of things. But what's interesting to talk about this, because my original exposure to Benjamin Bedlam came in reading a biography regarding Samuel Pierce.

Now, Samuel Pierce was a man who died in the last decade of the 18th century.

He was a colleague of Andrew Fuller and William Carey, and very instrumental in the founding and the funding of the

Baptist Missionary Society. And Samuel Pierce, a biography was written on him by a in the early 20th century by the name of Samuel Pierce Carey.

Samuel Pierce Carey got his name from Samuel Pierce, but he was, as far as I understand, the great -grandson of William Carey.

Samuel Pierce Carey, who wrote the book The Baptist Brainerd, which is the biography of Samuel Pierce, has a section in the book where he mentions

Benjamin Bedlam. And he mentions him in a rather unfavorable light, as not possessing an evangelical spirit.

He refers to him as being of the old school. He refers to him as having no concern for those outside of his own congregation.

And kind of caricatures him, although he doesn't use the term hyper -Calvinist, he caricatures him as a hyper -Calvinist.

Now, I had not heard of Bedlam before, but I had heard historians writing about the 18th century, and often particular

Baptists are kind of painted with a broad brush as, well, they were all a bunch of hyper -Calvinists.

Nobody cared about the gospel, nobody cared about the loss, they were just concerned with the elect, and they had, you know, the shutters of their homes, as Samuel Pierce Carey says, they were closed to everyone else.

So I've heard this kind of verbiage before, and so when Samuel Pierce Carey makes this comment about Benjamin Bedlam, I'm thinking,

I wonder if that's true. And I began to, you know, just dabble a little bit into Bedlam, and saw that there were some who presented a more evangelical view of this man.

And I kind of, I left it at that at the moment, because at the time I was more interested in Samuel Pierce, and I had spoken on Pierce at a

Founders Conference, I'd done a study on Pierce with my church, and so Pierce was really the guy

I was interested in. And this was before I was really on the way to the

PhD program, this was back in 2013. And in 2014, I believe that was the year that the

ARBCA had their General Assembly in Gilbert, Arizona. I believe that was the case.

And I'm having lunch with a group of guys, and Jim Renahan happens to be at the table.

And at this point, I am in the process of getting accepted to the seminary to come to the

PhD program. In fact, we have to stop right there and pick up where you left off about the

PhD program when we return from our midway break. 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 .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .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 chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away, God willing, we will be right back after these messages from our sponsors. Iron Sharpens Iron welcomes

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Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to A Visit to the Pastors Study every

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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

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. Beyway, pastor of Kobwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa. Richard Phillips, who is my friend from South Carolina, pastor of the

Second Presbyterian Church in Green, 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 Sharp and Zion 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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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 .com.

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and I would love to help you launch an ad campaign because we really could use the advertising dollars. That's the same email address that you can send in your questions to our guest today,

Jason Montgomery. Our email address again is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. We are now back to Jason Montgomery and our discussion today, which is on a unique and somewhat obscure figure from church history.

I don't know how many of our listeners have heard of the 18th century

Baptist that we are discussing today, Benjamin Benham, but I hope that this program will help open the door for further investigation from you.

Perhaps one of these days you'll be able to get a hold of the doctoral dissertation that our guest has written on this person.

Well, hopefully, perhaps Mike Gadosh will bring it into print. Dr. Joel Beeky's doctoral dissertation is an excellent book that is now available in print.

So, right before the break, you were talking about how you were beginning to enter into the doctoral program,

I believe, and pick up right where you left off. Yeah, yeah.

I was having lunch in Arizona at an ARCA GA with a group of guys, and Jim Renahan happened to be at the table.

And as he was walking off, another one of those things in my life that I just kind of remember, he looked back over his shoulder.

He said, you know, you ought to look into Benjamin Benham. And I thought, okay,

I've heard of him, but I really didn't know much other than what we were talking about earlier.

And so there began the bromance, as they say.

And he is now my guy.

And there's my wife, there's my kids, there's my church, and then there's Benjamin Benham.

And it's, oh, I guess I need to stick my mom and dad. But, you know,

I just began to look into him and his wife and his ministry. And I found a few brief biographical sketches of his life.

And I really just fell in love with him as a brother in the

Lord. And I think what drew me to him initially was he was a pastor, and he was a pastor of one church for 55 years.

Wow. Praise God. That is very rare. That is very rare. And died. And so, you know,

I mean, that's just a man after my own heart. I have been with our church for almost 20 years now, and I just cannot imagine ever being anywhere else.

And I know that my, or I should say the pastor of the church where I am currently a member before I got there,

Walt Chantry, who I've interviewed on this program, he was pastor of Grace Baptist Church for at least 40 years,

I know that. What a great picture and paradigm. Longevity in the ministry.

And, you know, I'm not faulting men for being at churches for short times. I know things happen.

I had a couple of pastors that were brief. And, you know, things just happen. But the idea of taking a church with the intention of this being some kind of a stepping stone to greater ministry and greater things for Jesus down the road, that's so foreign to my way of thinking about the pastorate.

And, you know, God has called me to shepherd a group of His people, whether they're 40 or 4 ,000.

You know, I frankly couldn't imagine what to do with 4 ,000 people. I think I'd die. But I want to know the people

I pastor. I want to know them when I look at them, when I preach. I want to have them on my mind when

I'm preaching the Word of God and applying it to their hearts and lives. And I want to know them through the week.

I want to know their situations. And so I was just impressed by this man.

He came to Borton -on -the -Water in 1740 on what they called probation.

I mean, nowadays we have you come to a church and you have a call, you come on a weekend, on Sunday morning, preach, they have lunch or a potluck in the afternoon, they vote on you.

This guy came to a church in 1740, and it wasn't until 1743 that they actually extended a call to come as their pastor.

And so he knew them and they knew him, and then he lived and ministered there for 52 more years and died in 1795.

That's just huge. And it wasn't for lack of opportunity. I mean, he was well -known.

He was offered the pastorate, or to come share the pastorate, of the Pithy Church, which was one of the largest churches in Bristol, pastored at the time by his father,

John Beddum, another faithful confessional Baptist, Secretary Baptist. He declined to go minister with his father, and he loved his father very much.

His father was a great influence on his ministry. Part of the dissertation is going to be looking at John Beddum, Benjamin Beddum's father.

Anyway, he had an amazing offer to come and pastor the

Goodman's Fields Particular Baptist Church in London when

Brother Wilson, their pastor, died. They solicited Beddum on numerous occasions over the course of,

I think, about a year. And Beddum, it was very interesting because, you know, today in church life, you know, if some church is seeking a pastor, that pastor will, you know, work with the pastor search committee, talk with them, and then make a decision, and then come and tell his church, oh,

I'm leaving for this other church. Beddum doesn't do that. Beddum puts himself under the under the counsel, in many ways, of his church in Borton, and says, if you release me,

I'll go. But if you don't, I'm going to stay. And they basically tell the church in London, we know you like him, but you can't have him.

I mean, that's kind of a shorthand version. They went round and round with letters back and forth.

Benjamin Beddum draws from the theology and the ecclesiology, interestingly, of John Owen, the

Puritan from the 17th century, about his understanding of the pastor's obligation to be in submission to the church that he's in.

Very interesting, very interesting just to read the dialogue in the letters between the church and the church in Borton, and the church in London, and then

Beddum's own letters back and forth to the church. You said something interesting, you said something interesting right there that may not be all that out of the ordinary for Baptists to hear, but if I'm not mistaken, do not many

Presbyterian denominations, including the very conservative ones that share very much in common with us, do they not believe that the pastor is not a member of that local church?

I believe that is correct. In a Presbyterian circle, the pastor would belong to the

Presbytery, I believe. But I am not a Presbyterian, so I could very well be wrong on that, never been a

Presbyterian, and never planned to be a Presbyterian. But yeah, the pastor's not a member of that church.

He, along with the other, I guess, pastors, elders of the other churches in that area, they are connected together, and they kind of form their own church body.

It's a very different ecclesiology than we have as Baptists. Well, I don't know if you've finished your train of thought, because we do have a few listeners that have questions for you.

That's great, sure. Okay, we have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who said, are you aware of any friendship or interaction between John Gill and Benham, since they were contemporaries, and if there was any real significant cooperation or partnership in Gospel work between the two of them?

Wow, that is a great question, and I tell you what, I need to enlist Ronald so he can do research for me on that, because if he could find a connection, like a tangible connection between Gill and Benham, that would be an awesome thing.

Finding those interconnections of people is so wonderful in historical research. I don't,

Ronald, I don't know that they actually knew one another. I mean, Benham knows of Gill.

Benham has some of Gill in his library. They actually have, the library of Benjamin Benham is, the bulk of it, is housed at the

Angus Library in Oxford, and somewhere up here on my shelf,

I'm pulling down what Benham actually has, I believe he has, yes, he had a copy of John Gill's Body of Practical Divinity in his personal library.

So he knows of Gill, he's reading Gill. In fact, if you're a particular Baptist, I mean, you're reading

Gill, and pretty much if you're not a particular Baptist in those days, you're reading

Gill. Gill is probably, in the early 18th century, the premier theologian in England.

I've been doing some research lately regarding a possible connection between Jonathan Edwards, the

American theologian, and John Gill, and it seems that Gill and Edwards are both reading one another.

John Gill's Body of Divinity was standard fare for the

Bristol Academy, the Bristol Baptist Academy, which was kind of the training academy for particular

Baptists in the 18th century in England, and Gill's theology, his literature, his writing was one of the foremost textbooks that they would have used.

And so Benham would have been very aware of Gill. I've come across a few references to Gill in some of Benham's work, but nothing at the moment that has told me that they ever met.

Benham's ministry is very rural. I mean, he is in the little village of Borton -on -the -Water.

It's a small little village in the Midlands. He goes to London from time to time, but not much.

And he is very involved in the Midlands Association, but I have not found that connection, a physical connection, between the two men.

I'm ready to hear about it though, Ronald, if you find it. Excellent.

Well, since you mentioned Jonathan Edwards, I want to give a plug to my guest tomorrow, Kurt M. Smith, who is a

Southern Baptist and Calvinist, thoroughgoing Calvinist, is going to be my guest tomorrow on Iron Trip and Zion Radio to discuss

Jonathan Edwards and his defense for the Great Awakening.

That's our theme tomorrow on Iron Trip and Zion, four to six, so mark your calendars for Kurt M. Smith on Jonathan Edwards and his defense of the

Great Awakening. Thank you, Ronald. Keep spreading the word about Iron Trip and Zion in eastern Suffolk County and beyond.

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, Have you ever heard of John Gill's friendship with the

Seventh -day Baptist pastor Samuel Stennett, who is also a hymn writer, and that they did pulpit exchanges there in England since they worshipped on different days?

I actually did hear about that, even though John Gill is not a subject primarily. I don't know if you've heard about that, but I know that Samuel Stennett was one of the preachers at John Gill's funeral, and he was a

Seventh -day Baptist, not a Seventh -day Adventist, I don't want our listeners to be confused. The Seventh -day

Adventist did not even exist at that time. Not a Seventh -day

Adventist, no. No, he was a Seventh -day Baptist, and they did exchange pulpits, and I saw the documentation for that, and that Stennett preached at Gill's funeral.

I don't know if you were aware of that. I was not aware of the funeral issue, but yes, I am aware of the the relationship or the camaraderie between Gill and Stennett.

You know, the Stennett family is a family of ministers that stretch back into the 17th century, late 18th, maybe early 19th century, like four or five generations of men that were all

Seventh -day Baptists. The Stennetts were very influential out in the

Western Association. Stennett and Bernard Foskett in the

Western Association, that would have had some association and interaction with the

Stennetts as well, but yeah, so John Gill and the

Stennetts certainly would have come across one another. In fact,

I will try to get you a copy, because I was given a copy, a reprint of Stennett's sermon at John Gill's funeral.

I'll try to get that for you. Okay, wow, that'd be wonderful. Yeah, and I know that today some

Reformed Baptists may get their boxers in a bind knowing that John Gill swapped a pulpit with a

Seventh -day Baptist, but of course he was a thoroughgoing Calvinist. I'm sure he did share the doctrines of grace very strongly.

Yes, yes, aside from the day of the

Sabbath, Stennett would have been in many ways a confessional man. And interestingly, in 1733, when

Bernard Foskett leads the Western Association of Baptists to re -establish the

Western Association on the basis of the Second London Confession of Faith, it's a fascinating story.

Stennett, and I'm trying to remember which Stennett it was, he pastored the church in Exeter, but he was a comrade of Bernard Foskett's in the founding of the

Association again. They actually write in the minute books of the

Western Association. I've received some photocopies from Mike Brealey at the

Bristol Baptist College that used to be called the

Bristol Baptist Academy. He sent me some photocopies of about 12 or 13 pages out of the

Western Association book, and it makes a little footnote in there that says, taking the one exception of the day of the

Sabbath, other than that, the Association would be fully founded upon the

Second London Confession of Faith. So they gave that allowance. That was one allowance that they gave.

Great. Well, thank you, Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania. Keep spreading the word about Iron Trip and Zion Radio in Perry County and beyond.

We're going to our final break. It's going to be a very brief one, and we do have a couple of you still waiting to have your questions asked and answered.

We'll get to as many of you as possible before the program is over. Our email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. We'll be right back at Bulling right after these messages with Jason Montgomery, the

Adjunct Professor of Church History at IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas. Don't go away.

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And now we are back with the final 25 minutes or so of our discussion with Jason Montgomery, an 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. And our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. We have

J .D. from Tyler, Texas, who says, What was

Bedham's purpose in writing hymns? For whom did he expect to sing them?

And what is your favorite Bedham hymn? And could you sing it for us?

Oh, my goodness. Well, I'll tell you what.

Well, you ask about his purpose in writing hymns. I'm trying to write this down.

Okay. He says, What was Bedham's purpose in writing hymns? For whom? For whom did he expect to sing them?

I'm assuming the congregations of churches, wouldn't he? Yep. And what is your favorite Bedham hymn?

Okay, well, we can do this, I think. Um, and real quick, can

I just clear up something I said a moment ago about the Senate? Sure. Don't mind. The Senate that was involved with Bernard Foskett in the

Western Association is Joseph's Senate. Okay. And before you go out and buy me a copy of Senate Sermon for Gill, I have it here on my desk on the bottom of a stack of books.

And this will just give my wife more fodder for her, you know, comment to me that I have too many books.

But I've been making the books, there is no end. But even

Solomon didn't say I shouldn't buy books. He just said much study would weary the body.

But anyway, Bedham's hymnody is such a treasure.

If you are not, have not been exposed to his hymnody, you just go on Google Books, and you can find the complete collection of his hymns that was published in 1818 with a preface given by a younger contemporary of his,

Robert Hall, who was one of the leading Baptist statesmen in the late 18th, early 19th century.

And as a wonderful little brief preface recommending the hymns of Benjamin Bedham, there are 830 hymns or 822 or so hymns, eight doxologies, something like that.

I'm trying to look at it here. And I have a little copy right here on my desk.

Yeah, 822 actual hymns, and then a few doxologies at the end. He wrote these hymns for his congregation.

And they were sung in his church at the conclusion of a sermon.

His practice was to write a hymn each Lord's Day for further instruction of the congregation in the contents of the sermon.

So the hymn would coincide with the text and with the exposition that he's just given.

And then there would be a gentleman appointed in the church that would kind of line out the hymn one line upon another.

And he'd sing a line, they'd sing a line, or he'd sing two, they'd sing two.

And they don't have individual copies of the hymn book. This would become more common as the century would progress and into the 19th century.

One of the leading hymn writers of the 18th century, the Congregationalist Philip Doddridge.

Many think that Bedham may have kind of taken this habit of writing a hymn each week to coincide with a sermon from Philip Doddridge.

This was a common practice for Doddridge and certainly was for Bedham as well. This is just the 830 is the number that has been published that have been published.

When I was at the Angus Library a couple of summers ago, I found 40 or more in a little folder that have never been published.

And I'm hoping one day to if we can get those published. Yeah, definitely.

We need some new hymns that are not falling in line with the typical contemporary syrupy sweet nonsense that we have.

And please, I know that there are many contemporary Christian artists who are producing beautiful, biblically sound hymns and songs, so I don't want to besmirch all of them.

But it seems to be the minority that are doing that. So it would be great to have some hymns that would be new to us that were still set solid biblically.

Well, and his collection is just a treasure trove. It's just so rich and so wonderful.

And it's so easy, though, to speak about my favorite hymn for Bedham. It is

Shout for the Blessed Jesus Reigns. And it is a hymn that is just gloriously declaring the triumph of the kingdom of God and its spread throughout all the world.

He would have shared the common postmillennial expectation of the particular Baptist in the 18th century.

You know, it's the opening line is Shout for the Blessed Jesus Reigns through distant lands, his triumphs spread and sinners free from endless pains own him their savior and their head.

And it was a lot better. This particular hymn is actually in the

Trinity Hymnal. Wow. Is that the only Bedham hymn in there? I believe there's another.

I should know that, but I'll just look here real quick.

But I know that one is in there. And so what we'll do here for our brother

JB, who wants me to sing, I'll just tell him to go look it up in the Trinity Hymnal and listen to it online.

Oh, you can listen to all the hymns of the Trinity Hymnal online? You can go to the

OPC Trinity Hymnal. It's online, and you can listen to just about every hymn in there.

This particular one, I'm not sure if it's on there or not, but you can go online and look.

There are many, many hymns. And there's actually someone out there.

I don't know who they are. I have not met them. But there's a website devoted to the hymnody of Benjamin Bedham.

Wow. And they have all his hymns on there, and you can look them up.

So pretty good stuff there. There are actually three.

In the Baptist edition of the Trinity Hymnal, there are three Benjamin Bedham hymns. Great. And I feel terrible that I didn't know there were three.

But anyway. Well, I'm gonna have to have my two new pastors at Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, I'll have to have them, or ask them,

I should say, to have these Bedham hymns sung at a very soon worship service.

Yes, we have been using Bedham's hymns in our service for the last three years, at least.

And I'm looking right now at the cover of our Lord's Day Order of Worship from this past Sunday, yesterday, on which

I have Benjamin Bedham's hymn number 653, The Lord Building Up Zion.

And it's a rich hymn. I have it on the front of the bulletin as a kind of a meditation upon people's coming into worship.

And that's a pretty common thing. And I would guess that since you're talking about the 18th century, that these would have been sung a cappella, typically.

I would imagine so. I don't think Bedham had the praise band thing going. Well, I don't know if you've read

John Price's book, but he makes a pretty good argument, he's a Reformed Baptist, he makes a pretty good argument that Protestants outside of Lutheranism and Anglicanism didn't use instruments until the 19th century.

I have not read Price's book, I'll have to look that up. And no, this would most likely be a cappella,

I'm almost sure. And our friend from Tyler, Texas, has a couple of more questions for us.

Sure. What can we learn about the purpose of confessionalism, the local church, and this is going to be like for three different shows, confessionalism, the local church, and biblical associationism from Bedham?

Wow, yeah. Do we have two more hours? Well, we could definitely schedule two more hours, but we don't have that right now.

Well, yeah, I think, you know, a couple things about that. Bedham is a confessional man through and through, and he learns this at the feet of his father and the feet of Bernard Foskett.

Bernard Foskett and John Bedham, Bernard Foskett was the pastor of the

Broadmead Baptist Church in Bristol, and John Bedham, his father, was the pastor of the Pithy Church in Bristol as well.

They, though, had pastored together earlier in the 18th century a series of three churches that were interconnected up in Henley and Arden and Alchester and maybe

Benjworth, I'm drawing a blank there, but there were three churches that were interconnected, and they brought a strong view of confessionalism to those churches there.

John Bedham was ordained in the Horsley Down Church under Benjamin Keech. Wow, the author of the

Catechism. Absolutely. And so Benjamin, well, yeah, that's another question, too.

You can talk with Jim about that. Most likely, the Baptist Catechism, which commonly is called Keech's Catechism, would have been authored by William Collins.

Oh, okay. Collins is, this is not Hercules Collins, an

Orthodox Catechism, but this is William Collins, who would have been the co -author of the

Confession with Nehemiah Cox back in the 1670s. The assembly of the

Baptists in the early 1690s, 93, 94, somewhere in there, commissioned

Collins to write the Catechism. A later edition of the

Catechism does have Keech's name on it, and it commonly is just dubbed Keech's Catechism, but he is, you know, probably the leading

Baptist there in the last decade of the 17th century for the particulars, and John Beddum is ordained and sent out to preach out of the

Horsley Down Church. So Beddum's confessionalism is deeply tied to its

Reformation and Puritan roots in 17th century Particular Baptist confessionalism.

Beddum himself writes an exposition of the Catechism. I don't know if you're familiar with that.

Mike Gaydosh has printed, I think in 2006 or so here, let me see the year on this, it was published by Mike Gaydosh, yes, first printing

January 2006. It is an exposition, a scriptural exposition of the

Baptist Catechism, and it takes each Catechism question and answer, and then exposits that, kind of opens it up with maybe 10, 20 more questions dealing with that particular one.

We use this every Lord's Day at our church. Presently we are on question 55, which is on the

Second Commandment, and we've been on that now for a couple of weeks. We just take a few of the expositions each week and try to shed light on the meaning of the

Catechism question. Beddum got this idea from Matthew Henry.

It was interesting, early on in the program, you mentioned Matthew Henry.

You mean in the opening announcement of my show? Yes, yes, that we should be,

I think, careful something about who we read and things like that. That was his exegesis of the

Iron Sharpens Iron passage. Yes, to make us, to make one...

Another wiser and better. Wiser and better, I think is what you said there. Yeah. Well, actually it was my announcer who said that.

Oh, there you go. Okay. Well, anyway, Beddum gets the idea for an exposition from Matthew Henry, who wrote his own exposition of,

I guess it's the shorter Catechism, I need to look more into that, but Matthew Henry had done his own exposition of a

Catechism earlier, back in the 17th century, and so how this also works in his associationalism is that the

Midland Association, of which Beddum's church in Borton was a member, was founded in 1655, and was founded on a strong confessional basis, and when the

Second London Confession was finally published, the Midland Association adopted the Second London Confession.

So it is a Second London Confession Association of churches, and they strongly held to that confession.

Interestingly, Samuel Pierce, if you... Uh, Mike Gaydosh, actually, this is like Mike Gaydosh announcement hour, and Mike should be like, you know, helping you out here,

I'm sure he is. Oh yeah, he's Mike. He sponsors on Iron Sherpa. He helps keep the lights on, literally.

Well, good for him. We'll plug his book a little more, but he wrote, several years ago, he had reprinted

Andrew Fuller's Memoirs of Samuel Pierce, and that is a rich, rich book, and in reading those memoirs, there are a couple of places where Samuel Pierce mentions his own commitment to the confession.

Now, Samuel Pierce is the pastor of the Cannon Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, which is a

Midland church, and so here's an association of churches committed on the whole to the confession, and individual churches within the association also committed to the confession of faith.

So I don't know if that really gets at J .B.'s question, but perhaps it does somewhat. Well, since J .D.

has another question that's... I usually don't allow one listener to have this many questions read and answered, but since they're all excellent,

I'll have one more by J .D. from Tyler, Texas, read. Does Bedham help us with any modern or ancient doctrinal differences or difficulties?

In what way, and in what way, does he inform our engagement with those whom we may disagree with?

Wow, can you read that again? I'm sorry, that's a long one. Basically, I think he's asking about polemics.

Does Bedham help us with any modern or ancient doctrinal differences or difficulties?

And in what way does he inform our engagement with those whom we may disagree with?

Okay, all right. Well, I think, yes, in regard to the first one in particular,

Bedham's exposition, since he is expositing the catechism, which itself is seeking to lay out the theology of the

Second London Confession, you can see in the Second London Confession itself its indebtedness, the particular

Baptist's indebtedness to church history, in particular thinking of its

Christology, its statement on Christ the

Mediator in chapter 8, addressing the issue of Christ being of two whole, perfect, and distinct natures inseparably joined together in one person without conversion, composition, or confusion.

I mean, this is our debt to the early fathers of the church and the various councils, the

Christological issues that were dealt with in the third and fourth centuries. You know,

Bedham is committed to this kind of understanding of Christ, so he will bring out at various points in some of his sermons points that might mark the influence of historical understandings or historical awareness on theological issues.

So he's certainly a student of history, he is a student of the Confession, he is seeking to instruct his people in these kinds of doctrines, dealing with doctrinal difficulties, you know, and I suppose it's not that Bedham is a strict

Biblicist. He's not just going to the Bible, it's not that kind of a thing. He has a high view of Scripture.

Scripture is certainly his ultimate authority in matters of faith and practice, as our

Confession would instruct and as the Scripture itself instructs us. So he's certainly drawing from church history, he's drawing from the

Confession, he's drawing from the Catechisms, he's indebted to others, he's reading broadly.

But ultimately speaking, he does bring things back to the Bible over and over, which is what's so interesting in his exposition.

It is a scriptural exposition of the Catechism. So here he's taken a historical document like the

Catechism, and he's tried to ground the teaching of the Catechism in the authority of Scripture.

So in helping us with doctrinal difficulties, we need to make sure that we're always grounding our doctrines ultimately in the

Word of God. So in that matter. But at the same time, we don't neglect our secondary standards.

You know, I mean, the fact that the guy would write an entire book, a scriptural exposition of the Baptist Catechism, is showing that he honors his heritage.

Amen. At the same time, he wants to make sure his heritage is seen as rooted in the

Bible. Amen. So how to deal with those that we may disagree with, or whatever. You know,

Benham is very clearly a Baptist, but he is also interacting with and engaging with men who are not

Baptists. So for example, one of the aspects of my study in my dissertation is going to touch on the issue of Baptists and their relationship to the evangelical revival.

As you may know, Baptists, and particular Baptists specifically, of course, in the early 18th century, mid -18th century, the general

Baptists had generally just kind of gone toward Socinianism, Arianism, and Unitarianism.

And those are some, you know, obviously historically loaded words, but... All bad.

I'm sorry? All bad. Well, yeah, there you go. What are they?

They're all bad. And Presbyterians had as well, but the

Congregationalists or the Independence and the particular Baptists, generally speaking, had towed the line for Historic Orthodoxy.

Really? Well, obviously the Congregationalists eventually caved in, which is why the Ivy League schools are now almost nearly all apostate completely.

Yes, that is true. Ultimately, they do kind of go the way, do they not, or go off the way, I suppose we should say.

But in the early 18th century, they stood tall with many of the particular Baptists for a strong Orthodox confessionalism.

But when it comes to the evangelical revival, the evangelical revival is born out of the

Church of England, which many of the Baptists who were just one of the various dissenting or non -conformist groups, along with the

Presbyterians, Congregationalists, some Quakers, they kind of viewed the

Church of England as, you know, you know, like, can anything good come out of Nazareth?

It's like this apostate group that sold out the Gospel, and certainly sold out their forefathers.

I mean, back in the late half of the 17th century, many of the dissenters are imprisoned, or tortured, or put to death.

And it's just not a good time to be a dissenter there during the time of Charles II and, or James coming along.

There are various, the various acts, the Clarion Code, the Test Act, Corporation Act, the Five Mile Act, various things.

It's a bad time to be a dissenter. And so, if you were to tell the dissenters of the early 18th century, hey, this amazing awakening is happening in the preaching of some of these

Anglican pastors, they were very skeptical at best, and in many ways stood aloof from that early signs of the awakening.

However, there were some, amongst the particular Baptists as well, that were quite welcoming, and quite embracing of these movements of revival.

And Benjamin Beddum was among these men. He is connected to various men.

There is a connection with Beddum and George Whitefield, and that they knew one another.

They were both mutually respectful of a pastor in the western England area known as Thomas Coles, who was a respected evangelical pastor.

Other contemporaries of Beddum would have also kind of, you know, reached across the aisles and joined hands with folks like Whitefield and others.

So, you know, they don't have complete doctrinal agreement with some of these men, but they all have a deep love for the

Gospel, and a deep love and passion to see the Gospel go forward. Beddum's church in Borton in the early 1740s experiences revival over the course of about a month.

Like, 40 -some people come to Christ. That was a significant percentage of those who came to hear him preach.

Well, brother, believe it or not, brother, we are out of time already, believe it or not. I believe it.

I believe it. And the time flew by very quickly, and I look forward to having you back on the program very soon.

I just want to make sure that our listeners have all of your contact information. For those of you wanting to further investigate the

IRBS Theological Seminary, go to irbsseminary .org, irbsseminary .org,

and don't forget there's two S's back to back in that URL, irbsseminary .org.

And then, of course, don't forget about the church where our guest pastors in West Fort Worth, Texas, Faith Community Baptist Church, that website is faithcommunitybaptistchurch .com,

faithcommunitybaptistchurch .com. Don't forget about the September 11th convocation of IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas, where I hope to be in attendance to do live on -site interviews.

And if you care to give any more contact information, brother, now's your time. No, I think that is great, and Chris, thank you so much for having me on, and thank you for your listeners, you know, emailing some questions in.

I'd love to interact with anybody about Bedom, but, you know, Bedom is just one man in history that, among others, points us to the greatest man, and that is the

Lord Jesus, and so we are grateful to you for giving us this opportunity to talk not just about Bedom, but about his love for Christ, his love for the gospel.

Oh, the pleasure was all mine, and don't forget, folks, tomorrow, Kurt M. Smith is going to be discussing

Jonathan Edwards and his defense for the Great Awakening, and then we have, of course, we're going to have a show every day, but this

Friday, we will have, God willing, Fred Malone as our guest to discuss the baptism of disciples alone, and we hope to receive questions from you then.

I thank everybody for listening today, especially those who took the time to email questions, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater