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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.
This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 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 with whom we converse 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 two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
And now, here's your 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 Tuesday on this fifth day of March 2024.
Before I introduce my guest today, I have a prayer request for my listeners, and this is being requested with the permission of the family of my very dear friend, Roger Salter. Roger is the rector at St. Matthew's Anglican Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
He is a thoroughly Reformed Protestant Evangelical Anglican, and he is experiencing some serious health problems. That's as far as I want to elaborate right now, but his illness has been very debilitating for him, and I would ask of you to please pray for our great physician, the Lord Jesus Christ, to touch his body and also to give him great comfort and encouragement mentally and emotionally, and that we would hear wonderful praise reports from his family that he is improving in his health.
And I want to thank his precious wife, Maureen Salter, for giving me permission to present to you this prayer request. He's a very dear friend, has been very generous financially supporting Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I really look forward to him returning to this program.
I've interviewed him many times on a whole host of issues, and his health has prevented him from returning to the show, so I hope to hear wonderful news soon. And so, please continue to pray for this dear saint.
Today we have a first-time guest, and I'm looking forward to interviewing him. His name is Greg Van Cort. He is the pastor of Dayspring Fellowship, a Reformed Baptist church in Austin, Texas. This happens to be the congregation where my very dear friend of many years, the late Richard Bennett, was a member at one time for quite a number of years.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Richard Bennett, he was a Roman Catholic priest who was saved by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, became a very passionate and thoroughly Reformed Christian evangelist and apologist, an author, founded Berean Beacon, which is a powerful ministry to reach Roman Catholics with the true gospel, and it's still active, being run by a number of Richard's dedicated colleagues over the years, including my friend for many years, Rich Wozniak.
And so, I am thrilled to have on the program someone who pastors that church that blessed Richard Bennett for so long before he went home to be with the Lord, and we are going to be talking today about the commonalities between covenant theology and new covenant theology, which are issues that have sadly divided sovereign grace-believing Baptists, Calvinist Baptists, for far too long.
Obviously, all differences of opinion in regard to theology and exegesis of the Scripture are going to lead to some kind of division, but the division that has existed between those who are covenant Reformed Baptists and new covenant Calvinists in the Baptist faith, the divisions have been far too harsh, far too wide, and I hope that my guest brings some insight that closes the enormous chasm that has separated us from brethren.
And I happen to be a member of a covenantal confessional Reformed Baptist church, Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, but I've always, throughout my entire life as a born-again believer, had close friendships on both sides of this divide.
That is likely largely due to the fact that providentially, my precious late wife, Julie, before we were married, was a member of a new covenant-believing Baptist church, First Baptist Church of Linnanhurst, Long Island, and I have always been, since my rebirth, a member of a covenantal Reformed Baptist church, and my friendship that develops with her pastor, Don Blind, really was an enormous blessing in my life, and I attended for a number of years the John Bunyan Conference, which began in Pennsylvania and is now being held in Franklin, Tennessee, but I attended a number of those conferences with Don Blind, and they were always a source of great joy and enlightenment and edification and fellowship and fun, but this is an issue that's near and dear to my heart.
We're also going to be talking about the details involved for the upcoming John Bunyan Conference next month in Franklin, Tennessee, but it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Pastor Greg Van Court.
Thank you, Chris. Delighted to be with you. And why don't you tell us some more details about Dayspring Fellowship.
You bet. So Dayspring Fellowship is located in the heart of Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1978. The founding pastor was a man by the name of Jackson Boyette, and it is a Reformed Baptist church, and by Reformed, we mean the five solas of the Reformation and the five points of Calvinism, and we're Baptist.
We hold to Believer's Baptism, and just a small but powerful congregation that has ministry outreach all over the world with missionaries that we support, and a very dear and loving congregation.
Now, there's something interesting about the name of your church, or perhaps the description of it. As you well know, many, if not most, who embrace New Covenant theology distance themselves from the label Reformed Baptist, at least in our current day, because I remember John Riesinger when the Sound of Grace newsletter was first being distributed, a publication of John Riesinger.
The subtitle of the Sound of Grace was a publication for and about New Covenant Reformed Baptists, and that has since then come out of favor, it seems, with most of the folks I know who embrace New Covenant theology, so you want to explain that?
Sure. So, we have always embraced the term Reformed at Dayspring. We just see it as referencing those ten key, you know, Reformational truths, the five solas of the Reformation are Reformed, and the five points of Calvinism, and don't add anything else to that.
We love the title Reformed, and I think like you, I mean, I have dear friends who hold to sort of both classic Reformed 1689 Baptist Covenant theology, and those who would be more confessionally aligned, perhaps with the First London Baptist Confession of Faith, and want to call themselves New Covenant theology, or Progressive Covenantalism is a new term that has come on the scene, coined by the Welland Brothers recently.
Yes, and I was delighted to meet the Welland Brothers, and have interviewed at least one of them, and look forward to having future interviews with them. So I'm assuming, from what you said, that Dayspring is confessional, but adhering to the First London Confession?
Yeah, we love the First London Confession. We love the Second London Confession as well, but the First London Confession, having been, you know, written by Baptists, for Baptists, not borrowing from Presbyterians, it for us expresses the Baptist faith in the sovereignty of God, with a unique emphasis on Jesus Christ, and exalting Him.
And, as you likely know, however, those who drafted the 1689 London Baptist Confession, the Second London Confession, intentionally merely duplicated the majority of the Westminster Confession, with the exception of those things that were Baptist distinctives, they did so to demonstrate the unity with them, and to prevent erroneous beliefs that the Baptists were some kind of a cult of some kind.
That's correct, yes. And by the way, folks, if anybody is either living in the Austin, Texas area, or nearby, or you're traveling through there, or you have family, friends, and loved ones in or near Austin, the website for Dayspring Fellowship of Austin, Texas is dsf .org, dsf .org, which stands for Dayspring Fellowship.
We have a tradition here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, that whenever we have a first-time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include any kind of religious atmosphere that that guest had been raised in, and the kinds of providential circumstances our Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to Himself and saved them.
So I'd love to hear your story.
Thank you, Chris. I love to tell the story of my personal testimony of how I was saved from being a thief and a liar and a drug addict, and transformed into a follower of Jesus, because it gives Him all the glory.
I was raised in a home where both of my parents were believers, and they raised me by pointing me to Christ, pointing me to the Gospel. They prayed for me. They took me to church. They were attending a Southern Baptist megachurch in Houston, Texas for most of my childhood, and I got dunked in the water by the pastor who is still pastoring that church, but this was back in the 1970s, along with all my nine-year-old buddies, and didn't know Christ, didn't think about Him, didn't care about Him, didn't stay up at night, you know, thinking about my spiritual state or my relationship with God, none of that.
My family moved to London, England in the early 1980s. For three years, we lived in London and attended the All Souls Church that was pastored by Rector John R .W. Stott, and Stott would preach the Gospel on Sunday mornings to me, and even Stott's preaching didn't register with my heart or with my mind.
It was just, you know, noise that went in one ear and out the other. I couldn't wait to get out of there, go play with my friends, and then one evening after my father providentially had moved us back to Houston, Texas, for my sake, a feeling that this was what the Lord wanted him to do for the sake of my soul, I eventually heard the Gospel through Paul in the book of Romans.
So one evening, while doing drugs in my bedroom, which was my normal course of action every day, at the same time I was trying to trace out Paul's argument in his letter to the Romans for a high school homework assignment that my New Testament teacher had given me, all of a sudden my eyes were opened, and I saw clearly the glory and the loveliness of Jesus and that He was the only way to deliverance.
I saw that I was in bondage to what I thought was freedom, and I desperately wanted to know Him, and that night, repentant of my sins, put all my trust in Jesus Christ for salvation, believed in the Gospel, and I was radically changed.
I was actually drawing the narcotics deep into my lungs as I saw the Gospel clearly and believed right then and there. So I'm sort of the poster child for what Paul says in Romans 4 -5, that to the one who does not work but just believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.
And I was absolutely transformed, flushed my narcotics, got rid of my drug paraphernalia. I actually preached my first sermon a week later to my entire high school during a Wednesday night chapel service.
I had been the drug dealer at that high school, and I was up there preaching to them and telling them all that Jesus had done for me, and lost some friends, retained some friends, and it was an interesting time.
All of it was very new to me, but I had the evidence of the Spirit of God indwelling me. It was a powerful witness to the truth of the Gospel, and just, you know, changed. But the first 10 years of my Christian life, I was in Episcopalian because this all happened in the context of a private Episcopal high school.
And so I was attending very liberal and very theologically shallow churches for the first 10 years of my Christian life before I became a Reformed Baptist.
Well, what providential circumstances rose up in your life that made you realize that God had placed a call upon your life to enter into pastoral ministry?
Yeah, that happened in a very interesting way. So I was, like I said, I was an Episcopalian here in Austin, Texas. I attended St. Matthew's Episcopal Church. The rector committed adultery, was pursuing divorce and remarriage to the adulterous woman, and the church threw him a party.
And that's when I woke up and realized, you know, this is not the church. I have to go find the true church, because this is not it. And I just had in the back of my mind, oh, those Baptists, I know they at least take God's word seriously.
And so I went to the nearest Baptist church that was closest to where I lived at the time in Round Rock, Texas, and I heard the gospel preached with power and unction like I had never heard before, and it was marvelous.
And this pastor ended up getting fired from that church on the Wednesday between the intervening Sundays that I was there for being a Calvinist. And I tracked him down, and he opened up the word of God to me.
He introduced me to Charles Spurgeon. He—eventually I became an elder in his church.
He introduced you to Charles Spurgeon. How old are you? I'm only kidding.
And, you know, all those rich Puritans, and it was a time of great growth. I would stay for two hours sometimes after church, just peppering him with questions. And he eventually raised me up as an elder in his church.
His church is still thriving. It is called Providence Reform Baptist Church in Marble Falls, Texas. And this pastor, Phillip Way, was a tremendous influence in just training me up, giving me opportunities to preach and to grow.
And I had a desire for ministry through that experience, but I actually came to the church I pastor now after I was married to my wife, Sandra. She wanted to find a larger church. We were just a little tiny church of sometimes we were down to three or two families, and she needed something a little bit bigger.
And that's where I found Dayspring in Austin, Texas. Jackson Boyette was the founding pastor and was the pastor at the time when I attended. He mentored me. We joined—we actually met Richard Bennett the very first day that we visited.
We walked in on a prayer service, and Richard was praying in his glorious, you know, Irish brogue about the glory of Christ. And it was great to meet him and to get to know him. But we joined Dayspring and thrived as members just there.
I worked a secular job in Austin, and I felt a calling to go into academia. And the pastor encouraged me to go to seminary and to pursue my master's and then my PhD and to teach for Providence Theological Seminary that Gary Long was, you know, putting together.
And so I got to know Gary very, very well. The pastor encouraged me to go to Southern Seminary because of the good things Al Mohler was doing there at the time. And so I did. I went to Southern in 2005 with the intention of just getting my MDiv and PhD, going to teach for Dr. Gary Long at his New Covenant Theology Seminary.
And it was right as I was in the dissertation phase—I had done all of my doctoral work and examinations—when Jackson Boyette, the pastor of Dayspring Fellowship, founding pastor, and his wife Barbara were killed by a drunk driver who hit them head on.
And when that tragedy happened, they were so beloved, they weren't able to have biological children of their own. And so they basically adopted all of Dayspring. The congregation was their family, as it should be.
And we and the church were very deeply grieving. And during that time around the funeral, we were back here in Austin with our brothers and sisters mourning that loss. The elders asked me to preach that first sermon, that first Sunday that he was absent, which was a very difficult task.
But it was during that period that my wife said, you know, I think the Lord might be calling us back here. And we began to pray about that. And sure enough, the Lord just changed my desire completely away from—I'm a language guy, so I was going to teach Greek and Hebrew.
And he changed my desire for being a professor to coming and being a pastor. And so for the past 12 years now, I've been pastoring Dayspring Fellowship here in Austin, and it's been a great joy. I see myself not doing anything else for the rest of my life.
I love it.
Well, praise God. Well, we're going to go to our first commercial break, and then when we return, before we get into the heart of our theme, I'd like you to give some description to the upcoming John Bunyan Conference in Franklin, Tennessee next month.
And if anybody has questions for Pastor Greg Van Court, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.
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This is Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin here in the beautiful state of Tennessee. Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens Iron radio financially.
Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in scripture through the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And of course, the end of which we strive is the glory of God. If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior.
Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin. Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org. That's gracechurchatfranklin .org. This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our Sovereign Lord, God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ today and always.
I'm Phil Johnson, Executive Director of Grace to You with John MacArthur. I've been a frequent guest on Iron Sharpens Iron radio, and I highly recommend this show. But today I want to tell you about one of its advertisers, Rare Document Traders, far and away my favorite source for quality Charles Spurgeon memorabilia.
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I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Lindbrook Baptist Church, a Christ-centered, gospel-driven church looking to spread the gospel in the southwest portion of Long Island, New York, and play our role in fulfilling the Great Commission, supporting and sending for the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth.
We're delighted to be a part of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron radio advertising family. At Lindbrook Baptist Church, we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired Word of God, inerrant in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak.
We believe in salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This salvation is based upon the sovereign grace of God, was purchased by Christ on the cross, and is received through faith alone, apart from any human merit, works, or ritual.
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It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast of the Lord's blessing and the knowledge of himself.
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So please go to royaldiadem .com today, at least to get the ball rolling on your purchase, and make sure you mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And we are now back with Greg Van Cort, who is the pastor of Dayspring Fellowship in Austin, Texas.
We are talking about the commonalities between covenant theology and new covenant theology, issues that have divided Calvinistic Baptists for far too long and too sharp and harsh and serious a way. And we look forward to a lot more unity coming about between these two groups.
If you have questions, send us an email to chrisarensen at gmail .com. Chrisarensen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. And Pastor Van Cort, could you please give us a brief description of the upcoming 2024 John Bunyan Conference in Franklin, Tennessee?
You bet. Glad to do it.
I am so excited about it. I can't wait to get there. It's going to be held at Bill Sasser's church there in Franklin, Tennessee, Grace Church. It's free. All you have to do is get there. And it's going to be held April the 14th through the 17th.
There are some fantastic speakers lined up with food. The church always comes out. It's such a warm church there that Bill Sasser pastors, and they feed us and care for us. Dr. Ted Baer is going to be there.
And Dr. Richard Lucas, Dr. Brent Parker, Pastor Blake White, Bill Sasser himself will be speaking, Pastor Gary George, Zach Maxey, Renee Frey. It's going to be just a great time together. And you can go to ptinct .org, ptinct .org, to get more information about the conference or to register for it.
But like I said, it's free of charge.
And all you have to do is get there. And the theme this year is the glorious hope of Christ in the new covenant.
Yes, such a great theme, a theme of hope. And so everyone's going to be speaking on some aspect of that. My own talk is going to be on the nature of true hope. And so what I'm working on right now is going back and looking in the Old Testament, the various Old Testament words for hope and the New Testament, and then doing kind of a synthesis to try to bring a definition to what is the nature of true biblical hope.
Amen. And once again, that website to register for the 2024 John Bunyan Conference in Franklin, Tennessee is ptinct .org, ptinct .org. Well, I think it would be very helpful if you could begin our discussion on the commonalities between covenant and New Covenant theology to define each of these theological systems.
And let's start with covenant theology.
Absolutely. So I would define covenant theology as basically understanding their Bibles in terms of three covenants, covenant of works, covenant of, well, covenant of redemption, I should say first, and then covenant of works, covenant of grace.
So I'm sure your listeners are probably familiar with that way of looking at Scripture. New Covenant theology, very similar, but looks more of it in terms of promise and fulfillment, promise in the Old and fulfillment in the New.
Great. Well, now let's move on to the definition of New Covenant theology.
Yeah. So I think, you know, in a nutshell, New Covenant theology really is putting together the Bible Christocentrically, Christotellically, looking at Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of all of the promises.
And so, you know, right off the bat, Genesis 3 .15, you have the promise of the seed, it gets reiterated to Abraham, it gets reiterated to the patriarchs. Eventually, you have a promise about the line of Judah and then the son of David, and it's all sort of building to this great fulfillment that Jesus Christ brings in the gospel in the New Covenant.
And one thing it might be wise for us to do is early on in this discussion to dispel the slanders that have been perpetuated by folks on both sides of this. Yes. As I've said before on this program, when I began attending the John Bunyan Conference in the late 80s and early 90s, I loved my wonderful time of fellowship with all of the brethren there.
But there were some who, during times of rest, relaxation, and fellowship, who would start saying things about Covenant Reformed Baptists, which would fit the description of the church where I was a member while attending, that I knew were incorrect.
Right. There were charges that Covenant theology either borders on or even crosses the border of Judaizing. There were charges that every time a Covenant Reformed Baptist evangelized someone, they had to recite the entire Decalogue to them.
In fact, I've never even heard somebody do that once. And on the other side of the coin, when I would go back home and be back into fellowship with my Covenant Reformed Baptist friends and brethren, there would be accusations about, oh, you better be careful about those guys.
They believe in the fact that you could be a Christian and never repent, and you could live like Satan your whole life and still go to heaven. I'm like, no, you've got that all wrong. They don't believe that at all.
Oh, they're antinomian. You know, they don't believe in following the law at all. And I'm like, well, they do believe in the law of Christ. And they do believe that, although that it's not salvific to obey the law, they do believe that Christians are commanded to follow the law of Christ.
So if you could pick up where I left off on these two extreme slanderous caricatures.
Yes, thank you for bringing that up. That always grieves my heart when, you know, non-essentials of the faith become doctrinal walls of partition between brothers, and these things ought not to be. I often think of John Riesinger and his brother Ernie as sort of representing, you know, these two, and we need to bring these brothers together.
They're truly brothers, not just by earthly blood, but by the blood of Christ.
By the way, Ernie Riesinger was the founder of the church where I'm a member right now. Is that right? That's wonderful. Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He was the founder of that church in the mid to late 50s before he relocated to Florida and served at Grace Baptist Church of Cape Coral for many, many years.
Praise God. That's wonderful.
I'm encouraged at where Baptists who are Reformed are at right now. It seems like the new generation of younger Reformed Baptists on both sides of this particular issue seem to be more irenic and more open, you know, to discuss and want to dialogue together and join hands in conferences together.
We didn't see that in the 80s and 90s, and it's an encouraging thing.
I can say that the church where I was a member, however, which was a confessional 1689 Covenant Reformed Baptist Church, it's where I was saved. That church, when I was attending the Bunyan Conference, was one of the very few at that time Covenantal Reformed Baptist churches that had new covenant men in the pulpit on occasion.
Yes. We had Tom Wells preach at the church. We had Tom Smith. I don't know if you remember Tom Smith from Randolph Street Baptist Church. He's now an Anglican, by the way. Oh, wow. No, I don't remember him.
In more recent years, Dr. Tony Costa, who's a dear friend of mine. Yes. I love Tony. Yes, amen. So do I. So we were a lot more ironic and gracious.
Yeah, I love to hear that. That's the way, you know, day spring has been that way as well. So we've had James White come into our pulpit. We've had Tom Nettles, a dear friend of mine, come many times starting back in the 80s.
And just recently, last year, I came for a conference celebrating the 45th anniversary of our local church. So we love that. And I think that's the way it ought to be. It seems to be headed more and more in that direction so that we're no longer so suspicious of one another and viewing one another as enemies, but more as friends with, you know, things to learn from each other.
Right. Well, perhaps you could bring up and highlight some more of the commonalities that these two groups have.
I think I love the theme here of commonalities between these two groups, because we often talk past one another, and it seems like we do that because we just dive directly into the differences before really understanding the common ground that we stand on, which can lead to those kinds of misconstruals that you were referring to, like seeing covenant theologians as Judaizers or New Covenant theologians as antinomians.
And so let me just highlight some of the commonalities that I see between these two groups that really make us very, very close next-door neighbors, really, on the theological block of Christianity. Probably the most important ones are the five solas of the Reformation and the five points of Calvinism, particularly the five solas of the Reformation.
We all believe that salvation is by God's grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to His glory alone, and that, you know, you don't have to take a spiritual bath and clean yourself up in order to come to God, that He just saves sinners who simply rest on Him by faith.
And I think that just the centrality of the Gospel is where we have to start when we talk about our commonalities. And then, of course, when we're talking about 1689 Reformed Baptist brothers, we both hold to believers' baptism, which is huge, and that sets us apart from so much of the church.
We believe in a regenerate church membership, where those who have been born again and have a credible profession of faith in Christ are the ones who undergo baptism and who come into membership at a local church.
And so that's a big commonality as well. And then, not being dispensationalists and following sort of the scheme of John Nelson Darby, we have so much in common in terms of, you know, viewing the church as the true Israel of God.
And, you know, when Hamas does this horrible crime against the modern state of Israel, your church and my church are not one of those evangelical churches that immediately, you know, starts our sermon series and begins preaching on the end times.
We're very different from a lot of the evangelical world in that respect, and I think that is a major commonality that brings us together. But one of the things I'd like to talk about and highlight is our commonality and agreement on the law of God, because that's an area I know that often people dive into that as being, here's the main sticking point, here's the difference between the two, without first understanding the commonalities that we hold to on the law of God.
And so the first point of agreement—I have seven—the first point of agreement that I see between the two camps on the law of God is that we agree that the law of God, even though it is good and righteous, it's powerless to save us because of our fallen condition.
And so both covenant theology and new covenant theology agree that Christians are not obligated to keep the law of God in a way of earning or even maintaining our salvation, that Scripture teaches we're all sinners, we're all lawbreakers, and our federal head, Jesus Christ, obeyed God's law for his elect, such that his obedience is imputed to all who believe in him.
He died on the cross for our lawbreaking. So I think that that's an important place to start with our commonalities on the law. The second one is that we both agree that the good laws that God has given have different aspects to them.
That one aspect is ceremonial, so referring to specific religious ceremonies commanded by God, such as animal sacrifices in the Old Testament or a baptism in the New Testament. And that another aspect of his laws are civil, that there are civil laws sometimes called judicial laws that refer specifically to laws that God gave to Israel as a civil nation to govern that theocracy of Israel in the Old Testament.
And that, you know, ceremonial and civil laws are no less serious and no less binding in their contexts, even if they are of a more temporary character or confined to a particular covenant arrangement.
And so, distinct from this third aspect of the law that we both see as well, which is God's trans-covenantal, immutable law, the law that inherently reflects the character of our unchanging, immutable God.
So that to rescind these laws would do violence to his very character. So that the abrogation of the prohibition against bearing false witness, for example, that could never occur because God is the God of truth.
He is the truth, and it's impossible for God to lie. Our covenant theology brothers like to refer to that as the moral law. We don't quite like that terminology in the New Covenant side. But that's just a terminological difference.
And so, another strong commonality is that one. And then third, we both agree that all ten of the Ten Commandments are commandments that we are obligated to keep as Christians today, though not always in the exact same way or form as given to Israel in Exodus 20.
And so, you know, we can talk later in the show, if you'd like, about the Sabbath. But New Covenant theologians are not like the traditional dispensationalists as far as saying that this is something that has no relevance to us.
We see it as more radically fulfilled than most in the covenant theology camp. But even there, you know, within covenant theology, there's quite a variety and range of understanding. How do we keep the fourth commandment?
No one says that we keep it exactly as it was kept in Israel, that the Saturday is a day of rest. And then fourth, we are both in agreement on what Reformed theologians refer to as the first use of the law.
So we agree that the law of God is what defines sin, and therefore it shows us our need for forgiveness, our need of salvation. And then fifth, we agree on what Reformed theologians have referred to as the second use of the law, which teaches, of course, that the law of God serves as a guide to a civil society.
Human beings, through natural revelation, have sort of an innate sense of right and wrong through a conscience that has been informed by the immutable law of God, which serves as a sufficient guide for civil society.
And then sixth, we both camps agree on what Reformed theologians refer to as the third use of the law, which affirms that God's law serves as the rule of life for believers today. So we embrace the goodness of the law of God, and we look to God's law for instruction from him on how we are to live out our faith and walk in his ways and glorify him, and how specifically we are to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves.
And then seventh, we both camps reject that dispensational view of the law, which says that unless the New Testament repeats an Old Testament law, that it's no longer binding. I think both groups see that that is not true and way too simplistic.
So those seven commonalities on the law, I think, constitute really a tremendous amount of common ground, which should provide a foundation for genuine, constructive dialogue.
And that's an excellent summary of the commonalities. And when we return, we will continue our discussion, and we hope to hear from you, the listeners, with questions. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.
Give us a first name, at least city and state and country of residence. If you're asking a question over a personal and private matter, let's say you hold to one view or the other, and you're in disagreement with your own church, perhaps you're even a pastor of a church and you're in disagreement with your own fellow elders or denomination.
Something like that, we would understand, would compel you to remain anonymous. But if it's a general question, either from the scriptural support of either side or historical, a general question, we ask of you to please give us your first name, at least your city and state and country of residence.
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I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland. Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia are largely to thank since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.
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Send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Greg Van Court, pastor of Dayspring Fellowship in Austin, Texas, as we continue our discussion on the commonalities between covenant and new covenant theology.
Before I invite, well, actually, let me read this listener question first before I make my own comments. We have Lou in Sharpsburg, Georgia. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Would a new covenant theologian church ever consider adopting the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith as a summary for what their church believes?
And if not, what do they disagree about other than the Sabbath?
Yeah, great question. I love it. I think yes, and in fact, you know, there is, there's a website called christoverall .com, which is a new covenant theology website. They would prefer the term progressive covenantalism over there.
Steve Wellam is one of the key editors and contributors of that website, and they hold to the 1689 Confession of Faith as their confessional faith for that website and ministry, and they would just interpret some things differently than others would.
So we do, there are many who I think have a lot of appreciation for the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. We just like to remind people that there was a First Baptist Confession, and it's glorious, and I have found great help in looking to that First London Baptist as well.
Yeah, and there are churches that they hold to officially the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith as their doctrinal statement, but they do so with a caveat. Some of them, like, for instance, my dear friend, Pastor John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, his church holds to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith with the exception of the Sabbath view.
They hold to a Lord's Day view, which has some things that are different from a strict Sabbatarian understanding. But that actually brings me to one of the statements that you made about the Lord's Day amongst New Covenant theologians.
And as you were saying earlier about Covenant theologians, that there is a variety of folks within that camp. They're not all pigeonholed or cookie-cutter examples of one another. Excuse me. That was definitely the case with New Covenant theology from my experience.
And one of them is on the issue of the Lord's Day. I can remember I purchased and fell in love with a book that John Reisinger recommended at one of the John Bunyan conferences years ago by Richard Belcher.
He wrote a book called A Layman's Guide to the Sabbath Question. And there were different views of the Sabbath in that book, which included the Sunday Sabbath view, the Saturday Sabbath view, and the Lord's Day view.
And there were many people, including John Reisinger, that espoused the Lord's Day view. And that attributed to Sunday a unique and special sacredness, if you will. Even though someone might not be a Sabbatarian, they viewed Sunday as a day that is the day that we should be gathering as a corporate, official, regular day of worship.
Yes. But I have met, and know personally, New Covenant theology advocates who believe that there is no such distinction of days on when we could have the Lord's Day. We could start meeting on Tuesday, for instance, and celebrate the Lord's Day on Tuesday nights after everybody's off work.
And that Sunday is not a special day. Whatever day that church chooses to meet on is the special day. Now, obviously, I get a sense you would disagree with that view within your own camp.
I do. I think that's just the example we have of the early church gathering on the Lord's Day, and the fact that it was the day that our Lord rose from the dead and is referred to as the Lord's Day. I think that makes that clear.
But I would say that there are those within the Covenant theology camp who would argue the same thing. I believe that was Calvin's view as well. Right, yes.
The Continental Reformers appeared to not have a strict Sabbatarian view, if I'm understanding history correct. That's right. And the other issue that I wanted to ask you about is the understanding that the church is the fulfillment of Israel.
Yes. My friend Gary George, not long ago, who is a New Covenant theology advocate, Yes, good friend. did a whole program, not the one that he did yesterday. He did a program yesterday on near-death experiences.
But a month or so ago, maybe longer, he did a program on how the church is the fulfillment of Israel. But unless you can correct me, and maybe I'm misremembering this, I do not think John Riesinger held that view.
I think that he believed that Israel has just been completely removed from the world on earth, that the nation or the state in the Middle East is not Israel, even though that it's identified that way, and the church is not Israel.
Did he not hold that view?
I'm almost certain he did, but I could be wrong. That's a great question. I think you're actually wrong on that. I would refer you to Abraham's four seeds, and in that book, I think he makes it very clear that the church is the true Israel of God, and that he calls it that very clearly.
Oh, okay. Well, forgive me for misremembering. I'm not sure why I had that in my head, that there was no connection between the church and Israel in his view, but—.
Now, you might be thinking of our good friend Fred Zaspel, who does hold to a more dispensational view of Israel than all of the New Covenant theologians that I know. No, actually, what definitely wasn't Fred,.
Because Fred, at least at one time, believed that the state of Israel in the Middle East has a future role in biblical prophecy. Yes, that's right. I was talking about Israel not even existing anymore.
Not even existing. John definitely sees the church as being the true Israel of God, and that the reference to the Israel of God at the end of Galatians, for example, is a reference to the whole church made up of Jew and Gentile.
Okay. But that also brings me to your distinguishing between New Covenant theology and dispensationalism, because every time I went—. Yes. Every time I went to the Bunyan Conference, there was a significant number—.
There definitely weren't the majority, but there was always a significant number of at least progressive dispensationalists there who identified themselves as New Covenant theologians.
Oh, interesting. Yeah, we would— I think there would be a difference between a progressive dispensationalist and a progressive covenantalist or a New Covenant theology person, but I can see that, you know, I know that early on in the history of New Covenant theology, that's sort of the direction in which people came from, right?
They had been disillusioned by their very future-oriented, in times, dispensationalism, and were jettisoning that, and seeing Covenant theology, even the full-blown infant Baptist version, is sort of the only option to run to, and then having problems with that, and finding New Covenant theology sort of in the middle.
Okay, we have a listener, Thad, perhaps an abbreviation for Thaddeus, but I don't know. Thad in Bluebell, Pennsylvania asks, I know that you call your conference the John Bunyan Conference, but is there any clear historic evidence that John Bunyan held to a New Covenant theology view?
Oh, that's a great question. I think that John Bunyan is a great father in Baptist history to look to for both those who are in the New Covenant theology camp and the Covenant theology camp. I don't think either one of us could sort of claim him exclusively as belonging to our camp.
So if you look at, you know, Bunyan's view, for instance, on the Sabbath, it's not your historical Reformed 1689 view of the Sabbath, but neither is it a, you know, John Riesinger understanding New Covenant theology view of the Sabbath either.
So he's, you know, there are things that I think both camps would agree with and disagree with in Bunyan, but that's probably the case with any man. But I know that John, who was the one who started the Bunyan Conference, as far as I know from my history, particularly was very fond of Bunyan and had learned a lot from Bunyan on the Sabbath itself.
So Bunyan did not hold to the idea that there was a Sabbath command given to Adam in the garden that continued all the way through the patriarchs and up to the time of Moses. He saw it as originating with the generation of Moses.
And so that's a difference.
From Covenant theology right there. Well, that question actually reminds me of another dear friend of mine who was an advocate of New Covenant theology that my Covenant theology church on Long Island invited to conduct the conference.
In fact, I arranged it. My dear friend, who is now in heaven for eternity with Christ, Barry Horner. Dr. Barry Horner was considered by many to be the greatest living expert on John Bunyan and specifically the Pilgrim's Progress.
And interestingly, there were folks who were amillennial who swore that Barry was a dispensationalist, even though he refused to identify himself that way. He was a historic premillennialist. But one of the things that he said at one of his conferences on the Pilgrim's Progress, and I gently challenged him on it during a time of fellowship.
He had said that Bunyan viewed the law of God as something equivalent to an x-ray machine. And he was talking about the Decalogue. And he said that an x-ray machine reveals the cancer that's in someone's body, but it could do absolutely nothing to cure that person from the cancer.
Right. And I said, well, Barry, every covenant theologian that I've ever met would say the same thing. And Barry was actually affirming this as something that he agreed with Bunyan on. So it was confusing.
It was confusing to me how he could claim that view of Bunyan about the Decalogue and still maintain a new covenant theology identity. Can you explain that at all? I know that you're not Barry Horner, but what am I being confused over here?
Because that's what, from what I understand,.
Every covenant theologian believes that. Yes. I think maybe that was coming from just a flawed view of what covenant theology teaches, because I agree with you that that's something that every covenant theologian would agree with Bunyan on that.
Yeah, you mean a flawed view that Barry had about covenant theology? Yeah, exactly. He might have had a skewed view of what covenant theology teaches on the law.
Well, I know that he did have some very strong and radical views. In fact, he insisted that if you were not premillennial, you were antisemitic. But I know that he knows better now. That's right, that's right.
A dear, precious man, and I urge anybody listening, if they could find videos or audio tapes of Barry putting on his presentation on the Pilgrim's Progress, they are absolutely magnificent. Let's see here.
I was just looking at a question. Oh, Franco in Hempstead, Long Island, New York, and Franco asks, have you ever heard of a congregation where both New Covenant theologians and covenant theologians shared leadership, and do you think that is a possible thing to do without creating some kind of tension and division within the same congregation?
Wow, that's a very deep and good question. I love it. I really don't know of a congregation where that is the case in terms of leadership. I know of many good congregations that are able to integrate both New Covenant theologians and covenant theologians into membership with the same church, but typically in those churches, the leadership is going to either be firmly committed to like a 1689 covenant theology or a New Covenant theology.
Just from my own personal experience with both camps, I don't actually see that as working out. Perhaps it could. We're getting more and more amicable, as I said, with this generation, so perhaps at some point that might be possible.
I don't see it working well.
Currently. So in spite of all the commonalities, you still think that there's enough difference that this would be prohibitive.
As far as leadership differing on these issues in the same church? I think so, unless—. I mean, there would just have to be a huge amount of humility. So say you have one of the elders in this Reformed Baptist church would be a strict Sabbatarian, so someone who doesn't in his conscience feel as if he could fill his car up with gas on a Sunday and that sort of thing.
He would have to be—. That would be called the hitchhiking covenant. That's right, that's right, that's right. Sorry about that. There are degrees of strictness in interpretation of that. And so if there is someone who has very strict convictions about that for himself, he would almost have to acknowledge himself to be a weaker brother and not make it an issue from a leadership point of view in his church and just sort of give a seed to the other elders to teach on that would be the only way that I would see it working.
Sort of as if your church or my church had an elder who was a dispensationalist and who had these views about Israel, he would have to sort of keep that to himself and not say, this is what our church teaches.
He would have to say, this is what I personally believe, but not what our church teaches. Right, and the dispensationalist elder, you'd have to keep an eye on him when he went into the pulpit that he didn't have a newspaper.
With him to bring the current events. I'm just kidding. But Franco, you might find this interesting, though. And I'm not saying I agree with this model, but I have heard about these churches existing.
There are churches that have leaders who are both Pato-Baptists and Crado-Baptists or Baptistic that function. That's right. My dear friend who's now in heaven for eternity, Peter Jeffrey, he was the successor of Martin Lloyd-Jones at the Sandfields, which is a church in Port Talbot, Wales.
And Peter's congregation had both Pato-Baptists and Baptist elders in the same church. And I also have a very good friend, Michael Wychowski, pastor of Westminster Chapel in Ball Ground, Georgia, who has the same ecclesiastical structure.
At least he did. I don't know if he still does. And interestingly, the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, also known as the Free Presbyterian Church of North America, they have leaders that are both Pato-Baptists and Crado-Baptists.
And if you're in a church where you have a Crado-Baptist pastor who will only baptize believers by immersion, you have to give a couple with infants and small children the liberty to invite a Pato-Baptist pastor to a service.
To baptize your children. Yeah, I have heard of that as well. I think first, evangelical free churches, that's their official position, is that they do mixed. And if I'm not mistaken, Wayne Grudem, in his Baptist Systematic Theology, suggested that as a way forward towards unity on that particular issue.
So those kinds of churches are out there and somehow have managed to make that work. Yeah, they're out there, all right.
I have heard from evangelical free pastors, though, that the practice of infant baptism as an alternative has almost completely disappeared from the denomination.
Ah, that's good. They've been preaching verse by verse through the Bible, it sounds like.
No offense to my loving friends who actually financially support the show, that are Pato-Baptists. We have a growing number of them, actually. Now, I'd like, before I take any more listener questions, for you to give some practical counsel on ways that those of us who have friends, especially, on both sides of the divide— Covenant and New Covenant Theology— how we can approach one another to begin healing wounds and forging stronger fellowships without compromising what we believe.
Yes, yeah. That's a great question, Chris.
I appreciate it. I think that, you know, in most cities— and I'm pastoring in a city or urban context— there are other like-minded pastors who hold to Covenant Theology and who hold to New Covenant Theology.
And I like to take them out for coffee and become friends with them and spend time having the kinds of conversations that we're having today. So, really beginning on the foundation of our commonalities.
I think if we begin there, then that opens up a safe, you know, place for us to dialogue about our differences, to learn from one another. And I would even encourage—. One of the commonalities we didn't mention was that we love to read the same theologians.
We love Jonathan Edwards. We love Charles Spurgeon. We love R .C. Sproul. All of us do. And so, I think one of the things we can do as friends from both camps is to pick a book and work through it together.
Read a book and have coffee and discuss it. I think that that's a great way to foster fellowship. I love reading my Covenant Theology brothers. Just this last year, I read for the very first time a book by Sinclair Ferguson titled The Whole Christ.
And it revolutionized my preaching. It was a wonderful gospel-centered book from a Presbyterian, you know, Covenant theologian brother. These kinds of things, I think, will bring us together. Yes.
And since you mentioned my friend Fred Zaspel earlier, Fred, one of the leading voices in New Covenant theology, he wrote a biography of B .B. Warfield, the Presbyterian theologian, the great Princeton divine.
And this is titled The Theology of B .B. Warfield, A Systematic Summary, and a tremendous book. I interviewed Fred on that book not long after it was published. And it's a magnificent volume that every Christian should have, let alone every Reformed Christian or sovereign-believing Christian.
That's right. The Apostle Paul warned Timothy against the kind of man that had evil suspicions. And I think that's what we have to be on guard against. We have to realize those who hold to the true gospel and even so many other common things to the Reformed faith, the sovereignty of God and providence and so forth, we need to be careful that we don't have evil suspicions of one another, trying to find dangers in one another's theology, but to want to honestly hear and understand the differences in our brother without compromising our own convictions, but giving an honest hearing and not jumping to conclusions, which is what has too often happened in these types of discussions.
Yeah, and by the way, Sinclair Ferguson wrote the foreword to Fred Zaspel's book on Warfield. Yes, that's right. That shows you what a great job Fred did because Sinclair Ferguson wouldn't write the foreword to just any book on Warfield.
Absolutely. And we have to go to our final break right now. And if anybody has a question, if you'd like to get in line because there are a few people waiting to have their questions asked and answered, send your email to chrisorenzen at gmail .com immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.
That's C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence and your country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back right after these messages.
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For more details on post Tenebrous Lux Bible rebinding go to P-T-L Bible rebinding dot com. That's P-T-L Bible rebinding dot com.
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Welcome back. Before I continue our discussion, we have some very important folks to thank. First of all, please never forget that this program is paid for in part by the law firm of Buttafuoco and Associates.
My dear friend Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, has been financially sponsoring nearly every single act of public ministry and effort that I have been involved in going back to the early 1990s, even before I had my own radio program.
The debates that I have arranged and conferences and everything else, you can count on the fact that Dan Buttafuoco has been behind the scenes financially supporting these things. So please, if you are the victim of a very serious personal injury or accident or medical malpractice anywhere in the United States, please call Dan Buttafuoco at Buttafuoco and Associates at 1 -800-NOW-HURT 1 -800-NOW-HURT or visit the website 1 -800-NOW-HURT .COM.
1 -800-NOW-HURT .COM. Please always mention that you heard about Buttafuoco and Associates from Iron Sharpens Iron radio. Also, folks, do not forget that Friday of next week, I am going to be the emcee for the Grace Christian Academy fundraising gala, which will be held at the Coral House Catering Hall in Baldwin, Long Island.
That's Friday, March 15th, 7 p .m. And the keynote speaker is my friend, educator and author, Dr. Ernie Zara. If you would like to register for this, I would love to see as many Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners as possible at this event when I will be emcee.
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And you can register right there. Last but not least, if you are a man in ministry leadership, you are invited to the next free, biannual Iron Sharpens Iron radio pastor's luncheon. And for the very first time, we are featuring as our keynote speaker, Dr. Joel Beakey, the founder and president of Puritan Reform Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
And not only is admission free and your lunch free and your time of rest, relaxation, fun and fellowship and edification all free of charge, every man in attendance is going to walk home or should I say drive home with a very heavy sack of free brand new books personally selected by me and donated by Christian publishers all over the United States and the United Kingdom.
So if you would like to register for this free pastor's luncheon on Thursday, June 6th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is Perry County, Pennsylvania, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line.
And that's also the email address to send in a question for Greg Van Court as we continue our discussion of the commonalities between Covenant and New Covenant Theology, chrisarnson at gmail .com. And we have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, from your knowledge of church history, can you pinpoint at least an approximate time in history when New Covenant Theology came to be?
That's a great question. I would say it would be the 1970s. Really? Nobody else? I would say so.
Wow. So nobody else in history, and to your knowledge, believed in the way that it is now fully fleshed out. That's right.
And yeah, I think that your phrase fully fleshed out is really the key thing. So I don't see it as something novel. In fact, I think that one of the weaknesses of the dispensational brothers is that their view is entirely novel.
It's something that, you know, John Nelson Darby really invented. Even though it's older. Even though it's older. Even though it's older. It's novel. So I see New Covenant Theology as being very consistent with a covenantal understanding.
It really comes not in, you know, out of nothing. A brand new thing like dispensationalism really was. But it comes through the reformational thought and Augustinian thought, even, of the covenants and covenantal thought.
It's an outworking of it. You can almost even say that it is a, you know, it sort of falls within covenant theology where you have a lot of divergence and a lot of differing views, even within covenant theology.
Which brings me to want to say I was over the commercial break, I was sort of pondering my answer to the previous listener's question about whether or not covenant theology and New Covenant Theology could coexist together in leadership in a local church.
I want to change my answer to that. The more I reflected on that, the more I do think that that could definitely work. I would see it as being problematic with a dispensationalist, but between a New Covenant theologian and a Covenant theologian who are both Baptist, I think that they could coexist very, very well because they both would say all Ten Commandments are binding.
They would have different understandings of how we keep that Fourth Commandment. But other than that, there would be some differences of terminology and perhaps emphasis. Most of it would be exactly the same.
Okay, great. We have Annabelle in Searcy, Arkansas. And Annabelle asks, what would be the best books one could purchase to fully explain New Covenant Theology? And is there any book in existence which compares and contrasts Covenant Theology with New Covenant Theology side by side in the same volume?
Okay, yeah, I love that question. I love to recommend books and to read these magnificent books. So the first question, what to read if you really want to understand what is New Covenant Theology teaching?
Because anyone with an internet connection in their mother's basement can claim, you know, this is what New Covenant Theology is. And that has been a problem. To really understand what it is, you need to look at the published works on New Covenant Theology.
And there's no greater one that I could recommend more highly than the book Kingdom Through Covenant, a biblical theological understanding of the covenants, co-authored by Peter Gentry and Stephen J. Willem.
Peter Gentry and Stephen Willem were both professors of mine at Southern Seminary. Crossway published this magnificent, it's in its second edition, Kingdom Through Covenant. Nothing lays out what New Covenant Theology is better than this book, in my opinion.
But also hot off the presses just last month is a brand new systematic theology and we Reformed Baptists love our systematic theologies. This one by Steve Willem, titled Systematic Theology from Canon to Concept, Volume 1.
It's the first of what's going to be a two-volume systematic theology by the Reformed Baptist, Stephen Willem. It's published by B &H Academic. And I cannot more highly recommend this systematic theology, which Covenant Theology, especially 1689 Brothers, are going to agree with so much of it.
But it also is going to lay out what New Covenant Theology is. So that's another place that I would point people to. And then the other question was, is there a work that lays out both Covenant Theology and New Covenant Theology side by side?
I can't really think of anything that does quite that without also taking into account, you know, dispensationalism. I'm actually working on a little book that I hope to write during my writing sabbatical next summer on these things.
Blake White has a little book on what is New Covenant Theology, which compares it and contrasts it with Covenant Theology and dispensationalism. But nothing that I can think of that just lays out both side by side.
So what I would actually probably recommend is that you get a good introduction to what Covenant Theology is, the Pato Baptist version or the Baptist version, and then read one of these books that I've recommended on New Covenant Theology.
Well, we were out of time. Don't forget about the 2024 John Bunyan Conference, April 14th through the 17th at Grace Church at Franklin in Franklin, Tennessee. For more details, go to ptinc .org. I'm sorry, ptinct .org, ptinct .org.
And also don't forget about the website for Dayspring Fellowship in Austin, Texas, DSF for Dayspring Fellowship. DSF .org, DSF .org. Thank you so much, Pastor Greg, for being such an outstanding guest.
I want to thank everybody who listened. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.