Is Supporting a Pastor the Role of the Local Church

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You can say what you want. You can say what you want. All right, ladies and gentlemen, my name is

Jeff Rice. And this is Open Air Theology. I'm about to hit the wrong button.

Okay, here we go. My name is Jeff. This is Open Air Theology. I'm one of the elders of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church in Tallahoma, Tennessee.

If you're ever in the area, please come and check us out. And I'm going to pass it down to the man holding a bear.

That's right. Can you guys hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. Yeah, I apologize first and foremost for my camera.

I just got on here just a second ago. And my computer is giving me a fit right now. So hopefully in the future

I'll have that fixed. So I'm going no camera today. But my name is Brayden Patterson.

I'm the pastor of Valley Baptist Church in Hagerman, Idaho. We meet on Sundays, the Lord Day at 11 in the morning.

If you live in the area, it would be a real blessing to see you there. I also have a YouTube channel called Reformed Ex -Mormon. Go check that out.

And just super blessed to be a part of Open Air Theology. So I would point in a direction to pass it, but I'll pass it to Tom.

Hey, my name is Tom Shepherd. I'm with Grace Bible Church of Burney, Texas. I'm the host of Even If None podcast and co -host of Open Air Theology.

Glad to be with you guys tonight. And I'm going to pass it down to the apologetic dog. Oh, woof, woof, woof.

Fellas, thanks for having me on at 10 p .m. at night. You know, kind of had a free evening.

I love my wifey, but she's not here. So I'm allowed to stay up a little bit later, if you know what I mean. So I am pastor and elder at 12 -5

Church amongst a plurality of elders in Jonesboro, Arkansas. We are a church plant, and I guess the church plant's about three and a half years old now.

I think in September it will be four years. Truly amazing. Like y 'all were talking about, if y 'all are anywhere, if anyone's in the northeast

Arkansas area, guess what, fellas? 12 -5 Church is the only Reformed Baptist church in my hometown.

We love our Presby brothers, but we differ on many things. And so just kind of getting to share with people what

Reformed theology looks like, the love, the doctrines of grace, really the doctrines of love. We're finally being able to be a voice in these ways, and people are like, huh, we've never heard it explained like that.

So it's been incredible down here in the Deep South. Very cool, man. That's really cool that you are working on your fourth year at CRBC.

So on May 31st, we were four years as a church plant.

That's awesome. So we just got y 'all by a little bit. Yes, y 'all are paving the way. Yeah, yeah.

So tonight's topic, controversial, yay, nay, maybe, shouldn't be.

Shouldn't be. Shouldn't be. Should a, well, let me put it the way that it is, right, is supporting a pastor the role of the local church.

So after I had made that topic, Brayden sent some other names of the topics that I was like, man, crap,

I already made it. Brayden, do you remember some of those names that you sent?

Oh, yeah. A muzzled ox, the threshing floor, things along those lines.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, just having fun with it. But yeah, I think it's something that needs to be discussed.

Tom brought it up. And so I was like, yeah, man, sounds like a good idea.

Let's let's go through it. And so what we want to do is we want to see not only our opinions on it, but I mean, because because that is definitely secondary or tertiary even to what the

Bible says. And I would say and then secondary would be what our confession says. So let's dive into it,

Tom. Yeah. Yeah. So this is something you wanted to talk about. Yeah. The reason

I want to talk about it. Well, I think it's a shame because there are many men who are shepherding a flock.

And Scripture says in 1st Timothy 5, 17, it says the elder who leads well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor at preaching the word and teaching.

And the subject really got got me going because two of my my friends here, you know, pastor churches.

And when I when I heard how much they were making,

I was like, how in the world this is this is criminal. It really is criminal because you guys are doing a performing a role, a

God given role to be able to shepherd the flock, to care for people's souls. And I can't think of a more a more needed job, a more worthy job, a more noble job than that.

And the amount of time and I know for myself, my pastors will give you an example,

Michael Beck at Grace Bible Church in Birney. He works tirelessly.

He has he has his wife and they have they have 10 children and he's got 200 members or not members, but 200 attendees at the church.

And the amount of work he puts in for the sermons a week, probably 20, 30 hours there just just for one sermon.

That's not including equipping classes. That's not including counseling. That's not including all the books that he's reading for study.

It's it's it's it's a it's a tremendous amount of work. I mean, there's there's no off days.

There are no there are no rest times. I mean, you could get called in the middle of the night. You have to be there all the time.

So, yeah, he needs to be paying. He paid double. He needs to be compensated double.

And for people to make can't even make ends meet who are shepherding a flock like that is just it's just horrible.

So that's why I wanted to talk about it. And then there's other other topics I want to talk about as well. But that kind of leads us in there.

Very cool. Jeremiah, do you have a position on this? I mean, so you are a church.

You know, you're part of a church plant. You're three, three and a half years before September.

What's your view on this? I had my fingers crossed. I was like, I hope me and Tom are on the same side of this.

And we are. It's hard to argue with Tom, right? And, you know, it feels a little bit bad because I'd never want to come across self -serving.

But like Tom did, we go to a passage in First Timothy, Chapter five. And this is why

I try to tell people special. So just to be transparent with you all, twelve five pays me part time.

And I'm one of the elders that labors constantly in the preaching and teaching.

And my heart to twelve five has has been if we look at First Timothy five, this should be the desire of a healthy church.

Right. So I don't want to pay me full time before the time is right.

But that should be the aim of their heart to take care of their under shepherds that labor in these things relentlessly.

And so what I've told my church body, because they are we're always talking about the budget.

We're always they're always saying kind things to me. They take care of my family and I'm the one that's told them, hey, let's wait until God's providence.

The door opens to where the budget makes sense to do that. Because in the meantime, I don't mind to build tents.

And so my full time job is a hospice chaplain. And yeah, I work grueling days and all that.

And I don't want sympathy from people. But my heart is that one day God opens that door to be full time at twelve five church.

My church family knows that. And we're always talking about what that looks like. And the apologetics ministry has been able to bring in some other monies.

And, you know, I'm just what do we say, Jeffrey? It's just stokes in the fire. Like I can trust

God. I want I want my energies just to be poured out for the kingdom of God. And so I'm really trusting him with that.

But full circle, healthy church should be striving to take care of their under shepherds.

Yeah. So what do you do when you have. Would you say that it is a if it's a burden for Christians to attend a church and and they're not they're not paying their their their shepherd adequately?

Is that definitely a mark of an unhealthy church? Oh, yes. I mean, it's it's wrong.

Yeah, it's unhealthy. And it more than likely stems from sin.

You know what I mean? And I don't want to just broad blanket all the church. Because you got some church plants that that can't yet, but they're striving to.

Right. So if you have a church that's not paying their pastors well, if they look at it as, hey, your duty is really just working one day a week.

And I mean, there's other foundational problems going on because you read the text.

I mean, right. Worthy of double honor. I mean, don't let them have to worry about their financial situation so they can spend more time laboring and preaching and teaching.

Yeah. So one of the things I was I wanted to touch on here in verse 17, it says the elders who lead well.

And one of the things if we expect the shepherds to lead well, they're going to have to spend some time in their job, aren't they?

They're going to have to spend some time in the scriptures. They're going to have to spend their time discipling the people in their church.

And so when an elder, when a pastor is being taken away from opportunity to immerse himself in the scriptures, to immerse himself in the body whom he's shepherding, it's hard to do it well.

And I'm going to use you, Jeff, because you're here and I can see you. And I don't see anybody else besides Jeremiah.

But you have the picture of his mustache, right? Yeah, yeah. We'll go there.

And a bear. Just think of me. But Jeffrey, every time, we spend a lot of time with each other throughout the day.

And the man gets up in the morning and he's working on Bibles. That's what he does all day.

And then, you know, hey, we want to get on the phone. We want to talk. And we do. But the rest of the time is for his family and study.

And from 7 o 'clock in the morning to 12 o 'clock at night, I mean, it's how do you sustain that?

And it's because he has to provide for his family to be able to live. And at the same time, he has a church that he has to shepherd.

And it's a tall order, man. It's a special order. It has to be, you know,

God has to only give that grace. That's the only way that I could imagine doing it.

Yeah. So for me personally, so again, so we just came up on our fourth year as a church plant.

So, I mean, so we are, you know, relatively small, right?

It is starting to grow. For the most part, we do good paying our bills.

You're talking about the church or you? Yeah, I mean, at the church, right? Yeah. So our bills run a little bit over $2 ,000 a month and stuff like that.

So that's rent, lights, water, so on and so forth. We have gas heat, so we have to pay for the gas and stuff like that.

And so it's probably about $2 ,400 a month. The building is like $1 ,500 a month.

We got a really good deal on it, actually. And so the church got to where they could pay me $700 a month before we got this building.

And I opted out of receiving that payment so that we could afford the building. And so that was, you know, they would have been paying me the whole time $700 a month.

But I wanted to have a building instead of just having a building that we were renting for one day a week.

And so the last two months, they were able to give me $700. So in the last four years,

I've had four months of $700 in four months. But at the same time, so I do,

I work 45, 50 hours a week in the Bible rebinding. That's probably, if you know who

I am, that's probably what you know me from. You probably don't know me from doing theology or pastoring or anything like that.

It's more than likely it's just from doing the Bibles, right? I did a

Bible for a guy named James White. Some of y 'all might know him. And that put me on the map.

And so I'm known worldwide, actually, because of my Bible rebinding business.

And I'm blessed. And if that's what I have to do, as long as I live to provide for my family,

I'll do that. For those of y 'all know me, I've moved houses for a majority of my life, 25 years, a little over 25 years professionally.

And I'm no longer allowed to get on roofs because I got banal positional vertigo.

So I get dizzy all the time. And it's not good to be on a roof and be dizzy. And so the

Lord put me into the position to pastor. And so I took that on. And so the church that planted us were not able to help provide for us financially.

And so we come up on our fourth year. And come in this September, the church will vote to see whether or not they'll keep me as their pastor.

And if they do keep me, that'll be great. And at the same time, I'm not sure how many more years

I can keep up the pace because I am working 45, 50 hours a week.

I'm having to stay up till 12, sometimes 1 o 'clock in the morning to study. And I would be lying if I tell you that it was easy.

It's not. I just turned 44. I'm getting old. Whenever I bend over now,

I have to kick one of my legs out. I don't know if you're experiencing that, Jeremiah. But every time

I bend over, I have to kick a leg out. One day I'm going to trip somebody or kick somebody in the rear or something like that.

But, you know, like age is catching up with me. And I just don't know if the Lord doesn't grow our church to where they're able to financially support me.

I don't know how much longer I can keep doing it. I mean, I'm sure I got another four to eight years in me.

But as far as this being something that I do long term, I'm not 100 percent sure.

If the Lord keeps the church the size that it is and the money and what's coming in the way that it is, like this is not something

I'm going to be able to do, you know, 10, 20 years from now.

Do you guys think that it's a matter of the people in the church not being able to afford giving?

Or is it something deeper? Is it a matter of the heart? Do they really not know what's at stake?

Do they understand the amount of work that they're going through? Do they understand that the cup of coffee that's 20 bucks that you spend a week on a week will help your pastor if they were to give 20 bucks a week?

Because some people don't give at all. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I don't dabble into the financials.

I always say that the pastors need to stay away from the money and the honeys. That's kind of like a rule that I live by.

Stay away from the money. Right? Because that's what usually, you know, like if you go over the history of the church, it's usually the downfall of all ministers.

Right? And so, I mean, I do want to be able to do this full time.

I mean, how much more could I do if I was full time? And then Brayden was talking about this the other day.

Him and I, we work in order to pastor. Right. So Brayden's a fireman.

He works full time. And I do this. And Brayden, you can chime in about this.

But him and I, we work in order to pastor. And it's tough.

And we're trying to do big. At CRBC, we're trying to do big things as a small church.

We have these conferences and stuff like that. We're trying to do the work of an evangelist.

Again, I go out weekly or every two weeks. I go out and I do the work of an evangelist.

I don't feel like I'm called as an evangelist. Let me put that out there. But I go out and I do the work of evangelist.

I knock on doors. I stand on the streets, on the street corners. I proclaim the gospel. And I work.

I put about, I don't know, 12, 15, 20 hours a week in my study to prepare the message.

And it's tough. I'm not going to lie. It's absolutely tough. Brayden, we work to pastor.

What do you got to say? Yeah, I completely echo exactly what you just said on that. And I don't think that's something that people realize.

The desire and the want to do a lot more in ministry is being tamed by our work schedule.

It's being pulled back. It's not able to be done because there's just so much.

There's only so much workload that you can put on somebody's shoulders.

And while it's good to have broad shoulders, it's good to be stretched. It's good to work hard in those ways.

If a pastor, yeah, I would just say it's a challenge, right?

Like you said, we work so we can pastor. If I wasn't working,

I couldn't be pastoring. That's what it comes down to. When you think about the whole reason, in my opinion,

I'm curious about what you guys would say about it. But 1 Timothy 5, what we already read, verse 17 and 18, the elders who lead well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor at preaching the word and teaching.

For the scripture says, you shall not muzzle the ox while it is threshing, and the laborer is worthy of his wage.

So what would be the reason of allowing an ox not to be muzzled while it's threshing?

What is the picture that Paul is getting at with young Pastor Timothy? What is the purpose of a ox eating some of the produce that the farmer is going to be receiving from the work that this ox is putting in?

What is the purpose of that? I think the purpose of it is to nourish the oxen so it can keep on doing more work.

So it gathers more work. You think about the coffee shop analogy.

We put $20 in for coffee, and why do we do that? So we can get more energy, so we can do more work.

Yet we don't see that same principle when it comes to the person that's preaching. If we gave more towards them so that they weren't entangled in secular affairs, it would mean that they could perform more ministry and more work for the kingdom of God.

And I think that that's what's going on there in 1 Timothy 5. If you have an ox treading the grain,

I mean, if you have an ox working the field, but he's not able to partake in what's being done there, like treading the grain, he's going to fall over and die.

He's not going to be able to continue. So look at the job the ox is doing as well.

He's threshing the grain. If that ox had to do work elsewhere, he wouldn't be threshing the grain.

So that's my question. My question is, can a pastor, and hard question because you guys are bivocational, can you do two jobs full time well?

Can a person, it's not ideal, obviously. How much better would it be if you could devote all of your time to ministry,

I would think. So I guess the question is, can you do it well?

Two jobs well, working full time in each job. I'd be more than happy to say you can try, but no, you can't.

I think doing it well is, that's what you're doing, is you're threshing the floor.

And if you have something that's entangling you from being able to do that, you are not performing well.

You might be able to do it. You might be able to stretch thin enough on it, but it's going to burn you out. You are going to be that ox that falls over and dies eventually from it.

That's just how bivocational ministry typically goes. Yeah, I would echo that.

And I would just add, and y 'all probably heard me say this before, right now I'm not doing anything well.

I'm doing a lot of things, but I'm not doing anything well. Before I took on this pastor position,

I was the leading guy in Bible rebinding.

I was always, because there's a new rebinder, I think, every day.

And because of the work that I have done in the past, it has set a standard.

And so all these new guys, they've copied my work and they have caught up to my work.

But before I took on the rebinding, I was always innovating. I was always doing something new.

I was a step ahead of everyone. I'm no longer a step ahead of people because I don't have time to be a step ahead of people.

I was able to earn more money in rebinding because I was able to produce more work because I could work longer in the day and I would have the evenings to spend with my family.

Now I have to get off at a certain time. I get off at 4 and from 4 to 8,

I devote that to my family. And then from 8 to 12, sometimes 1 o 'clock in the morning,

I'm studying. There is no real transitional period from one thing to another.

When I get off work, I like to smoke a cigar. No, I can't do that because this is the time that I have with my family.

I'm not doing anything well. Even as I'm working, I'm having to listen to books on the subject that I'm going to be studying that night.

I have to listen to commentary during the day so I can prepare myself for the night.

As I'm hanging out with my family, I got the work that I needed to do today that I failed and didn't get done.

I got these Bible verses in my head and I'm trying to contemplate. I'm trying to hang out with my family.

The whole time, I got all this other crap in my head. When I get into the pulpit, I always feel inadequate because I know that I could have studied more, done more, said something better.

I do not feel like I did anything well. If you ask my family, they'll probably agree with me.

Let me be really transparent with you. We were making, before I started pastoring, we were making way over $50 ,000 a year.

I think it was like $50 ,000 - $55 ,000 a year. We're under, we're about $45 ,000 a year right now.

We've lost a lot of money since I took on the pastor's position. What about you,

Jeremiah? I'm assuming you mentioned healthy church. What does a healthy church, how do they encourage the members of the church?

What do they preach? What do they say to encourage members to make sure that the pastors are taken care of?

Is it a hard subject? I mean, can you just say, hey guys, I'm not making them up. Pick it up.

Pick up the giving. You got to communicate with the people. It is a tough subject, but Jesus throughout the gospel spoke so much about money, being good stewards of what

God has given us. We are men of conviction. I have family and friends that for the life of them say,

Jeremiah, why do you not go to a church that you could be the senior pastor and get well over $100 ,000.

You can preach. You know how to be dynamic and all these things. I said, I'm not about to put myself in an unhealthy church atmosphere that do not understand systematic biblical theology, much less the sovereignty of God and the doctrines of love, and then have to slowly take a

Southern Baptist church to have a lofty view of God, only to get people mad to divide the church, and my family is suffering.

No, I'm not going to do that. We are men of conviction, but that comes at a cost a lot of times.

In Jonesboro, Arkansas, I'll be honest, I was about to move. I was wanting to go to seminary, things like that, and God's providence, he brought into my life,

Pastor Nathan Hargrave, we pastor now, but we served at a different church, unhealthy, tons of problems, unrepentant sin, and the

Lord laid on his heart to plant. We were talking about this, and like I said, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, evangelical churches mixed in with Church of Christ, not evangelical, but they're kind of all scattered, and no healthy churches.

Not that I can see, and that's why we planted in Jonesboro a city of churches.

People say, why? I'm like, because we want a gospel atmosphere, gospel culture, meaning that we have orthodoxy, so we can have a proper orthopraxy.

What does that look like, your city of churches? What is that? Tell us about that. Tom, we broke all the rules for church planting, meaning we planted in 2020 during the

COVID, so churches were shutting down, and we were like, the time is nigh.

So you got to think, Pastor Nathan, his family, he has four kids, and obviously his wife, and so me and my wife, we were just me and her at the time before, baby

JJ. So we church planted during COVID. That was strike number one against us.

We planted with no families other than our own, and we had a $0 budget, so big no -nos, but God was so gracious in all that.

Pastor Nathan is one of the hardest working men I've ever seen, and I will say, COVID, he says stripped him of 20 years.

I mean, we didn't know if he was going to make it through. It hit him really bad, and you got to think we were just praying, and trusting in the

Lord, and so Nathan used to do the work of 10 men by himself, just grew up as a carpenter building furniture, and all these things, and you talk about trial through fire.

So I'm just saying, even the church planting trial fire, I tell people, I can tell you what I observed, but it can't be replicated.

You know what I mean? There's something to be said about faithfulness in there. Oh my goodness, Tom. He is faithful, even when we are faithless.

That's right. And I can remember early on, God was always bringing families coming to visit.

We started in a living room of Nathan's house, but it wasn't.

Eight months into it, his family was able to move onto a property with a shed, and we called it the

Holy Shed. That's where we had church. If you look at 12 Five's website,

Facebook page, you'll see old pictures. Now, we've transformed the insight. Gospel culture means a culture of hospitality.

So yeah, we saw a big metal shed when people would drive up on the private property, but insight, just hospitality.

In the early years, Tom, this is important. I would encourage you all to think about this for y 'all's churches. We do something after every, so most services end with the sermon preached.

Ours continues on into koinonia, a meal, a meal of a love feast.

We call it koinonia feast. And in the early stages of 12 Five, we had

Spaghetti Sunday, every Sunday. There's some members in the church that remember that, and they were sick of spaghetti.

We'd have it every Sunday. But we believed in sharing a meal together, building relationships.

And so now we have over 100 people for our fellowship meals, and it's all home -cooked meals.

And you just see long -lasting relationships being built before your very eyes.

And so Tom, guess what we do after our koinonia feast? Go back to the Bible. We do a sermon

Q &A, sermon discussion. Oh, cool. And we have, that's a part of our service.

We still have not read the benediction. So anyway, God's faithfulness.

And so I want, Jeff, I want to let you know, I feel your pain.

I delivered mattresses while working for the church. I mean, I was a mattress delivery and manager of the warehouse for 11 years as I started ministry, because what y 'all said, you and Brayden, that I worked so I could pastor.

I'm so glad I know y 'all, because I feel that. And delivering mattresses was starting to get too much to also pastor well.

And so at least with hospice, it wears on me. I mean, I'm literally around death every day and I get to preach the gospel and counsel people.

But I mean, from eight to four, I'm just locked in that world, but trying to think about what

I'm gonna teach on Wednesday, sermon preparation, apologetic stuff, trying to love my wife and son well.

And you can't, you really do feel like you're being pulled in so many different directions.

And maybe y 'all are like this. It's really hard to give 100 % of anything whenever you got so many things going on.

Jeff rebuked me for this, but what I've had to lean into and trust the

Lord. So like I teach every Wednesday and I'm teaching through Acts. I do different, I'll go to the adult class and teach some type of theology.

We just wrapped up the systematic theology and I'll come over there for hard topics. But I try to listen to sermons on times two speed.

I have reading programs that I can crank up to times six, but I have to be so innovative being in the truck.

I got these aftershocks, like kind of like you do that lets me listen. But when I teach,

I don't have the notes like I would like, and I just trust the Lord with it. And I'm always fighting that internal battle of like, man,

I felt like I was missing something. Yeah. Yeah. That's me every week, man. I mean, so our church is a lot like yours.

We have a meal after every service, right? Acts 2 42, they devoted themselves to the teachings of the apostles, the breaking of breads.

We have the Lord's supper every week. And we also have a meal directly after. We do not have a Q and A afterwards.

Our meal time, like it's a long time. And then, but around the table, we do a lot of discussion and I do a lot of counseling during that time and stuff like that.

Now, what scares me is that you say that you have around 100 people coming and you're still not being able to be paid full time.

Okay. Like I don't have anywhere near that. So here's a little bit more details to that.

So Pastor Nathan is full time. I don't remember what he makes, but I think it's probably around 35 to 40.

And even though we're having over 100 people, and I say over 100 people, I know one

Sunday, it was incredible. We had 151 with 60 guests. So you got to think

Jonesboro is a city of churches and we're actually in it because we're no longer in the holy shed. We leased out a restaurant building for five years and we've just absolutely transformed it.

You can look it up on our website. It's incredible. I'm just saying how that came about the hand of God. So we have about 90, 85 members.

And we're getting ready to have a, we call it a family meeting, but it'll be one of, hey, here are our bills.

Here's what's coming in and it's got to change. So I say that from a place of love for anybody that watches that and the

Lord is going to take care of us and we're striving to be good stewards of our money. There's three elders. So Nathan is full time, but to me, he's still not in the category of double honors like we're talking about.

Another elder that serves with us, he's retired. So he's just able to spend time with the body and all the stuff.

And right now I am part time in my conviction. I know Jeff's not able to hear this Tom and Braden, but Nathan is the primary preacher at 12 .5

and he wants me to preach so much more. And I told him I'd want to, I just don't know how I can pull it off.

You know what I mean? As far as your time goes, you mean? As far as my time goes, because June 30th is when

I'm preaching. I need these three weeks to prepare for a sermon because of everything else going on in my life.

What I was saying, Jeff, is... Well, I heard you. I just gotta go tell my kid to go to bed.

Gotcha. So Jeff, to your point, I think something does need to change at church, but it's right around the corner.

And it'll be a good, loving meeting, but to speak clearly about the finances.

And I'm younger than you. You see, I thought you were the primary pastor. I thought that you did the majority of the preaching.

Right. Honestly, I don't know how y 'all do it. Dude, I'm telling you,

I stay up till way later than nine. Braden... Yeah, these guys get mad at me because sometimes

I'm up on Saturday, although we'll go on into Sunday morning and I'm still getting my sermon prep done because it's rough.

Yeah, that's me too. Well, and so I'm thankful to hear, though, that your primary pastor, even though maybe he's not to where he needs to be, at least he is full -time in that way.

That's wonderful. He says, so the 1689, 2610, it says, the work of pastor is to give constant attention to the service of Christ in his churches, in the ministry of the word and prayer.

They are to watch over the souls of church members of those who meet and give, of those who must give an account.

Sorry, it's getting dark out here in Idaho. You guys can't see me. It's been nice being able to pick my nose. So it says they must, they are to watch over the souls of the church members.

He ruined it. As those who must give an account to Christ. The churches to whom they minister must not only give them all due respect, but also must share with them for all their good things, according to their ability, they must do this.

So the next page, so pastors may have a comfortable living without having to be entangled in secular matters.

And so they can show hospitality to others. This is required by the law of nature and by the explicit command of our

Lord Jesus, who has ordained, who has ordained that those who preach the gospel should earn their living by the gospel.

And so like, just to give you an example today. So I got off of work yesterday. I got off work this morning at eight.

So I got off work this morning. I worked 24 hours yesterday, got home. I take a nap, right?

People are over at the church doing VBS stuff and I want to be over there to help them, right? But I'm recovering from working and being woken up throughout the middle of the night so that I can then work the past.

Like people don't realize how much a secular job pulls you away from being able to do that, which others are doing in a full -time capacity and are still seeing how difficult and challenging those things are.

The amount of stress and pull from different, to be able to counsel and minister and to go and do checking in on people at their houses and pray with people and all those kinds of things, full -time jobs, bivocational, you just cannot hit those marks.

Preachers only work one day a week. Yeah, that's what they say. Is my camera blurry to y 'all?

Just put a picture of a bear on the screen. I'm going to try to use a glass wipe to clean it, man.

I'm sorry. So I have a question for you guys. So all of you guys had said that you work so you can do ministry.

At one point in time, you've done that too, Jeremiah. And what about the guys who recently, and this is a post

I recently made on Facebook, and it's regarding - You're going to get us in trouble. Yeah, we're going to do it.

We're going there. This is open -air theology. This is open -air theology. I was actually thinking about this yesterday.

Before you get into it, and I've actually thought about this years ago about other topics. And so this is going to bring up a lot of stuff.

Okay, well, that's good. So you guys said, again, you guys are pastors of a church. You guys are shepherding a church.

You're shepherding the people, caring after the souls. You're counseling. You're diving into the scriptures.

You're sharing the scriptures. You're expositing the scriptures. You're praying with the people. You're doing all this work weekly.

And you work so you can do that ministry. What about the street preachers? And I'm not going to name them by name yet, but there's going to come a time

I'm going to name them by name if they don't stop it. They go out there, and they're doing ministry, and they don't work.

But they're asking for donations. These are people not shepherding the flock.

These are people who do what I do, who go out on the street corners, and they share the gospel. Noble work needs to be done.

We need to go out there, and we need more people to do it. But some of these guys, they're not working at all, no working.

They have families. They have rent to pay. They have children. And they're going out.

They've chosen, and I think all of them have had their church blessing to go out and street preach.

But these guys are going out and choosing to do street preaching full time, and they're asking you to donate to them.

And one guy has actually asked for $3 ,500 a month. Please donate so I can feed my kids, so I can feed my family, so I could put food on the table, so I could pay my rent to keep me on the street corner.

Is that the route? That doesn't sound like the route you guys went. What do you guys think about this?

So there is movements out there that people are trying.

There's classes that you can take to where they teach you how to raise money in situations like that.

And so I'm going to come at it from the church should do better.

Also, the individual should do better. All right, so let's just look at the individual first.

I would say that if you do not work, you're worse than an unbeliever.

That's what the Bible says, right? If you cannot provide for your own household, you're worse than an unbeliever.

And I really don't want to piss people off, but I guess it is what it is.

So I was a part of a class one time where they were trying to get me to do that sort of thing, right, that was teaching you how to go about raising money.

And I think that I have teeter -tottered on this, right, because I know people who do it well.

I also know people that don't do it well, where they're just constantly contacting people.

People contact me. I get messages quite often of people asking me to support their street ministry.

And it's like, dude, I work a full -time job. I pastor a church, and I do street ministry. And the money that I receive is from my full -time job.

So let's chill out, right? Yeah, yeah. So I'm like, let's chill out on asking me for money when it comes to that, right?

But the second thing is not everyone is called to that work financially.

And this is where I would say the problem is with the church. You see, especially among Baptist churches,

I don't know about Presbyterians, but for the most part, Reformed Baptist and Baptist churches, they do not recognize the office of an evangelist, right?

And so I would say that the church needs to recognize the office of an evangelist, and they need to have an evangelist.

And if he is doing that full -time, he needs to be, like the pastor, needs to be supported by the church.

The evangelist needs to be supported by the church. But I would say that the evangelist being supported is secondary to the pastor.

Absolutely. Being supported. And so I would say that if someone is doing the work of an evangelist, they feel like they're called to this field, they need to be supported by their own church.

If they feel like that's their call, they do not need to go out and ask other people, especially don't ask anyone from my church, all right?

Because here's the thing, whenever our church first planted, and this is what makes me respect Paul Washer so much.

I called Paul Washer trying to get the, yeah. So I called Paul Washer trying to get the information because our church was wanting to give what we could to a mission, right?

An overseas mission. And heart cry, in my opinion, is the best one that you can give to.

And Paul asked me, he said, Jeff, you're the pastor, correct? And I said, yes, sir. He says, how much are they paying you a month?

And I said, oh, they're not able to pay me at the moment. He says, listen, you are their first missionary.

If they cannot pay you, they should not be given to anyone.

And heart cry will not accept money from a church that's unable to pay their pastor.

And you want to talk about respect. That's right. And so I would just say that if they feel called to the ministry, they need to collect money from their own church.

They do not need to be calling around asking people for money. That's right. Because like you said, my obligation is to Grace Bible Church.

I'm a member of Grace Bible Church. Now, if I'm giving faithfully to my church and then maybe have some extra to give somewhere else, but not to deduct it from where I'm giving of my own church,

I'm responsible. I'm called to support my pastor.

I'm called to support and help pay and fund the building of my own local church before I contribute to any other ministry.

So these guys that are going out, like you said, Jeff, are asking members of other churches to help them live, to put food on their table.

When and if their church did send them out, they should ask their church to, you know, if they're sending them out to full time, man, their church is responsible for feeding them and taking care of them.

What do you think, Brayden? Your bare face is silent. Yeah, no, I definitely agree.

It should be done in the confines of the church. The issue that I've seen with a lot of these kind of evangelists, and I'm not even just going to say evangelists.

Where my mind went was several years ago. I remember seeing this on online ministries, just asking people for money, nonstop.

And then from other ministry agencies, and then I was getting emails and all this kind of stuff, asking for money.

And from guys that I didn't even meet in person, people that just found me online and were sending me this type of stuff.

And a lot of it, I think, yeah, it should be done. And the ministry should flow from the church.

It shouldn't be a solo thing that you're just doing over here and trying to make it work.

It should be done through the church. It should be blessed by the church. The church should be praying for the pastor.

There should be a pastor or a council of elders that are looking over that ministry and that function as they are the ones that care for your soul and are holding you accountable for those things.

So if you have people that are just going off doing their own thing and trying to make a living off of it, that have no oversight, no accountability, that's just dangerous.

I remember three years ago, Jeff, was it three years ago, in the preaching Facebook group that you started, don't you remember there was a guy that was saying that, hey, my family and I were out in our car.

God has called us to do evangelism, and we are struggling to eat, and we're trying to get food right now.

And we said that same thing. A person that's unwilling to work is worse than an unbeliever.

Yeah, I ended up removing him from the group. You remember that though? Yeah, absolutely.

I remember because I had some private conversations with him, and he says, I just don't understand. And I said, no,

I understand that you're lazy, and you're not taking care of your wife and kid. He had his wife and kid living in the back of a car.

Yeah. Because he didn't feel called to do a 9 to 5. He felt called to ministry. And I said, well, has

God put you in a ministry that provides for you? No. I said, then God hasn't put you in that ministry.

Exactly. That's right. I said, in my opinion, you have abandoned your family, and your wife biblically could divorce you.

Right. Well, you know, and also, when you think about the street preachers that are out there,

I mean, you guys made it clear that we shouldn't be going solo. We need to be held accountable to the elders that are looking over our souls, making sure that we're doing it right.

So there are people. These people, I think, some of these guys that I'm thinking of, actually have the approval of their local church to go out and preach, yet don't have a job.

So somebody needs to do their job holding them accountable to work, I'm thinking, in order to do that.

I mean, some of them are even asking, you know, they want to go open -air preach in Scotland.

It's like, wait a minute. You're asking for money to go to Scotland. I want to go to Hawaii, guys.

So if anybody wants to send me, I'll be happy to take my speaker along and open -air preach out there. I feel like I would have less questions for the evangelist in that situation as I would for the pastor.

As the pastor telling them, hey, we can't send you, but you just go and raise your own funds.

How is that happening right there to be that?

Knowing he's not working. Yeah. Yeah, I would call them to repent and get a job.

I mean, listen, y 'all know me, right? I mean, somewhat, right? I just don't mix words.

Hallelujah. Hollaback. Hollaback, right? Like they would hear from me hard, especially if I was shepherding them, right?

No, you get a job and provide for your family or you're worse than an unbeliever.

Don't tell me you believe in Christ. Like I go back to that guy, he had his wife out living in the car.

Don't tell me you believe in Christ and your wife and your kid are in the backseat of your car asleep because you don't want to get a job.

That makes me get into some streets, right? Like I just get upset. And so pastors, that's what

I'm saying. These guys are doing this because they feel called to the ministry and because pastors are not telling them how it is.

That's right. A pastor needs to not worry about it. That person is going to leave the church. He needs to say, look, you're in the wrong.

You're in sin. You need to repent or we're going to exercise church discipline.

Yeah, it's definitely something that needs to be repented from. And again, there is a work and there are people who are out there street preaching and they do it well, but that's not the point.

The point is you need to take care of your family first. So, yeah, you know, one thing

I like about open air theology is that we say what you're thinking.

And if you're not thinking what we're saying, repent. Well, I was going to hop in there a little bit because I was thinking back to Ephesians 4 where primary thrust in Ephesians is addressing the ecclesia.

And verse 11, Christ is the gift giver, gave to the church, the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers.

So there's a connection there to equip the saints for the work of ministry for the building up of the body of Christ.

Real interesting. You know, the closest one, I think, well, I say within our leadership, especially at Twelve Five, but I would be the closest to the evangelist with an apologetics ministry, engaging the community, having a heart for all that.

But what I love about you fellows talking about, I mean, I got to provide for my family well, provide protection.

And we're men. We're called to stand flat -footed and work from the sweat of our brow and,

I mean, sun up to sun down. I mean, everything that you're saying, like, about the men that want to preach on the street corner, that bothers me.

Trust me, I want to engage with the culture too. I want to do these things, but I'm not going to neglect my family because of what

Christ has called us to. And we're quoting good verses that basically are saying, you're worse than a pagan.

Pagans know how to take care of their family to some degree. And I think it's first Thessalonians, but it talks about, you don't work, you don't eat.

And you don't want to end up in a Ravi Zachariah situation where you're kind of a rogue evangelist, a rogue apologist.

No, it has to be in and through the local body. And I really think

Dr. James White has always emphasized that point. And so as I've, over the years, got intrigued into apologetics,

I'm watching not only his ministry, but I don't know y 'all's thoughts, but I've grown up watching

Todd Friel with Wretched Radio. And he's always pushed the local church.

And I've watched him evangelize students on college campuses. I've seen him set up a microphone, like Ray Comfort style.

Right, Jeff? Encouraging people to interact with them.

But he's got his own parachurch ministry. He's laboring, and I think he's going about raising support the right way.

You know what I mean? And there's no doubt in my mind that he would work a job to pay for his family. And I know he has the oversight of his pastors in his church.

So I'm encouraged by Ray Comfort. I'm encouraged by Todd Friel and ministries like that, that are doing the work of an evangelist.

So that's my heart. When I do apologetic stuff, when I'm speaking at the conference,

I'm firstly thinking about 12 Five Church. I have them in mind when I'm preaching, when

I'm debating, whether I'm out evangelizing. I'm an extension of 12

Five. I mean, I know I'm an extension of Christ. But I have them. And so that's why, in turn, they actually provide funds and resources for me to go out exactly what we're all talking about.

Yeah, exactly. You know, that's one of the things when we're out. We just got through doing a Pride Walk ministry on the streets.

And we all gathered together. There were about eight. Well, there were seven men and my wife.

And we had gone out. And, yes, just what you said, Jeremiah. I mean, yes, we're going out to represent Christ. But we're also going out to represent

Grace Bible Church of Bernie, Texas. And when we go out there, we don't want to do anything to shame our church.

We don't want to do anything to shame Christ. We want to be loving and show that we don't respond the same way the world responds.

But we magnify Christ. And we're just telling people we love them. You know, there's hope in Christ.

You know, repent of your sins. Lay down your sins at the cross and follow Christ. And that's what we want to do.

We want to make much of Christ in the ministry. And I think it's a shame when people do that.

But now they're going, you know what? But I've not provided for my family. Send me $100. Send me $3 ,500.

That's not being above approach when you go out. So let's just dive in real quick to what the 1680.

I mean, I know Brayden read it. But let's talk about exactly what it's saying. And then we can look at some scriptures.

I'm trying to see if. Okay, Brayden said he cannot get back on. His camera just pooped out on him.

Okay. Let me tell him to try his phone. Yeah, for real. Yeah.

So do y 'all have y 'all 1689? No, it's. Well, that's fine.

I can read here. But it's just easier for you to follow along and have that conversation.

Pull it up on my second computer. I got the founders. I'm reading from the founders. If y 'all got the old

English, I can read from that as well. What page was it on? So it's chapter 26.

So if you're in that, the one that you got for everybody, I don't have it on me.

I got the little one. I keep my monitor from founders. Okay. 26.

What? 2610 is where it speaks about all of chapter 26 is

God. Right. Yeah. So it says the work of a pastor is to give constant attention to the service of Christ in his church and in his ministry of the word and of prayer.

Now, let me ask you all this. Can this be done if a man is being pulled from every direction?

The work of a pastor is to constantly attend the service of Christ in his churches, the ministry of the word and prayer, to watch over their soul.

Can it be done well? Yeah. Can this be done well? I'm going to tell you, if it can be,

I have failed. Well, so not in our own efforts, but I think at the same time, kind of like Jeremiah was saying, we're dependent on Christ.

And it's by the grace that he's given us to, you know, just the pure energy that you have.

That's a grace that God has given you to be able to endure that. And so is it ideal?

No. Is it doable by God's grace? Yes. Yeah. So let me say this.

So I've had a gentleman who was in the hospital for several weeks, and I was in such a bind that I could not take off work to go there and be with him.

Like literally, we would have lost our living space. Like we would have been on the streets if I had left to be with him.

That's tough. Yeah. You want to talk about feeling like a piece of crap?

That's what I felt like. Yeah. So I don't think in my position that I can do this well.

And this is why if the church said, Jeff, we were going to have to look for someone else, I wouldn't argue with them, and I would still be a member of that church.

At the same time, we serve a sovereign

God who is in control of all things. And regardless of the circumstances that we live in, we're called to respond like Christians.

We're called to be faithful. We're called to, in tough circumstances, be able to respond in a way that would be pleasing to Christ.

And you can't be two places at once. So God gives grace with that too,

Jeff. Oh, yeah. Trust me. I know. I 100 % know. But we're just talking about can the pastor who is unable to devote himself to this.

Because it's going to tell you, you know, at 20, how he's able to devote himself to this first section and it names off.

Right. It says they are to watch over the souls of the church members as those who must give an account to Christ.

All right. So I'm called to watch over the souls of the church members at CRBC.

Because when I die, I'm going to have to not only give an account of my life. Right.

You know, for all those that want to become teachers, don't just quickly insert yourself in this because we get a stricter judgment.

Right? Right. All right. So I'm going to have to not only stand before God on my own of what

I've done, but also of the church members.

Have I shepherded their souls? Right. I'm going to have to give an account to this. All right.

Can't can with that first section, that second section be done well? If this isn't done, what

Braden was focusing on earlier, the churches to whom they minister must not only give them all due respect, but they also must share with them from all their good things according to their ability.

Now, at this time, when this this 1689 and stuff like that was was being produced.

The financial situations that we have now are different. Right. Pastors were paid in grain.

They were paid in wine. They were paid in alcohol, like whatever it is that the member of their flock did.

Right. If you had a guy that that grew tomatoes, that was his payment.

But that's what he gave to the pastor. Tomatoes. You see what I'm saying?

So they had to, you know. All right now. Can what took place in that first portion of that sentence, can they do those things if they're not being provided for by the church?

And I would say they can't that they can do them, but they're not going to be able to do it well.

They're not going to be able to do it to to the same attention that the scriptures in the 1689 calls for us to do.

Yeah. And then it says they must do this so their pastor may have a comfortable living without having to be entangled in secular matters.

Jeremiah, would you say that your job? Because like in one sense.

So so my job isn't a secular job. I read behind Bibles.

Sure. I have to deal with Christians. Yeah. Would you say that your job is a secular job?

One hundred percent. And it it weighs on my soul. Now, with the secular job,

I get opportunities to love on people, to minister to them. But you got to think

I have all of these, quote unquote, restrictions where I'm supposed to be like a spiritual counselor.

Well, sorry, I'm going to share the gospel. I'm going to pray with people. I'm going to definitely flirt that line.

Now, the thing is, I express to people I am a pastor and man, you can just tell people that they really are glad to hear that.

You know, whether I'm dealing with someone that's in the last days of life or a family that's hurting, they want to talk to somebody like that.

It is secular and it's not my calling. My calling is to be with the people of God day in and day out, laboring in the things of the ecclesia more so than what a

Christian is called to do. Like, this is what I desire to be. As we look at First Timothy chapter three, there there is you must be called by God.

There must be an internal desire, but you must aspire. Right. There must be tangible, observable disciplines in your life.

And so that's where my that's where I'm at. And I love what Tom said earlier of we are in less than ideal situations.

But if we are called by God and since he is faithful, he's going to provide those means.

Now, you said something, Jeff. You know, you may have another good five to eight years.

My encouragement to you is lean into the continue throwing those stokes in the fire. And if we are shepherding our people faithfully as well as we can, and I would say expositing the word, training them up in righteousness, discipling them, looking at context.

Well, we're eventually going to land in First Timothy chapter five. You know what I mean? And that's where you have those clear conversations with.

Yes, you are to give according to your hearts, according to your heart before God. But we got to pay bills.

Right. This is communicating with with your people. So those are some of my thoughts,

I guess, after listening to y 'all kind of talk. It is absolutely hard to work a secular job.

And I would still put Bible rebind. I mean, you're working a job outside of laboring just in the church, right?

Correct. So we're we're either going to burn out and kill over or we're going to just do an absolutely poor job of shepherding

God's sheep. Now, Tom, sorry, this way makes a good point. We serve a sovereign

God. He's going to meet us where he's at. He's going to we know the scripture seek first the kingdom of God and he is going to take care of us.

Yeah, it's like that situation I told you earlier. Right. I had that guy that was in the hospital and like literally like we would it got down to the point.

I mean, it doesn't always get to this point, but for some reason it did at that time. Like our bills were not getting paid.

And so I had to I had I had to work super extra hard because like it was just I can't remember exactly what happened.

It could have been during the time when my mouth surgery or whatever I was having, I had to miss some days because of it.

But but but it got bad. And so I had to you know, and so it was either it was either lose the house.

I didn't provide for my my home. So I'm worse than unbeliever or I wasn't able to go to do this part where where was it, you know, shepherding the souls of the members of my church during a tough time of him being in the hospital, so on and so forth.

Right. And so I had two things that I know that I'm called to do. And I had to choose one.

Right. And then in the one I don't you know,

I got to provide for my family. Right. Right. And so and so it's again, I I felt like a piece of crap.

But at the same time, you talk to someone that would say, listen, if I if this chair breaks right now and I fall in the floor,

I know that it was predetermined by God. Like I trust so in God's sovereignty.

But but that still doesn't make you not feel like a crap whenever situations like that happen.

Right. So I'm thinking in terms of evangelism, we're really trying. And matter of fact, we're doing well.

A lot of people are stepping up with evangelism at our church. And that's really good, man. Yeah, it's exciting.

But one of the common things is, you know, they don't feel like they feel like they're going to make a mistake.

Somebody's they're going to go talk to someone and they're not going to know what to say. And and this applies with this exact same thing, too.

You know, God ordains the means in which he's going to save people by using you as an instrument.

Every single one of us is called to go share the gospel. Everybody's equipped in a different way. But if he has chosen the youngest believer to go share what he knows to the best of his ability, you show up and God will will do the rest.

You communicate who Christ is. You communicate. You tell people about Jesus to the best of your ability.

And he's going to bless your faithfulness and going out in the same way, I think, in pastoring.

You know, this is this is the hand that God has dealt us right now. He's in control of all of it.

He's going to bless the faithfulness and doing doing ministry to the best of our ability and let

God handle the rest. And I think if we do that, we just trust God in all of it. So, yes, it's tough.

But yeah, first and foremost, we got to take care of our families. And that's why

I try to speak to people like there is a priority tree that we have to have.

Right. You know, like first things are first. Like when it comes to to love in our neighbor, our closest neighbor, me as a husband, my closest neighbors, my wife and my kids.

All right. My second neighbor is not my actual physical neighbor. It's my church.

That's right. And the members there. Right. I don't take food from my kids mouth and give it to my church, but nor do

I take the food from the church. If the members of my church need the food,

I don't take it away from them to give it to my physical neighbor. Right. So I got to make sure my house is provided for the church before I can actually do anything.

I give any kind of physical means to a an actual neighbor. And so and so you got to have a priority of first things first, wife, kids, my church and then the people in my surrounding neighborhood.

Right. If you get that backwards. Right. Hey, Jeremiah, look what

I got here. This is the dog. Oh, the dog. What's your dog's name?

This is Cricket. Cricket. We call her Freaky Do. Hey, that is as an awesome.

How long have you had? She she's I think she's two years, but we have

Goose who's who is seven years old. But we adopted him when he was four and he's huge.

This is yeah, she's a little bit smaller, but yeah, that's so cool. That's good stuff, man.

Jeremiah, it was great having you on, man. Worked out. I just finished a cup of coffee, too.

So now you're going to be up till I know. Well, thanks for letting me come on.

It's funny. I glanced the topic before I actually came on because I just saw that Jeff was going to be on.

And I was like, hey, I join you. He was like, sure, come on in. Come on in, boys. The water's fun. But when when we were taught, when when

I read it, I just thought, man, I hope we're on the same page, because my whole conviction is it's very, you know, the passage we're looking at.

It's very important that the church takes care of their pastors. Yeah, absolutely. So tell us about you're going to be heading a debate at the

Open Air Theology Conference on Pre -Education War. Yep. Any challenges going to go out live from Open Air Theology?

Hey, I've been I've sent out my second challenge today. The previous guy, he critiques all my videos.

Jeff told me, hey, let's find a church of Christ, because this will be an opportunity for people in Tennessee to come be a part of the church of Christ.

They believe a false gospel. They confuse the representation of baptism for the reality of the forgiveness of sins.

And so it conflates law and gospel. It conflates faith and works. So we're really wanting to have a church of Christ, Reformed Baptists debate, and the debate is on sanctification.

Beautiful doctrine, right? Yeah. And so once again, the church of Christ, they conflate just like Roman Catholics, sanctification and justification.

So what we're trying to get what I'm challenging people, especially I called out

Aaron Gallagher, Tom. So I did a debate with the church Christ month and a half ago at twelve five church.

And so this church Christ preacher drove from Texas to twelve five and I debated him at, you know, in our pulpit type thing.

And it was real respectful. But what I'm saying is so that that debate, you know, almost three hours long.

And so this Aaron Gallagher guy, and he's like one of the leading church of Christ apologists.

He did an eight and a half hour debate review of my. Wow. And he's reviewed a lot of my stuff ever since I was on cultish with Trey Fisher.

And so I was like, OK, Aaron Gallagher is the guy to come to Tullahoma debate me.

I just thought, how can you turn it down? It's so far in advance. Yeah. Wants no part of it. He just wants to stay in his little echo chamber podcast like,

OK, I thought he was serious. You know, come on, Aaron Gallagher. What's up with that? It's disappointing.

I thought it would be good. Like he's a kind, respectful guy. But yeah, he don't want this sauce,

I guess. So I just got done doing a live stream earlier today.

Call it challenging Johnny Robertson. I don't know a whole lot who that is, but I've had a ton of people say, hey, he's the guy.

He's a fiery church of Christ evangelist, however they they call it. So he's kind of an

OG is what I've been told. And his son is kind of following right in his footsteps. Caleb Robertson.

So I just sent the challenge out to either one of them. I mean, I kind of tongue in cheek said, if you want to both do it, that's fine, too.

I don't care. Just someone accept this. But I was like, you only have two weeks. And so I got a few other people in mind if they don't.

So I'm trying to get people two weeks at a time to think about it. But yeah, Jeff, we got to get we got to get this rolling, man.

So I was going to say, if you need me to, I'll contact some churches around here. But I mean, I don't know.

I had a church. I had a church of Christ comment on something I said on Facebook.

Not long ago. I can't remember exactly what it was. I think I just posted a verse or something concerning faith.

And he said, yeah, but after Jesus's resurrection, the Bible doesn't say believe it's, you know, yeah,

I put repent and believe or something like that. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel.

And he says he says after it says repent after the gospels, it's baptism.

And and I was like, you act like repent that that faith is not connected to repentance.

Right. And they're wrong. John the Baptist literally preached a baptism of repentance. Of repentance.

Yes. For the forgiveness of sins. Absolutely. They're in a pickle with a lot of that. And I'm I'm that guy that will lock himself in a dungeon and figure your position out the way you nuance it for a debate.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I challenge you. I said, listen, brother, we'd love to have you on open air theology and have a conversation with you because I put in that.

So, oh, CLC, we'd love to have you on. A lot of times they'll say, well, we're the churches of Christ.

We're not a denomination like you Baptist out there. We're Romans 16, 16 churches of Christ.

And I tongue in cheek always say, well, we're we're twelve five church where we come before y 'all.

Romans 12. That's not what that means. So I love it.

I've literally been studying for I don't know how many years it's been, but I've been studying the history of the

Campbellite restorationist movement. And when I was praying about apologetics, I started realizing there's not really any apologetics ministry geared specifically for evangelizing the church of Christ.

So that's kind of one of my that's my Nineveh, if you will. Like, I don't delight in that, but that's kind of what

God has called me to. And so Jeff and the past year and a half or preterism is another topic that's kind of been dumped in my lap with not a lot of strong resources.

So me and Dr. Frost have joined forces and, you know, who tagged me in a video today calling me out.

Davis, I was like, come on, really? I'll just. Yeah, I did it kind of in a nice, fun way.

But I'm like, dude, we we have a history, man, like you wanting to really open up these can of worms. Yeah, I love that.

I really do. Our last interaction together wasn't great.

I mean, it was still, you know, we didn't walk away calling each other names, but it wasn't as great as our other interactions.

And I revealed this to you earlier. So I used to at one time would say that I was a partial preterist.

And I do believe. Well, I do believe that if you're a true Christian, like you, you do hold to a partial preterist.

You are a partial preterist. But I think to hold to partial preterism as a foundation for interpreting the

Bible, I think the only thing that keeps you from being a full preterist, if that's your foundation, are the creeds and confessions.

And I can say that because it was the only thing that kept me in orthodoxy. I got a question for you,

Jeff. Did you ever flirt with the idea of kind of full preterism and all that leads to always?

No, no, no, no. I definitely I was like, man, this stuff just like because, again, I mentioned

Sam Frost and at that conference, full preterism or preterism period, it answers a lot of question and surface value.

Right. But the thing is, is is is that. Most I would say out of the

Bible, maybe I'm going to be generous. Well, let's say 25 percent of the scriptures can be answered at surface level and the rest of it.

And I'm being generous by giving it 25 and the rest of it. You have to really dig deep and allow the scriptures to interpret the scriptures.

Right. You have to understand the historical, you know, as a pastor, that's what we do. Right. Whenever we're preaching something, we need to know what was going on at that time.

Why did he say this? Right. Like we're talking about money tonight. Why did Paul use a what was it?

A donkey muzzling, you know, muzzling the donkey. Because of of things that were taking place at his time.

Right. And so you have to know the historical context, the context in order to interpret the proof text.

Right. Yeah. And in full preterism, a lot of times the answer is the proof text.

And so and so myself personally, and you've heard me say this on this channel before, my foundation of interpreting the scriptures is

Baptist covenant theology. And then whenever we get into the Book of Revelation, I would just add idealism to Baptist covenant theology.

And so and of course, when I come to something that I know it's a fulfillment, I have no problem with saying that it's a fulfillment.

But when it gets into those prophecies, I as as holding the Baptist covenant theology,

I see those prophecies, particularly speaking about 70 A .D. as a type, a shadow of what's going to be in our future.

Right. Everything that you can come to in scripture. And you really don't understand this until you dive into covenant theology.

Everything is a picture and there's something greater to come. Like I'm preaching through John chapter 11 this week, and we're going to look at how the resurrection of Lazarus was is a type of something greater coming in our future.

Lazarus died again. Yeah. Yeah. It was a type. And so the final resurrection is going to be the shadow.

I mean, the substance is always greater than the shadow. Right. Right. The anti type is greater than the type.

Yep. And so I just see those prophecies that a lot of old

Proterists hold to as as a type of God's judgment against those who are persecuting the church.

Of a future judgment when God judges those that are persecuting the church.

Something else. Tell me something about this. For whatever reason, somebody just hook, line, sinker goes the full

Proterist route. They absolutely miss the most common sense thing given to us about we feel the hurts and pains, suffering, evil, death in this world.

And they get so committed to their system. They don't care about those things anymore. They don't care about scripture addressing those.

And it gets brushed off as spiritual. And to me, that's one of the biggest things that make me sad about full

Preterist. Is it no longer provides an apologetic for why those things happen?

Because it's spiritual. Right. It wasn't talking about your literal suffering, heartache, hurt.

The death is spiritual. And and then it strips our blessed hope.

We're longing to be with Christ face to face because they're saying that already happened. So, Jeff, even though they will come up with some hard questions and it's usually obscure things.

And you're just like, wow, you really got to kind of figure out more of what full Preterist even means to understand some of their questions.

But I just I have such a strong confidence that the scripture is so clear that all the saints have been longing for the second return of Christ and to restore all things.

Full Preterism says this is the new heavens, a new new new earth, fully consummated right now.

And I just everything in us, those that are trusting Christ know that that's so false.

And so that's why the past year and a half I've been studying. That's why you heard me kind of give a full blown presentation from First Corinthians 15.

They cannot argue with Paul developing his case that Jesus is the first type.

How did he die? That's the death that he has in view, a physical death. How was his resurrection?

It's physical. It's bodily. That's the first fruits. That's the first type of what we can look forward to.

You are also quoting the destruction of the temple. Of course it is because Hebrew says that we've tasted of the powers of the age to come.

I think it's Geoffrey Johnson and his five points of all millennialism. I love Geoffrey Johnson, man.

That's one of the most brilliant, humble men I've ever had the pleasure of getting to talk to.

Told him would love to have him come preach at 12 .5. He says, oh, yeah, because he's just a couple hours away from Johnsonville.

He described the day of the Lord in two phases, first coming. And in that first coming, so many things, picturing of what the second part of the day of the

Lord is going to look like in its totality. Anyway, so I'm with you all. I just I think about how eschatology does matter.

Truth matters. And there's not a lot of people that are able to talk with full predators, those that have just bought into it, hook, line, sinker.

And so I am trying to be a type of voice in that world, even though I'm still trying to work through my eschatology, learning a lot.

Left the the premill dispensation world. Love John MacArthur, still recommend his stuff.

And I just say we are all male, correct? All male idealist is the thing that makes the most sense to me.

And I will say this, Jeff. All male idealist packs the hardest punch against full predators.

And better than post mill, better than like I've just been able to kind of objectively watch why that is the case.

The already not yet scheme. Listen, Jeremiah, let me challenge you.

You need to add three more words into that. Baptist covenant, theology,

Baptist covenant, theology. The reason why the 1689 federalist position is so important is because full preterism will actually use covenantal language.

Oh, yeah, I know. I know. But I'm with you is we don't let them hijack those terms.

And so that's another way to just continue to chip away. And actually, I think destroyful preterism is just full covenant theology.

Coming to the understanding of Baptist covenant, theology, 1689 federalism. And like it changed everything for me because I'm telling you the truth.

Listen, if it wasn't for the creeds and confessions, I would be a full preterist right now.

Wow. Jeff Durbin almost got roped into it. Well, I love

Jeff Durbin, but I think he takes it a little too far. I do not think that preterism of any sort should be a foundation of you interpreting the scripture.

Now, should you recognize something that's happened in the past? Yeah. And you also need to recognize and you also need to look at it from a

Baptist covenant standpoint. Right. Is this something that's pointing to a greater fulfillment?

Like I would even say, OK, like. The prophecies of the first coming of Jesus.

That ended. He's not. There is no more first coming. First birth.

Having once. Yeah. Yeah. That's only going to happen once. Right. But when you get into something that seems to have a future type for us, such as Lazarus being raised from the dead, that is a type of something that's going to happen.

Right. And they can't see that. Right. So when they get to to to John chapter 11,

Lazarus was raised bodily. And they're saying that our resurrection is future.

Right. I mean, the spiritual. So the the antitypes not greater than the time. Right. And so when you come to these scriptures and that's why you really need a covenant, especially

Baptist covenant theology with the two tier typology, like it just changes the game.

Yeah. Right. And so you need to recognize if something happened is actually in our past. But also you can see something that's in our past, but that's just a type.

That's right. Pointing to an antitype. Right. Right. And if you're bought into preterism, you do not think about the types.

And the antitypes is dangerous. You're thinking fulfillment. And I'm telling you right now, if you're a partial preterist and that's your foundation, the only thing keeping you in orthodoxies are creeds and confessions.

My wife made me read them every day. Stay in the creeds, stay in the confessions.

She was pushing it on me. Yeah. And I did. Something that blew my mind with Reformed Baptist covenant theology is, and you got to think,

I was fighting the Johnny Mac bias, so I wasn't wanting it until grace of God, it just kind of all clicked.

You almost went to TMS, didn't you, Jeremiah? Oh, I was wanting to so bad, but my wife wanted to stay in Jonesboro.

And then I was like, well, maybe I can go to Southern in Kentucky. And I got into ministry before seminary, so I stayed local.

Yeah. It's been a huge process. And really your heart has to be open to changing your mind because these things get so deeply rooted.

You can hear all the best arguments, but until your heart's open to receive it, you're not going to be able to hear it and understand it properly.

Does that make sense? Yeah. I think a lot of people, especially that hold to dispensationalism, one, that's all they've been exposed to.

That's all they know. And then if you go to TMS, it's just going to be ground in you, and you're not going to abandon the hermeneutic.

They're going to stick with that hermeneutic, and it's going to end up with dispensationalism. Go back, but keep reading, keep reading the historical, the

Puritans, keep reading the Reformers, and you won't stay there. Tom, what I was going to say was, it's right over there,

The Kingdom of God by Jeffrey Johnson. That has been just the most delightful book.

He wrote The Fatal Flaw to Presbyterians' understanding of covenant theology.

When I was dispensational, I only had Presbyterian friends, so I'm only hearing the covenant of works, covenant of grace from their paradigm.

When Jeffrey articulated true Israel has always been believers, I was thinking, okay, that makes sense because we're looking to Romans 2,

Romans 9, Ephesians 2, things like that. Abraham, he was looking to a heavenly kingdom that Genesis chapter 12 and 17 is talking about, that which is an eternal promise, not temporal.

Those things started to click in my brain, and then he articulates this dichotomous understanding of the

Abrahamic covenant. As type and anti -type, right? Yes.

The line of Canaan was a type. That's right. Temporary versus eternal.

Yes, earthly versus heaven. That's right. I'm telling you, without Baptist covenant theology, the

Bible just doesn't make sense. It's like there's problem passages, right?

It makes the most sense through Baptist covenant theology. Baptist covenant theology and idealism.

I'm going to read you something. This is

Jeffrey Johnson. We get into those conversations about how do we articulate how

Old Testament saints were saved through the new covenant. You know how we've said that before?

Yes, credit, debit. Hopefully, I can find it because I almost sent you a screenshot of it.

You said that's the kingdom of God? Yes, kingdom of God. You haven't read that stuff, man?

That's good. Fatal fall, kingdom of God, I got them. I'm going to say something, Bolt. It's better than Renahan's books.

Really? I love Mystery of Christ. I really do.

It's the good thing about it. But the good thing about Renahan, it does hash out the type anti -type.

It's really good in that. What Jeffrey brings out that to me is stellar and shows the

Presbyterians they had it exactly backwards is the historic covenants are republications of the covenant of works.

The way that he explains that of saying the covenant of works is the moral law.

It's always as we relate to the creator of the universe, it has to be by covenant.

There is a way we are to obey and honor him transcendentally.

That's been an eternal law. All the historic covenants draw from that well.

They're all republications. Presbyterians say, no, ever since Genesis 3 .15, the historic covenants, they are republications not of the covenant of works but of the covenant of grace.

Then half of them say time out with the Mosaic Law. We're like, oh, so you're a little bit closer to the

Reformed Baptist side of things. I think I found it, Jeff. Tell me what you think about this. Don't get mad at me.

Take it up with Jeffrey Johnson. He says the covenant of works did not cease after it was broken by Adam's fall.

Rather, it remained in operation and continues to hold fallen men captive until he is spiritually transferred by faith alone into the membership of the covenant of grace.

God's law must stand over man until it is satisfied in both its penalties and demands.

I think that's what the Judaizers did. That's what the Pharisees did. They wanted to hold on to that law, but it was a curse.

It remains a curse. What we're asking is, is it a covenant today, right? Is that what you're saying?

I would say by way of covenant, it isn't.

However, men are still under that law because they have it in some form.

It's written on their heart of stone, just the same way as the tablets were written by the finger of God on stone tablets.

Everyone knows that it's wrong to lie still. They have this on their heart, but it's the stony heart, so it's of self -righteousness.

So people are automatically caught up in their own self -righteousness.

So it's a form of what the Jews were actually under. But I think you would agree that it being covenant, like the

Old Testament Scriptures has it, to the Jewish people, that was only until Christ.

It's faded away. It's no longer no more, but in some way, because it is that law, it's on their heart, men are still enslaved to their self -righteousness.

If that's what he's talking about, I 100 % agree. I think, too, what I'm bringing out is even

Old Testament saints were members of the new covenant by virtue and faith of that promise to come.

Even though it was promised, the one that promised it makes it a guarantee because he cannot lie.

So my point is... Okay, I see what you're saying. So I wouldn't say that they were members. Yeah. Like I wouldn't use those words.

Yeah, yeah, I don't mind. I would just say that... I would say they're saved through the new covenant simply because...

Yeah, simply because as mankind, we're working in the perimeter of time, right?

And so Jesus Christ did not die for our sins in 2024. Right, right, right.

He died for our sins in, I would say, 30 AD. On the cross. On that cross, right?

And so there was a certain time that took place as a certain time that we're living in.

And the time of Abraham and all these people in the old covenant was not 1st century 30

AD, right? All right. And so in order to be a part of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church, to be a member there, you have to be within this last four years that we've been here.

If you were 20 years ago, you were not a part of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church in Tullahoma, Tennessee.

And so we're just talking about the issue of time. So as members, they weren't in time.

So therefore, when it came, they were saved through that. And I would say now they're members of the new covenant. But I wouldn't say that...

I would have said that at Jesus' resurrection, they were the members of the new covenant. Now, here's an odd qualifier, because I agree with y 'all.

But I think in some way, they can be members by promise. And it's not a promise that we make.

Okay, so if you say promise members, I can get with that. The reason why that's the key right there.

Because we're in time, and God deals with us in time. We have to operate and think according to time.

Think about it like this. Just as much as Abraham could be declared righteous by faith in the promise, because it's a guarantee.

But it's on credit. It's on credit. So the membership, too, is on credit in the promise.

No problem there. As long as we can understand...

It is a qualifier. He works in time. And think about, too, why we want to use that kind of terminology.

Because all saints of all time have entered in by membership, the new covenant has always been by faith.

Not a mixed covenant of people that are unregenerate. You know what

I mean? So that works against dispensational theology that has God's people being

Israel with both regenerate and unregenerate membership, and then Presbyterians that have a mixed covenant of unbelieving infants.

And we get to point back to Abraham and say, No, entering into the new covenant has always been by faith.

Sure, his was on credit and trust in the promise to come. But that's just as much a guarantee because of the one who promised it and cannot fail.

That's like an everlasting covenant. Yeah, it is everlasting. And here's what would be the reason why you have to at least acknowledge now that they are in it, because the promises...

So Canaan was a type. The new Jerusalem is the anti -type, right? Right. So when heaven, whenever this fulfillment takes place,

Abraham's going to be there. Yep. All right. And the new Jerusalem is part of the new covenant.

Canaan, the Jerusalem of old, Israel, this temporary

Israel, they'll slam a piece of land by the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. You see what I'm saying? Like that was a type.

And so the anti -type is always greater than the type. I'm with you on what we're experiencing now is better than the

Old Testament. Absolutely. But there is a sense in which they were saved through the new covenant promise.

And I think we can say that they were members of the new covenant by faith in the promise of it to come.

And still they're seeing it in type and shadow. But just as much as they can be justified by credit, their membership is a guarantee by credit as well.

But would you say, so I just want to make sure we're on the same page. Would you say the actuality of it was according to what took place in time?

At the resurrection. Yeah. Just as much as we can. To me, it goes back to this. Just as much as we can say that Abraham, his sins were forgiven, is just as much as we can affirm that he's a member.

Now it's on credit. It's looking forward. It's trust in the promise. Right? Their promise is looking forward.

And then our trust in the promise is looking back to the debit. So there is a qualifier.

I would say that when Christ died, I died. Right? And my baptism pointed to that as information.

When Christ died, buried with him in baptism. Death, raised with him to newness of life. Right? So my baptism is pointing back.

I'm saying that when he died, I died. However, in time, you see what

I'm saying? There was a certain day when I actually repented, believed, and there was another day when

I actually pointed back at that time and baptism was a picture of it and all that stuff right there.

But whenever he died, I could say that right now, there's a certain time when I actually entered into the new covenant.

But on debit, I've always been in the new covenant. So also I would include too, when you're looking at the promise, you're looking at the substance.

What was the object of their faith? One was the promise. That's not the same substance as the fulfillment of the

Christ. It's the promise. A promise is just a promise, which they're justified by through faith, through that promise, but it had not been revealed.

The substance is Christ. And once Christ, and that's why we go all the way to the resurrection, we go all the way to the cross where he was raised.

He goes to the mercy seat, sprinkles his blood. That's when everything consummates right there.

And I'm with you, fellas. That's why I think there's enough room to say they're members. It's not the same one -to -one how we are members, but they are members by virtue.

Now it is. Yeah, it's been real. It just wasn't actuality.

It was only, in one sense, spiritual to them until Christ came and the covenant was cut.

So they were, like you said, the same way that they were when Abraham believed,

Abraham was righteous. Just as much as I am righteous now, Abraham was righteous. His was on credit.

Ours is on debit. How we would say it, right? He had to look forward to a promise.

We're looking back at the same promise, but hindsight more information than he had. Definitely.

You see what I'm saying? And so in the same way that he was righteous, he was also,

I would say, he's in the new covenant. However, it hasn't really, the new covenant hasn't been cut.

It's okay. Yeah. As much as we affirm that principle of his justification, we can affirm that he was a member of the new covenant by faith and still retained.

It hasn't been cut. I think it's what I struggle with too, though. But it was a guarantee.

It was guaranteed, though. It was guaranteed because the wording isn't right, right?

So maybe I would say that they were. Tom, this is why I brought this up. Through the new covenant.

I'm just saying it's got to make sense. And here's the apologetic value to the

Presbyterians. We've always, even Abraham, we've all entered the new covenant by faith, not having faith.

Of course. But he hasn't entered it. Some would say when Abraham was justified, whenever he was righteous, he hasn't entered into the covenant.

So I would say that his faith guaranteed him access into the covenant.

The moment the covenant was cut. Yeah, Romans 5 .1. The moment that covenant was cut, he enters into it.

But he already was given the access key to it. Right. Because if we say that Abraham entered into this grace, into the covenant of grace, well, let's define what the covenant of grace is.

It's the new covenant, right? So Abraham didn't enter it. He entered into the new covenant. How did you get in the house?

Oh. How did they? So he had faith in the new covenant to come.

A Presbyterian would say that it was grace. He was saved by the old covenant, that covenant that was one covenant of grace, different administration.

But he was saved by the new covenant, which hadn't been revealed to him yet, only through promise.

I've thought of a response to the Presbyterians. Y 'all have seen maybe Dr. White's debates, where Roman Catholics make the same point, too.

But they'll say, are you telling me a child in the first century that was under the old covenant, now that child is no longer in the new covenant?

Like, that's just crazy. Have y 'all heard that kind of objection? Oh, yeah. You know what I've said in response to him, and I've only had them look at me wide -eyed like, huh?

I said, so you're upset for a child no longer being under the covenant of condemnation, and now they're not under it?

Right. Because there's deeper presuppositions. We see the covenant of works as a covenant of death.

2 Corinthians 3 calls it the ministry of death. The covenant of works never saved anyone.

That's right. So I look at the Presbyterians, and you're mad that the children in the first century were no longer under the covenant of condemnation?

And they're like, okay, so we've got to deal with other issues. Yeah, they think they've got it keyed in, but my dear brother.

But, yeah, I've never thought to say that. I usually hit them with something else, but that's really good. I'm going to have to steal it. 2

Corinthians 3, ministry of death. It never saved. I use that constantly.

One would be against those who hold to a theonomic view that we are to force people to live under that same principle.

For those that don't know, I'm not a theonomist. However, that's a talk for another day.

You affirm general equity. Yeah, I mean, to a certain point.

Right. And I definitely hold to the murder. Right. Like I think, you know, because that right there got us off on a different conversation.

But that right there goes back to Noahic. And if there is no sign, there is no covenant.

There's still the sign of the rainbow. Right. I know it's been hijacked, but you just got to hold on to it,

Christian. Sign of the rainbow. The Noahic covenant. The Noahic covenant is if you shed man's blood, your blood shall be shed.

Something else I wanted to mention real fast. I just released on my channel. I said I just released it. It'll be released tomorrow at 10 a .m.

But a few nights ago, I was invited on a Church of Christ podcast, The Narrow Way or something.

And they wanted to talk with me about the gospel and baptism. And I got them to admit they believe in two different gospels.

One for the Old Testament and one for the New Testament. And, Jeff, your point about Reformed Baptist covenant theology.

Man, we get to talk about how Abraham believed in the gospel promise.

And Romans 4 telling us that just as Abraham was justified, that is how

Paul says we with Christians after the loss of fulfillment, we are justified like Abraham. It was so wonderful to be able to answer everything that guy.

It was three versus one. It didn't matter to me. Very nice people on the podcast. But understanding how the covenants relate together.

And like I said, Tom. Were they classic dispensationalists? No. Church of Christ is kind of a mixed bag.

But they're definitely an Andy Stanley unhitching from the Old Testament. Unless it suits them. Like when we start talking about federal headship or original sin, they want to go to Ezekiel 18 talking about the soul.

The sins will die and not the. And we're like, OK, it's not what we're talking about. We're talking about federal headship

Romans 5. You know what I mean? But they're disconnected. They look at it as a totally different system of salvation.

And they they look at a kind of covenant of works is, oh, they had to work really hard to be saved.

Christians today just have a different set of commands in order to be saved. One of the most popular books in the

Church of Christ that gets circulated, even though they say we just let the Bible speak and that's our ultimate.

And we don't look to any creeds, but Christ, they still have their books. They're right. They just don't tell you. But they have a book called

Muscle and a Shovel. And it's it's a testimony about a

Baptist that converted Church of Christ. And I've I've notes every page of it. You can tell they just struggle to even understand basic Baptist theology.

But what I'm bringing out, Tom, is the cover is a muscle above like a hole being dug.

But I'm like, yes, that that does represent that y 'all are a works righteousness group.

Right. That are cultic. So they get mad at me for calling them out to, you know, being, you know, trusting in their works.

I'm like, y 'all literally write books called Muscle and a Shovel. So you say

Kingdom of God, huh? Jeffrey Johnson. Got to read it. I'm going to say again. Wow, that's tough.

That's tough. Cookies, right? That's got it. Well, I just think that they're doing two different things to me.

But Jeffrey Johnson is really good, man. The thing with Jeffrey Johnson, and this could be where you're at, too, is that he's easy to read.

So smooth. Samuel Renahan. Samuel Renahan. He's he's tough.

He's like the books are hard. Yeah. Yeah. They're packed with information.

But, yeah, they're tough. Yeah. Jeffrey Johnson. Jeffrey Johnson. Actually, like, like R .C.

Sproul. Like, I think R .C. Sproul, right, is like his writings are just so on anyone's level.

Like, like, you can be a young child and read an R .C. Sproul, the holiness of God and walk away with an understanding.

I don't think that you could do that. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that you could do that with a lot of writers.

But I think Jeffrey Johnson has a really good gift like that. I would equate him with an R .C. I interviewed

Jeffrey Johnson on his five points of all millennial book. And so if you read that book with the kingdom of God, they just to me, they go hand in hand so well.

But if you look at my show notes, I list he has a sermon series on covenant theology.

And I would recommend listening to his sermons going through the historic covenants along with reading that book.

I've listened to him over and over again. I've taken so many notes because he got it. I was breaking the shackles back here.

And it's so hard. But once once the pieces start fitting together, you realize why this this is the best place to pack up.

I mean, and then all meals, the only thing compatible with Reformed Baptist covenant theology. Right.

I mean, and then you realize how you can kind of undo Church Christ. You can undo full preterism.

I mean, it's it's a complete paradigm. It's a complete worldview. Yeah. That's when you have one one system of understanding the scripture that can destroy every system there is out there.

I think you need to be a part of that system. And it's all millennialism, Baptist covenant theology, baby.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, with with all meal, something else that I love is, you know, we call it optimistic on mail.

Like I see righteousness and wickedness, both increasing, especially when I look at the parable of the wheat and tares and so forth.

But that's so necessary for the church to be victorious through suffering. You know what

I mean? And in the post -millennial paradigm, if things get better, you're not going to have the church suffering, giving enough time.

You know what I mean? Right. So there's a lot of things that hang in the balance because I do not like it when post.

I say I don't like I don't really care. But post -meal, we'll talk about. Oh, you have a loser theology.

You pre meal and all that. And I'm like, who gets to define what victory is?

Right. What if it's a victory through suffering? You know what I mean? Yeah. Jesus, you know, died for our sins, according to the scriptures.

And in that death, he took the keys away from the key of death away from Satan.

Right. Like that was victory. We have victory in his death and his suffering.

We have victory. And even, you know, there's even victory and over sin over because of justice, of his justice and holiness.

So if he chooses not to save someone. Yeah, that's Christ's victory over that. And I would say victory for the church is is being able to spread

God's word in a way that it covers the earth, fulfilling Bible prophecy. Right.

It doesn't mean that no word is saying that 90 percent or it doesn't give a percentage of how many converts it tells you that the wheat and tares, they're going to grow up together.

Right. But it says that the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the water covers the sea. I absolutely believe that.

Yeah. Right. Christians are going to you know, Christians are going to tell people about Jesus.

Yeah. Right. That doesn't mean that everyone that hears about this knowledge of the Lord is going to come to the

Lord. Yeah. Yeah. So good. It just doesn't say it. Yeah.

Well, I'm optimistic about, you know, for the most part, we're going to be on this earth until Jesus comes.

Amen. We're going to preach this gospel until Jesus comes. And we're going to, you know, there might be times when someone has to die for their faith.

I'm optimistic that God is going to do exactly what he intends to do with his word. Yeah. And he's going to have victory.

Yeah. Fellas, I'm starting to feel the drowsiness kick in. I don't know. Coffee's wearing off.

That was a two hour show, Jeff. Did you plan on that? Well, I don't plan anything.

I ain't got time for that. But I want to answer one question that was just proposed.

It was about the very first comment, the very first section of this. And we'll get off. It says, guys, let me pull it up.

Let me see if it'll work. On YouTube or Facebook? Right here. You see it? Yeah.

Oh, we've been live on YouTube this whole time. I didn't realize that. Yeah. It says, not doubting the hard work an elder and shepherd is doing.

But it has been said. This is what threw me off. It has been said before. Any experienced preacher should only need three to nine hours to make a 30 to 55 minute sermon.

Yikes. I want to be charitable with this person.

But how do you interpret what 1 Timothy 5 says labors in the word?

Like how is three to nine hours laboring and preaching and teaching and preparing, rightly handling the word?

When I look at laboring, I'm thinking of a nine to five job plus some.

I'm thinking, how can you not? Even if you're an experienced preacher, an experienced theologian, how are you still not laboring, plundering the depths of God?

I mean, y 'all know what it's like. We go in the coal mine. The well is deep. The well is deep.

And we come out to show the gem to the people. But man, there was so much labor that it took to get to that point.

Now, if you're bivocational, yes, man, trying to spend three to nine hours to get it.

I mean, we're saying that's less than ideal. If it's in the ideal situation, how are you not pumping out 20, 30 hours, 35 hours plus laboring in the text?

You know what I mean? Yeah. You want to be able to give to the people. There's so much that we learn that we're not able to give in that 30 to 50.

I preach about 55 minutes to an hour, right? We have it. That's why you have a sermon discussion.

Yeah, absolutely right. Right. Like so much of what I learn, I don't get to give to them.

There's not enough time. But if I did not learn what I've learned, I couldn't be so confident with what

I give them. And that's the nugget. Right. Right. And so what really throws me off is that it's been said.

I would say stop listening to those people. I mean, just being honest, because, you know, the whole it's been said thing.

Well, that's been said before, too. How many days of laboring if your task is three to nine hours a week?

Now, if you're telling me a day, OK, that's laboring, you know, every day. I do about four hours a day for four days to get my sermon done.

And then I spend two hours the other seven days kind of reading over it, preaching it in my head, writing down notes, scratching stuff out.

I should have said this better. Drawing a picture that was going to remind me of something.

Tom, I know you use a flare pen to take notes. I'm sure. Johnny Mac uses like a quill ink pen to slow him down.

I've heard him say. I think that's so interesting. Is that right? Yeah. So when you write things down, it's easier to remember.

But at the same time, like it's hard to read. It's cool. Slower is better. Slower makes you think more slower, makes you process more.

And he'll be writing his little ink quill pen or whatever. And then he has to take time to dip it in the ink.

He's been doing that 50 plus years. So I'm not going to knock the man. He's wrong on covenant theology.

But definitely. Yeah. And eschatology. Well, if you get covenant theology right, you're going to get eschatology.

Yeah. You know what? I mean, that's what's wrong with Schultz. He doesn't have a good covenant theology.

So his eschatology got off a little bit. He's an all mill up into chapter 20 of Revelation.

Then he goes pre mill, historical pre mill. Yeah. And then he's 20th century covenantalism.

Yeah. Mac has said, if you get Israel right, then you get your eschatology right.

And I thought, no. If you get Christ right and his covenant right, then these things.

Then you know who Israel is. Right. Yeah. But that's the hermeneutic.

Yeah. Thanks. I appreciate you, man. Yeah. Great talk.

Thank you, guys. All right. Well, like I said earlier, if you're ever in Tallahoma, Tennessee, please come check a brother out.