Dogmatic Secularism Rises; the Politics of the Southern Baptist Convention

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. I have no screen in front of me, so I don't know if we're going or not going, but there we go. There's something up there now. And if you are used to the setup we've had before, it's slightly different.

I've just sort of cobbled things together for now, because this isn't the computer I'm actually going to be using for The Dividing Line in the future, but that is the new monitor I'll be using. It's big, and it's big enough for old eyes.

Even though I put it on its highest resolution, and I could actually go higher if it could do higher, but it's big, very, very large. I remember the first time I saw a flat screen, Randy had one. Many, many, many, many moons ago, and I was like, oh, that's awesome.

And now they're much less expensive than they were back then, actually. But hey, it's cool outside. I get to wear one of my Coogee sweaters, which is spelled C-O-O-G-E-I. Man. Well, the guy then said that Google lied to him.

Like, come on, Google didn't lie to you.

Does Google really lie? I mean... I don't think he Googled Coogee and got... instead of Coogee. No, no, no. I'm sorry. There's no...

Both are horrifying. I'll choose that one. Safely back from the Midwest. I didn't get the nice cold weather I normally get back there. They're going to have that on Thursday of this week. Not going to be above freezing, and the possibility of snow, and stuff like that.

But did get to go take a little buzz around St. Louis in a Cessna 172 on Friday. Got some nice pictures of the arch and stuff like that. That was a little nerve-wracking, but we made it in one piece, and so I appreciated that.

Had a good conference. We talked about reliability of Scripture and issues there relating to, in fact, some of you will be interested to know I did spend about an hour on ecclesiastical textism. I've added that to the repertoire.

We discussed a little bit of that in the program as well. Those will be posted within the next couple of weeks on YouTube and linked from Covenant of Grace Church. Sixteen years now I've been going out there, and I just figure that means I'm sort of officially part of the family or something by now.

Always have a good time out there. We're doing things a little bit early today, because I got a lot of stuff to catch up on. The flu's finally gone, and I feel human again, and the blood chemistry's back to where it's supposed to be, and all that stuff.

Man, don't get the flu. It's ugly stuff. Hadn't had that for years and years and years and years and years, but I have to be reminded every once in a while that, yes, indeed, we're all human beings. I had gotten a little lax in trying to avoid that stuff.

You do it pretty well for a while, and you get a little arrogant, so just a reminder, I suppose, and that's a good thing. We're back, but have a lot of stuff to catch up on, so we're doing the program a little bit early today.

Most of you, if you listened to the dividing line, the briefing this morning, if you were watching social media last week, I mentioned actually at the beginning of my discussions there in St. Louis that I was not at all surprised, honestly, by what I was seeing in regards to Chip and Joanna Gaines, I'll be honest with you.

My wife sometimes does watch HGTV. I do not. I would imagine that Rich is a lifetime subscriber to HGTV. You've watched every one of their episodes? They're good. Okay. Well, I have seen absolutely none because I don't watch HGTV.

Not my thing. Not my thing at all. But anyway, everyone is, of course, up in arms because, well, how can this be? How can you get to sue Christian bakers for not making cakes to celebrate homosexuality?

But on the other hand, dressmakers can say, I'm not going to provide any dresses for the First Lady because of the stance and the positions of her husband or something along those lines. As long as you continue to expect fairness, lack of hypocrisy, consistent standards, anything like that from the secular totalitarians, you're going to live a life of utter and constant frustration.

These individuals don't care about consistency. They don't care if they are using different standards. Secular totalitarianism is an entirely different world, and you are not going to expect that there is going to be any kind of fairness in what's going on.

Now, what happens is, you see, HGTV has two letters in it that are very important. T-V. And that means it's the entertainment arena, and this is the temple of secularism in our land today. And so to get into the temple, it's sort of like, remember what happened to poor Paul?

Paul was accused of bringing Gentiles into the temple. And they just about tore him apart. Well, it's the exact same mentality amongst the secular leftists. They are totalitarians. They do believe that everyone must think and act like they do, that we must celebrate all the things that they do.

They do not have a basis in their worldview for the concept of freedom of speech, liberty of thought. No, secular totalitarians are just that. They are totalitarians. They want to control everything in the society, including the very thought processes of everyone.

And there's a reason for it. There is a reason for it. I have a graphic, if you've ever seen the debate that I did with Dan Barker, I illustrated the difference. I'm going to see if this is going to work.

Let me see if I can make this work. I don't know if it will or won't or whatever. But I'm going to see if it's possible. You getting just a plain old white thing over there? Okay, let me see if I can get this to work.

In the old world, okay, hello, the center of everything was God. And everything else out here, anything else in the fields of human knowledge, let's say whether it's history, whether it's science, whether it's medicine, whether it's morality, ethics, ethics is a shorter word, so it's easier to do here.

Whatever it is, in the olden days, these things were held together by the recognition of the existence of God as creator of all things. And so I'm down here. And as I relate to God, then I can have true knowledge of these other things because they are a part of the same creation in which I am.

And so I don't have to be infallible and omniscient because God's infallible and omniscient. He's big enough to hold it all together. And so I can be the finite human being that I am and yet still have meaningful knowledge, sufficient knowledge, as my creator defines that to be of ethics, science, medicine, history, art, everything else in the universe.

The problem is that that's not any longer really a possibility because God has been erased out of the center here. Isn't that interesting? It almost looks like it's leaving, like it's a real white part, doesn't it?

It's, okay, I'm going to have to somehow get out some cleaner. What? Yeah, I can see that. That's pretty much what it looks like up on the screen up there. Pretty much identical to that. So if you take God out of the center and you take me out of being part of what God has created down here and you put, as a secular humanist, you have to go, I'm now the center.

I'm now at the center. I am the autonomous creature. I am not sufficient to hold all these things together. To make this work, I have to be omniscient. That's why you end up with radical skepticism because I could have false knowledge of these things and I don't have any reference to anyone who would be the standard of objective true knowledge of all things.

And so a secular epistemology is the very essence of a failed epistemology. It's not going to work. And what happens is once you start trying to function in this way, then if someone comes along and they choose not to accept your claim to be that autonomous creature that defines everything else, what upsets your apple cart?

It destroys your epistemology. And that's why they tend toward totalitarianism, not toward libertarianism, not toward liberty. If I believe that God defines all things, hey, if you disagree, if I think you're just completely wrong, your disagreement doesn't change the nature of reality because you and I don't define reality.

But once mankind's put in the center, we define reality. And therefore, disagreement is rebellion. Disagreement is destructive to the entire experiment. And so you listen to these totalitarians. You want to see this illustrated, sadly?

Look at France right now. Look at what is happening in France right now. France is a proudly secular nation. We can bring that down. France is a proudly secular nation. It is part of their charter, their government.

And so what are they doing? What happens when you try to consistently apply secularism? Well, what you're seeing immediately is the first and foremost set of freedoms that is destroyed, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion.

And so you have French police on beaches forcing Muslim women to take off their burqa. Why? It has nothing to do with security. It's not, well, you know, you can hide a lot under these there, and they're afraid that people are going to be blowing themselves up.

That's not the issue. The issue is you're not being secular enough. You are making, by that statement, by that statement of dress, you are rebelling against the secular morality that says, there's no standard of, you should not be demure.

You should not be modest. You should be showing more skin. You can't cover that much skin and be like the rest of us. And we all have to be together. See, there can't be freedom. There can't be expression.

There can't be liberty. They may use those terms, but we all have come to understand that for leftists, words only mean what they want them to mean and only to a certain extent. And so now you have France outlawing pro-life websites.

Dr. Moller talked about it this morning on the briefing, where you have France basically saying, well, not only outlawing pro-life websites, but there has been a move recently to, across cultural boundaries, to celebrate the wonderful people that we all know who have Down syndrome, because the vast majority of them are not being born anymore.

Over 90 of babies that are diagnosed in the womb with Down syndrome are aborted now. But we've all met some of these really special people. And so there's sort of a movement to celebrate these folks and to recognize the contributions that they make and things like that.

Well, that is an in-your-face repudiation of the culture of death, which identifies human worth based solely upon arbitrary quality of life issues. And that's not a high enough quality of life. And therefore, it does not have value.

And so there had been commercials celebrating the beauty of people with Down syndrome, and they were banned by the French government, because they might make some people feel uncomfortable with the choices that they had made.

The choices that they had made. And so you have them banning pro-life websites, banning commercials, all on the basis of what? You see, one of the things that you and I just have to hit on immediately in our society today, is when people say, you can't force your worldview on me.

Any person that says that has a worldview they're trying to force on you. They just don't want to admit it. Secularism is a worldview. Oh, but it doesn't have a God, but it does have ultimate authorities.

It's still an ultimate authority paradigm that determines ethics and morality and everything else. It is a worldview. And these people recognize. They recognize if it's put out there on the same level, if people start realizing, well, wait a minute, you're shoving your worldview down my throat.

You are silencing me on the basis of your worldview. They might start fighting back. And so you're just not even allowed to say this. It's just immediately shut down. We can't talk about this kind of stuff.

But the reality is secularism is a worldview. And it is an incoherent and destructive and anti-human worldview that robs. It's robbing the current generation of transcendent meaning and value, the concepts of self-sacrifice, self-discipline, all these things.

If you can't, you know, I know most of us just sit back and we chuckle at this because it's so stupid. But when you see people that are supposed to be adults. Looking for safe spaces and teddy bears, something has gone wrong.

The truthfulness of the 18 year olds storming the beaches of Normandy in 1944 versus 18 year olds who can't even talk to a woman because they spent the majority of the years they were supposed to be growing up staring at a screen shooting zombies.

Something has gone wrong here. Something has gone wrong here. The pushing back of the time of marriage until now it's pushing into the 30s. And one of the reasons for it is that because people aren't grown up enough yet.

They're just not mature enough yet. Why? What's going on? I was taught when I was raised, I had a responsibility in my teen years to be maturing, to be taking responsibility for myself, to be contributing to the family.

Because once I turned 18, I was responsible for myself. Not anymore. What are you told now? What is everybody told in our society now? That you as a parent are responsible for paying for your kid's college.

That has been absolutely burned into our brains. My parents never, they never said, don't worry, son, we'll take care of your college. I knew that they probably were not gonna be able to do that at all.

They might want to help as much as they could, but that was gonna be up to me. That was gonna be my job. That's my responsibility. And so in high school, I earned my college. They're called scholarships.

They were called scholarships because you never got a B in high school. Now, would it have been more enjoyable for me to have gotten some Bs in high school? Because I could go and play and be immature?

Sure. But I realized that that, you know, I was taught, once you turn 18, you're responsible for yourself, man. And all of that was based upon a worldview that said, God has made you in such a way that you are responsible before him and you have responsibilities to other people.

All that's falling apart. I wonder if I can find it quickly here, because it was in my feed. So it might still be here. Let me see if it, yeah. Good old Michael Fallon, who we still haven't gotten together with to call and do his, I mean, he's just the world's greatest marketer and I'm the world's worst marketer.

And so we need to do something about this. Mike posted, Patrick Dineen, Notre Dame professor. Our schools are committing civilizational suicide. Let me just read this to you. This is worth your time. It fits in with everything else we're talking about.

My students are know-nothings. They're exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, utterly decent, but their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation.

They are the culmination of Western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten nearly everything about itself and as a result has achieved near perfect indifference to its own culture. By the way, I would just add that the reason for this is a culture that becomes embarrassed that its predecessors lived in the light of the existence of God is a culture that must enforce amnesia upon itself or live with constant shame, a self-imposed foolish shame.

But all this goes back to what Solzhenitsyn was right. What's wrong with the West? It's forgotten God. It doesn't live in the light of its own creator. It's Romans 1 all over again. It's Romans 1 being lived out.

But anyway, I go back to the article. But ask them some basic questions about the civilization they will be inheriting and be prepared for averted eyes and somewhat panicked looks. Who fought in the Peloponnesian War?

Who did fight in the Peloponnesian War? You could almost have figured that out, almost have figured that out by watching the 300 movies, which guys who do first-person shooter games only watch because the CGI, not because of any of the history.

But just think Athens and Sparta and anyway. Who fought in the Peloponnesian War? Who taught Plato and whom did Plato teach? How did Socrates die? Just be careful what you eat. Anyway, raise your hand if you have read both the Iliad and the Odyssey.

The Canterbury Tales? Paradise Lost? The Inferno? Who was Saul of Tarsus? Boy, we better get that one right. What were the 95 theses? Who wrote them and what was their effect? Boy, you better get that one right, okay?

You better get that one right. What does the Magna Carta mean? How and where did Thomas Beckett die? Who was Guy Fawkes? And why is there a day named after him? Boy, when I was down in New Zealand, it was Guy Fawkes Day and there was all sorts of fireworks going off and all sorts of neat, fun stuff like that.

But does anyone know why? That's even a day of celebration? What did Lincoln say in his second inaugural, his first inaugural? How about his third inaugural? What are the Federalist Papers? What our educational system aims to produce is cultural amnesia, a wholesale lack of curiosity, history-less free agents and educational goals composed of content-free processes and unexamined buzzwords like critical thinking, diversity, ways of knowing, social justice, and cultural competence.

Our students are the achievement of a systemic commitment to producing individuals without a past for whom the future is a foreign country, culture-less ciphers who can live anywhere and perform any kind of work without inquiring about its purposes or ends, perfected tools for an economic system that prizes flexibility, geographic, interpersonal, and ethical.

Wow. Wow. Our students are the achievement of a systemic commitment to producing individuals without a past for whom the future is a foreign country. Isn't that the case? Isn't that the case? But how else can it be in a secular society?

Because there is no future that has meaning. Because there was no past that had meaning. If I am autonomous, if I get to determine today I'm a male, tomorrow I'm a female, tomorrow the next day after that I'm going to be a canine, and then after that I'm going to be, you're going to need to call me Zee, Zur, and Zim, and the day after that it's Yee, Yur, and Yim.

And all this other abject, insane stupidity that is worthy of not an instant of respect, but now is being placed into law, which means law becomes something that is not worthy of respect either. But if I am this autonomous creature, then I might find it interesting to know what happened in the past, but only for entertainment value.

And future? Well, once I'm gone, what does it matter? I mean, you know, what's even the basis for wanting to pass something on to your children? And of course, even when you say pass something on, the first thought anybody has is what?

Material things. Not a heritage, not a connectedness to their ancestors and those who came before them. Man, that was falling apart even when I was younger. I mean, I was in my 30s, maybe even 40s before all of a sudden I started going, you know, I'd like to know a little bit more about my grandparents and my great-grandparents and where they come from and all that kind of stuff.

I'd sort of, it was because of my study of history that I started realizing I really haven't had a lot of emphasis in my life upon what has come before me. And of course, if you don't know about the great intellectual movements and theological movements that came before you, then you are determined by those things, but you can't examine those things.

You can't look at yourself and go, oh, wow, you know, I think this particular way because of what has happened in the past and because of what's gone on in Western culture and this happened in England and this happened in Germany and blah, blah, blah, blah.

I can't do any of that. I'm totally dependent upon that stuff. I just live in ignorance of it and just figure that's just the way I am. You really don't end up knowing yourself very well when you don't know anything about history and when you don't think there's going to be a future.

I mean, you know there's gonna be a future, but why should I care about it? I'm not going to be here. I think that's why you see the willingness of Western cultures to absolutely indebt our children to their eyeballs.

We're not going to be around. What does it matter? Eat, drink, and be merry. Spend far, far, far, far, far, far, far more money than we actually have because everything's about me anyways. Anyway, that sermon was not a part, by the way.

That's just those of you listening by audio. The last paragraph here is,. But even on those better days, I can't help but hold the hopeful thought that the world they have inherited, a world without inheritance, without past, future, or deepest cares, is about to come tumbling down and that this collapse would be the true beginning of a real education.

Wow. Think about that. But it fits. It fits really well with what we are looking at here. And I've been saying over and over again, I say to the young people, You've been robbed. You have been robbed.

Every time you buy into the secular mindset, the secular worldview, it's me, me, me, the autonomous human being idea. You are robbed of the highest aspirations of what it means to be created in the image of God.

And the end results, when people can go on college campuses and the people on those campuses can't tell the difference between Donald Trump and Fidel Castro. Yeah, you heard about that? Yeah. Which one's worse?

Total, complete, moral, ethical collapse. Sadly, the only thing that cures this is complete societal breakdown and war. That resets everything. And that's frightening. Really, really frightening. But anyway, somehow back to HGTV.

Look, this should not shock us for a second. Because Hollywood and the entertainment industry is the inner sanctum, the very temple of the culture of death. And therefore, if you are going to walk in its precincts, you must abide by its rules.

And if you go to a church that teaches what Christians have believed for a very long time, that is an open and unforgivable act of cultural heresy. You are denying the dogmas of the culture. None of us should be shocked for an instant, for a moment, at the reaction of that.

You simply cannot maintain a meaningful level of moral integrity based upon a Christian worldview and function in that society. You will be marginalized. It's just, that's just, it's heresy. Abject heresy.

Nothing that can be done about it. So, you know, I'm just like, this doesn't surprise me. There's going to be a fight. A lot of people like them. I sort of think they'll survive for now, but we'll see.

I mean, if the totalitarians can get the appropriate corporate sponsors, you know, hold them hostage and threaten boycotts or things like that, they'll be gone. They'll be gone. But we'll see. We'll see.

Yeah, Home and Garden TV, I guess. HGTV. Okay, I mentioned while I was in St. Louis that I was going to talk about this, and so I must needs do so, or there could be a lot of people who could be very, very upset.

Last week, the day after this chapel at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, I actually, I don't remember why it was that I actually had time. I was doing something else to listen to the chapel service where Dr. Rick Patrick, now, evidently, Dr. Patrick is one of the lead individuals in this traditionalist movement.

And if you're familiar with the Southern Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist traditionalist movement, you have Connect 316, which is sort of a umbrella organization. Normally, you end up hearing about them in May and June because they, when the convention takes place, they have their meetings.

And that's when most of, but, you know, you've got other stuff. You've got other stuff out there. I forgot to silence the phone there. And basically, when you see websites like SBC Voices, and you see back a few years ago, when the primary topic of discussion was, there is no actual, it's not original sin or original guilt.

We're not really guilty of Adam's transgression. We're born with a corrupted nature, but we're innocent in God's sight. You know, all this kind of stuff, same general area. Well, anyway, Rick Patrick, I guess, is one of the lead guys here.

He was asked to speak in the chapel. Basically, what you have was an advertisement for the anti-reformed Southern Baptist resources. And it was just read. Well, okay. He read the presentation and then sang the conclusion, which was really uncomfortable.

I just, so many times I like to say, preachers, preach. Don't sing. Don't even go there. Leave that. Leave that to the guys that can actually do it. There's been some interesting exchanges with him in Twitter.

One of the most recent ones, just three hours ago from Dr. Patrick was, true or false, New Calvinists oppose patriotic services more than traditionalists do. And the earlier part of that had been a statement where he said, New Calvinists are much less likely to have God and country services.

And what all this reminded me of, well, let me play something for you, and then we'll sort of put it all together. Because one of the things that gets lost in the anti-Calvinism, let's come up with wild interpretations of John 6 and John 10.

For example, the John 10 thing we talked about last week, about how the eye of other sheep that are not of this flock and their interpretation, well, of some of them, it wasn't even Hobbes' interpretation, but that this is not, as the vast majority of New Testament scholarship has seen down to the ages, this is not the Jews and the Gentiles, which is what you get if you just read John in context.

But we know the traditionalists aren't into that. If you read in context, you have the Jews, Gentiles. This is the prophecy of the Gentile mission. You've got this in all the Gospels. This is one of the linchpins that connects thematically John with the synoptic Gospels.

Really important stuff, but they don't care about stuff like that. Because they're not going out and debating the Muslims and people like that. They're not taking this stuff outside. This is, as I said, a rearguard action.

They are attempting to stem the tide within Southern Baptist life of an understanding of God's sovereignty and salvation. So they're not concerned about that. So this idea that the disciples are the flock and then the other flock is the people who are going to believe later on, you know where that actually ended up coming from?

That the original impetus to that was so that Judas would be one of those for whom Jesus gives his life. They've got to find a way for Jesus to fail in his atonement. Because if Jesus doesn't fail in his atonement, then it's obviously just made for the elect.

And we can't have that. So you've got to find a way for Jesus to die for someone who ends up in hell. Because that's really important to us. That needs to happen. Just makes me want to beat my head on the table.

But anyway, so this is stuff that's going on. And as a result, they're centered at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. This very strong anti-Calvinistic attitude on the part of the leadership.

It doesn't mean that there are not people who don't go to those schools that would identify themselves as being Reformed. But I'll tell you, they are in the minority. And that they are regularly criticized.

And their positions regularly misrepresented. I happen to know, and anyone who has any experience in the Southern Baptist Convention happens to know, that the SBC is a political entity. The politics in the convention are deep and hidden.

What you see, see, the great, see, I ran afoul of this years and years ago when I dared criticize Mark Seyfried at Southern Seminary. And all the stuff that came down on me. And I had one guy said, I'm never going to work with you in publication again because you violated the one law of Southern Baptists.

Southern Baptists do not criticize other Southern Baptists. Now, I wasn't even a Southern Baptist at the time, but it didn't matter. That is the big law. And so, when you see Reformed Southern Baptists shaking hands and taking pictures and, oh, we just work so well together, that's what you have to do to have positions of authority and power in the Southern Baptist Convention.

It's what goes on behind the scenes that's totally different. And I happen to know firsthand, well, at least secondhand, I guess, but I happen to know individuals immediately and directly who have experienced the fact that if you make it known that you are going to preach and teach the doctrines of grace in a Southern Baptist church, you can expect that there will be people in leadership who will be seeking covertly to bring about rebellion in your church and even to the point of church splits.

They are willing to do it. That's the politics of the Southern Baptist Convention. That's what's going on. And so, on the outside, oh, we just love one another and, you know, I just disagree with you, but we just love one another.

But then from that, they're going to text message people, if you're trying to get into a church, be warned about that guy, or if you're already there, need to get rid of that guy. And it all ends up going back to ecclesiology, too, which is something I want to talk about.

But if I don't get this played, I'm not going to be doing any of this. So, let's take a look at this. You should be getting it. I think I have it sent over to you now. This is after Dr. Patrick's presentation.

Dr. Paige Patterson, the head of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, got up and made some comments that ended up echoing and echoing and echoing, and for good reason. And so, here's what he had to say.

I would sing at the end of my sermon, but unfortunately, your Calvinism would not hold up well, because you would vote with your feet and leave the building, and I wouldn't blame you. And so, I'm glad you can do it, my brother.

Thank you so much for a wonderful presentation, and I trust that you will seriously consider it. I know that there are a fair number of you who think you're Calvinist, but understand that there is a denomination which represents that view.

It's called Presbyterian. I have great respect for them. They are, many of them, the vast majority of them, our brothers in Christ, and I honor them. But if I held that position, I'd become a Presbyterian.

I would not remain a Baptist, because the Baptist position from the time of the Anabaptists, really from the time of the New Testament, is very different. And I think he, Brother Rick, made the case this morning that you need to consider, and I hope you seriously will consider it in the days that come.

And I want to thank you so much, Brother Rick, for making that wonderful statement.

Now, for some reason, the MP4 hiccup there and got desynched, but you still got everything that was said. So, some of you think you're Calvinist. Now, this is a chapel service, okay? So, this is the president of the seminary speaking to the students.

And some of you students, you think that you're Calvinist. You probably really aren't. We're doing our best to convince you. And believe me, I know there is a significantly obvious bias in the teaching of the majority of the people at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

There have been some in the past who have somehow survived for a period of time. I know there's a few holdouts, but let's just be honest. The leadership of Southwestern and New Orleans are firmly in opposition to Reformed theology.

They are firm synergists. Not just synergists, but I think you can make a pretty good argument that they will dip their toes into the Pelagian side of things, not just the semi-Pelagian side, but into the Pelagian side of things.

Every once in a while, they'll pull it back just a little bit and go, no, no, no, no, no. But that's what they're doing. We all know it. We all know it. But what struck me in this not-so-subtle hint, I'm not sure why you have that up there.

But what, there you go. Hi. What struck me in this not-so-subtle hint that, hey, you know, if you want to believe this stuff, there's a denomination you can join and they're called the Presbyterians.

Because, you see, we go back to the Anabaptists and all the way back to the Apostles, and immediately some of us were going, you ain't been reading the Trail of Blood again, have you? There is, look, there are so many books already in print that debunk the Anabaptist paradigm.

So many lectures that have already been delivered that I'm not going to be repeating them, just refer you to numerous resources on that particular subject. The reality is that the term Anabaptist refers to such a massively wide movement, and next to impossible to define movement when it comes to issues of theology, that certainly to try to say, well, we come from that.

It'd be one thing to say we purposefully seek to draw more of our understanding of our heritage from a certain spectrum of well-studied Anabaptists. We're not talking about Munster here. We're not talking about Jan Leiden.

But, you know, there were some people with Zwingli, you know, there's some good stuff here from Hubmeier and Blaurock, and we appreciate some of the things they said. We can draw some things from here.

Okay, that's different than to just simply say we came from the Anabaptists. And then what do you mean, and then all the way back to the Apostles, again, this is this type of landmarkism, some kind of trail of blood stuff, I don't know.

I've heard some really interesting lectures coming out of Southwestern that the rest of the world sort of looks at historically and goes, eh, what are you doing there? But what really caught my attention is what doesn't catch almost anybody else's attention, because I'm weird, I realize that.

Um, but there is completely missing here is the issue of ecclesiology. Because, yeah, when it comes to the doctrines of grace, me and my Presbyterian buds, yeah. But we don't agree on ecclesiology either.

Um, if anyone would like to see how that works, let me see here. Here we go. I think we have these in stock. In fact, I'm pretty sure we have some out there, don't we? Uh, perspectives on church government, five views of church polity.

Uh, Danny Akin, James Leo Garrett, Robert Raymond, the late Robert Raymond, Paul F .M. Zoll, and yours truly. And I've mentioned this book before. Uh, it seemed to me that the two people who took it extremely seriously and went at each other fairly strongly were, were me and Dr. Raymond.

Um, the single pastor model starts off going, you know, you can make a pretty strong case for a plurality of elders, but hey, we can do it in other ways too. Let's, let's talk about how we can do it in other ways.

I happen to believe, and Dr. Raymond happened to believe, that there is a New Testament foundation as to the form of the local church. Uh, the apostles went about strengthening the church. How'd they do that?

By ordaining elders in the churches, not an elder, not a deacon board that then hires pastors. You will not find that anywhere in scripture. It is not there. Nowhere. When you have deacons functioning as elders and determining who is going to be the one ministering the word, that's not a New Testament setup, but it is the Southern Baptist setup.