Why Calvinism: Dr. Sam Waldron & In Studio Music By Kenny & Claire DMW#211

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Exploring theology, doctrine, and all of the fascinating subjects in between, broadcasting from an undisclosed location,

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Dead Men Walking starts now. Well, hello everyone.

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Welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking podcast. Coming live from the

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Why Calvinism conference in Tullahoma, Tennessee. We're continuing our series here. We've been here for two days and we've got a day to go.

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As always, you can check us out at dmwpodcast .com. Support the show there. Check out the merch and a little bit more about us.

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Always trying to bring you great content to bring glory to God. Well, we have a first -time guest on the podcast, which is always exciting.

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I just met him in person today, or maybe it was yesterday. I don't know. Did we meet yesterday or today?

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I wasn't at the conference. I was working on a sermon at the hotel room. Okay. So it was today.

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All the days are running together. I'm going to let him give you a Bible. It's Dr. Sam Waldron. How are you, doc?

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I'm doing well. It's great to be with you, Greg. Now, here's the crazy thing. I'm the emcee at this event and I was looking over the itinerary and I didn't get to the third day.

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And on the way down here, eight -hour drive from Michigan to Tennessee, I randomly put on a hour -and -a -half episode from guys called

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Eschatology Matters. And it was with Sam Waldron. And I said, I don't know a lot about Sam. We don't run in the same circles.

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I'm in the kind of the fight, laugh, feast, Presbyterian circles and this and that. And an hour and a half flew by on an eight -hour drive.

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Very informative. I'm also in the minority with some of my Presbyterian friends being an amillennialist.

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Good for you. That's what you were talking about. And it was very informative. And then, lo and behold, we get down here. I look at the itinerary for the third day and I go, that cannot be.

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The providence of the Lord is so cool or I'm just so dumb I didn't pay attention to the names on there. So, so awesome to see you here in person, get to meet you and sit down with us.

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So, tell the listeners a little bit about yourself, kind of your ministry, your background, your origin story, as they say.

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Okay, let's see if I can do this. I've been in the ministry since most of your heroes probably were born.

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I entered the ministry in 1977 as a non -supported pastor of the

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Reformed Baptist Church of Grand Rapids. And I've been in the ministry ever since, so I guess 2077 plus 24 is like 27 or 47 years.

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Although I spent a few of those years doing my PhD and not formally a pastor, although I still was acting like one most of the time.

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When I was 2001 to 2005, I was at Southern Seminary doing my doctoral work after I was 50 years old, believe it or not.

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But I've been married since 1975 to my dear, dear wife, Charlene.

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So we'll celebrate number 49 this summer. We have five children, 15 grandchildren.

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And I am now one of three pastors of Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Owensboro, Kentucky. And I'm also the president of Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary.

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Thankfully, though my bio still says so, I'm not academic dean anymore. We have a vice president and an academic dean.

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In fact, well, there'll be two different persons in that role as the seminary is growing.

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But I am the professor of systematic theology there. That's awesome. My first thought, when

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I see these men of God, such as yourself, that have these long histories, we're actually sitting in another room where Dr.

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James White is speaking right now. And I'd introduce him and you go through the credits. What is it that draws someone to stay in that so long scholarship, theology, the pastoral ministry?

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Because the pastoral ministry is very hard. What is it that you just fall in love with knowing

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God? Is that where the passion comes from? And writing books and essays and discipling others?

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Where does that come from for, I mean, you're going on 50 years. Yeah, you know, I think I can tell you where it came from for me.

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I came to the doctrines of grace in my first years of college. I began to understand

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Reformed Theology. Actually, God used my increasing understanding of the faith and of the scriptures to bring me to a more prevailing assurance of salvation, which

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I had struggled with being raised in a basically Armenian easy -believism kind of context.

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I really struggled with assurance of salvation. But when I came to Reformed Theology, in a few months, all those struggles evaporated.

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And I began to say to myself, this is really important stuff. What I've come to know and believe is just crucial for Christians to know.

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And it's been that desire to communicate a Reformed understanding of scripture in terms of how important it was to me to other people that has kept me going,

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I guess. There's nothing more important in the world than people understanding the truth of scripture and understanding it in a right way.

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And that is from what I think is a Reformed Baptist perspective. And we're at a conference called Why Calvinism?

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So maybe I'll dip into that just a little bit since you're speaking tomorrow. I don't have the subject in front of me, but why is it important for people to have either the correct theology or, more specifically, why is

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Calvinism important? I felt my view of who I was and who God was changed drastically when the

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Lord opened my eyes to the doctrines of grace. It truly put me in my place of who

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I was and who God was. And boy, is there a Proverbs 31 fear of God there, right?

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Just the beginning of wisdom is that reverence and awe. So would you be on board with that?

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It gives you the right understanding and character and view of God? Or why is that important? And why specifically

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Calvinism? Well, I certainly am on board with that. But I'm going to refer to my struggles with assurance of salvation and how a

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Reformed understanding, or the Scriptures, helped me with that. I began to realize that my salvation didn't depend on whether I prayed the right prayer back when

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I was seven years old, when I was three years old. I began to understand that salvation was a work of God in the soul that left marks or evidences of grace there, that if you had them, could only be the result of His work in your soul and of the regenerating power of the

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Holy Spirit. But if you get a hold of the marks of grace and you don't understand the sovereignty of God, that can become works righteousness really fast.

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Really fast, yeah. So the two things together were what was important to me. I began to understand that if I could see in myself the changes and the graces of the

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Holy Spirit, then I could argue from that to assurance of salvation, which is,

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I think, what the confession of faith actually teaches. And yet, those things

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I had, understanding the sovereignty of God, I had to acknowledge were completely of Him, weren't something

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I did myself, but they were the product of His sovereign hand. So that a text like 1

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John 3 .14, which is really important to me, we know that we've passed out of death into life because we love the brethren.

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I could say to myself, but I do love the brethren, and that means I passed out of death into life.

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But then that didn't become works righteousness because I knew that passing out of death into life was all of God and not of myself.

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And that, in addition to my basic knowledge of the way of salvation and the work of Christ, brought me to a prevailing assurance of salvation and convince the importance of understanding things like this for practical

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Christian living. So would you say assurance was kind of the gateway into, or the questions about insurance was kind of the linchpin on which everything else was kind of swinging and built?

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Because that was kind of one for me, assurance and limited atonement. I didn't know what I was asking when

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I was 10 or 12 years old, but I was saying, how many sins do I have to do before I backslid so far that I lose my salvation?

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I'm an 80s kid, so there's a lot of that going on in fundamentalist circles. And then also asking my youth pastor, well, has everyone sinned?

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Yes. Why do people go to hell? Well, because they don't believe. Well, did Jesus die for all sins? Yes. Then why isn't everyone in heaven?

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I didn't know these words. You were beginning to ask the right questions.

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The right questions, right. So years later going, so was that for you kind of the same thing when you were talking about assurance?

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Because it's a scary thing to... I had a four -hour conversation with a dear friend who's a Roman Catholic.

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And boy, at the end of it, he goes, I don't know if I'll be in heaven or not. I could commit a mortal sin. And I just go, wow, what a way to live.

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So was that something for you that got you into... I remember, this is really, in a sense, it's a little odd or weird, but I remember praying in the summer before I went to college that God would...

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I realized that my struggles with assurance of salvation in some way were struggles with my understanding of salvation.

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And I remember praying, Lord, show me what salvation is, because I was so deeply concerned about my soul.

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But that's what God did. He did show me what salvation was, and that's the way he brought me to an assurance of salvation when

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I was in the first years of college. You know, I began to understand the doctrines of grace.

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So I wouldn't say that it was all my own struggles that led me in this direction, but I would say that once I began to read good literature and understand the doctrines of grace, they kind of dissolved my...

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One of the first and most important things they did was dissolve my struggles with assurance of salvation, for the most part.

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Yeah. No, that's good. All right, I'm gonna shift gears here a little bit, just because I'm curious. And like I tell most people,

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I do this podcast because I'm selfish. I get to sit down with interesting people, ask questions that I want to ask, and then

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I get my curiosity satisfied. So you've had a very long career, many books, many essays, posts, conferences, all those things.

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Two -part question. One, what is the most important subject that you feel the need to be talking about right now to believers and unbelievers alike?

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Well, let's just say believers. We know the gospels are the most important for unbelievers. To believers, the most important.

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But two, what's the one you have the most passion for and that you enjoy talking about the most in this season of your life?

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I'm sure those have varied over the years, right? You maybe have an area of expertise that you study and grow in, and wow,

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I find that interesting. So right now, for Dr. Sam Waldron, what's the most fun and passionate subject you're looking at and talking about?

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And then also, maybe it's the same, but it could be different. What's the most important one we should be focusing on? Is it eschatology?

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Is it political? Is it gospel based? Or Christology? What would you think?

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That's a really interesting question. I'm not sure I know quite how to answer it, but I'm going to do it this way.

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I have my three most recent books. One is the fifth edition of A Modern Exposition of the

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Confession. I am entirely convinced of the importance of paying attention to the historic development of Christian doctrine as a tremendous help to give stability to Christians.

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I think in our society, which is changing so fast with so much nonsense, people want a

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Christianity that has some historic stability about it. And I think that's why confessional theology, which just opens the

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Scripture up and helps them understand what the Scripture is saying, is so important. So that book and confessionalism, in the sense of paying attention to the great guides in the

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Christian faith in terms of the meaning of Scripture. Another book that came out a couple years ago is

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How Then Should We Worship? It's kind of related to my book on the Confession because I'm asking the question, so if this is what we believe, how should we worship in our churches?

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And I endeavored to lay out both the regulative principle of worship as I understand it from Scripture, and then also the basic elements of Scripture that Scripture teaches should be part of our worship.

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And I'm convinced that we need to recover a Reformed understanding, a biblical understanding of worship.

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And then I think a lot of people are really confused, in a really unhelpful way, about the

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Doctrine of Last Things. And I hope by the end of this year, my full course on the

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Doctrine of Last Things is going to be published by Free Grace Press, and it's called

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The Doctrine of Last Things, An Optimistic Amillennial View. And I think that that subject of eschatology is not something that's really secondary to the main theme of Scripture.

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The way I understand eschatology is kind of the backbone of redemptive history, and really is tremendously enlightening, a right view of eschatology, tremendously enlightening to the storyline of the

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Bible, and crucial to it, really. So let's say someone's listening right now, and they kind of had the same journey

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I did, where I just grew up in a kind of a charismatic Pentecostal setting, where we were pre -Mill,

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Rapture, Hatch, right? The Beast, The Mark of the Beast, all that stuff, right?

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We were right out of Late Great Planet Earth and Kirk Cameron's movies, Left Behind. And let's say they're coming out of that, or they're unfamiliar with amillennialism.

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Obviously, we could spend hours on this. We just want to spend a few minutes on it. You use the term optimistic amillennialism, which

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I use as well for myself. So how would you explain that to someone and go, that this is what optimistic amillennialism is, maybe in a two - or three -minute version?

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Amillennialism is the basic eschatology that leaves off all the sensationalism in the movies and everything.

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It's the most boring, huh? It's the most boring eschatology in one sense. I don't want to say that in every sense.

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But it focuses on the fact that Christ is coming back, there's going to be a general judgment, general resurrection, and we're going to go into the new heavens and new earth.

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And it doesn't allow people to be distracted by all the fanciful stuff about the

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Middle East and about the Antichrist and the Beast and all of that stuff. It just keeps the main thing the main thing.

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And that's really important for Christianity. I'm not saying that eschatology is not important.

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I believe it is. But we have to keep the main thing the main thing. So, optimism.

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What's my optimism? Well, it's not that there's going to be a millennium that's vastly different than the kind of life we're living right now before Christ comes back, or after Christ comes back.

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Amillennialism actually teaches that, well, you know, amillennialism actually means no millennium.

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Which is annoying, because we do believe in a millennium. But here's the way I think about it. You know, words have denotations.

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I hope I'm not blowing your listeners away by using big words. But the words have denotations and they have connotations.

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The denotation of a millennium is simply a thousand years. Does the Bible say there's going to be a thousand years?

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Yes, it does. It's right there in Revelation 20. So we believe in it. You may think it's figurative or something else, but that's the denotation.

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There's a thousand years. Of course there is. The Bible says there is. But then there are connotations.

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And millennium connotes a great golden age of peace, righteousness, and prosperity on earth.

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And if you're a post -millennialist, you believe that that happens before Christ comes back. And if you're a pre -millennialist, you think it happens after Christ comes back.

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And with regard to that connotation of millennium, I am a non -millennialist. Because I don't believe in any such thing.

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So what I like to say about it is, I'm optimistic about the church.

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I think the church is going to grow. I think the gospel of the kingdom is going to be preached effectively in all the earth.

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And I think there's going to be a global church. I do believe that. But I don't think it's going to bring it into conflict.

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And I think that's what some of our brothers think, that once the church grows that much, it'll triumph culturally and politically, and there'll be this great golden age of peace, righteousness, and prosperity.

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I don't think that's what it means. I think the church will grow. So I would say I'm really optimistic about the church.

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I'm not so optimistic about the world until Jesus comes back. No, I think that's a great way to explain it, too.

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Yeah, absolutely. Okay, let's put bookends on this. I want to grab this here that I have in front of me. We've got a conquering, what is this?

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Conquering and to conquer. So we've got a conference coming up here.

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And I just found out about it. It looks like you've got Vody there. You've got yourself. Is that Joel? Dr.

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Joel Beakey? Joel Beakey, yep. That's Joel. Good friend. I say good friend, but we know each other.

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Man, you've got a great lineup here. And then you're there, of course. This is March 14th through 16th, 2024,

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Louisville, Kentucky. Tell me about it. Tell me about this.

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What are we doing? How many years have you done this now? This is one, two, three, our third one. It's going to be our biggest one.

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CovCon, right, is what we call it. It's our seminary conference, and it's a conference in which we deliberately take up more theological issues, practical issues, but theological.

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We did one on church planning and missions work. That was the first one.

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We did one on worship last year, and not based on, but it's certainly related to my book,

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How Then Should We Worship. This one is on eschatology and optimistic amillennialism.

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Because we think that there's a lot of confusion out there, and I think

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Joel Vody and I and our vice president, John Miller, who's speaking too, agree about the basic issues and avoid some of the things that we think are happening in Christian circles that may not be really helpful.

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Yeah. No, that's good. And we're going to make sure we link this up. We'll link up the books we talked about. We're going to link up your site.

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We'll definitely link this up for people who want tickets. When this comes out very shortly, it'll be about three weeks away.

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Are there still tickets available if people want to come on down or up or over? Our venue holds about 600, and the last

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I heard, we're about 527. Well, you know what? You're not too awfully far away from Michigan where I'm at, so I might have to bring the camper down, and we'll bring the family and find a campsite nearby.

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It's March. It'll be nice. Yeah, conquering and to conquer an eschatology victory just looks so interesting, and I'm sure it's going to be very beneficial for people who have any questions or need some encouragement, too.

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Yeah. Amen. I hope so. Yeah. We're in times right now where the joy of Christ really is important.

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I see so many defeated believers relying on happiness and physical things, material things, and it's like, boy, when you have the peace that surpasses all understanding, the joy of Christ, and honestly,

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I think COVID really did a good job on the church. It really weeded out those who were playing church and those who want to serve at the feet of Christ.

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I think you're right. You know, my own anecdote is that the churches that I think were really serving

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Christ and preaching the truth, I think they prospered. They did. I know.

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We did, and we were so thankful for the kind way in which

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God dealt with us. We lost no one, and we actually gained a lot of members during that period of time, and we give

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God all the glory for it, but we really... One of the things I think that's important about our conference is that it gives us hope for church planning.

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It gives us hope for missions, because we believe that whatever else the Bible teaches or doesn't teach, that the

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Bible teaches us that God is going to bless missions and church planning to the building of His church.

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Amen. Yeah, couldn't be better said. Well, so thank you so much, Dr. Sam Waldron, for coming on the podcast.

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Guys, we're going to link up everything, so if you're listening to this, you're going to see it below. If you're watching this right now, you'll see it below.

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Everything will be linked up. Wealth of resources and knowledge, make sure you check that out.

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Buy the books, watch the videos. We really appreciate him, and thank you so much for taking time to do this.

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Well, thank you, Greg, for having me on the show. All right, guys, that's another episode of Dead Man Walking Podcast.

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As always, you can find us at dmwpodcast .com, Dead Man Walking Podcast, everywhere on social media, and remember, the chief end of man is to glorify

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God and enjoy Him forever. God bless. Hey, guys, what's going on? Still at the Why Calvinism Conference, and we're wrapping things up here.

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I'm here with Kenny and Claire, who've been providing worship for us every morning and afternoon, and I've been absolutely blessed by you guys.

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Tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell the listeners. Either one of you. So, we are a folk

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Americana band, and we love to write music for the church, and with our first project that we did, we took lesser -known hymns that had fallen out of use in the church.

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We wrote them into new songs with the hopes that they would continue to serve the church, and since we put that album out, we've been traveling the country trying to share these with churches to help bring those songs back.

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At the same time, with that project, it's called Are You Weary?, we wanted it to be an album that would come alongside those who are suffering as a way to help encourage them to press on in the faith and to trust the

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Lord and just to, frankly, remember the promises of Scripture. And at the same time, in these hymns, they do explicitly state the gospel and who

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Christ is, and so we love getting to share these songs. Yeah. It sounds like it's a real passion.

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I know I've been talking to both of you over the weekend, and as a nationally touring musicians and with children, there's some challenges there, but it has to be a passion, and it really comes through in your guys' music.

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Right now, you guys are fundraising for the next album, correct? Correct. We'll link it up, but where can people donate or see what this next album is going to be about?

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So if you go to givesendgo .com slash Kenny and Claire, you'll find a video giving you some information about why we do what we do and the album.

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Quickly, the album that we're working on now, the goal is to gather together songs that are rewritten hymns.

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We have one on the Apostles' Creed. We have a handful of songs about lamenting sin and forgiveness, which we'll actually share one in a minute.

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The idea is to recognize that God is genuinely merciful and that we are genuinely a people in need of mercy.

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And so one of our goals in writing worship music is to try to draw our eyes to topics that maybe aren't as commonly represented in worship music, to bring us into some more of the historical doctrines, the deep, rich theology from those who have come before.

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I love it. And you guys have an EP out now that's available, right? They can either purchase a

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CD, I know you guys are on Apple and Spotify and all those places where you can spin it and hear it, stream it.

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Where would they go if, just to the same place for the website, if they want to find out more about you or order anything?

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KennyandClaire .com. KennyandClaire .com. All right, we'll put that on. And you guys are going to perform a song for us, right here in the little makeshift studio.

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So what are we going to hear today? So this one is called Forgive Us, Lord. We were wanting to write a song focusing on confession of sin.

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And we found an old one and a little hymnal that we have from the 1800s called

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All Our Sinful Words and Ways. And the only attribution to a songwriter is initials.

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And I don't know who the writer is. We've been trying to research that. But I hope this gentleman who has long not been with us isn't mad at what we've done with his work.

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But we mashed up his song of confession also with what we had written. And so this is called

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Forgive Us, Lord. And really quick question, with just initials, do we know that it was a gentleman? Yeah, I don't know.

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Or is it a lady? I don't know. I mean, Fanny wrote a few hymns. She did, but it was pre -Fanny.

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I'm just saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's true. We don't know for certain. We don't know for certain. And that's actually one of our goals.

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I know a guy who is a hymnologist. I like that. So I've been having some discussions with him. And he's also sent me to one of the seminaries that has a library.

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So we're working on it. Working on it. Well, man, I'm excited. So guys, gals that are listening,

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Kenny and Claire, here you go. Forgive us,

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Lord, for Jesus' sake.

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Laziness and pride. All your laws that we defy.

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Forgive us, Lord, for Jesus' sake.

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Forgive us, Lord, for Jesus' sake. Every needful gift of grace.

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Till we see your holy face.

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Please give us more. Give every needful gift of grace.

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Till we see your holy face.

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All right. Yeah, Kenny and Claire, everyone. That was awesome, man. Oh, absolutely love it.

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Now, just to sum this up, too, you guys do tour. People can find out where you're touring at all around the country on the website that we linked up.

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And I would say, guys, go out and see them, support them, bring a group of friends, listen to them, spin them, buy the

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CDs. I mean, I just can't support you guys more because I love what you're doing, the heart you're doing it with to glorify

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God. And it's just absolutely beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we'll be out west. We'll be up north.

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We'll be everywhere. Be everywhere. Find us and we'd love to come and worship with you.

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All right, guys, thanks so much for being here and taking time out to do this. And listeners, check them out.

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Like I said, you won't be disappointed. I've been listening to the EP this weekend, and it's absolutely beautiful.