Anabaptists (Part 2)

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Reformed Theology (Part 3)

00:00
Our Father and our God, we thank you for the opportunity to come together again to discuss the Anabaptists, to finalize this discussion, Father, and I pray that you would glorify yourself in the teaching of history, for we know that ultimately history is just looking at what you have decreed down through the ages.
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For, Lord, you are the sovereign over history, you're the sovereign over the world, and Father, we submit unto you.
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We bow the knee to Jesus Christ and we thank you that you have brought the world as you have to us this day so that we would be in your house worshiping you together.
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I thank you for all of these people, God, for you are the one who is deserving of thanks.
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I thank you for people who have a hunger for the word, who have a desire to hear it preached, and I thank you for a church that week after week after week comes in just longing to receive the meat and the milk of the word of God.
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And we pray, Lord, all these things in Jesus' name and for his sake.
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Amen.
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Well, last week we...
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Yes, sir, go ahead.
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Before you start, sacral system, look up.
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I looked it up and I'm getting cranial sacral system.
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Yeah, yeah, sacral is a descriptive term that I do recognize is not used by a lot of people.
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We could say the familial system or simply the state church system.
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I would say state church system rather than sacral.
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That was a description used by an author that I had actually heard another pastor use and I was sort of piggybacking on what he said, but it isn't the most common used term.
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State church is the more commonly used term.
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So I'm glad, nice to know you're looking stuff up because I said I went back and was looking at it and yeah, you see the, what was it, sacral cranial? It's a bodily function.
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Yeah, yeah, it's it when you use it in that context.
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Okay, um, what I want to do today is I'm going to finish out what the book says about the Anabaptists because I realized and I was thinking this week we would move on to the move on to Reformed Theology because that's the exact, that's the next one.
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I feel like I can do that one.
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I feel like that one won't be too hard.
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But we didn't finish what the book said about the Anabaptists, so I just felt like it would be unfair to just jump right ahead.
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We did watch the video last week.
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For those of you who were here, you got a chance to see the story of Michael Sattler.
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Michael and Margaret Sattler, sad story.
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I was asked during the video were they killed by the Roman Catholics and I wanted to kind of clear something up.
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They were killed by the state because within the state church or sacral system, the state was the one who performed the executions.
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And this is important because if you ever talk to a Roman Catholic and you talk about Roman Catholics burning people at the stake or Roman Catholics killing people, they'll say we didn't kill anybody.
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It was the state.
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What you have to understand is within a state church system, within a system which weds the church in the state, the state has the authority to exercise the judgment, not the church.
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The church condemns, the state executes.
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So the Roman Catholics, I have heard them in debate make the argument, we never killed anybody.
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It was the state that made heresy punishable by death and it was the church that determined what was heresy.
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So that's a fine line, but at least you know, you have to kind of, you have to understand they're making a distinction and if they're, you know, it is the, it is our right to make distinctions and if you ever hear that argument, you can at least say well, I understand what you're saying.
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But you were the one who led him to the, you might not have been the one who put the noose on his neck, but you were the one who led him up the steps kind of thing, you know.
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Kind of like the United States government saying, all the money that we give to Planned Parenthood isn't used for abortions.
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That's exactly what I think.
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Exactly, yeah.
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All right, did anybody need this? Would you like a copy? I see you don't have one there.
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Mr.
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Richard, anybody else need one? Jake, you want one? I got extra if you'll pass this down to him.
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And so, you know, when we think about that, and that's a good example of what the state does with it, with the money for abortions, and we think about what happened, the first Anabaptists were actually condemned by the Council of Zurich.
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They were under Zwingli.
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So they would have been reformed.
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Condemnation.
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Just like Mikhail Servaitis.
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Who is Mikhail Servaitis or Michael Servaitis? He is the one that Calvin is accused of having killed.
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Calvin did not kill him.
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But he was killed by the Council of Geneva, having condemned him to death.
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And one of the witnesses to his crimes of heresy was Jean Calvi.
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Calvin did sit on the panel, or sat, and Calvin actually, you know, he thought he was being merciful by asking for a quick death.
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They actually tortured Servaitis, and he did die.
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But Calvin asked for a quick death.
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Are you unfamiliar with the story of Michael Servaitis? Michael Servaitis, this is often the whip which people use to beat Calvinists.
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They'll say, you're following a murderer because Calvin murdered people.
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Calvin didn't murder Michael Servaitis.
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Calvin did testify in his trial to Michael Servaitis being a heretic.
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What was Servaitis' heresy? Servaitis did not believe in the full divinity of Jesus Christ.
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He was an anti-Trinitarian, and he was essentially teaching a form of Arianism, which had been condemned in the fourth century at the Council of Nicaea, and later condemned over and over at various councils.
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So Servaitis was, he was teaching something that would have gotten him condemned anywhere in the Christian world.
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Would have gotten him condemned under the Roman Catholics, would have gotten him condemned under the Reformers.
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He would have been universally condemned by the church for denying the full divinity of Jesus Christ.
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Now, does that mean he deserved to die? Okay.
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Yes, he wrote letters to Calvin.
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He wrote letters trying to convince Calvin of his, because he felt like this was just another step in the Reformation, that we needed to rediscover the real Jesus.
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So he was writing letters to Calvin.
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Calvin said, don't come, you ain't gonna make it out.
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Calvin was, Calvin was very clear.
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You don't need to come here seeking asylum.
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You don't need to come here seeking favor, because you're not going to get it here.
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And if you come, you probably won't leave.
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And it was true.
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He did not leave.
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You know, it was obviously a different time.
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And we don't need to make excuses for Calvin if we're not going to make excuses for the Catholic Church, too.
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You know, obviously there, you know, we don't make excuses.
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We say it was a time.
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Did Calvin do something wrong? Calvin didn't condemn him, but Calvin was a part of the condemnation.
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To be fair, this was a, it was a different time in history.
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Heresy was seen as something worthy of punishment by death.
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It was the question of what was heresy.
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And is there a time in biblical history where heresy is punishable by death? Yeah, absolutely.
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In the Old Testament, under the Old Covenant, there was times where if you were an unbeliever, you know, or teaching something that was false, if you were, if you were a prophet who prophesied falsely, it was condemned by death.
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If you were out cutting wood on the Sabbath, you were condemned to death.
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I mean, there were, you know, this is the thing I don't like when people, when people attack the Muslims.
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Now, I'm not supporting the Muslims, so before you all walk out, people will say, I can't believe anybody who would believe a religion that would call unbelievers to their deaths.
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Well, read the Old Testament.
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At least be fair and be honest.
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There are passages in the Old Testament that call for the death of unbelievers, they call for the death of false prophets.
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You got married and found out your wife was a virgin, she would run to her father's doorstep and stone him in the front door.
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Yep.
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I mean, so, so there are things that we need to be careful throwing stones in the glass house kind of thing, if you're gonna, if you're gonna condemn the Muslim for, for their beliefs and say, well, they're backwards and whatnot.
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What, this is the thing that I've always said, is not that Islam is, is, is wrong for, for what they're doing.
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They're, they're wrong for what they're believing, because they're believing in a false God, and that's the dangerous thing.
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And thus, it's making, it's, it's blossoming into this terrorism, and that's what it is.
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One of the things we don't see in the Old Testament is the, is the command of terrorism, which is simply the, the act of killing indiscriminately for the purpose of creating and instilling fear.
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That, we don't see that.
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But, but anyhow, we have to be, have to be honest, at least about the scriptures.
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Not condemning the scriptures, because it's God's Word, but at least being fair to say that, you know, the problem with Islam is, is that they're following a false God, and, and it's a theological problem, which comes out into a practical problem.
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Now, all that has nothing to do with Anabaptists, so we, so the people listening to this recording are probably very disappointed at the 10-minute mark.
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We haven't even mentioned the Anabaptists yet.
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Let us read now how they viewed the Bible.
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We've seen the theology part.
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We have not read the revelation part.
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Under Revelation, the Bible is to be obeyed completely in one's life.
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It is the sole authority and guide.
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The Spirit reveals the message of the Word to the believing community.
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Interpretation of Scripture is discerned primarily at church gatherings.
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Anabaptists tend to focus on the teachings of Christ and the New Testament more than on the Old Testament.
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Well, I wouldn't say that's odd.
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I would say most Christians would focus more on the teachings of the New Testament as being further revelation than the Old Testament.
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This sort of answers the question of, well, why, why is it that we no longer stone the, the woman at her father's doorstep? Because the, the revelation of God, while we know God did not change, there is a movement from the nation of Israel to the religion of all nations, which is through faith in Jesus Christ.
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It's not, no longer, it's no longer meant to be a theocratic nation, but a theocratic people of all nations.
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We serve one King, Jesus Christ.
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No matter who is the president, no matter who is the senators, no matter who is the governor, we serve one King, and that's Jesus Christ.
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And we have that whole two kingdom idea.
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I think it was Augustine who talked about the city of man, the city of God.
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So you've got, you live in the city of man, you live under the authority of the king, or the ruler, the president, or whoever, but you, you are a citizen of a different kingdom.
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You're a citizen of the, of the kingdom of God, and thus you live not with a divided loyalty, but with a singular loyalty to God, and yet God calls you to obedience to the civil magistrate.
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And we have to consider that as well.
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So in the Anabaptist tradition, as far as the scripture is concerned, the scripture becomes the, the, the, similar to what, the way we use it, comes to place where you come together and learn about life living.
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But here's the thing about how they understand scripture that needs to be understood.
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When they are looking at the Bible, they are looking more at practicality than they are theological statements.
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Their statements of faith, very, very simple, not doctrinally thick at all, they're very, they're very simple.
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In fact, we looked at the Sleighthine Confession, at least we mentioned it two weeks ago, in the Sleighthine Confession.
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What is the first thing in the Sleighthine Confession? It's only seven statements.
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The first thing is baptism, and then it's, after that is the oath, or the ban, rather, the ban, which is the excommunication.
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So what is it? It's how you get in and how you get out.
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It's the first two things in the statement of faith.
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It doesn't start with the holiness of God, or the place of scripture, or who is Christ, which is where a lot of other statements of faith start with.
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It starts with how you get in through baptism, how you get out through excommunication, or, you know, whatever.
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That's the two things.
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And then after that it deals with how pastors are supposed to function, and how you're supposed to relate to being separate from sin in the world, and the world system, and all that.
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It's very, very practical, not very, very theological.
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And somebody might say, well that sounds great, you know, theology divides.
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Yeah, but theology also provides for us a basis for how we act, and for what we believe, and what we do.
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And without a strong theological basis, it's easy to get into wild and divergent behaviors.
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And we see that in some of the Anabaptist movement.
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Alright, salvation.
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Sin is not so much a bondage of the free will of man, as it is a lost capacity to respond to God.
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The free will of man allows him to repent, and be obedient to the gospel.
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There's an area where we would disagree, but this is their argument.
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That when one repents and believes, God regenerates him to walk in new life.
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The emphasis is more on obedience than on sin, more on regeneration than on justification.
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So essentially this, where the reformers were focused on the concept of justification, which is by faith alone.
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The Anabaptists are concerned with regeneration, which is the reforming of the heart of the individual, so that he might walk in the newness of life.
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Both of them are important.
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But where the Lutherans especially are concerned with justification, the Anabaptists are concerned with regeneration and the changed life.
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I can see how someone could see German Lutheranism and other Reformed teachings as being licenses for licentiousness.
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You know, licenses for sin.
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And so the Anabaptists, you know, no, Christ changes the life.
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He doesn't just save the soul.
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And so to be saved is to be changed.
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Now, none of us would disagree, at least I don't think that we would.
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I don't know, the way I look at it, it's almost God-sovereign.
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Oh, well that, yeah, well I'm getting to that, yeah, I'm getting back, no, no, no.
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I'm saying their expression of the results.
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Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
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I think that their view of free will does miscommunicate at least the Scripture teaching.
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Because their argument is basically you get in by virtue of your will.
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Once you're in, God regenerates your soul.
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And then you can actually do what he commands you to do.
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Because before that, you couldn't because of sin.
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But you could respond.
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Here's the difference, again, in Reformed theology.
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We believe that responding, or at least I would say this is what is classically taught in Reformed theology.
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I hate to say we as if I'm speaking for all of us.
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But this is what is taught.
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That the response itself is an act of God's enablement.
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Apart from that enablement, we would not respond positively to the Gospel.
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This is taken from the words of Jesus himself.
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No one can come to me unless it be granted to him by my Father.
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So God has to do the enablement to allow us to come.
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Now the Wesleyan argument is that God enables everybody.
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See, this is the thing.
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We're closer, classic Wesleyans or Arminians, actually are closer to Reformed thinking on the nature of man than our modern Southern Baptists.
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Because modern, now when I say modern, I mean the quote unquote traditional or whatever.
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They're not traditional because they're 50 years old or a little better.
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But they'll argue that man is totally free, able to come to Christ on his own.
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And that once he comes, then God gives him a new life, a new heart, and all that stuff.
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So we're like the Anabaptists.
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It's kind of like a freedom that man has to come.
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Wesleyans didn't believe that.
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John Wesley believed that every man is bound in his sin.
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He's dead.
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He's born dead.
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He's totally bound in his sin.
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He cannot come to God on his own.
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But that God provides to every man what is known as prevenient grace.
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That every man receives a form of grace that preempts his coming but allows him the capacity to come.
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So it's not that he has free will.
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It's that he has an enablement from God to come and that that is universal.
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That every man, though he be a sinner, though he be born in his sin, though he is absolutely dead in his sin, he has been given just enough life that he may come.
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This is Wesley's argument.
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That is closer to us than the free willers.
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It still sounds descriptive but more if he's a sick man, not a dead man.
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Oh sure, yeah.
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It's described better as a sick man needing medicine than a dead man needing resurrection.
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Absolutely.
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I hate to go to heaven.
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Well he would argue that God draws everybody or God grants it to everybody.
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I don't agree with him.
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I'm saying that would be the argument is that God draws everybody.
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They would go to John 12.
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Jesus said, if I be lifted up, I'll draw all men unto myself, which is in the context is all types of men because the context is one of the disciples had brought to Jesus some Greeks.
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And Jesus says, you know, they're wondering, should this happen? Should it not happen? Jesus says, if I be lifted up, I'll draw all men unto myself.
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That's all kinds of men, not just Jews but men of all nations.
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That's the context of that statement.
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But you'll hear him say, well God draws everybody because it's in John 12.
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And I say, well, if God draws everybody, then everybody gets saved.
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Because John 644 says, no one can come to me unless the Father in heaven draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.
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So unless you're arguing that the second him is different than the first him, then what you're saying is everybody who he draws will be raised up.
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If he draws everybody, everybody's saved.
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The end.
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So you're a universalist.
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Yes, sir.
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Enter another Methodist by the name of George Whitfield.
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George Whitfield.
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George Whitfield, he lived in the same room with John Wesley.
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The two of the men, there's a great story about prayer.
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Most of you have heard me tell the story about how they come in from a day of preaching.
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George Whitfield stands up and says, Lord, thank you for this day.
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I thank you, God, for the souls that you've given me and all the blessings that you've bestowed upon me.
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And I pray for that.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
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He lays down.
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And old Wesley gets down on his knees and looks at Whitfield.
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And he said, oh, how your Calvinism has robbed your prayers.
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Where is your Calvinism taking your prayer life? And he starts ringing his hands and gets down and really starts getting after it.
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Whitfield goes to sleep.
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About 3 a.m.
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he wakes up, and old Wesley's still over there.
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And he gets up and walks around.
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He looks at him.
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He's asleep.
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Fell asleep praying.
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He said, oh, where your Arminianism has led your prayers.
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But yes, they were both part of the quote-unquote holiness or holy club, George Whitfield and John Wesley.
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They had diverging views on man's freedom and God's sovereignty.
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But they did have a loving relationship with one another.
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And this is something I try to express to everybody.
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Even if we disagree with Arminians, we cannot just unilaterally condemn them.
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Even Whitfield was asked, will you see Wesley in heaven? And he said, no, because he will be so much closer to the throne of grace than I will.
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He thought a lot of his friend, and he felt that he was a saved man.
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So before we get out the knife and start cutting people in half for not having the same views as we do, know that most of us were Arminian at one point, and yet we were saved.
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And it's God's grace that opens eyes to see these things.
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You didn't come to salvation or an understanding of Reformation theology because you're smarter or more intellectually savvy.
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It's because God was gracious to you.
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Just keep that in, you know, that's important.
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Yes, you.
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I just heard Al Mohler address that work before and basically said, you know, keep it open, beloved brothers and sisters.
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But we would not necessarily do things and works within and fellowship together because of the differences between one to the other.
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Well, that's what I'm saying.
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I think the hardest part for me is witnessing with an Arminian because of the attitude of the push towards the sinner's prayer, which not all Arminians use, but there's especially modern Southern Baptists have this push sort of to get somebody to pray a prayer.
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And that's not my motivation.
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My motivation is to get someone to bow the knee to Jesus Christ.
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My motivation ultimately is to glorify God in the preaching of his word, whether somebody believes or not.
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But the idea of praying a prayer.
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And again, my buddy I was telling you the story about, that he and I disagreed a little bit on evangelism.
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That was his whole thing.
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You know, I'm not out just to get somebody to pray a prayer.
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I said, I'm not either.
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We agree.
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Absolutely.
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Just trying to go out and get another notch in your evangelism, you know, belt or whatever, you know, just to get another, just to get another person to say, I got him to pray the prayer doesn't mean anything.
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There is discipleship that needs to be involved.
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But you can witness to somebody and knowing them for five minutes, you can witness to them.
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You don't have to become their best friend to share Christ with them.
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Well, they're truly indwell on spirit.
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Yeah.
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They'll get the sign of the sinner later.
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Yeah.
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And that's why I say I like, that's why I like giving out tracts that do have our information on it.
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My hope is that I'm not trying to advertise for our church.
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I hope nobody thinks that, that nobody thinks that I'm just out trying to advertise for the church.
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My hope is that if they do come to knowledge of the truth, that they'll know where to reach out for the next step, the help to learn, you know.
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Did we read the salvation? Yes.
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Okay.
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All right.
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So let's finish up with the church.
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What time is it? Anybody? Okay.
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So I've got five minutes to finish up this last bit.
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The church is a visible body of believers obedient to Christ.
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The church exists as a visible fellowship, not an invisible body or state church.
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That is important.
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There's language here.
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Because one of the things you need to understand is Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, all maintained that state church system.
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And in doing so, they believed that everybody born into the church, baptized, was a member of the church because they were also citizens of the state.
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And it was, there was a connection between the citizenry of the state and the citizenry of the church.
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And part of the Anabaptist movement was a rebellion against that.
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Just because you're a member of the state, just because you're a member of the church by birth, you are not a member of Christ's church.
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But it needs to be understood that Calvin and Luther both had their own theologies of this too.
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They weren't ignorant of this fact.
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Calvin had something called the visible and the invisible church.
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And you might have heard me talk about that before.
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In Calvin's view, the visible church was the state church.
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That was what everybody was a part of.
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But the invisible church was the church that was made up of the elect, those who had been regenerated.
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So he understood there were people in the state church that were not in the real church.
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And he made the distinction visible-invisible.
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The argument of the Anabaptists is there is no two.
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There's one church.
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It's the true church.
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And we don't put members in the church that are not members of the body of Christ.
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Now, here's the thing.
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Nobody can really say that.
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Because even people who confess Christ, be baptized, could be lost people playing the role.
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That's one of the things that even now, that's why I still teach on the visible and invisible church.
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When I go in our church on Sunday morning, I know that there are people here who are professing believers who are not saved.
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Now, I don't know who they are.
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It's like, I don't see a big E tattooed on your forehead.
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I don't have special sunglasses like that guy in that movie that I can see all the alien faces and I know who's aliens and who's not.
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I know who's the elect and who's not.
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That was Roddy Roddy Piper, who was in that movie.
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You remember what I'm talking about? No.
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That's why I was kind of freaking you out.
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Yeah.
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Anyway, don't worry about it.
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Sunglasses.
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He had sunglasses where he could see who was aliens, who wasn't.
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Anyway.
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So, I don't know who is the saved and who is the lost, but I know that they're there, which is why I always try to have an evangelistic appeal in my messages, a call to repentance, even when I'm speaking to believers because we are seeing that there are people that are lost.
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And so the idea that the church is only going to be made up of the elect, it's only going to be made up of saved people, is not possible because there's always going to be unbelievers who either want to associate with the church because it stabs their conscience, they want to be associated with the church because it allows them some type of status in society, which is kind of going away, but there was a time in which you actually had to be a member of a church to really have any influence in society or a member of certain churches to be influential in society.
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I remember a friend of mine was running for office in Jacksonville and he was told, well, if you want to, you can go anywhere.
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And I'm not saying this is the true all the time, but he was told this.
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If you want to go anywhere, you have to join First Baptist downtown if you really want to be in the politics of the city.
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And he said, well, I can't just go to the little, you know, backwoods Baptist out here.
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Nope.
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People need to see you in church and that's where they get to see you.
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So, I mean, there are all kinds of motivations for people being in church that aren't godly.
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So the idea of the visible, invisible church, I think Calvin was right, but I think his understanding of the state as the visible church was wrong.
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That's what I would say.
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There's a difference.
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Only believing adults can participate in baptism.
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Baptism testifies to the believer's separation from the world and commitment to obeying Christ.
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Amen.
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I don't really have an issue with those.
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The next thing, the sacraments.
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By the word, the word sacramentum now means mystery, but the Latin term used to mean, in the old Latin, meant ordinance or something that is ordered.
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So we usually use the word ordinance rather than sacrament, but I don't shudder from the word sacrament.
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But typically sacrament is used in Catholic churches and more high churches.
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So normally you'll hear me use the word ordinance, but that's what they're referring to here is baptism in the Lord's Supper.
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In Catholic churches, there are seven sacraments, but in Protestant churches, there were only two that were considered truly ordered by Christ, was baptism and the Lord's Supper.
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Baptism and the Lord's Supper are only symbols of Christ's work.
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They impart no grace to the participant.
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The characteristics of a church member's life ought to be personal conversion, holy life, suffering for Christ, separation, love for the brethren, non-resistance, and obedience to the Great Commission.
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The church is a kingdom that is in constant conflict with evil kingdom in the world system.
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That was terrible.
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Let me try that again.
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The church is a kingdom of God that is in constant conflict with the evil kingdom of the world system.
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The church is to evangelize in the world, but not participate in its system.
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This precludes participation in any government office or military service.
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This is the part where I would have the biggest divergence from the Anabaptist or Anabaptist movement because I do believe that a man can faithfully serve in the military or even in politics and be a Christian.
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I don't know that you necessarily get too far politically nowadays, but I also don't say that all politicians are condemned simply for being politicians.
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I think oftentimes they're condemned for other reasons, but the very act of serving local government, if the government is put in place for our good, as Romans 13 says, meaning it has a place of propriety in society, then it seems to me a logical conclusion that God would want His people involved with the enterprise.
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If it's there to be the minister of good, is actually what Romans 13 says, it's to be the minister of good and the minister of judgment because it says it does not bear the sword in vain.
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And it seems to me that God would want, and again, I'm making a logical deduction.
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If you want to argue with me sometime about it, that's fine.
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But it seems to me that God would want His people to be involved with such a thing rather than simply turning that over to Satan and just giving up on having any influence at all.
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The biggest thing that I see is a question of violence, and I don't have time.
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I did bring my article, but I'm not going to get it.
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I just won't get a chance.
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But if you get a chance to read my article that I wrote on the website, Benevolent Violence, if you haven't seen it, I sent an email out.
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I encourage you to read this because the argument of Anabaptists was that we never have a case, never have a place where we would be violent.
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My article, Benevolent Violence, makes a distinction between malevolent and benevolent violence.
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Malevolent means something that's used for evil.
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Benevolent means something that's used for good.
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And the Bible describes benevolent violence and people say, where? Well, it says if you spare the rod, you hate your son.
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Well, what are you doing with a rod? Are you massaging his back? No, you're spanking him on the backside with a rod.
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For what purpose? For the purpose of correction, instruction.
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But let me ask you a question.
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If you walked through Walmart with a stick and started whacking people on the backside, what would happen? You would go to jail for assault because it is a violent act to whack somebody on the backside with a stick.
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Wicked some dates? My point being, the same action, when motivated by a different impetus, can be evil or good depending on the motivation.
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Violence is not always malevolent.
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Police officers are for what purpose? Serve and protect, right? What is part of protection? Acting benevolently, violently.
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Why do you call a police officer and break into your house? Please come do violence on my behalf.
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Please.
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And if you don't make it in time, I may have to do violence on my behalf.
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But somebody's going to be doing some violence on my behalf tonight.
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And again, the Anabaptists saw all of that as being anti-Christ.
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And I would disagree.
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And I'm actually going to be interviewed this week on Iron Sharpens Iron again.
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It's a two-hour interview this week, so I'm kind of anxious about that.
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But it's on the subject of benevolent violence and our role as protectors of the home.
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And Chris Arden just wants to hear my take on it.
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And I'm going to be taking questions from the audience, so I'm kind of a little anxious about that.
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So please, be in prayer for me.
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Yes, sir.
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One issue of this is a very large subject How did they come up with the name Anabaptists? Which means, again, Baptists.
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That's the literal translation of the term.
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And that was considered the biggest issue.
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Yeah, that was their condemnation, was that they had re-baptized.
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Yes.
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Let me ask a question so I don't forget what we can do with the language.
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Under Revelation, it talks about the interpretation of the Scriptures is primarily at church gatherings.
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Is this intended, because I mean, every time you come into a Catholic church, the priest told you what to believe, read the Bible to you and all.
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Yeah.
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Reformation people had the Bible and stuff.
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What does this mean in terms of the term primarily at church gatherings? Well, I'll have to look further into that, but what I think that is happening is rather than there being the magisterial preacher, it's more open to the interpretation of the community that we're interpreting this together.
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Because it was about action.
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It was more about action than about theology.
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How do we apply this? Yeah, because I was confused with how this was worded.
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Yeah, like I said, this is House's notes.
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I need to look further into what he meant by that before I make a definitive.
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Yeah.
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But I know in a lot of communities like this, rather than having the pastor giving the magisterial message, you've got the community, several men in the church get up and teach and preach, and sometimes three or four guys preach at a time, and there's sort of a communal sense of the giving of the word.
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But I do need to break, so God bless you guys.
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Thank you all.