Should a Baptist Attend a Nazarene Church?

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Would a Baptist be happy going to a Nazarene church? That's a question we're going to answer today, along with some other viewer questions on Conversations with a

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Calvinist, which begins right now. Welcome back to Conversations with a

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Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. Yesterday was Reformation Day.

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October 31st is the day that Martin Luther published the 95 Theses. It's considered to be one of the watershed moments in church history.

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And so if you're unfamiliar with that, I referenced in a previous video a series of DVDs that I recommend called

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Reformation Overview, and they are available for free, and you can find them at Vision Video's YouTube page.

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Also, this Saturday I'm going to be making my first attempt at stand -up comedy, so I'm looking forward to sharing that video with you.

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Once it's done, I'm going to share the video, whether it's a success or whether it's a colossal failure, but I'm going to be doing it at a charity event for Set Free, which is a ministry that our church supports.

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They're doing a fundraising dinner, and I'm going to go and be part of the entertainment. So look forward to that.

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It's something that's going to be coming later this week. So what we're going to be doing on today's program is we're going to be answering a series of listener questions, and the more that people hear about the show and the more that people watch the videos, the more

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I'm getting emails from people who have questions. And I want you to know, if you have a question, please send it in.

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I want to answer it if I can, and I do my best to try to answer all the questions that are sent to me.

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You can send the questions in to calvinispodcast at gmail .com. But here's the thing, moving forward, if you send a question in,

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I'm going to do my best to answer it on the show so that the answer that I give you is an answer that is beneficial to the entire audience.

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So if you have a private question, something that you don't want me to share, please mention that in the email if you don't want it to be mentioned on air.

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Also, I'm going to do my best to not mention church names if there are church names in the emails, and I will just mention the first name of the person who sends me the email.

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That way, leave a little bit of anonymity for whoever's sending in their emails.

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But if you send an email, my goal is going to be to try to answer it on the show. And so the first question is, as I mentioned in the intro, regarding the

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Church of the And I'm going to read the email as it came in. It says, Hi Pastor Keith, thank you for all your

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If There Were Churches videos. Since I came across your YouTube channel, they have made this relocated conservative

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Southern Baptist very happy. Well, thank you for that encouraging word, I appreciate it. Being raised in an evangelical

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Lutheran and finding a true relationship with Christ after being baptized in an SBC Church, I also found your podcast about different denominations both insightful and hilarious.

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Again, thank you very much. I consider myself a conservative Southern Baptist due to the inerrancy of the Bible and the sovereignty of God.

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However, I've recently had to relocate to Pennsylvania, and the closest thing to a God -fearing Bible Church I've found is a

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Church of the Nazarene. What are your thoughts on the Nazarene denomination? God bless Matt.

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Well Matt, my answer to you is going to be kind of interesting, because I have an interesting history with the

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Nazarene denomination. First of all, two people in my life that had important places in my life were part of the

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Nazarene Church. The first one was my band director. As many of you may already know,

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I spent my middle school years and high school years, a big part of my life, I spent in the band.

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I was in the marching band, I was in the concert band, I was in the symphonic band. We went all around the state and even the lower southeast region of the

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United States playing and participating in competitions, and I loved the band, and my band director, his name was

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Don Reynolds, and he became a friend not only in school, but after school we became friends, and even recently

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I preached his funeral. Don and I were friends even until his untimely passing.

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He died, he had a disease, and he passed away rather young. So Don and I were dear friends, and I consider him to be a brother in Christ.

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I talked about that during the funeral. And Don was a member of the Nazarene Church. So that was my first interaction with the

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Nazarene Church, was one of my dear friends growing up. My band director and friend was a member of the

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Church of the Nazarene. But also when I went to seminary, I attended Jacksville Baptist Theological Seminary, and while I was at Jacksville Baptist Theological Seminary, I had a fellow classmate who was a pastor at a

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Nazarene Church. And it's interesting, I've told the story about my seminary before, my seminary was really a...there

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were a lot of older men in my seminary. I jokingly say sometimes that my seminary was like pastoral trade school, because the classes were at night, it was made for men who were either already in ministry or who were bivocational and who were seeking to get an education, but weren't able to be in class during the day.

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So almost all the classes were in the evening, we had one Monday night or Monday day class, but the rest of them were evening classes.

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And I took several classes with this gentleman who was already serving as a pastor in a

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Nazarene Church, and right away the one thing that I remember always stood out about him was that he believed that you could lose your salvation.

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That was a very big and important thing for him. He believed that salvation was something that could be forfeited, you could leave the faith even though you were a genuine believer, you could become not a believer, and of course that was an issue because he was in a seminary that was a

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Baptist seminary. One of the things that sort of marks Baptists is the belief in eternal security, sometimes referred to as once -saved -always -saved.

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So right away, Matt, one of the things you're going to face if you go to Nazarene Church and you're a Baptist and you believe in eternal security, they're probably going to teach differently about that.

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But you have to step back and you have to say, well why? Why is it that they teach that? And the reason why is because they come from a more

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Wesleyan background, a holiness background, and that's where I want to take you today.

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I'm actually going to read to you from their official website. This is the website of the Church of the

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Nazarene. And if you go to their website, you'll notice under what we believe, it's not a lot that they have, but the things that they say are pretty interesting because it says a lot about them.

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First of all, they affirm what we would say is very important, they affirm the doctrine of the Trinity. Under the we believe statements, it says we believe in one

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God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now they don't explain one in essence, three in person, they don't go in any of that.

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I would assume they affirm that as the historic definition of the Trinity, but I can't say that for certain.

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I can only say that the simple statement that they make here seems to be Trinity affirming.

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So that's a good thing. The second thing, it says we believe that human beings are born with a fallen nature and are therefore inclined to evil and that continually.

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So, sounds pretty good. Sounds like they believe that the nature of Adam has been passed down to all of us as we believe, inheriting...it

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doesn't use the term original sins, original sin, but it does say fallen nature, so pretty good so far.

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Now it goes on to say we believe that the Atonement through Jesus Christ is for the whole human race and that whosoever repents and believes on the

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Lord Jesus Christ is justified and regenerated and saved from the dominion of sin.

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Okay. We might take as Calvinists, and Matt, it sounded like, if I go back to the email, like you were coming from the position of...well

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you said conservative Southern Baptist. I as a Calvinist would not say that the

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Atonement was for the whole human race. I believe in limited Atonement, I've talked about this in other videos, but that wouldn't keep me from going to a church.

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That would not be the issue for me. I mean, there are other things that might come with that that might be an issue.

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Limited Atonement is certainly something that's debated. A lot of people have different opinions on that, but I am a five -point

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Calvinist, as is obvious conversation with the Calvinist, so I believe in limited Atonement. I believe that Christ's death paid the penalty for those for whom it was made, which means all who will believe or all the elect.

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So that third one seems to deny limited Atonement. Number four, we believe that the

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Holy Spirit bears witness to the new birth and also to the entire sanctification of believers. Now here's where we start getting into some of the

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Wesleyan view of this idea of entire sanctification. What does that mean? Well, depending on how it's taught, it can mean the idea that a believer will reach a level of sanctification where they will no longer sin in this life in thought, word, and deed, and essentially become completely sanctified in this life.

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And it says, again, we believe that the Holy Spirit bears witness to the new birth and also to the entire sanctification of believers.

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Well, the first question I would have is, what do you mean by bearing witness to the new birth? Because some people believe that bearing witness to the new birth would be something like speaking in tongues.

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I'm not saying that's what they teach, I'm just saying some holiness or Pentecostal believers believe that if you don't speak in tongues, then you haven't borne witness of being filled with the

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Holy Spirit, so that might be an issue here. But again, entire sanctification would be something

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I would want to address. Does that mean that you believe, or that they believe, that people will stop sinning in thought, word, or deed, as is believed by some who believe in a second blessing, or the idea that you can become completely or wholly sanctified?

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The next one says, we believe that the Old and New Testament scriptures, given by plenary inspiration, contain all truth necessary to faith and Christian living.

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That's a pretty decent expression of the scriptures. The only thing it doesn't say is inerrant, and I would be interested in why it does say plenary inspiration, which means inspiration of the whole, so they believe every word is inspired.

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Okay, that's good. That would certainly lend to the idea of inerrancy, but it doesn't say that.

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I assume they believe in inerrancy. It goes on to say, we believe that the finally impenitent are hopelessly and eternally lost.

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Okay, so what's that referring to? That's referring to what happens to unbelievers. Unbelievers, the finally impenitent is the term that they use, are hopelessly and eternally lost.

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Okay, they don't use the word hell. I understand hell is something that not everybody wants to use that word, and I get it.

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We certainly believe in hell. We believe hell as the destination of those who are finally impenitent and hopelessly lost, but it doesn't say hell.

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So I would wonder if there was some question there. I don't think so, but I would wonder about what their doctrine of hell is.

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Do they believe eternally lost means some form of annihilationism, or do they believe in eternal conscious torment?

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And that's the difference, right? In regard to the subject of hell, do you believe that a person simply goes out of existence or into a state of unconsciousness forever, and that is sometimes referred to as annihilationism, or do you believe in eternal conscious torment, which is what we would believe, that it is forever, it is awake, and it is terrible, it's tormented.

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So that would be the version of, or the understanding of hell that we would hold to as Reformed Baptists, or that I would hold to.

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Next one says, we believe that believers are to be sanctified wholly, subsequent to regeneration, through faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Again, this idea of entire sanctification, which was already used once, and sanctified wholly, subsequent to regeneration, what does that mean?

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And I think what they mean is the idea that someone will be without sin and thought, word, or deed.

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So that's going to be an issue. And finally, we believe that our Lord will return, the dead will be raised, and the final judgment will take place.

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Well, praise God they believe that, because that is affirmed by all true believers, that Jesus will return, the dead will be raised, and there will be a final judgment.

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So there's several of these, like I said, there's no problem with. Maybe a little clarity could be useful, but other than that, there's nothing here that I would say, in several of these, there's nothing that's inherently wrong.

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There's just a few, like I said, that have some issues, and the issue I have is this idea of whole sanctification. Now I want to give you some more facts.

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Now these come from a different website, that was from the actual Nazarene website. I want to read a few more facts about the

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Nazarene Church before I give my final thoughts. The Church of the Nazarene is a Protestant Christian Church in the

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Wesleyan holiness tradition. Again, I mentioned that earlier. A lot of people think of the idea of Pentecostal.

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Well, Pentecostal didn't just arise out of the ether, but the Pentecostal movement did arise out of Wesleyan teachings, and Wesleyan teachings are

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Arminian teachings, and so the idea of things like free will, the idea of things like belief for regeneration rather than regeneration causing faith, those are things that are believed in these movements.

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And the idea of the second blessing, and the second blessing creating this entire sanctification, and a person can be through this process of sanctification without sin and thought, word, or deed in this life.

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These are all things that are things that are believed. And it was founded in 1908.

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There are 23 ,000 Nazarene churches globally, with nearly two million members, with 650 ,000 members in North America.

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Perhaps the most well -known member of the Church of the Nazarene is Dr. James Dobson from Focus on the Family. So that's interesting,

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I didn't know that until I looked up the information about the Church. The Church of Nazarene is the largest denomination in the

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Wesleyan holiness tradition, which emerged from the teachings of John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church.

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So again, a lot of similar theology between the Methodist Church and what you're going to get in the

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Church of the Nazarene in regard to things like justification, and salvation, and sanctification, and those things. But the

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Holiness movement being more in line with the practicing of the spiritual gifts, the holiness side of it, the holiness tradition is built upon the theological foundation of entire sanctification.

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I've been talking about this for a while. An act of God's grace that cleanses the believer of original sin.

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Through careful observance and renunciation of temptation, the believer can lead a sin -free life.

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So that is what is the idea behind this entire sanctification process. So the question is, can a...or

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the question that I want to address is, can a Reformed person be active and participate and properly sit in a

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Nazarene Church? And I would say there's going to be a lot of difficulty, just right off the bat.

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Now in the email, the question was that you consider yourself conservative, Southern Baptist, duty and inerrancy of the

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Bible, and sovereignty of God. However, you've relocated, and the closest thing to a God -fearing Church is the

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Church of the Nazarene. Okay. Can you go there? Yes. Will you find there are things that you immediately disagree with?

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Yes. If you are a conservative Southern Baptist, if you are Reformed in your theology in any way, you're going to run into some major issues when it comes to things like free will, you're going to come to some major issues on the issue of entire sanctification, or whole sanctification, or this idea of being without sin.

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You may find yourself in a place where they expect you to exercise certain gifts, and what you believe about those gifts might be an issue, such as the gift of tongues, but that...I

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can't say that for sure. You would have to talk to the leadership about that. What do they believe about the exercising of these spiritual gifts, and like for instance,

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I know some churches in the Holiness Movement that believe if you don't speak in tongues...now again, I'm not saying this is the

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Nazarene, but in the Holiness Movement in general, they would say if you don't speak in tongues, you are not a believer, or if you've never spoken in tongues, if you've never had the utterance of tongues, you're not sanctified.

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I remember speaking to a Holiness pastor years and years ago, and the very first thing he said to me was, we believe that the evidence of sanctification is the utterance of speaking in tongues.

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I remember that phrase very specifically, he said it just like that, as if he had memorized it, and he probably had. We believe that the evidence of sanctification is the utterance of speaking in tongues.

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Okay, if that's what you're requiring, then you don't believe that I'm saved, because you don't believe I'm sanctified.

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You don't believe I'm...or at least you don't believe I'm being sanctified if I don't do this thing, and I've never spoken in tongues.

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So that's one of the areas that you're probably going to find a lot of difficulty.

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I mentioned earlier eternal security, I think that could be a pretty big issue. Ultimately, my recommendation to you would be to say, all right, let's take a step back and say, okay, this may be the closest church to you geographically, but it might not be the closest church to you theologically.

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Are there other churches anywhere nearby within 45 minutes, within an hour, that would be worth the trip so that you're not constantly embattled with the theology of this church?

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Or are you willing to set these things aside for geographical closeness?

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You know, one of the things about our church that, you know, we've had to come to terms with, and our church is in Jacksonville, Florida, is we have people who drive sometimes over an hour to get to our church, because they're looking specifically for that which we are teaching.

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We're teaching verse -by -verse through the Bible, we're teaching Reformed Baptist theology, we are, you know, we're holding to these standards, and we believe these things, and we have family -integrated worship, and so there's some things that are very specific that people are looking for when they come to us, and sometimes good theology is worth the drive.

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That's something you have to consider. So there are going to be some things,

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Matt, that you would have to overcome. I've shared with you what those things are, and at the end of the day, as the leader of your family, you'll have to make that decision for yourself.

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But I would perhaps consider expanding your geographic look and see if there's anything else within the area of where you're at, and maybe reach out a little further.

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And again, good theology is worth the drive. Okay, moving on to the next question.

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I go to... this says, good morning. I go to a church that's not Reformed in Columbia, South Carolina.

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I'm Reformed and a Calvinist. The church's leadership is conservative, but most of the congregation leans left.

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The amount of people I've talked with and met with who vote for candidates that support the murder of babies, the homosexual agenda, men can be women, etc.,

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is stunning. I'll ask these people nicely what their views on these subjects are, and they respond that they're against those things, but when

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I ask, well, how come you vote for people who support those things and are hostile to the faith, they look at me like I'm crazy.

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My question is, what is a good strategy to have that type of conversation, and have you had any experience dealing with people like that?

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Thank you for your great YouTube channel, love it, God bless. Joseph. Well, Joseph, thank you for the kind words,

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I appreciate that. And let me just say right away, it's interesting that you say that the church is conservative, but leans...that

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the church's leadership is conservative, but the majority of the people lean left, and yet when you say you talk to them, they would be opposed to things like abortion and other things, but they don't see the connection between voting for people who are in those positions.

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And you asked me if I've run into people like this. Yes, there always are people in our lives who are not always consistent with what they believe versus how they behave.

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And I've been a firm believer for a long time that how we believe will affect how we behave if we really believe it.

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But what happens is, we say we believe one thing, but our behavior shows something different.

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And so that's the first thing, is it's one thing to say

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I believe in something, but it's another thing to act on that belief. And so if I were having a conversation with someone, and they said, well,

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I believe this is wrong, but I'm gonna vote for this person who does this thing, or whatever,

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I may have a question about that. I may want to talk to them about how they come to that conclusion.

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One of my fellow elders is...he's famous for that question, we talk about it a lot. The question is, how did you come to your conclusion?

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And that's a great...you asked the question of how do you have a conversation with someone. Sometimes that's a great way to do it.

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Say, okay, well, you believe this and you're doing this, they don't seem to be consistent, so how did you come to your conclusion?

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How did you come to the conclusion that it's okay to support a candidate who believes in abortion when you don't believe in abortion?

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How did you come to the conclusion that it's okay to support someone who believes in, I don't know, something...you

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mentioned homosexual marriage or the homosexual gender, whatever. How do you come to the conclusion that it's right to support this person if you are fundamentally opposed to them on this area?

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And their answer may surprise you. They may say, well, I'm considering the Lesser Vera of two evils, and I can't support this candidate because of this, but I have to support this candidate because of this.

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And it may come to the point where you realize this person really just has a lot of confusion.

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And I do think there is an issue in American Church life where there is a lot of confusion over how to apply principles of the gospel to life issues.

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And should the gospel affect how we vote? Yeah, but that doesn't always mean that necessarily the candidate that we vote for is going to cross every

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T and dot every I, because very seldom does that person ever come to long. So for instance, even on a conservative side, somebody might vote for Donald Trump, even though there's a lot of areas of Donald Trump's life and policies that wouldn't necessarily be...that

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wouldn't necessarily coincide with things that I believe, or that somebody who votes in him believes, but we say, okay, but he does these things right, and so I'm voting for him for this reason.

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So asking someone how they come to their conclusion might be a way to start a conversation.

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You might not like their answer, and that's fine. And it may lead to an even bigger conversation, because this is what really struck me about reading what you wrote.

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You said that the Church's leadership is conservative, but most of the congregation leans left.

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I would want to flesh that out more if I had a chance to sit down with you. How is it that the

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Church is proclaiming a conservative...and by conservative, I'm saying biblically and theologically conservative, because there's a difference.

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There are different...you can be theologically conservative and socially not as conservative, or you can be socially conservative and theologically not as conservative, and so when you say conservative,

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I would want to know more about what that means, and I would want to ask the question, what do you mean the congregation leans left?

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Okay, and those are just...again, I hope I'm helping at all.

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Here's my answer. When you're having conversation with people, ask them how they come to their conclusions. That's a great way to interact with somebody with whom you might disagree.

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Okay, well, how are you coming to that conclusion? And help me understand your thought process. That's unoffensive.

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It's a way of asking someone to share with you how they're getting where they're at, and you may learn something about that person that you didn't know.

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Sometimes people will tell you more than you think. Well, for instance, like if I talk to somebody about...let's

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take the subject totally off politics. Let's take the subject of female pastors. If somebody says, well, I believe in female pastors, and I say, well, how did you come to that conclusion?

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And they say, well, I don't agree with what Paul said in 1 Timothy 2 or 1

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Corinthians 14, therefore I believe a woman can be a pastor. What does that tell you?

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That tells you that they don't believe the whole Bible is God's Word, because they're saying they can disagree with certain parts and that's fine.

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Now, somebody might tell you in a different way, well, I believe because of this passage, this passage, this passage,

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I don't believe Paul was talking about all people for all time. That's a different argument. Even though they may come to the same conclusion, women can be pastors and they may still be wrong, that whole argument is different than saying, well,

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I don't believe this and I don't believe that, therefore I can come to this conclusion. Asking someone how they came to their conclusion is a very helpful way of figuring out where they get to where they are.

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Also, you know, when you with your pastors and stuff, maybe have a conversation, maybe take your pastor to lunch and say, hey, you know, it seems like there's a lot of people in our church who lean left.

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Do you know why that is? Is it a cultural thing around here? Is it something that everybody around here has always been Democrat, so they're gonna keep being

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Democrat simply because? You know, I have family members who have said, you know what, I'm a blue dog

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Democrat. What does that mean? Well, I would vote for a dog before I'd vote for a Republican, right? That's what some people believe.

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They just...it's ingrained in their culture or in their...in how they grew up that that's the right side, even if they're obviously wrong, even if they're teaching things that are wrong.

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And somebody might tell you that if you have that conversation. I had a friend who called himself a blue dog

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Democrat, and he said no matter what, he was voting for blue, even if they put a dog on the ballot.

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So asking people how they came to their conclusions might be a way for you to start and learn something in that conversation.

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I hope that's helpful. All right, next up we have a question about Baptist confessions, and it says this,

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Hi brother, I've been a Calvinist Baptist for nearly a decade, but it wasn't until recently that I changed my position on eschatology from dispensational to amillennial, and also have been reading the confessions and creeds.

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Some may say I just now became technically Reformed. Some people would say you're still not

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Reformed because you're a Baptist, but we'll leave that be. It's been a blessing to see how the

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Church has responded to biblical interpretation and its errors hundreds of years ago, and it's very relevant today.

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Had a random idea for a show. Do you think it would be profitable to discuss the differences and similarities of the 1644 and 1689

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Confession, and even the Westminster Confession? Or maybe I'm the only one who dives into these things.

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Thanks for your ministry. God has used you as an enormous blessing in my life. Thank you, Josh. Well thank you,

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Josh, for saying kind words, I appreciate it. And here is my answer. I may one day do a full show on this, but for now

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I just wanted to respond to your email with a few thoughts. There is a distinction to be made between the the first London Baptist Confession and the second

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London Baptist Confession, and some people don't even know that there was a first London. Some people just they just think 1689

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London Baptist Confession is the Confession. Well, it is the 1689

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London Baptist Confession, and it's often called the 2LBC because it's the second London Baptist Confession.

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The first Confession was written in 1644. It was then very quickly edited because it was almost immediately...there

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were those who responded with critiques and criticisms and things that were not worded properly or things that were not said clearly, and there was a book,

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I think it was called The Dippers Dipped, was the title of it. It was written by a Presbyterian minister who was challenging what was written in the first Confession, and so they wrote a second, but not the second, the second 1689.

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They wrote a second edition of the first Confession in 1646, and then there were some other changes that came later, but specifically the ones that I point to are the 1644 and the 1646, and the 1646

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Confession is the one we hold to at our church. It's 52 articles, and each of the articles is anywhere from a couple of sentences to a paragraph, and it is not as thorough, and it is not as robust as the 1689, and that's why a lot of people prefer the 1689, because it has a...it's

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more thorough. Even, like for instance, when I do baptisms, I will often read from the 1689

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Baptist Confession because it's a more thorough on what we believe about baptism than the

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First London Confession, even though we hold to the First London Confession. And I'm not being inconsistent on that, because I think there's great things about the

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Second London Confession, but there are some areas of the Second Confession that are areas that we can't, as a church, confess, and this is where some people think we're being inconsistent, because some people teach that the

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First and Second Confession have the exact same theology when it comes to things like covenant theology and Sabbatarianism and things like that, and we would say, while it may be true that the men who wrote these documents held to the same theology, it's not written into the

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First Confession, and therefore we are more consistent holding to the First Confession than the

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Second. In particular, let's just address the issue of the Sabbath. The Second London Confession, the 1689, is clearly a

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Sabbatarian document. The First London Baptist Confession doesn't mention the Sabbath. So some churches that are not

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Sabbatarian like ours will take the Second London Confession, and they'll put asterisks by the portion about the

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Sabbath, and they'll say, well, we just don't hold to the Sabbath. And they'll say, basically, we hold to the

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Confession, but we don't hold to this part. We didn't want to do that. We didn't want to hold to only a portion of the

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Confession, or we didn't want to eliminate portions that we disagreed with. We felt like we could affirm every single thing in the 52

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Articles of the 1646 Second Edition of the First Confession.

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I hope that wasn't confusing. We could hold to all 52 Articles without having to put any asterisks, without having to say anything had to be changed or reclarified for our sake, and so that was the

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Confession that we held to, and that is the Confession that we continue to hold to. I do have an article on my website, and I know that Josh, I sent you a copy of this article,

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I know you've already read it, so hopefully that was at least a little helpful for those of you who wanted some history.

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And for those who want history, I would encourage you to go to sgfcjacks .org, look up our website, look at the article that I wrote about the history of the 1646

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Confession. I talk about the book, The Dippers Dipped, and things like that, and I talk a little bit about some of the history and some of the articles.

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But if you really want to dive into history, if you really want to know more about the First London Confession and the distinctions between the

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First London and the Second London Confession, I would recommend that you get this book. This book is by James Renahan.

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Oh, I have it upside down. Sorry. James Renahan wrote this book, it is called For the

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Vindication of the Truth, Baptist Symbolics, Volume 1, A Brief Exposition of the

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First London Baptist Confession of Faith. This will give you more history, this will give you more information that you're looking for if you're really wanting to take a deep dive.

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Now I will say this, having read this, Dr. Renahan does believe that the

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First Confession is incomplete, and that the Second Confession is the one that people should, at least basically what

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I think that he's getting into, is that churches should adopt the

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Second Confession because it's more complete. But again, the Second Confession is obviously influenced by the

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Westminster Confession. There are certain portions of the Second Confession, the Second Baptist Confession, that are almost word -for -word taken, seemingly drawn word -for -word.

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There's actual memes out there, people cheating off of tests, and the person doing the test is the

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Westminster, and the person cheating is the 1689 writers, because they're taking directly from there.

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There's nothing wrong with that, but I think we should be honest and recognize that a lot of the theology that was in the

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Westminster Confession made its way into the Second London Confession, and so some of that is great.

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Some of what it says about God's decree, some of what it says about His sovereignty is very well written, and I've quoted it,

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I've used it in conversation, I've even used it in debate. However, as a whole, as a church, we didn't adopt the

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Second London because there were areas of disagreement, and so that's our reasoning behind it.

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And so if you want to know more, I recommend obviously Dr. Renahan's book. He will give you more history on this, and I recommend reading the

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Confession. If you've never done it, I've heard people say, yeah, we're 1689, and I say, have you ever read it?

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Well, I've read a portion of it. Read the Confession. Read the First London. Read the Second London.

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Read both the 1644 and the 1646. There are some differences. You know, we went to the 1646, there were some differences, there were some updates, some things that were clarified, and we wanted that.

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And so hopefully that will be helpful if you're interested in diving deeper. Read the

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Confessions, and hopefully you'll see what the differences and the distinctions are.

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Ultimately, they're both Baptist documents. I did read, and I don't remember who it is, it's in my article, but one did say that the the

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First London Confession is one of the most historically Baptist documents to ever be written, which is an interesting just accolade in the hat of that particular document.

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But again, there are places in the Confession where you wish it said more, particularly on the

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Lord's Supper. It doesn't even have an article for the Lord's Supper, except it says that a person should be baptized and then receive the

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Lord's Supper. So it doesn't talk about things like what we might ask the question of real presence, or the doctrine of Christ's presence in the bread and the cup.

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Not mentioned in the First Confession, at least the 1646, the one that we teach from, the one that we use, the only mention of the table is that baptism precedes it.

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And in order, that's typically the belief among Baptists, is that you're baptized and then you receive the

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Lord's Supper. So that is my thoughts on it. You mentioned also that you would, you know, be interested in the comparison of that and the

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WCF. There are whole websites out there that are dedicated to comparing the differences between the 1689 and the

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Westminster Confession, and they actually have charts that will show you. If you just do a quick Google search and look up comparing the

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Westminster Confession with the 1689 Confession, you'll find some places where they have whole charts which will show you where the similarities are, where the differences are, where they're word -for -word the same, and hopefully that will help you as well in your search to try to discern more about these documents.

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And I hope that was helpful. Thanks for writing in, Josh. I want to thank you again for listening to Conversations with a

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Calvinist as we did another listener -driven show, answering questions from you, the audience.

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And if you do have a question that you'd like for me to answer, please send me an email at calvinistpodcast at gmail .com.

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You can follow me on Twitter at YourCalvinist, and you can find all of our videos and podcasts at calvinistpodcast .com.

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Thank you again for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your