January 3, 2017 Show with Dr. James M. Renihan

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity who are living on the planet Earth, listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this third day of January 2017, the second broadcast of Iron Sharpens Iron in 2017.

And before I introduce my guest and our topic today, I want to remind you about a couple of exciting events that we are having next week.

First of all, on Thursday, January 12th, from 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m., we are having the Iron Sharpens Iron Pastors Luncheon at the beautiful Carlisle Vault in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

And if you're wondering why it has the name V -A -U -L -T, vault, it is because it is a historic bank from the early 20th century that has been transformed into a gorgeous catering hall.

And this venue is actually being provided to me free of charge, with the exception of the fact that I have to pay the cleaning crew.

This is an absolutely amazing blessing from God that this is being done through the generosity of the new owners of the

Carlisle Vault. This is for men in ministry leadership only. We apologize that we cannot accommodate the wives at this event.

So if you or a man in ministry leadership, whether you are a pastor, deacon, perhaps you run a parachurch organization, something of that effect, we would love to hear from you, and we would love to have you register for this free event,

Thursday, January 12th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at the Carlisle Vault. Our keynote speaker will be

Dr. Tony Costa, professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary in Canada, and major Christian book publishers from all over the

United States and the United Kingdom. Nearly every prominent one is donating free books to every man that attends this.

They have been doing this going back to the 1990s, when my late wife came up with the idea to start these luncheons, and I am just overwhelmed by the generosity of these

Christian publishers from all over the United States and the UK who donate 100 copies of a title that I select, so every man there can get a copy of the book that I select from each of these publishers.

So these are brand -new books, these are not used or damaged books, and so this is quite a remarkable act of generosity on their part that they do annually.

You're going to have a gourmet meal provided by Chef Exclusive here in Carlisle, and it's a great time of fun and fellowship.

The dessert is even being provided free of charge by Carlisle Bakery, and that's the first time they are involved in this event.

So there is nothing that you have to pay for by going to this event, and we are not selling anything.

There's no hidden agenda other than to bless all the men that attend. For more details, email me at chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line.

You can also email me at pastorsluncheoncarlisle at gmail .com, pastorsluncheoncarlisle at gmail .com,

and Carlisle is spelled C -A -R -L -I -S -L -E. Then the following night,

Friday the 13th of January at 7 p .m., Dr. Costa, who I just mentioned, Dr.

Tony Costa, is debating Robert Syngenis of Catholic Apologetics International on the theme,

Mary, Sinless Queen of Heaven or Sinner Saved by Grace. This requires a $5 ticket purchase to cover the cost of the

Carlisle Theater and to cover travel expenses and other things involved with this.

If you'd like more information on that, please email me also at chrisarnson at gmail .com

or thegreatdebatecarlisle at gmail .com.

We hope to see as many of you as possible at these events.

I already know that we have people coming as far away as Virginia, Washington D .C., Maryland, and New York to attend these events.

So wherever you are, we hope to see you if you can possibly make it out here. Well, my guest today is

Dr. James M. Renahan, Dean and Professor of Historical Theology at the

Institute of Reform Baptist Studies, and we are going to be discussing this project that he is involved in, not only the school as it is now, but the exciting things that are going on with the

Institute for Reform Baptist Studies, or should I say Institute of Reform Baptist Studies. And we'll also be opening up the program for questions, even those who are basically just asking general questions on Reform Theology or more specifically

Reform Baptist Theology, Soteriology, Ecclesiology.

We would love to hear from you at chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com

with your question. But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr. James Renahan.

Hi Chris, good to be with you today. Yeah, it's good to have you back. And the last time we attempted to do a program with Dr.

Renahan, we were experiencing technical difficulties, and we just thank God that those technical difficulties seem to be gone forever, although we never know what's coming around the corner.

Just like I watch major television networks like Fox News, and they're always having technical difficulties.

But I just thank the Lord that he has been gracious to us and has for the time being alleviated these problems for the past few months, and we hope that that will be the case for a long time to come.

Before I even go into the subject at hand about the

Institute of Reform Baptist Studies, Dr. Renahan, I'd like to know something about you personally. I'd like to know something about your childhood as far as the religion of your youth, if any, and what providential circumstances came about in your life by our

Lord's sovereign hand that drew you to himself and saved you. Well, I'm from Massachusetts.

I was born and raised in Worcester. It's about 40 miles west of Boston. My parents were from a mixed religious background.

My father was an Irish Roman Catholic, and my mother Swedish Protestant. Due to circumstances,

I was raised in her Protestant Church rather than the Roman Church. And it was a church where the

Bible was respected, but I would say that the gospel was not preached in that I can never remember being told as a child that you must believe in Christ and be born again.

When I was about 15, through some friends in the neighborhood where I lived,

I attended a Baptist church in town, and there heard the gospel and believed it.

I was baptized there, and interestingly, my wife was baptized the same night.

It was Palm Sunday, I think in 1972, before we were an item.

But next year, we did become an item, and thanks to God, we were able to get married and move forward.

It really was through that church that I was nurtured in the faith and sent off to Christian college.

When I was in college, I had the opportunity of reading a lot of really good literature, and that set me on the path of understanding the

Scriptures and seeing how Christian theology works together. My wife and I were married in 1978, and she's been a great support and helper to me.

I was advised by the men in that church that they thought that I had the gifts necessary for the gospel ministry, and because of their advice that I went off and studied for the ministry,

I was ordained to the gospel ministry in 1984 and have served in churches in Massachusetts and New York.

I came out here in Southern California in 1998 with my family to begin the program of the

Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies. It's been a great opportunity.

Really have appreciated the men at Westminster Seminary. I guess that's a rambling answer to your question,

Chris. Well, how did you come to embrace what we know as the

Reformed faith? It has been nicknamed Calvinism. It has been nicknamed the doctrines of sovereign grace, or just simply the doctrines of grace.

It has been nicknamed even the doctrines of free grace. But if you could tell us about how that came about in your life.

Yeah, sure. In my freshman year in college, it was a little Christian college in New England. It's closed its doors since then.

But I was in a course called History of Western Civilization, and when we came to the

Reformation, the professor talked about what happened in the Reformation, and then spoke about the

Genevan Reformation and the five points of Calvinism, as they're called.

And as I listened, I thought, well, that makes total sense to me. I guess that my nurture in that Protestant church when

I was young helped me to have a real sense that God is God, that He must be the

King who reigns. And so when I heard in that History of Western Civ class about the

Reformation and about how the Reformed faith began to grow as a result of things in Geneva and, of course, other cities in Europe, I didn't really struggle at all with it.

I thought, well, that if God is God, if He's the Creator, if He sustains the world, if He is what the

Bible says He is, then this must be the right way to read the Scriptures. And that set me off on the path of reading some really fine literature.

Back then, this is the early 1970s, most of the material that was available were the reprints and books that were coming out from the

Gano Truth Trust. And so I began to be exposed to the English Puritans and to the other really excellent reprints that the

Banner was publishing back then. There was a discount Christian book service in Delaware, and I began to buy books from them.

And it was just study, study, study, study, study, work with the

Scriptures, read them, listen, think. That helped me to grow in my faith.

Adamus Well, praise God. If you could also, because not all of my listeners are theologically reformed.

I have new listeners every day, and some of them would be of an

Arminian persuasion, even if they don't call themselves that. Some would not even be Christian. I do have

Muslims who, from time to time, listen and email me questions or people who just don't have any faith that they claim.

Sometimes I have Roman Catholics that listen. If you could, in summary, define what it means to be reformed, and then what it means to be a reformed

Baptist. Jonathan Okay. Let me take it a step before that.

When I was involved in church planting up in Massachusetts, and we would have people come to visit our church, or we would make contact with folks.

We had a variety of programs in the community that opened up doors to people's homes. And we would go and visit those folks in their homes, and they would ask the question, what is your church all about?

How do you define yourself? And my friend and I, who were doing it, we were sort of sharing the leadership of the church.

We realized that we had to come up with a very simple way to describe to people what we were about.

How can you, in a sense, boil down the essence of the reformed faith into something that people who don't know the jargon and maybe aren't well -trained, how can you make it simple so that they would understand?

And what we came up with, and you have to imagine we're sitting in somebody's living room, talking to them, trying to help them understand what our church is about.

And we said, there are two things that really characterize our church. We have a big

God, and we have a big book. By saying that we have a big God, that opened the door for us to be able to talk about the fact that we really do believe in God as sovereign.

He's the creator of all things. He's the sustainer of all things. All things begin with Him, and all things will be brought to their end, their conclusion, or to use the jargon, the consummation in Him.

And He is directly involved in the world and all of the events of the world. So, we have a big

God, and then we have a big book. And of course, by that we mean the Bible, and it means that we take the

Bible seriously. We recognize that from the beginning of the book of Genesis to the end of the book of Revelation and all of the rest in between Old Testament and New Testament, we believe that these words are inspired by the

Holy Spirit, that the Spirit moved different individuals to write, and what we have recorded for us are the very words of God.

And so, they're going to be taken seriously when we read them, or they're read to us when we're gathered together in church, or even in our family devotions that I had earlier today with my wife and daughter when we read the

Bible. We're hearing God's words being read to us. And so,

I would... that sounds pretty simplistic, but that's the way that I would reduce in the smallest sense what the

Reformed faith is all about. We have a big book. We take the Bible seriously from beginning to end, Old and New Testament, and we have a big

God who rules sovereignly over all things. Now we come to specifically what a

Reformed Baptist is because, as you know, there are some of our greatly beloved

Presbyterian brethren and Reformed brethren who are Paedo -Baptists, who baptize infants, who believe that that phrase,

Reformed Baptist, is oxymoronic. Not that all of them say that. And then you also have even some of our...

many of our Baptist brethren who will say the same thing, and they will not use that label to identify themselves.

Some of them even when they are thoroughgoing Calvinists or Five -Point

Calvinists or Sovereign Grace Believers will not use that term, Reformed, connected with Baptists.

So if you could explain what is that more specifically, what is a Reformed Baptist, and why do you use that title?

Yeah, okay. It's a good question. You know, we were out here at Westminster Sunday in California for 18 years.

Sometimes I say I've lived in a Presbyterian world for that period of time, because, you know, the

Seminary is committed to a Presbyterian view of the Church. The men here, the faculty and the administration have been extremely kind to me.

They've been very welcoming. We have a great relationship that has existed for all these years. I think it's at its best right now.

And so I understand the concern that some people express by the use of those words

Reformed Baptist together, because there is a real sense in which historically the word

Reformed is used as an adjective to describe churches that believe in the sovereignty of God, but also practice some form of Presbyterian Church government and baptize their babies.

And I can appreciate that and understand it, and in a sense I respect their wish to have a very specifically defined use of the term.

Why do we use it, though? Well, we use it because we've inherited it. It begins probably there in Carlisle, where you are right now, at Grace Baptist Church.

They had a very close relationship with Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia back in the early 60s.

And it's out of that relationship between Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia and Grace Baptist in Carlisle that the phrase

Reformed Baptist begins to be used to designate people like the folks at Grace Baptist Church who are solidly committed to the

Reformed confessions as they come to us, but especially as those

Reformed confessions are expressed in the

Second London Confession, which came to prominence in 1689. It was written a little before that, but it comes to prominence and is known as the 1689

Confession. It's a Baptist version of the Puritan Reformed Westminster Confession of Faith from the late 1640s.

So, looking backwards, hindsight better than foresight, maybe a better descriptive name might have been used.

Maybe Covenantal Baptist, as opposed to Reformed Baptist, which might have caused a little bit less angst to both the

Peter Baptists, who don't like us to use it, and the Baptists, who also see that Reformed, historically, has had that emphasis on infant baptism.

Maybe a name like Covenantal Baptist would have been better, but that's not what was used, and so we've sort of inherited

Reformed Baptist, and that has come to designate churches that are committed to this

Second London Confession of Faith, and that believe that it is the best descriptive system to reflect what the

Bible teaches about who God is, about how God saves sinners, about what the

Christian life is to be, and what the church is to be. So, you know, I'm not tied to the name

Reformed Baptist. I do love it. I'm not ashamed to call myself Reformed Baptist, but if we were something else, that would be fine as well.

Yes, and they would probably, historically, prior to the 20th century, been more commonly referred to as Particular Baptists, being hinged on the doctrine of Particular Redemption.

Am I correct on that? Yeah, yeah. When English Baptists began to come to prominence in the middle of the 17th century, there were two groups, and one were called

General Baptists. They were the first ones, the earliest ones, for about 1612, and they believed that a general atonement, and all of the doctrines that are related to that, that a person could experience genuine salvation and then lose that salvation, that a person, that sin doesn't bind away, and so an individual, apart from the effectual working of God, is able to believe the gospel when he hears it.

Those were the General Baptists. A little bit later, two decades or so, along came the group that were called the

Particular Baptists, and that word was used to describe the fact that they believed that God, in sending his

Son, intended particularly for Jesus to die for the sins of the elect.

Sometimes, when that came over to America, most of the early Baptists in America are rightly called

Particular Baptists, but that evolved into another phrase that's frequently used, that's

Regular Baptists. Many times when you read about the Baptists in Virginia, for example, or Pennsylvania, in, say, the 18th century, in the beginning of the 19th century, they're called

Regular Baptists, and largely, that's the same as Particular Baptists. So you have Particular Baptists, and Regular Baptists, and then the second half of the 20th century, you have

Reformed Baptists. Largely, they describe the beliefs are the same among the groups, just different titles.

Dr. Gregory Poland Yes, and today, the denominational affiliation known as the

Regular Baptists, they are now a mixed group of both Calvinist and Arminian, although they probably would never refer to themselves as Arminian.

They were not all consistently Calvinistic today. Dr. Andrew Nelson That seems to be the case, yeah.

Dr. Gregory Poland Yeah, in fact, I've met very strong, thoroughgoing Calvinists in that group, and I've also met vehemently anti -Calvinist pastors in that group.

Dr. Andrew Nelson Just like the Southern Baptists, which began nearly exclusively, if not completely exclusively, as a

Calvinistic organization, the Southern Baptist Convention, today, the Calvinists, as you know, are a minority in that denomination.

Dr. Gregory Poland Yeah, you know, a really good book that just came out at the end of last year that helps to address that is a book by Brandon Smith and Kurt Smith on the history of Georgia Baptists.

Dr. Andrew Nelson Yeah, the Southern Grand Christian Books, right? Dr. Gregory Poland Exactly, exactly, and it very helpfully addresses the fact that the early

Georgia Baptists were all of them clearly predestinarian in their views. Dr.

Andrew Nelson Yes, and one of the reasons I think that Reformed Baptists is actually an appropriate term is because I believe that those

Baptists who are from the stream that believe in the doctrines of Sovereign Grace or the

Gospel of the Reformation, I believe that they took Reformation to a more logical conclusion in that they, especially in regard to Sola Scriptura, which led them to abandon or not embrace, to begin with, infant baptism.

Dr. Gregory Poland Yeah, that's not a claim that makes Presbyterians happy, and I appreciate that.

I really love my Presbyterian brothers here. I really do. I have the highest respect for them.

But at the same time, I think if they understood the claim, they would say, okay, based upon your presuppositions, it's fair for you to make that claim that you are the logical conclusion of the

Reformation. You know, it's interesting, in the 17th century, there are a couple of churches or men that give us accounts of the histories of their churches, and in at least two of them, they begin that way.

They argue that the Reformation was an era in which the light was dawning and growing, and Luther is at the beginning of day.

When, you know, if you look to the west, it's still dark. You look to the east, the sun is coming up. And as the morning progresses, they even name names, and they talk about how the

Reformation moves forward. And it's as if they're at noontime, these early particular

Baptists, because now the full light of the doctrine of the Church has come to them, and they're the logical conclusion of what was begun by Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and the others on the continent.

Like I said, our Presbyterian friends maybe would go to their noses with that. I understand.

You know, I understand. I'm not sure that I like it when people say things about me that maybe

I wouldn't feel comfortable with. So, you know, fair enough. Let's give them credit and show appreciation for them and, you know, be humble in the way that we express ourselves.

Yes, I know that people who care deeply about theology and truth, who are meticulous about that, very often can be, perhaps, have knee -jerk reactions in a wrong way when they hear somebody disagree with them.

So, that's one of the things that people who are sinners, like you and I and everybody that lives on this planet, even if we are in a positive way being meticulous about truth or trying to be, there can be that negative baggage that comes with it when we are less than kind on occasion.

I've even heard, perhaps you have as well and I'm assuming you have, that Luther and perhaps even

Zwingli were very close to becoming persuaded by Anabaptists that credo or believers -only baptism was the biblical mode, but then they backed off of that.

Have you heard those stories? Yeah, I think that that's an exaggeration, to be honest with you.

Luther, so far as I know, was never persuaded by any Anabaptist about anything.

In fact, it was the radical nature of the Anabaptist views that drove him away from any kind of credo -Baptist views.

He may have entertained the idea early on in his Reformation, but I think it was not much more than an idea.

Zwingli, though, once again, as the

Swiss Anabaptists around 1525 were the leaders of that movement, really were the young men who were very close to Holger Zwingli.

And he, as they were working through the process of Reformation, how to bring

Reformation to the Church, it does seem pretty clear that Zwingli gave serious consideration to the possibility of credo -Baptism.

Now, that would have been prior to the adoption of the practice at the beginning of the

Anabaptist movement in Zurich. But it does seem to me pretty clear that in those earlier days before that,

Zwingli was at least willing to give some consideration to the fact that by the time that Conrad Grebel and George Briarock and the others actually take the step of baptizing one another and forming a

Church, by that point Zwingli was not persuaded at all, and he was definitely opposed to them at that point.

In neither case can you say it was the Anabaptists who brought these ideas to Zwingli, it's rather that perhaps earlier in their development as if they're beginning to think about how

Reformation is to work itself out at that point, that they're willing to consider some form of credo -Baptism.

Great. We're going to a break right now. And by the way, Dr. Renahan, I can understand you completely, but there is a bit of a static on occasion with your phone connection.

I don't know if you have another phone line you could use, but I can hear everything you're saying. But if there was another option that you could use, you might want to use it when we go to the break, but that's up to you.

I can understand everything you're saying. Just let me know what you're doing so I know if I have to hang up and let you call back.

I will, okay, yeah. Okay, you're going to do that? I'm going to move my phone and try to take it away from what might be the source of the noise.

Okay, that's great. And I want to let everybody know that if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name at least, the city and state of residence that you live in, and also the country that you live in if you are outside of the good old

USA. And once again, that's chrisarnson at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We will be right back after these messages with Dr. James M. Renahan.

Chris Arnson here, and I can't wait to head down to Atlanta, Georgia, and here's my friend Dr. James White to tell you why.

Hi, I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. I hope you join me at the G3 conference hosted by Pastor Josh Bice and Praise Mill Baptist Church at the

Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta, January 19th through the 21st, in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation. I'll be joined by Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Balcombe, Conrad M.

Bayway, Phil Johnson, Rosaria Butterfield, Todd Friel, and a host of other speakers who are dedicated to the pillars of what

G3 stands for, gospel, grace, and glory. For more details, go to g3conference .com.

That's g3conference .com. Thanks, James. Make sure you greet me at the

Iron Sharpens Iron exhibit booth while you're there. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,

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Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am

I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

We are a Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.

We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how

God views what we say and what we do, than how men view these things. That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the

Apostle's priority, it must not be ours either. We believe by God's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750, that's 508 -528 -5750, or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our

TV program entitled, Resting in Grace. You can find us at providencebaptistchurchma .org,

that's providencebaptistchurchma .org, or even on sermonaudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor

Iron Shop and Zion Radio. And we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions.

Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon eastern time for a visit to the pastor's study, because everyone needs a pastor.

Welcome back, this is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is

Dr. James M. Renahan, and he is the Dean and Professor of Historical Theology at the

Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies. And we are discussing what it means to be a Reformed Baptist, and also we are going to be discussing more about this

Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies. And if you'd like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And we already have several people waiting for their questions to be asked, but I'd like you to now, before we go to them, tell us about the

Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies in more detail. Hello, Dr.

Renahan? It seems that Dr. Renahan is not on the air with us for some reason, so I am going to hang up.

I'm going to go to a station break, and I don't understand, Dr. Renahan?

Okay, Dr. Renahan is not with us, so we're going to go to another station break, and hopefully he will be by the time we get back.

So, don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages, God willing. Jesus Christ In fellowship, play, and together.

Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman, and I invite you to come and join us here at Linbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

Call Linbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402, that's 516 -599 -9402, or visit linbrookbaptist .org,

that's linbrookbaptist .org. I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

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Welcome back. Dr. Renahan, are you back with us? I am, Chris, yes. And by the way, you sound a lot better now.

Okay, that's good. I'm on a different line. I get cut off somehow. Yes, I'm not sure how that happened, but you sound a lot better.

Okay. I would like you to now go into more detail about exactly what the

Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies is all about. Well, in 1997, when the

Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America was formed, we were invited by the faculty of Westminster Seminary to come out here and work with them to prepare men for gospel ministry.

Through an interesting process, we put together a program that we call the

Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies, and we teach five classes that apply towards the

Westminster Seminary Master of Divinity degree with the goal of preparing men to go out and serve in the gospel ministry in churches in the

United States and around the world. It has been a great relationship with Westminster Seminary.

Westminster is a first -rate theological school. Our men have received a really fine education.

Many of them are out serving in churches now and are doing very well. We're seeing the

Lord bless both established churches and some of the men who've gone out to plant churches, and those churches are growing nicely, seeing

God's blessing on them. So we're a graduate school, or we work with a graduate school to prepare men for gospel ministry.

Well, praise God for that. And so you have some exciting things that are developing that are new in regard to this

Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies. Tell us about that. Yeah. A couple of years ago, we began the process through some...

Because of the interest of some folks, we began the process of considering the possibility of advancing

IRBS, our institute, into a full -blown standalone seminary. Various circumstances came together.

It's not that we're discontent with the relationship that we have with Westminster or anything, but some men wanted to look into the possibility of seeing what we could do if we were to move forward.

So we've been involved for a couple of years in a process of investigation, of trying to put together...

Well, first, really to determine God's will. And we don't have a... There's no word in the

Bible that tells us to go ahead and do this. We don't have any expectation that some kind of divine revelation will come to us and give us an indication that this is the right thing to do.

We're trying to be prudent and wise, look at all of the circumstances, and through those circumstances, in God's providence, through general revelation, come to a determination as to whether or not we should go forward.

So we've been involved for a couple of years in this process of seeking advice.

What would we need to do in order to be able to move forward? Where should we go if we decide to move forward?

Who would be involved with us? Who would be our professors? Who would be our administration members who would help us?

And all of this is pointing towards the next General Assembly of our

Association of Churches, where we'll have a discussion about this, and we expect that a vote will be taken as to whether or not it is the right step for us to take to move forward and build a seminary, a residential, accredited theological seminary for the training of pastors.

I've been involved in talking to people both here in the

United States and in many other countries around the world to gauge the level of interest, to see what kind of participation would people be willing to aid us, to support us, to send their men to us, to teach for us.

We're trying to put all of that together and be very wise, be prudent as we consider moving forward into the future.

Okay, we have Richard in Palmdale, California, who asks, at the

IRBS website, it says, a confessional Reformed Baptist seminary, nothing of this kind now exists anywhere in the world.

Could you elaborate on these words, nothing of this kind now exists anywhere in the world? Yeah, there is no residential school that offers accredited degrees for Reformed Baptists in the

United States. There are a couple of schools that are distance education, and for some men, distance education is a helpful means to provide education and preparation for their ministries.

But there is no, in the world, there's no degree -granting accredited residential school where men can come and spend three years, or if they do it on a part -time basis, perhaps four years, where men can come and spend that time in a community, being involved in the churches, in the vicinity, and get their training.

And that's what we're trying to build. We want to put together something that doesn't repeat what others are doing, that, in a sense, takes what we already have here in Escondido.

You could argue, well, there's a sense in which that exists because of your relationship with Westminster Seminary, and the guys who come through our program will earn a

Master of Divinity degree that's an accredited degree, and they do come here and they spend three years. That's the closest thing that exists right now.

Our hope is to have something where all of the faculty members are Reformed Baptists and where that community can be built.

So that's what that phrase refers to. Well, thank you, Richard, in Palmdale, California.

We also have CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says,

I have Baptist friends who say that they militate against any

Baptist group that is in a denomination because Baptists historically have always believed in the autonomy of local congregations without a denominational headquarters or denominational hierarchy as the

Presbyterians and others have. Is the Reformed Baptist group a denomination, or are your congregations independent and autonomous?

We are not a denomination in the traditional sense of the word, as it would be used with, as this correspondent said, the

Presbyterians or other groups, or even Southern Baptists and American Baptists. We do believe in the autonomy of the local church.

We don't believe in any organization that can rule over or intrude into the local church.

From the beginning, in the 17th century, the Baptists have been committed to the principle of associationalism.

And so we have organized ourselves according to the historical principles of the

Baptists as an association where churches cooperate together, but there is no body that is greater than the local church.

Nothing can be enforced upon them. Nothing can be forced from them. So all of our churches are autonomous.

Well, I guess the only thing that could be enforced upon them is expulsion from the group if they, you know, wind up disagreeing on doctrinal issues or other matters.

Right, yeah, yeah. I mean, every group has the right to maintain commendation towards those who are within its group.

And so if a congregation were to go in a direction that is questionably morally, which, you know, today in the society in which we live, sometimes churches do that, or if that church deviates doctrinally, then the association has the right to say, you no longer meet the standards of our church,

I mean, of our association of churches. But the association can't tell that church, you must change, you must remove your elders and deacons, you must replace them, you must accept these men that we send to you.

That's what a denomination does. I am as strongly opposed to that as anyone else. We have

Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, who asks, is it true that sometimes our

Presbyterian brethren say that Baptists are not technically reformed since their history is much later on than that of the traditional confessing

Presbyterians? Would you read that again for me?

He asks, is it true that sometimes our Presbyterian brethren say that Baptists are not technically reformed since their history is much later on, meaning more recent, than that of traditional confessing

Presbyterians? In other words, since, I think what he is saying is since Baptists, in his opinion, or in the opinion of Presbyterians who have spoken with him,

Baptists arrived on the scene later than the Reformation, and since they're not identical to the

Anabaptists, I'm assuming that it would put them in a totally different category other than reformed. I'm assuming that's what he's asking.

Yeah, I think the question is mixing up two things. Yes, it's true that some

Presbyterians don't like when Baptists use the word reform to define themselves, but I've never run into myself the argument that it's based upon a later period of time, which is not really that only a couple of decades later than the

Westminster Assembly, and even at the time of the Westminster Assembly there were particular Baptists.

More I've heard the argument that infant baptism is an essential part of the reformed system.

To reject infant baptism is to disqualify yourself from the adjective reform.

We have Matt in Spring, Texas, who asks, in our day and age, much theological confusion surrounds us, even in so -called reformed churches.

Key elements of the doctrine of God are denied with little to no awareness of their impact on the church.

Eternal functional subordination in many circles has become the accepted norm.

Can you explain why the church needs a confessional reformed Baptist seminary? Well, this is a totally different question here.

I'll tell you what, why don't you answer his first question and then we'll go on to his second question.

Okay, yeah, confessions of faith, when they're well done, when they're written carefully and done well, tie us to the church

Catholic, and I don't mean Roman Catholic, I mean universal. You know, when we think about who we are as Christians, we must not fall into the trap of chronological snobbery and thinking that our day and age is the final, the best, that we have all of the answers, that everything has been leading up to us.

We want to be identified with Christians and what

Christians have believed ever since the days of the Apostles, and even before that, in terms of their understanding of who

God was in the Old Testament. And a good confession of faith will pick up on the language of, for example, the

Nicene Creed, or the Chalcedonian Declaration, or the Athanasian Creed, and express in its confessional statement the same doctrines that have been believed by Christians throughout all the centuries.

And that protects us from modern movements, and if, you know, I mean, if we're living in the 18th century, that would be a modern movement if something came along, or here in the 21st century, or maybe in the 24th century if the

Lord doesn't return. It protects Christians from new ideas coming in and brings us back to the truth that is rooted and worked out in Scripture.

So a confession of faith is really a protection for the

Church from the winds of doctrine, as Paul calls them later on in one of his official confessions.

Right, and obviously the Church, in order to actually prevent those things from happening, those aberrant views from raising up, they actually have to remain faithful to the confession, because there are denominations who on paper believe that, or at least on paper they state that that is the official creed or confession of their denomination, but since they've long abandoned it in practical matters, it doesn't even mean anything.

Like there are some Anglican churches that say that the official statement of faith of their denomination are the 39

Articles of Religion, and yet there is probably a very tiny minority of Anglicans and Episcopalians who actually believe in the 39

Articles today. Yeah, yeah, you're exactly right. And it becomes a matter of integrity, you know?

You take an oath when you're ordained, whatever denomination you happen to be in, whether it's an independent type group like Baptists are, or it's a denomination like the

Church of England or Lutherans, you know, when you take that oath that says,

I am committed to the doctrine of my Church, you're saying something publicly, but also before God.

And if you don't live up to what you've just said, there's a real question about your integrity.

Why are you saying this? Why are you committing yourself? Why did you take this oath if you don't intend to live up to it?

And that has been the problem in the Church, certainly for the last 300 years, is men who have not kept the word that they've spoken when they have been ordained to the ministry in whatever denomination they happen to belong to.

So Matt follows up with, can you explain why a

Church, or should I say, can you explain why the Church needs a confessional Reformed Baptist Seminary?

Yeah, that's a good question. You know, over the last couple of years

I've had the opportunity to talk to several men that I've become friends with who are presidents of seminaries around the country.

And one of them, in speaking to me, said that we will fill a niche that no one else is filling right now.

There isn't a place for men to come to and to be trained in the doctrines that are contained in our confession of faith.

There are good schools. I'm part of one here. You know, I think Westminster Seminary California is a great school.

Two of my sons are graduates. I'm really thankful for everything that they learned, and I think the blessing of God in their ministries now is the result of what the faculty here has done for them.

So, you know, wanting to do this is not meant to be a criticism of anyone else. It's to say, this needs to be done.

And one of the things that I have been especially encouraged by is the response that comes both here in the

United States and around the world from people who say, yes, we appreciate very much what our men could get if they went to XYZ school, but XYZ school does not exactly represent what we believe the

Bible teaches. What you guys want to do is what we believe needs to be done, because you're going to teach them the things that we believe they need to be taught.

So I think that we can fill this space that is not being filled right now and really move forward.

There are many, many opportunities to us, church planting opportunities, churches that need pastors.

My generation is getting near to the age of retirement. Some of my friends are already at the age of retirement.

They'll need to be replaced. There are many opportunities, and with the blessing of God, we can prepare men to go into those opportunities and see this movement go forward.

You know, one of the things that really blesses me a lot is as I look to the generation of men in their 30s and early 40s, we have a lot of them now, and we've got some really fine young leaders.

I think if the Lord were to take all of my generation home right now, this thing would still be left in really good hands, because they're godly men, they understand the

Scriptures, they're committed wholeheartedly to serving Christ and to helping his people and to seeing the gospel go out to the world.

I think that the opportunities that are in front of us in the next couple of decades are really amazing, and we need to now lay down the foundation to meet the opportunities that are in front of us in the next three decades.

Let me tell you a story. In fact, could you tell the story right when we come back from the break?

I'd be glad to. Yeah, just don't forget. Remember where you left off. All righty. We're going to be going to a break right now, and if anybody else would like to join us, we do have a number of people already waiting to have their questions asked and answered, but if you'd like to join them by asking a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Please include your first name, city and state and country of residence, and we will be right back after these messages with Dr.

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This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than an hour to go is

Dr. James M. Renahan, Dean and Professor of Historical Theology at the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies.

If you'd like to join us with a question, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

And you were going to tell a story before the break, Dr. Renahan. Yes, yes. Thank you for giving me the opportunity.

You know, in 1979, Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia saw the need for a seminary on the west coast of the

United States. They wanted to especially be able to reach the Pacific Rim. And so they planted the school out here in Escondido, California.

Just this last May, the seminary had its 35th graduation.

So for 35 years, they've been graduating men and sending them out into the gospel industry. And what's really interesting about that is that it's happened in my lifetime.

And they said that there are about 1 ,100 graduates over the 35 years who have come from Westminster Seminary.

Now, when I look at that, I think that's a realistic goal. It has been done in our lifetime.

It was done in much the same way that we're thinking about moving forward. When they began out here, they had a very small residential faculty that was supplemented by men who came in part -time.

They began with a small student body. In fact, the first graduating class was one student. The second graduating class, there were seven.

And then in the third graduating class, there were 21 or 22. I don't remember the exact number. But over the course of 35 years, there have been 1 ,100.

Now, I don't expect to see 35 years of a seminary. I'll hopefully be in heaven by then.

But, well, you know, all things being equal, that's kind of what you expect.

But imagine the impact that 1 ,100 Reformed Baptist graduates could have in the course of 35 years.

You know, when I talk about the future and the decades that are ahead and the opportunities that are ahead, the model that I base that on is what

I have seen for the last 18 years here at Westminster. It's not a pipe dream.

It's not a wish. It's not an optimistic padding of figures. It's what really has happened in my own lifetime.

You know, I went to seminary in 1980. They began holding classes here in 1979. So it's since I went to seminary that they've put out 1 ,100 graduates.

And I think, man, the opportunities that would be in front of us if we could do the same, if we could repeat what has been done here in what is statistically a relatively small school.

You know, the student body here caps out probably between 150 and 200 at the largest that they've ever had.

That's a tenth of what some of the big schools around the country do. But still, 1 ,100 graduates helping the

OPC and the PCA and going overseas and doing missions work, if we could can help to accomplish the same thing,

I don't have to see it. I don't have to see the result in 35 years. I just need to be faithful in laying down the foundation.

And it's those men who are now in their 30s who are such a huge encouragement to me. I look at them and I say, they could see it 35 years from now.

They'll be close to the age that I'm at now. They could see it and they can rejoice in what God has done in their lifetime.

But we have to begin somewhere. When I visit churches and I talk to them about this, you know,

I talk about how we need to be involved in missions, sending men to plant churches and to go overseas.

But I also, I ask them the question, who will be the pastor for your grandchildren? And that really connects with them.

And many times people have come to me and said, I've never thought about it before. But you're right. You know, we're concerned about what

I call geographical expansion. And we must be. We must be doing the work of God in our day.

We must be seeking to reach the lost wherever they are. But also we need to think about generational expansion.

How do we provide for our kids and for our grandchildren? What are we doing to make sure that they have the kind of ministry that we as adults enjoy today?

And that's what our hope for our seminary will be. We'll be able to train a realistic number is 1 ,100 graduates in one generation and send those graduates to plant churches in the

U .S. and to serve in churches around the world. Well, thank you,

Matt. Oh, by the way, Matt has one more question here. He says, can you also explain the type of confessional subscription that the seminary will adopt, full subscription or some other form?

And maybe if you also could explain what that means to our listeners who are not in confessional churches, although I believe every church is a confessional church.

It's either just a good confession or a bad confession, because once you explain what you believe, that's a confession.

Yeah, yeah. It's either written or it's unwritten, but it's there. Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah. The language that was used is full subscription.

Sometimes it's equated with what's called strict subscription. And what that means is that a group that adopts it, and our association of churches has adopted this policy of full subscription, it means that we accept that all of the doctrines that are taught in the confession are the doctrines that are taught in the

Bible. It's very simple. The whole body within the confession is what we're committed to.

Pardon me. Now, I'm not the decision maker on these things. That will come down the road, but what

I would anticipate and what I would expect is that the regular full -time faculty of our seminary will be, that the seminary will adopt a policy of full or strict subscription for the regular full -time faculty.

Now, I suspect that, well, let me put it this way. We've had some men, I won't name their names, but they're well -known

Presbyterians who have offered to us to participate with us, to come in and teach a course, for example, in one man's area of expertise.

I think that it would be wise for us to adopt a policy for part -time faculty that would allow us to bring in men like these well -known

Presbyterians who can contribute something, perhaps, to our students that our regular faculty might not be able to contribute to them because they don't have the expertise.

So I think you have to have a couple of different levels, and for those who are regular full -time voting faculty,

I would hope that our position would be full subscription or strict subscription, but that we would find a way for visiting faculty to be able to come in and teach on a part -time basis and give us the benefit of their expertise.

But those are decisions that are down the road that others will be involved in. Well, Matt from Spring, Texas, since you are a first -time questioner on Iron Sharpens Iron, you have won a free

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We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who wants to know how much wiggle room do congregations have to disagree with each other to be in your association of Reformed Baptists?

There are things that are not included, to my knowledge, in the 1689

London Baptist Confession of Faith, such as whether or not a church takes an exclusive psalmody position or an a cappella worship position, and other matters involving eschatology and so on.

What type of differences can a church have and still be considered a faithful member of your association?

Yeah, it's difficult to get into specifics, but the simple answer is we're committed to the doctrines in the

Confession of Faith. Anything that's not addressed by the Confession of Faith is not an issue that we debate, and so there can be differences of opinion when it comes to matters that are outside of that circle that is drawn by the 32 chapters of the

Confession. But our commitment to full subscription is a commitment to all of the doctrines that are contained in that Confession itself.

So you read the Confession, you say, does it address this or not? If it doesn't address it, then it's probably not going to be a problem.

Now, every once in a while something comes up, for example, questions about marriage that are being discussed in our society today that are not directly addressed, but they're addressed by implication.

Those matters would be important as well. But it's the Confession itself that defines for us our standard of intimate cooperation.

Thank you, RJ. In White Plains, New York, we have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, can a dispensationalist be a part of your fellowship if they are thoroughgoing

Calvinists? I have even seen literature from Calvinistic landmark

Baptists that say that they subscribe to the 1689 London Baptist Confession, and they also are simultaneously dispensationalists.

What is your guest's opinion on this? Well, it's important to remember that we're an association of churches, not individuals.

And so we don't have a provision for individuals apart from churches to join and be part of our association.

So that's important to say up front. But my argument would be dispensationalism is contrary to the

Confession of Faith. That one cannot honestly hold to the

Confession of Faith, which is structured around Reformed Covenant theology, and is completely inconsistent with dispensationalism.

One cannot be a dispensationalist and honestly hold to the Confession of Faith. So that's an area where the

Confession doesn't use the word dispensational in the modern sense. That has come to us since the 19th century in English -speaking

Christianity. But dispensationalism is a system that differs from the Confession of Faith. It does not agree with it.

And I would say when a church claims to hold to the Confession and is a self -identifying dispensationalist church, they really don't understand what the

Confession is about. So they're adopting it, really, with not thorough knowledge of what they're doing.

Yeah, you know, a lot of people look at a confession. It could be the Second London, it could be

Westminster, it could be many others. And they're generally in agreement with the sense of the

Confession, especially in terms of its, just to use the jargon, its

Calvinism, okay? And they say, well, okay, we're Baptists, and this Confession of Faith speaks about the, it addresses the five points, and I hold to the five points, and so I hold to the

Confession of Faith. But those five points are only a small part of the entire system. To be a

Reformed Baptist means to adopt the entire system, not just some points in it, and a dispensationalist simply can't do that.

Thank you, Orny and Perry County. We have Abby in Mansfield, Texas, who says, what can the everyday layman do to help this project?

And I'm assuming this is in regard to the Institute for Reformed Baptist Studies. What can we do now and as things move forward?

Wow, that's a great question. The first thing, when I talk to people in churches about this project that we're involved in to build a seminary, the first thing

I do is ask them to pray for us. Pray that the Lord would make it clear that this is the step that we ought to take, because without His blessing, all of the work that we do, all the money that is spent, everything is just wasted.

We need to have His blessing upon it, and so I would ask people to, on a daily basis, pray for us.

Pray for me and the other people who are involved. We have several folks in a leadership team who are involved in helping us.

Pray that the Lord would make us to be holy people, that we would walk in His ways, that we would live according to the standards of Scripture, that we would show

Christlikeness in our lives, so that we can be instruments that can be useful to the

Lord in this project. We could use financial help, to be quite honest.

One way that people can support us is by giving. At our website, irbsseminary .org,

there are two S's in the middle, I -R -B -S -S -E -M -I -N -A -R -Y .org.

We have a donate page, it's a secure page, and people can contribute and help us out with that.

They can also send contributions to IRBS, either at our

Carlisle, Pennsylvania office, or here in Escondido, and those are tax -deductible gifts.

People can use amazonsmile .org, which is a fantastic program.

Many people don't even know this, but Amazon has a foundation that they've set up for charitable giving, and if you go to Amazon, or smile .amazon

.com .org, .com, whichever, if you go to that and you designate the

Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies as your charity, Amazon will donate to us from the money that you spend on your purchases at Amazon.

They will donate a percentage to us. It doesn't cost the buyer anything, because the price that you pay for, let's say you're buying a book from Amazon, is exactly the same as what it would be whether you used

Amazon Smile or not, but we get the benefit of that donation that they give to us, and that's a wonderful thing.

We also have on Amazon a wish list for our library.

We're trying to build our library, and people can search for the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies on the Amazon website, and they can purchase books for us that will go into our library.

So there are all kinds of ways that people can help us. We're also glad if somebody has a talent or a gift that they'd like to offer to us pro bono, we'd be glad to talk to them about any way that they might be able to give us aid.

So there's lots of things that people can do to help us out. Well, that was the exact same question that Judith in Hartford, Connecticut asked.

So actually, both of you, since you are first -time questioners on Iron Sharpens Iron, you both have won a

New American Standard Bible, so please give me your full mailing addresses. I only have your city and state, so if you'd like to get those free

New American Standard Bibles shipped out to you by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, that's C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for BibleBookService .com,

C -V, B -B -S dot com. If you'd like to get those free Bibles, email me your full mailing addresses, and those will be out to you,

God willing, within a week or so. And we thank you for contributing to the program with your questions.

And if anybody else would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com, chrisarnsen at gmail dot com.

One of the things that Reformed Baptists, as you know,

Jim, have earned a reputation for in a negative sense is that we can appear very often to be isolationist, we can appear to be going overboard with our restrictions on what someone must believe or not believe to be in full fellowship with us.

How do we overcome the stereotype that some may have of looking from the outside in, who may even hurl the charge of cultic towards us, but that does happen.

And there may be even, I'm sure, pastors or specific congregations who would rightly be able to be accused of that kind of Pharisaic attitude and isolationism that would warrant that kind of a comment.

I mean, obviously, we are sinners saved by grace, so not every Reformed Baptist church or person or pastor is perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

So what are your practical recommendations for pastors that they could do without compromising truth, obviously, without watering down anything, but at the same time giving more of a humble appearance, a reflection of humility and grace and love, and even willingness to learn from brethren who disagree with us on certain matters?

Yeah, that's a good question. And, of course, stereotypes are difficult to overcome.

And oftentimes, stereotypes are based upon isolated incidents, individual circumstances, that then people draw them out and apply them to everybody else who has the name.

You know, everybody who lives in Long Island acts in such and such a way. Or when

I meet you and you're from Long Island, I assume that you're going to act in that way. But that's not fair to you, is it?

It may be a generalization about Long Islanders, and you understand why I'm picking on Long Islanders. Yeah, that's where I'm originally from, and I've kind of gotten that kind of feedback after moving here to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, that people assume one thing just because I'm from New York.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so it's not fair to anybody to stereotype them in that way, because they may be very different from that.

You know, I've been here for 18 years, as I said an hour ago, living in a Presbyterian world, and the

Lord has really blessed that. And I know that the men and the students at Westminster Seminary and I have a really great relationship.

We've been able to work together. If anything breaks down the stereotype, it's 18 years of being able to work very closely with some godly

Presbyterians and moving forward in the Kingdom of God, so much so that if the

Lord blesses this project to move forward, it's going to be with the handshake from the guys at Westminster who don't want us to leave, you know?

I mean, there we've broken down the stereotype. Now, when I was a pastor, I tried to reach out to men around me.

I remember one time, I read in the newspaper, I was in a small town, and I read in the newspaper that a new pastor had come to one of the evangelical churches in town.

And I had on my bookshelf an old copy of a book that was written by the man who's identified with the founder, with founding that denomination.

So I took it off my shelf and I went over there and visited him, gave it to him as a gift, said, you know, welcome to the area, it's nice to meet you, here's this book by so -and -so,

I'd like you to have this. He invited me to come and preach at his installation, and we had a good relationship with each other.

In another circumstance, I tried to reach out to a pastor in a different evangelical church and just get to know him and go visit him and have him come visit me.

I think that it's good for our pastors to go to, you know, find out where's the local ministerial fraternal.

Now, sometimes you won't be able to go, you won't be comfortable because you'll have prosperity preachers who dominate it.

You know, prosperity preachers don't preach the gospel. And you don't want to go to the liberal ministerial fraternal, where it's just social work.

But if they're evangelicals, or if there's a, like in New England, we had a group called the New England Reform Fellowship that I was part of.

Those are great things. When we planted our church in Massachusetts, we had men from the

New England Reform Fellowship come and participate with us in that constituting meeting.

They sat on the platform, they prayed, they read the scriptures. It was great to see that.

So I think we need to be aggressive in reaching out and befriending others, remembering that in the

New Testament, there aren't any perfect churches. We won't have perfect churches.

We're sinners. We make our churches imperfect as they are. And all of those churches in the

New Testament are true churches, even with all of their imperfections. So we need to reach out to them, work with them, befriend them.

Like you say, learn from them, listen to them when they speak. I think there are many things that we can do to break down the stereotype.

Now, if somebody has a prejudice against Long Islanders, no matter what you do, you're not going to be able to overcome it. Right? And if people have that stereotype, prejudice against Reformed Baptists, no matter what you do, you can't overcome it.

I just let that, it's like water off the duck's back. You can't do anything about that. You do your best to honor the

Lord and to show love to other people, and you'll leave it at that. Yeah, the main thing that I'm complaining about is that when people, when

I go into a local shop or store in the area here in Carlisle, when people hear my New York accent,

I automatically start getting searched, and that kind of thing. I have a metal detector wand waved over me.

But we're going to our final break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, this is your opportunity.

We have about 26 minutes left. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the good old

USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. James Renahan after these messages.

Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to A Visit to the Pastor's Study every

Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am

.com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the

Pastor's Study by calling in with your questions. Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull.

Join us this Saturday at 12 noon Eastern Time for a visit to the Pastor's Study, because everyone needs a pastor.

I'm Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and here's one of my favorite guests, Todd Friel, to tell you about a conference he and I are going to.

Hello, this is Todd Friel, host of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV, and occasional guest on Chris's show

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Hoping that you can join Chris and me at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, my new hometown.

It is going to be a bang -up conference called the G3 Conference, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation, with Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Baucom, Conrad and Bayway, Phil Johnson, James White, and a bunch of other people.

We hope to see you there. Learn more at g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

Thanks, Todd, I think. See you at the Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitors booth.

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Again, 717 -254 -6433. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen, and this is the final 25 minutes or so of our program today with Dr.

Jim Renahan of the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies. And by the way, the website, if anybody would like to investigate more about this organization after the program is over, is

IRBSSeminary .org. That's IRBSSeminary .org.

IR for the Institute for Reformed, BS for Baptist Studies, and Seminary .org.

And keep in mind, there's two S's in there because you have IRBS and then Seminary. So keep both of those

S's in there for the URL. And one of the things that I as you've been hearing me announce,

Dr. Renahan, in keeping with the theme that we had before the break about Reformed Baptists being somewhat more open to fellowship with people who are not in lockstep with everything that we believe and do, is my pastor's luncheon that I have.

This is open to any man in ministry leadership that cares to attend.

Now, people in the past have said to me, why are you having those people at this luncheon, etc.?

And I've said in response, well, number one, they're not teaching anything here. And number two, how do you expect people to agree or come to believe in truth that you find so precious and important and even vital or essential if you never have anything to do with them?

I mean, if you keep them locked out of everything you do, how do you expect them?

By osmosis or something? How do you expect them to learn these things? And I understand that there are certain occasions where you want everyone in a certain gathering to be nearly identical to what you believe.

But something like what I'm doing, I'm purposely making this available to men in the community as a way of letting them know who

I am, what I believe. And the books, for instance, that I have available at the pastor's luncheon, they're all free of charge, they're donated, but they're all books that I would agree with, at least in the majority of what they're teaching in the books.

I wouldn't have any crazy or liberal or heretical book available there.

So a lot of these books are specifically and uniquely reformed in their content. And this is just another way of people getting books that they may not already purchase on their own and that may be used of God to bring them into deeper truth.

I'll give you an example. I know of an Arminian pastor who picked up at one of these luncheons for free

Dr. James R. White's book, What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Quran. And this pastor, who's

Arminian, is using this book as an instructional class on Islam in his church.

And we don't know where that's going to lead. He might start reading everything that James White has written, etc.

I mean, do you think that this is a healthy approach that I have here? Oh, yeah. Yeah, certainly.

I wish I could be in Carlisle and come to your thing and meet some people. And in fact, once in a while, if somebody has a unique sphere of knowledge or focus of attention in their particular ministry that I happen to agree with, then

I don't even require necessarily that the speaker be in lockstep with Five -Point Calvinism.

Last year, I had David Wood of answeringmuslims .com speak on the issue of Islam at the luncheon.

And David is not a Five -Point Calvinist, but nothing that he said would have been in any way in contradiction to the doctrines of grace in any way.

Well, I want to make sure that the folks listening have more of a thorough understanding of the things that you are doing there and plan to do with the

Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies. Like, what are the various courses that are being taught there, and are there doctoral programs, etc.?

Yeah. Well, if we move ahead with our seminary, we want to have a full Master of Divinity program that will be modeled after the very traditional program that you'll find in any seminary, with a strong emphasis on the original languages.

We believe that pastors need to be able to work with their Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament.

We want them to be thoroughly schooled in both the Old and the New Testament, be able to preach that well to God's people.

We want to emphasize pastoral ministry, of course, systematic theology, historical theology, all of those things.

You know, one of the things I love, one of my students here was telling me he was in an Old Testament class, and on a regular basis the professor would go through the exposition of the text, say, one of the prophets or a psalm or something, and then he'd look up at the students and he'd say, now how do you preach this to your people?

And I think, wow, that's great, because that's what the student needs to know. He needs to be able to take what he's learned in the classroom and put it in a form that will be of benefit to God's people as they sit in the pew.

So one of the things that we really want to emphasize is the ability to work with Scripture in such a way that it will be of benefit to the people in the pew.

You know, you sort of get in your mind that you're not preaching, you're not leading the

Church for the sake of scholars, you're leading the Church for the high school kid who is struggling with life, you're helping the young mother who doesn't get a lot of sleep at night because the baby's up, you're helping, you know, everybody who makes up the

Church, you want to speak in such a way to help them. So the seminary curriculum lays down a basis in Scripture and theology that then the minister needs to take out and make that available to the people.

Now, we don't have any plans at this point, and a lot of the, even some of the questions you've just asked are things that I can't answer yet, but I'll just give you some ideas.

At this point, there's no plans to talk about a doctoral program. That takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to do, and in order to be able to do it the right way, schools have to have the right kind of faculty, they have the right kind of circumstances.

We need to focus and concentrate our attention on preparing men for Gospel ministry. There are really good options out there.

If somebody wants to go on and do a doctoral program, they could do it elsewhere. I know some seminaries even have taken away, they've moved away from their doctoral programs because they have recognized that those programs in one way or another distract them from their mission.

And our mission is going to be training men for Gospel ministry, so we want to focus specifically on that, really dedicate our time, our efforts, because my dream is in 35 years to have 1 ,100 graduates, to see those men out pastoring churches, to see people being brought to Christ through their preaching, to see churches planted here in North America and overseas.

That's what I want to see. We've had tremendous interest from men around the world who

I think will send their men to us, we'll send them back, we'll begin to see churches planted, the

Gospel going forward, people brought to Christ. That's the goal. So, you know, I think we have to keep a laser focus, that sort of jargon these days, but it makes the point.

You know, a laser is a straight line. It goes to its destination, it hits it.

That's what we need to do. We need to stay like that and see with God's blessing that we're able to train men for Gospel ministry.

We have the BB in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says,

I am a strict complementarian and very much oppose egalitarianism in church leadership.

However, I was wondering if you accept or believe it is appropriate for a woman to attend courses such as the ones you offer, as long as she is just doing this to build up her own knowledge in the faith and perhaps use these gifts in order to teach other women as the scriptures even command the older women to teach the younger.

Yeah, that's an interesting question too. Right now, we follow the policies that Westminster Seminary follows, and that is that all of the wives of all of the enrolled students are able to sit in on the classes that they take.

They also do allow women to be admitted to the Master of Arts programs, but not to the

Master of Divinity degree, which means I've had women in my classes and have been glad to have them there.

A couple of times Westminster has hired me to teach courses for them, and those classes have had women.

So, you know, I think that given the careful definition that was in the question,

I don't have any opposition to a woman sitting in on classes and growing in her knowledge of grace.

Of course, remembering that that's primarily the job of her pastors to provide that to her, but I have no objection myself.

I'm pretty sure that we would not, if we go forward, we're not talking about the

Master of Divinity degree, but like in the current situation with a Master of Arts degree, I don't think that there's an issue.

Did you know the late Dr. Robert J. Cameron? No. Oh, he was a dear friend of mine.

He was an Orthodox Presbyterian pastor in Somerset, New Jersey, and he was a black brother in a very conservative denomination, and he was a very, very conservative pastor who had gotten involved in conflict with other

African -American pastors and churches who ordained women into the ministry, and he was very much opposed to that.

And he told me that his first day of teaching at a

Bible school in New York, he walked into the classroom and he saw women in the classroom, and the first words out of his mouth were, good morning, my name is

Dr. Robert J. Cameron, and the first thing that you need to know about Dr. Robert Cameron is that he does not teach women how to preach.

He had the homiletics class, so the college had to, or the school had to switch him into a hermeneutics class rather than a homiletics class, but he was a dear brother and he just went home to be with the

Lord about two years ago. But I want to make sure before I go to any more of our listener questions because we have a couple more, but I want to really make sure that you have at least five minutes to summarize the things that you most want to leave our listeners with before the program is over.

Well, let me reiterate what I said before. The more people who are praying for us, the better.

And I deeply appreciate the way that people have taken up their love for me and for the work that we're doing and have sought the face of God on our behalf.

And I would ask everybody who's listening to please do that for us. There isn't a better gift that you can give to us than to pray for us and pray for the

Lord's blessing upon the work. And I thank you for that and would ask you to continue to do so.

I'd ask people to visit our website. You've mentioned it, let me say it again, irbsseminary .org.

You can learn about this project and how it's moving forward. We have regular updates on the news section where a lot of what we're doing right now is reprinting material from Baptist publications from the early 19th century.

We found some really great stuff and we're putting it on there. But there's also information about how we're moving forward, what we hope to do.

We will be having some events around the country as they're coming up.

We'll have one in about two weeks in the Quad Cities area of Illinois. And if you live in the area there, anywhere in Iowa or central

Illinois, if you want to send an email to us through the website, we can give information on that event.

It'll give information. That event is intended to help people to know what's going on with the seminary project and how they can help us.

If anybody is motivated to participate with us, visit the donate page on the irbsseminary .org

website and we'll be very thankful to you for what you're doing, helping to provide pastors for your children and your grandchildren to make sure that the cause moves forward.

And pray even for the men who are here and studying right now. We have a couple who'll be graduating this year, more who'll be graduating next year.

God willing, pray that the Lord would use them for his glory and for the extension of his kingdom.

I guess those are the things that immediately come to mind, Chris. Great. And we do have

Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who wants to know, do you think it is appropriate for Reformed Baptist churches to give loopholes in order to allow

Presbyterian brethren to have full membership in the church who refuse to be baptized as believers by immersion?

I know that some churches that claim to be Reformed Baptist have done this with certain members, especially those who are elderly, but to me, regardless of one's age, one should not give them a way of escape from abandoning a command of Christ.

Well that's actually a very difficult question to answer and it would take a long time, and Baptists have different opinions on that.

You know, I could imagine a church, let's say that there's a Reformed Baptist church somewhere, and there are no

Presbyterian churches nearby, but a person with Presbyterian convictions begins to attend the church and wants to have some kind of oversight in their lives, but by conviction they believe in infant baptism.

What do you do with them? One of the things that really blessed me when I was doing my PhD work is to see in the 17th century how much respect there was between, in the different communions, over matters of tender conscience.

You know, it's one thing for me to say to somebody, but you know the Bible says that you have to be baptized by immersion as a believer, and if you don't, you're being disobedient.

Well, I believe that that's true, but I need to respect the conscience of someone else who comes in a matter like infant baptism to a different conclusion than mine.

So I could imagine, in a unique situation where there are no options for a good

Presbyterian church, that a Baptist church might consider some kind of, maybe not full membership, that was part of the question, but maybe an associate membership type status, because it's better for those people and their souls to have some participation in the church than none at all.

But, you know, I respect the view, too, of Dagg, for example, in his, he's a 19th century

Southern Baptist, who argues very strongly against allowing anyone who's not been baptized by immersion into the membership of the church.

When I read Dagg, I say it makes a lot of sense. I understand his viewpoint. So I'm not prepared here to give a definitive answer to that question.

I think that we do have to respect the conclusions that each individual church makes on its own as to how it will apply that principle.

We have an anonymous listener who asks, in the church where I am a member, it will be frequently said before the

Lord's Supper is administered that all who have been scripturally baptized are welcome to partake.

In the same church, I have heard the pastor say that our visiting Presbyterian brethren are welcome to partake.

This seems to be a contradiction. What is your advice? Should I complain to my pastor?

Should I keep this to myself? Or do you agree with what my pastor said? Well, once again,

I don't have enough information to give a definitive opinion on this. I would say anytime that somebody's troubled about something that they see in their church, the best and the first thing to do is to go humbly and ask a question of their pastors to seek for an answer there.

But I'm really reluctant, Chris, to jump in, because I don't know the circumstance, and I don't want somebody going to their pastor and say, you know,

I asked a question on Chris Arnzen's internet radio show, and Dr. Renahan said such and such. Well, it would be stupid for me to try to give advice in that case, because I don't know the situation.

So I think that individual, humbly, ought to go to the pastor and say, you know, I don't really understand what seems to me something that doesn't fit together.

Can you help me to understand this better? Yeah, and it is one of those issues where, like, for instance,

I love when—I'm a Reformed Baptist, as you know, and I love it when

Sinclair Ferguson and others visit to preach. And it's one of those areas of life as a

Christian where you wonder, could we possibly bar Sinclair Ferguson from the

Lord's Supper? Well, we wouldn't bar anyone anyway. It's basically the way that the ordinance is administered.

It's really, obviously, left up to the conscience of the person, after he has been informed, who is welcome.

We're not supposed to be like—I don't think having ushers knock the plate out of someone's hand or pull it away from them or anything like that.

But that is one of those touchy situations, because, you know, there are so many dear, precious brethren who do disagree with us over that.

But at the same time, you would hate to have a compromise on that become so frequent and commonplace that over the years, the whole question of whether one needs to be baptized as a believer in the way the

Bible prescribes, it becomes completely inconsequential and not even adhered to.

I agree. You know, our practice in our church is one of the elders—when someone's visiting, one of our elders will try to get to that person before the church service and ask a few questions.

And just recently, I had to tell a man who was visiting that we would prefer him not to participate in the

Lord's Table. He said, okay, I understand. You know, that's your conviction. I'll live with that. You know, sometimes—at least that's how we approach this.

And besides the fact that we actually fence the table when the time comes, we tell people what are the standards by which they can come.

But it's a touchy issue. Yes. And let's see, we have

Andrew in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who asks, what are the parameters by which someone is welcome into membership in most

Reformed Baptist churches? Do they need to actually believe in the doctrines known as Calvinism?

Do they need to believe and agree with the confession? That would seem to me to delay a person obeying

Christ by becoming submissive to elders because he is just not fully in a stage of education in his life where he understands those things enough to believe in them.

Shouldn't there be a certain grace period of growth after a person's welcomed into membership?

Yeah, good question again. I realize that time is running away, so let me suggest this.

On the ARBCA webpage, it's www .arbca .com, under the section called

Resources, there's a column on the left that says

Circular Letters. And I wrote the Circular Letter for 2005 that deals with church membership.

And someone could go to the website and get some idea of how we try to apply these, how we would try to answer that question.

And could you repeat the website again? www .arbca .com.

And click on Resources, and then Circular Letters. Okay, well in two minutes, if you could just leave our audience with what you most want etched in their hearts and minds before they leave the program today.

I want them to believe the gospel, to believe that Christ died to save sinners, and if they trust fully in him, if they depend upon him and forsake their own righteousness, they will find the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

And if they are believers already in Christ, I want them to live for his glory, seeking every moment to love him and to love their neighbors as themselves.

Well, Dr. Renahan, it is a joy to have interviewed you today. And if you could make a note that the next time you're on the program, definitely use the same phone you're using now, because it's been perfect clarity since you switched phones.

Okay. And I really look forward to having you back. And in fact, if you don't mind waiting for a moment so I can open my calendar and ask you what date in February you might be free to do another interview.

I'll stay on the line. Thanks, Chris. Really appreciate it very much. Oh, I thank you. And I want to remind everybody that next week on Thursday, January 12th, 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m., we're having the Iron Sharpens Iron pastors luncheon. It's free of charge. Dr.

Tony Costa, professor of apologetics and Islam, is the keynote speaker at this luncheon.

And there are going to be a mountain of free books that almost every major publisher in the

United States and the United Kingdom have donated to this event to give to each of the pastors in attendance, or each of the men in attendance, because this is open also to deacons and men who are leaders in parachurch organizations and so on.

And then the following night, we have the great debate between Dr. Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary and Robert St.

Genes, founder of Catholic Apologetics International, on Mary, Sinless Queen of Heaven or Sinner Saved by Grace.

That's at the Carlisle Theater in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. And that requires a $5 ticket purchase to attend that.

Please email me at chrisarnson at gmail .com for more information. I want to thank all of you who listened today, especially those who took the time to write.

If you have not given me your full mailing address to get the free Bible, please do so as soon as you can. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. We look forward to hearing from you and your questions.