D. Scott Meadows Interview (Part 1)

The Interview Opens and the Guest’s Current Ministry

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Ebendroth, and it is, in real time, it is January 23rd, probably in NOCO time. It's going to be around the 1st of February or so. As you know, on the show, we have lots of guests and theologians and friends and pastors.

And if you wrap those all up together, we have D. Scott Meadows. Pastor Meadows, welcome back to No Compromise Radio.

Thanks so much, Mike.

So, Scott, you would probably know the place that I had lunch today. I just got back from the fish place in West Boylston, where we've had fish on at least one occasion.

Yes, with your fellow elder.

That's right. And I was thinking of you. So, it's been a while since you've been on the show. Scott, would you give us an update on where you're pastoring, what book you're preaching through, how long you've been there?

I mean, I know the answer to the questions, but I'd like to have our listeners know.

All right. I'm serving in my 34th year as Calvary Baptist Church's pastor in Exeter, New Hampshire. And as of January of 2024, we moved our location. So, now we are meeting at 307 Epping Road in Exeter.

Sunday morning worship services at 11 a .m.

Scott, if we would attend the church, what would we say? We would say 45 minutes of rock music, and then 20 minutes from Annette. Is that the way it works up there off Epping Road?

And followed by the puppet show and the interpretive dance program.

I knew you Reformed Baptists had a sense of humor. What are you preaching through these days?

So, we're working verse by verse through 1 Peter in the morning worship services. We just finished a three-year Bible survey program in our Bible study hour. And we have just begun a six-month study on Chapter 26, Paragraph 4 in the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, which topic is the papal antichrist.

And then, God willing, this Sunday evening or in the afternoon for our second service, I'll be taking the congregation through that great book by the Puritan Walter Marshall called The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification.

Sanctification, Union with Christ, and the Law-Gospel Distinction

Well, that sounds wonderful. I wish I lived closer to you. While we're on that topic, Scott, about Marshall and the Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, you're about ready to teach the class. If you had to summarize that book, how would you summarize the book?

And if you would in your summary, tell me how it cuts against the grain of many models of holy living and sanctification.

I think it's the greatest book ever written, probably, or at least a candidate for that position on the doctrine of sanctification. And it is emphasizing that real holiness of life is impossible apart from union and communion with Jesus Christ.

That's why it's called The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification. It turns out, Mike, only born-again Christians can really live the.

Christian life. Without Jesus, it's impossible. Scott, what is that old story or line from, I think, an older theologian, and he heard some pastor preach just a moralistic how-to sermon, and he tried to exhort the young man afterwards, and he said something to the effect that, you know, your sermon is going to have to need Jesus for it to work, as it were.

So, I think you're talking about the same thing that he was talking about, right?

Mike Davis Right. There's a critically important distinction between the law and the gospel in the Bible, both Testaments, required for us to make heads or tails of its doctrine of holy living.

Well, what happens is, when I talk about sanctification, and I might say it's monergistic, that's God alone working, and our response to God's work in sanctification is to kill sin and to live for righteousness, many times when I say that, and I've said it often, I hear things like Philippians chapter 2, where you're supposed to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

And so, they'll give me those verses in Philippians 2, somehow thinking in their mind they've negated everything I've said. Do people say that to you, right? Not only in my presence, but much more in my absence, Paul said, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

I think they forget the end of that verse.

Tom Hanks. Right. It's a classic text on the question, and when I have heard others try to grasp what it's saying, I've heard them say it's a qualified synergism. In other words, in a simple syllogism, you have a joint project of cooperation, but that's not really the way it works in the Christian sanctification.

We do work, but our work is the product of God's work in us, and we certainly can't make ourselves sanctified. It's God's grace in us that makes us sanctified and to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Peter Jelinski Scott, when you were talking about that, it reminded me of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 35, what is sanctification? And the divines gave this for an answer, sanctification is the work of God's free grace, comma.

I think that's so far so good. I think that's what you're trying to say. Whereby we are renewed, okay, that's something that happens to us, we're passive in that, in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled, God is enabling us by His free grace, more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness.

I think that's a great summary,.

Don't you? I do. Oh, I subscribe to that language, absolutely.

The Papal Antichrist and Old-School Hermeneutics

Peter Jelinski. So, Scott, we were texting a little bit last night through a messenger service, and we were wondering what we should talk about. I'd like to go back to what you said earlier, your discussion about the Antichrist and the Pope, and why is this such a sensitive topic?

Why do some confessions maybe take it out now, and we don't discuss it? Give me kind of a bird's eye view of what you're thinking.

All right. The reason this topic, I think, remains especially significant and relevant is because it takes us back to what I would call a pre-critical hermeneutic in the way we interpret Scripture. Now, today it's commonplace for preachers and teachers of the Bible to advocate what is called the grammatico-historical hermeneutic, and as if this is how we interpret Scripture, period.

And I believe that phrase means that we study the grammar, syntax, vocabulary, immediate context, genre of literature, and all these things in the analysis of a particular biblical text before us for our consideration hermeneutically, as well as the historical setting in which that text is found, and how it would have been meant by the human writer and received by the human hearers in their contemporary contextual situation.

And I don't reject the grammatico-historical hermeneutic, but in the old days, you know, 300 years ago, all of our forefathers in the faith also counted on other resources for biblical interpretation, and not just the grammatico-historical hermeneutic.

And so, when we look at the papal antichrist statement in the old 1689 Confession, as well as in the other 17th century great confessions like the Savoy and the Westminster Confession, because this is the same in all of them, something important is going on.

They all felt so confident about this that they included it in their confession of faith. And yet, to us, it seems implausible that it should be there. Well, my conviction is, Mike, that we don't understand what the Confession says, and we don't understand what principles of hermeneutics brought those Reformed brothers to that conclusion.

And so, I want to renew our commitment to old-school hermeneutics, which would include things like the importance of the illumination of the Holy Spirit when we study the Bible. I think that's important.

The principle of analogia scriptura, that we approach biblical interpretation canonically, and not just in the immediate context. The principle of analogia fide, that we interpret each and every verse in the Bible consistent with the whole system of theology that arises out of our study of the Bible.

The legitimacy of typology, a principle I would call historicism, or maybe today it would be referred to as partial preterism, and biblical casuistry in our handling of biblical texts. That is skill in being able to apply the biblical truth to practical, real-life situations.

And these other aspects, I think, Mike, have largely been lost in the modern church.

Well, Scott, I love listening to you, and you're a man who, uh, you have measured words, so I listen to every word you say because I think it's your desire, and the design of the way you speak, the design of your speaking pattern, is to be exacting and measured and precise.

So, I appreciate that. That is something good, not just for lawyers, but expositors as well. So, thank you. Well, thanks, Mike. So, tell me back to the Pope and the Antichrist. Is the Pope the Antichrist?

Was Ratzinger the Antichrist? What do we do with all that? Small a, large a,.

What's the confession driving at? Right. So, when you ask that question, if I were to answer you privately and personally, I'd lean to know, what is it specifically that you're asking me?

Well, hey, this is private in front of thousands of people, no problem.

Well, by private, I mean very precisely man to man, not with no one else listening.

Okay. Well, I think we have 12 listeners, so that's okay. It won't get out past us.

But let me guess, and I think this is part of the problem in general with skittishness about 26 .4 in the Confession today, because when people hear the term, the Antichrist, they tend to think of a future individual person that will appear in the Tribulation period, perhaps, and be, you know, the worst person who ever lived, and wreak havoc on the church and so forth.

But that is a more modern conception of what the Antichrist is. The Confessional Antichrist is more ecclesiastical than eschatological, which is to say, he has to do with the church in its present condition and state, and not just what happens at the end of the world.

So, 2 Thessalonians foretells a man who will assert himself to have the place of God in the temple, and our forefathers understood that to mean an office that arose in church history that claimed divine rights in itself over the whole church to the mutiny against the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

And if there should ever be an office occupied by a man, sometimes one man, sometimes two or three men at a time, who claimed to be the head of the church, well that would be a usurpation of Christ, because only Christ is the head of the church.

And this is the figure they had in mind when they talked about the Papal Antichrist. It's not an individual, it's the papacy as an office, and it has to do with the unholy assumption of divine power over the whole church that the papacy asserts.

And if you understand 2 Thessalonians 2 that way, and then you know your church history, you know that eventually the papacy developed to the point where there was a claim of divine headship over the church instead of Christ.

In fact, the pope is known as the vicar of Christ, which means the substitute for Christ. So, this is the kind of thinking that is behind 26 .4 in historic Protestant confessions.

Dispensational Premillennialism and the Rise of End-Time Charts

Petey Scott, somewhat related, what's your take or what's your opinion on how most evangelicals these days, at least broadly speaking, they would be dispensational pre-mill? They would believe in a seven-year tribulation, Antichrist, like you said, the worst person that's ever born type of thing.

Why do you think most evangelicals now are dispensational pre-mill?

Right. Well, in the 19th century, there was a widespread obsession with eschatology. And some of the leaders, the most influential voices in those days were men and women who attempted to interpret the Bible without any commitment to historic orthodoxy or training in the Bible and theology and exegesis.

And so, I'm talking about people like C .I. Schofield, for example, who was an attorney. Let me tell you an anecdote, Mike, that will amuse you probably. I was going through my boxes and boxes of books in my pastor's library down in my basement.

Since we moved from our old church building, I had to move my study at home, and I don't have room for 5 ,000 books in my home study, so they're in boxes in the basement.

I've been in your home study. I don't know how many books you had there, but I was surrounded by a bunch of dead authors, and I enjoyed it.

Yeah, I think about 1 ,000 books here, but maybe about 4 ,000 or so in the basement. But I was rummaging through my books, and I found a book that was published in 1886 called Studies in the Scriptures, and in the back it has a fold-out dispensational chart.

And when I folded it out to look at it, it looked so familiar to me. Because from the time I was 10 years old, I was taught to dispensationalism, and with dispensational premillennialism in particular.

And so I folded out this chart, and there's the first dispensation, and the patriarchal dispensation, and the Jewish dispensation, and then the gospel dispensation, and then the kingdom dispensation. And if you notice, Jesus comes, and He's not reigning over His kingdom until after His second coming, and then there's the eternal state.

So I'm looking at this, and it dawns on me, there's really very little substantial difference between this chart and the common dispensational charts that were developed by others. And do you know who the author of this chart was?

I'm trying to think of some Seventh-day Adventist author.

Worse.

Christian Science. Mormon.

It was Charles Taz Russell, the founder of the Millennial Dawn Association in New Jersey, that became the Jehovah's Witnesses of Watchtower fame, now in New York City, I think.

Interesting. Brooklyn.

So you look at the Seventh-day Adventists, and you look at the Jehovah's Witnesses, and you look at Advent Baptists like William Miller, who falsely predicted Christ's return again and again, and that time period had sort of like rapture fever, and the fascination of the community of Christians, especially in America, with predicting end-time events and drawing charts and graphs was phenomenal.

And that's why many American evangelicals are heirs of the dispensationalist tradition now. There's really not that much difference in the beliefs between the typical dispensational premillennialists about the millennium than there is from the Jehovah's Witnesses on that.

Pete, interesting. So when I listen to people on the radio now, if I jump in the car, it seems like the majority of them are dispensational premillennialists. I mean, the ones that are still alive. And you've got Chuck Swindoll and Charles Stanley and Adrian Rogers and John MacArthur, all the Calvary Chapel pastors.

I'm trying to think, Dr. Meadows, are you a doctor?

No.

Okay, sorry. But you've mastered—.

The D in my name stands for Douglas.

Okay.

D. Scott Meadows.

So we have R. Scott Clark, we have D. Scott Meadows, and one has a doctorate. But have you mastered divinity? Have you mastered divinity?

I have a Master of Arts in Christian Theology degree. But I wouldn't say I've mastered divinity.

I think one of my friends says, you know, people have MDivs and they've mastered divinity, but they don't know the difference between who and whom.

Yes, that's sometimes true.

But I'm trying to think of, Scott, how many non-dispy premill people are on the radio these days? Of course, Ligonier is on, so R .C. Sproul would not have been dispensational. Once in a while, James Boyce is on the radio, but I think he was maybe historical premill, is that right?

I think that's right.

Okay. Can you think of anybody else who's on the radio who's very popular who would not be dispensational?

I mean, I have a friend, Dr. Lars Larson in Lemonster, Mass. He's on the radio five days a week, and he is a Reformed Baptist of amillennial persuasion. By the way, I recommend his program. He says more substance in two minutes than Joel Osteen would say in a year.

Yeah. Well, Lars is on the station that I used to be on, 760 WVNE here in Central Mass, and I think there's an affiliate in where you are. One of the things I noticed about that show, Lars gives his personal cell phone number out every show and invites people to call him.

So, he's much more gracious than I would be. I would probably give them the church phone number.

Yes.

All right, today we're talking to Dave.

He and you are both treasures.

Well, let's stick with Lars for right now. We've got just a little bit of time left, Scott, and we were talking online last night a little bit about William Perkins, and years ago I thought, well, I'm going to try to read through the John Owen series, the old Banner of Truth one.

So, I think at about five and a half volumes, I'm stuck right now. I just need to start getting back to it, but I'm just trying to read the entire works. I was told by Sinclair Ferguson, if you ever see Owen as a set, buy it used because it'll be unmarked.

Sadly. So, I started reading it, but you just finished the ten volumes of William Perkins. Who is William Perkins, and why should we be.

Reading William Perkins? Right. Well, William Perkins was a Puritan, you might say. He's often known as the father of the Puritans because he was early 16th century, and he was a master of biblical teaching and theology in that tradition.

And the Banner, I'm not sorry, not the Banner, Reformation Heritage Books, recently finished a new edition of the works of William Perkins in ten volumes, beautifully edited and produced. And so, I made it a project of my own just to read through the ten volume set within a year, and God helped me to do that.

How many pages a day? It seems like that was maybe 15 or 20 pages a day for about a year. Well, if you had a radio show, you could.

Come up with a slogan. So, my slogan when I was reading Owen was, ten pages of John Owen a day.

Keeps the Richard Baxter's away. Oh, wow. That's a good one. I like it.

So, reading 15 pages of William Perkins a day, fill in the blank.

You do this to your guests on the podcast, don't you?

Yeah.

Illumines the mind, inflames the heart, and equips the mouth. There you go.

You are a pro at this. That is wonderful.