Open Air Theology -with Jacob Tanner “Everything John Knox”

What are you doing? What are you doing? Come on. You never light a cigar that way.

You use a wooden match. Preserves the flavor, you see.

But the worst curse would come upon the one who seduced him, whose head would be crushed by the seed of the woman.

And the punishment was too severe? What's wrong with you people?

Are you ready to get back to work? With pleasure. So, Senor Kramer, what is this about?

I choose to believe the Bible because it's a reliable collection of historical documents written down by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses.

They report to us supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claim that their writings are divine rather than human in origin.

Don't any of you have any guts to pay for blood? I'm your huckleberry. But because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.

I don't know why you're clapping. I'm talking about you. I didn't come here to get amens.

I didn't come here to be applauded. I'm talking about you. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Open Air Theology.

It's always hard to start after hearing Paul Washer just say, I'm talking about you.

It's like tear -jerking and then we're starting to say hi to people. So anyway, welcome to Open Air Theology.

It's a great blessing to be on the show tonight with these good brothers in the Lord here. I think we have a really awesome show prepared for you.

My name is Braden Patterson. I'm the pastor of Grace Bible Church here in Moorpark, California. We meet on Sundays at 1030 in the morning.

So if you live in Southern California, it'd be a great blessing to see you here with us either tomorrow or on a coming

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We'd be greatly blessed if you would consider going onto YouTube and subscribing to our YouTube channel,

Open Air Theology. Look that up, subscribe, and please continue to check out our content. Also, we have a special guest that we'll be talking about here in a moment.

But go to founders .org and check out Jacob Tanner's new book, Resist Tyrants, Obey God.

We're going to be talking about that book specifically tonight. Also, we have... Let's see if I can get it to display here.

Oh, it's not displaying for me. Oh, there it goes. It's there. It's there. It wasn't there for me. All right.

2025 Grace and Truth Conference. Go check this out. You're not going to want to miss this. We'll talk about this again later with Brother Tom Shepard, of course, as he's one of the speakers there.

On that note, I'm going to pass the mic down to our dear brother in the Lord, Brantley.

Please introduce yourself. Hey, guys. I'm Brantley McDonald. I'm with Coram Deo Reformed Baptist Church in Stanley, North Carolina, outside of Charlotte.

If you're in the area, please feel free to come and join us on the Lord's Day for worship. We meet in the evenings currently.

A lot of you folks know me with the 1689 .com, 1689 Reformed Baptist. Thank you for having me on.

Should I go now? Yep, you're good. You send it. Just making sure I'm in the right direction here. Hey, so thanks for having me on the show.

I'm Jacob Tanner, the pastor of Christ Keystone Church in Middleburg, Pennsylvania. So if anybody listening to this is in the central

Pennsylvania area, which is actually a very large area, but if you're nearby and you're looking for a

Reformed church to come to, we would be more than happy to have you. We've been there for two years now, and the

Lord has been blessing the work there. So just really looking forward to see what the Lord continues to do with our church over the next few years.

I'm also a Christian school administrator slash principal at Juniata Christian School, and I work with various ministries, particularly on podcasting and writing.

So like we're going to be talking about here, a new book through Founders on John Knox, Resist Tyrants, Obey God.

One of my absolute favorite theologians, pastors, one of my heroes of the faith, if you will. So really looking forward to this conversation with you, brothers.

And of course, was able to meet Tom a few months ago, actually in person, which is highly unusual because I feel like I have a lot of internet friends that I don't get to meet, but I got to meet you,

Tom. Yes, you did. Yeah. So my name is Tom Shepherd, and I'm a member of Grace Bible Church of Burney, Texas.

And it's about 20 miles north of San Antonio, and we gather Sunday in the morning and evenings.

So please come visit us. If you wanted to hear the book on Romans, it just finished.

But the good thing is there's other books of the Bible that we're going to be going through. So Pastor Michael Beck, he's my pastor.

He's going to be preaching. Matter of fact, I think we're going on a series. He's going to be teaching on a series on giving for the next few weeks and stuff.

And before he announces his new book, I saw a post on Facebook, and I think he's going to go through the

Gospel of John, which is going to be great. But in the evenings, he's attacking Job right now, which is an awesome book.

So I'm a co -host here at Open Air Theology. I'm also the host of Even If None, which is an evangelistic ministry.

We go out on the street and we preach the gospel. And yes, I met Jacob at the

Grace and Truth Conference last August. And so it's going to be exciting to hear him preach, guys.

It's absolute fire. And to be an honored speaker this year. So yeah, there it is right there.

You got David Weber. He is the host. He's the host of the church that we're going to be preaching at.

We have Greg Morton Jr. I can't remember if Trevor's going to be there. Kevin Hayes is going to be there.

Jacob, John Speed, myself, Brandon Scalf, Kofi, Claude Ramsey. You guys.

Oh, Nick White. You guys, it's going to be a great conference. Please come and visit us.

And then we got this guy. This guy right here. Are you pointing towards me or are you pointing the other way?

Yeah, look. That went right to you. Look, I read him. Why is that? Well, it's the light. I thought you needed to be pointing this way.

I'm so confused right now. Wait, am I in that direction? Here, am I pointing the right way now? You are,

Jacob. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What am I doing? You're pointing the opposite way, brother. Well, technically he is pointing the right way.

Because if I point your way, I point right. So if I do that way, that's... Okay, see. It's weird because I'm on the right.

Yeah, I can't see it anyway. I think we're mirrored. There we go. We're good. There we go. Yeah, it's a great blessing to be on here tonight with you brothers.

Again, it's a great blessing to be able to talk about Christ here with our audience. Please get the word out about our show.

Share this along with some people. Hopefully, we can get just more interaction. We really like to talk about, interact with our audience, be able to answer any sort of apologetic questions that we can, and also just address questions at large.

So I think we have something special tonight. We are talking specifically tonight about this book that we've had displayed on our show a couple of weeks now,

Resist Tyrants, Obey God. I think we can see there the name on that book. We've got

Jacob Tanner live with us right now to answer questions about this book. And also,

Brantley, actually, there was something that you wanted to throw a plug into that you had. I saw that. I apologize for not addressing that.

Do you have something that you wanted to chat about before we jumped into that? No, you're good. I'll say two things real quickly.

First and foremost, with this book, we are giving that book and several other books away as part of a giveaway in our 1689 .com

Discord community. We've got over 1 ,000 different users in there. So good luck on winning.

There's only one winner. But that will be shipping sometime at the end of April, I think, right?

So when that giveaway, that's our Easter giveaway. So there's a lot of other books in there on the civil government and Christianity, two books from founders, two books from G3, two already out, two that are coming out.

But yeah, the other thing was, I'm sorry that was last minute. You're good. But Ryan Cornett, if you're watching this stream,

I know you watched the last stream. He'd kill me if I didn't make mention of the project that me and him are working on right now.

Probably, it's going to take all year, maybe even into 2026. Right now, we are trying to work on getting baptisthymnal .org

across the finish line. So if you're musically inclined, check out baptisthymnal .org

and click the volunteer button, and it'll give you all the information. So be sure to check that out.

Baptisthymnal, you said. Baptisthymnal .org or at baptisthymnal on Instagram or whatever.

Basically, all free public domain content, trying to make it very easy for churches to be able to worship.

We're going to have the psalter from the 1912 psalter, which is in the public domain now, and a selection of hymns as well.

These package PDFs, plus some other selections outside of that package PDF that you could pull separately if you wanted.

Work in progress. Great, brother. That's great to hear. I'm excited. I'm going to have to go check that out.

I just typed it in my phone and took a screenshot of it, so I won't forget. I'm going to check it out later. Well, so, brother

Jacob, this is the book right here. There we go.

When is the release date of this book? Let me ask you that. Maybe that's a good first question. I have no idea.

People already have it. People already have it. Yeah, so I thought the release was April, which is what

I was telling people, and so I wish at this point I could hold up the book and go, but look, here it is.

Lots of people have it. I don't. I know it exists, so it was sold at the

Founders Conference, and one person even told me that they pre -ordered on the website and that it shipped out already, and I'm like, that's great.

I don't have a copy yet, but I know it exists. Did you pre -order it? I did. I did.

They just didn't ship it to me. I didn't get author copies, nothing. No, they're coming. They're coming.

But I think what Founders does is they do like a pre -release phase, so I'm pretty sure people who pre -ordered early on already got the book or they were able to pick it up at the

Founders Conference, and I think now if you pre -order it, you might have to wait until April. If I understand correctly, that's how this works.

So I think the official release date is April, but if other people are like, hey, look, I got it, they actually do have it.

They were able to get it early through the pre -release phase, which is cool. I think that's a cool thing that they do there.

Before I ask you why John Knox, you did write some other books.

What are some other titles that you've written? Okay, so I did through G3 Publishing, I did

Why Sally Can't Preach. That was 2023 I wrote that one.

So that was like the first big one that I did, and then corresponding with that was another book through Wrath and Grace Publishing, Union with Christ, which is all about the doctrines of grace.

And then I followed those two up with a book on John Bunyan through Christian Focus Publishing.

They're out of Scotland. So that's The Tinker's Progress, The Life and Times of John Bunyan. And I guess technically my most recent would still be

Wait and Hope, Puritan Wisdom for Joyful Suffering, and that's the Reformation Heritage books. So that's my most recent one, because technically the

Knox one isn't out yet. This is the pre -release phase. But, yeah, so those are the ones that we've done so far.

Yeah. So what did Humble Clay say? He goes, this show is nearly beardless.

Yeah, so I'm holding down the beards, guys.

I mean, this is it. Tom's holding the line. Yeah. I'm doing the best I can,

Humble Clay. Humble Clay, I'm sorry. I wish I could have one like you, Tom. Thank you.

This is it. Actually, mine is cut back, because, remember, it was down to here. It was. Yeah.

So hopefully by August, I'll be fully. I had this a little bit longer today, but my wife, she doesn't let me go any longer.

She mixed it. Yeah, she's like, it was terrible. Braden tried, and then he moved to California. It didn't work out.

I tried. I gave it a good shot. It didn't happen. Decided to go back to the mustache. It's kind of my signature look now.

I got to keep it. You are a Baptist, right?

Yeah. But so why did you go with a Presbyterian? So like all good

Baptists, my favorite theologians are Presbyterians, you know? So it's funny, honestly, because if you were to ask me for my favorite theologians,

I'm pretty sure top 10, probably 75 % of that list would all be Presbyterian guys.

And then, of course, John Owen, which I guess you could say is Congregationalist. But anyway, Knox is one of those guys that I first came across.

I want to say I was about 15, 16 years old. I was reading through Calvin's Institutes at the time and found all of these different free books.

And I came across Knox's books. And I think the very first one, maybe that I would have picked up or downloaded from my

Kindle at the time, would have been the first trumpet blast against the monstrous regime of women, which

I didn't read fully. Like I started reading it and I was like, wow, this guy is interesting. But I have no idea what he's even talking about.

I don't know what the historical implications of this are. Like who is the Jezebel in view here?

Lots of questions. And then I picked up, because I love history, his History of the

Reformation in Scotland. And again, the free version I had downloaded at the time had his sort of old

English way of writing in it. So I read it as far as I could. And then I want to say I dropped it, but I was fascinated by it.

And I was especially fascinated by some of the things I started reading about him at the time. So I'm a teenager at this point.

But as a teenage boy, there is something that is utterly compelling about reading about a man that's literally going up to a queen who is killing

Protestants as a Protestant and saying, you're evil, you're wicked.

You need to repent of this evil and this wickedness or the Lord's going to strike you down. And it's just, whoa, where do you get that sort of thunder from?

Where does that lightning come from to be able to take a stand against tyranny? When you know that your life is very well on the line, you could be killed for this.

So I've had this immense fascination with Knox for years. And then eventually, when

I started preaching, I think it was Charles Spurgeon that really ignited the passion for me, for Knox.

Because I forget where it is, but Spurgeon talks about Knox. And he says that he was like this lightning rod.

Wherever he went, he would call forth lightning from on high. Whenever he would preach, lightning would strike.

And I was like, that is what I want to be as a preacher. I want to be able to preach like that. But what else is there to him?

And so it just started this fascination with me where I've been reading his works for years.

A couple of years back, my wife actually picked up for me the Banner of Truth complete set of his works.

And when we first got it, I believe it was a Christmas present. Again, it's old English for the most part.

And she looked at it and she was like, are you sure you're going to like this? And I was like, I'm going to love this. And yeah, it's just been one of these great blessings in my life.

It might be weird to say, because I think when people think of John Knox, they don't typically think of a guy who you're blessed by reading.

But for me, it has been a distinct privilege to be able to learn at the feet of Knox, as it were, through reading his writings.

As you read through his works and stuff like that, what's most surprising about him that you didn't know that you're like, wow, this is pretty awesome?

So I write about this in the book. But the thing that I think surprised me the most is his pastoral clarity and his love for his people.

Because, again, when you think of Knox, what you have is a guy who, in a lot of ways, he's on the run multiple times.

In a lot of ways, he can be rash. He can make really snap decisions that kind of mess things up for multiple people.

He's very, very flawed, very, very human, very much. He believes totally in what he's doing, but he's constantly having to run around.

He's getting kicked out of different places. At one point, Calvin's even like, you got to leave Geneva, man. There's just all of these different problems going on for him constantly, it seems.

Just because he's so radical or what? He could be. He could be. So, for example, going back to the first Trumpet Blast.

When he wrote that, he published it anonymously, but it caused so many issues.

Now, everything he said in it is true. I mean, I would agree with him. He's right in what he is saying. And the other reformers, the magisterial reformers, they agreed with him as well.

But, for example, Calvin would later look at it and he'd go, I really wish he didn't write this because it's caused us so many issues.

Like, for example, Queen Elizabeth takes the throne in England. And rather than the

Protestants being able to really work with her, like Calvin and the others in Geneva, she's immediately on her guard because she's like, this guy,

Knox, your buddy over here wrote this book and it seems like he really hates me. He's calling me a Jezebel and he wants my head.

And it's like, no, that's not what he wanted. But that rashness was a form of radicalization,

I suppose. But despite that, every church this guy went to that he pastored, he loved those people.

And in a way, this shouldn't be surprising to me because everybody knows that famous quote from Knox, Lord, give me

Scotland or I die. And I think a lot of the times, at least when I used to read that,

I'd be like, arrogant guy. You know, he wants all of Scotland for himself.

He wants to rule it. That's not at all what that quote saying when he says, give me Scotland or I die. What he is praying for is the evangelism.

He is praying for the salvation of the Scots, and he wants them to be saved. He wants them to be brought into the kingdom of God because he loved his country.

He loved people. And primarily he loved his church. So wherever he was set to pastor, he loved those people.

So we kind of talked about this before the show went on, and I wanted to hit this and everything because I know that he had followed around an evangelist before he got started.

What was that like? What was the guy's name? And the reason why I asked that is because this is what I do. It was the thing that really – as a matter of fact, when

I actually knew I was going to do the interview, I went and watched a small biography and was talking about this evangelist that he walked around and he wanted to guard.

He wanted to be the bodyguard. And that he had two swords with him protecting the evangelist.

Tell us a little bit about that. How did that go? So Knox started off in kind of a strange way, and I think you got to go back a little bit to understand how this exactly works out for him.

Knox was not necessarily quick to embrace the Reformation like some other guys were. It took him some time.

So he was studying to be a priest. He was Roman Catholic just like everybody else at that point in time.

And he was not necessarily exceptional in his studies, but he did show promise.

And so it was easy for him then to get a job as sort of like a tutor. And he would not only be a priest, but he would tutor these young people, these kids.

Again, things worked differently back then. How old was he? He probably was in his 20s, 30s at this point.

So he's tutoring different students, but he also is starting to catch something of the

Reformation. So this tiny little event happens in 1517 where this

German guy decides to nail a document to a church castle. Some other things happen along the way.

But Reformation doctrines, so think of things like the five solas, like scripture alone is our authority.

Think of things like Christ alone is our savior and our intercessor.

All of these ideas start to flood into Scotland just as they're going all across the European continent.

And finally, they're starting to impact Knox. So now the gears are turning, right?

And he's starting to think, okay, so I've been teaching this. I've been thinking this, but actually that makes a lot of sense.

So that seems like this is what the Bible actually teaches, that Christ alone is our

Lord, our savior, our redeemer. Maybe we don't need a pope. And then as he would continue to go through these different ideas as they were being brought forth into Scotland, it began to radically shift and alter his mind.

It's at this point that he begins to hear preaching, actual Reformed Protestant preaching coming into Scotland.

And he loves what he is hearing. He's not sure what to do with it at first, but he's compelled by it to do something.

And so one of these men, eventually, he kind of goes underneath his tutelage, if you will, and he wants to learn more about what is it to be

Reformed, what is it to be Protestant. And so he begins to follow this particular man around sort of as a bodyguard, like you said.

Now, do you remember which documentary you watched? I can't remember what it was. So I watched a couple of them.

Some of them were 15 minutes just to get a great idea. And then immediately when

I heard that, I kind of clicked off of Knox and I wanted to go after the evangelist because I've not heard the story.

So now Tom's writing a book on the evangelist. You know, you might be the first to write a book on the evangelist.

No, I think somebody actually did write a book on him. I'm trying to think what the name of that book would have been. Anyway, regardless.

So you're right. Knox starts to follow around this evangelist who's going around the Scottish countryside basically preaching the gospel.

And he takes up swords to kind of defend him. Now, this is what we were talking about beforehand a little bit.

Did he ever use them? As far as I can tell, probably not. Maybe he would have like raised them in defense.

Maybe if like bandits would have come or something, you know, he would have been prepared. What's interesting about him is

I think he would have used them given the chance. He just strikes me. Whenever you read the stuff that he has to say, he strikes me as the sort of guy that 100 % full force would have taken those swords out, you know, like a

Peter moment. Cut off anybody's ear that was in the way. But eventually what happens is it gets to a point where this evangelist that he's following around, they know he's going to be arrested.

And that's what's happening. A lot of Protestants at this point are being arrested. They're being executed.

And Knox wants to go with him to the gallows, basically. So he's like, if they're going to take you, they're going to kill you.

I will fight for you. And this evangelist says to Knox, no, don't do that.

Because those who kill with the sword must prepare to be killed with the sword.

Don't waste your life like that. You have a, you have a different purpose from the Lord. And basically what this guy encourages them to do is to start preaching.

So, so take up the mantle that's falling here today. Go forth and preach the word.

Now he doesn't say it exactly like that, but he's able to go forth and he's able to begin preaching.

And in probably one of the most difficult ways imaginable. So again, this is sort of the, the controversy of Knox, I guess the, the sort of power struggle in his life, the constant back and forth, though he's willing to die for this evangelist, though he is fully embracing

Protestant, Protestantism and reform doctrine. He's afraid to preach. He does not want to preach.

And so he doesn't take up his sword, even though I believe he was wholeheartedly willing to do it. He doesn't take up his sword.

He drops it. Evangelist gets arrested. He's killed. There's this whole revolt that happens in a castle.

I write about all of this in the book, but fast forward and knocks, realizes he's been wandering the countryside kind of fleeing from all of these different things.

Cause you know, he was the bodyguard and now he's got to get out of here while the people that have fled into the castle after the killing of this evangelist, they invite him into the castle.

Now they're all stuck inside of a castle together and they realize we don't have a preacher. We don't have a pastor.

Now there's a guy preaching, but they need somebody who's actually going to, again, Take up the mantle.

And eventually similar thing happens to Calvin. Knox is almost guilted into doing it where he's the guy comes in front of the entire congregation of people at the castle.

And he says, Knox, the Lord has called you to preach paraphrasing quite a bit here. Yeah. The Lord has called you to preach and you cannot reject that call.

And he just goes through this whole thing. And you would think it's going to be one of those moments where knocks like sits up straight rises up to the challenge.

And she's ready to go. Not at all. What happens? Instead, Knox begins to weep loudly and runs from the room out of it into his own chambers and hides there for a while.

It's not at all. What you would expect out of fear of men or out of fear of what he was the task that he was getting presented to do out of the calling the latter.

The latter, I would say for sure. And you can see this again. One of the other famous quotes from Knox.

That he trembles every time he steps in the pulpit. I fear no man, but I tremble every time

I step into the pulpit, which actually is a quote that I with me. I've kept it with me since I've started preaching.

I always have it as a bookmark. Whatever chapter I'm preaching that Sunday. That's the quote.

I like to read beforehand. Yeah. Do we? Yeah. So anyway, I've been rambling here because I like talking about knocks.

No, that's great. Yeah. This is fantastic. We're like, just give us the book. Just give us the book.

If I had it, I would. You're waiting for the book too. No. So.

That brother, everything you're saying is just captivating. I think it's given the audience reason why you guys should be going and pre -ordering or ordering getting this book here soon from people from founders.

But why, what would you, what would, how would you articulate? What's the biggest reason why a

Christian should care about the story of John Knox? Oh man.

That's a good question. You know, it's almost like, why do you care about any

Christian story? Right. And what I have found personally is outside of reading the scriptures and I'm a theology guy through and through.

I mean, you can write. They're all around me. Yeah. But outside of reading the scriptures, the biggest blessing in my life again and again and again is reading about these old saints, reading biographies about them.

Like, for example, you can't see it, but off to the side right now, I have the diary and journals of David Bernard, which

Jonathan Edwards helped to put out just an immense, immense help and encouragement to read about how

God has used these godly men and of course, godly women as well, but how God has used these godly men to do some absolutely amazing things throughout church history.

So when it comes to John Knox, for example, what you have is a guy personally

I can relate to. So I think for a lot of different reasons, I'm attracted to the guys that make a lot of mistakes.

The guys that are really, really passionate about what they're doing, but they mess up, right?

They make mistakes. No, not Christians, right? Not Christians. But there is something that is compelling to me about that, because I look at myself and I remember every single day,

I'm a sinner saved by grace. I have to repent daily because I sin daily.

Now I look at John Knox and I'm like, yeah, this guy messed up too. This guy is actually a lot like me, but God used him.

And if God could use John Knox, not that I'm John Knox, but surely he can use

Jacob Tanner. Now, it's not just that, though. The other thing that I love about John Knox is the courage that he teaches to us, the boldness that he teaches to us.

So again, he's living at a point in time where you can be killed for being a

Protestant. You can be killed for being a Christian. But he lives as a

Protestant Christian anyway, and he does it boldly. He does it courageously. Dare I say he does it proudly because he loves the

Lord Jesus Christ and he loves his church. And he doesn't really care what happens to him.

And he goes through some difficult times. So the one thing that I didn't bring up then is after he's in the castle, he preaches like one sermon basically, and then the castle is overtaken and they're sold as French galley slaves.

And for months, he's on a ship as a galley slave, which is interesting because I don't know if you brothers remember this.

I think this was back in 20, I want to say 2019. The Shepherds Conference, John MacArthur that year preached a sermon on how ministers of the gospel are actually galley slaves that were the lowest of the low.

And I remember sitting there listening to that and making an immediate connection to John Knox and going providentially by the hand of God.

Is that not amazing? That here you have a man who actually served in the lowest of lowest capacities as a galley slave, nearly dying, and then becomes a true minister, a true pastor, a true preacher of the gospel.

So there's a ton of different reasons to read Knox, but encouragement, number one, he gives us boldness.

Number two, number three, a lot of people don't think of him in this way, but his theology is great, despite being

Presbyterian, impeccable theology. His probably most famous theological treatise is on predestination.

And in some ways, maybe he actually gets that doctrine out a little bit more than Calvin did.

Not quite. What is he holding up there? Calvin on? Oh yeah, there we go.

Cool. So Knox is building upon a lot of what Calvin did.

But again, great theological work. And then of course, if you like history, here you have a firsthand resource of a guy that lived through these events, writing about the

Reformation in Scotland. So there's five reasons. Yeah. I'm happy to have you on here.

We are Reformed Baptists. We love our Presbyterian brothers, though, nonetheless. Yes, we do. So we like to give each other a little bit of a hard time.

So I will just let me pause real fast and just announce to everybody, we have 57 watchers, listeners, people tuning in right now.

Go check us out on Open Air Theology on YouTube. Go subscribe to that. Share that with everybody.

We would love for everybody to be jumping in and making comments, asking questions to us week in and week out, but especially tonight with Jacob here as we just, we're getting the cream of the crop right now of the information of John Knox.

So you guys don't want to miss out on this. Please ask some questions and comments. But I did have another question, though, for you.

And I know, Brantley, I'm sure you have a question, too, nonetheless. But I've seen a lot of things talking about how

John Knox saw some pretty fantastic miracles, like miracle, miracle type of stuff, like people raising from the dead.

Like, I don't know if, what did, in your research of John Knox, tell me about that.

Is that justifiable? Did those things ever happen? What is that about? With regards to his son as well.

Yes. Yeah. Okay. So let me answer that question by going to something else entirely for a second.

These are connected things. Okay. Yeah. So Charles Virgin has this story that you guys have maybe heard before where he felt as though he was in one particular moment given the gift of prophecy.

And he writes about this, I believe, in his autobiography where he's in the middle of preaching. And suddenly in the middle of preaching, he looks out and he notices that there's a young man sitting in the audience that has these different clothes on.

And he looks at the young man directly in the eyes and he says, you have stolen those gloves from such and such a place.

They don't belong to you. You must repent. You must return them. Turns out he was right, 100%.

Where did that come from? Keep that. Go back to the life of, and by the way,

Spurgeon would not necessarily have been a continuationist as we would understand it today.

He would be more in line with a cessationist, right? As we understand it, as it's being promoted today?

Not quite. Okay. So that's the nuance here, right?

Down the rabbit trail we go. I know, I know. So I'm trying to figure out how to answer this in a quick way for you guys.

So John Knox, yes, he does write about seeing some pretty incredible things. I personally can't necessarily doubt what he saw.

I think what he saw, he really did see. I think what he says he experienced, he really did experience.

Just like Spurgeon really did see and experience that in that particular moment. What exactly do we do with that?

I'm not entirely sure. I've been trying to figure this out for years. So personally, I would be a cessationist, right?

But I do know that there have been remote cases throughout church history where really, really respected theologians, so even

Calvin sees certain things that when you read about it, you just kind of scratch your head and go, yeah, I have no idea what to do with that.

But it happened apparently, so they saw it. But does it constitute a miracle?

Now, here's where I would say things, again, get a little nuanced. Is it possible, going back to the

Spurgeon account, is it possible that he looked at the man and recognized, hey, that's a poor dude sitting over there.

Those are expensive gloves. I've seen them around. Clearly, those don't belong to him. I'm going to call him out.

I'm going to ask him to return those things. I'm going to rebuke him. Now, in his mind, he could be like, God has given me the gift of prophecy in this particular moment.

But actually, what's happening is he's just going off of memory. God's working through impulses, right?

Intuition type of stuff. Intuition, sure. Is it possible that some of the things Knox saw are actually totally grounded, not in the miraculous, in a manner of speaking, right?

Because, I mean, in another manner, everything's miraculous. But is it possible that some of these signs, people raising from the dead, all of these different events, is it possible that they have totally normal explanations?

Yeah, that's also possible. But what I do know is that he did see these things, and that's how he described them.

That's how he explained them. Also, I don't write about this in the book for that reason, because I have no idea what the right answer is.

Yeah, that's a good question. So I wanted to acknowledge here, and I'll go ahead and I'll take the fall since I'm not a pastor, and I don't have to be held accountable to anybody.

So when you think about the gifts and stuff like that, when we're talking about cessationism, and Ryan Ditton is very loud that a cessationist today is not the cessationism that the

Reformers believed in, stuff like that. But I think everybody, and all of us here, I think, would say that they're cessationists.

But at the same time, I think that we would also acknowledge that God is sovereign, and as R .C. Sproul says, there's no random molecule.

And so whatever happens in our life, God has caused in a certain way, is He communicating special revelation?

No. But nothing happens without a purpose. So anything that happens in our life today, that's going to get our attention or that's going to curve our way.

Did God do it? Of course He did. He's sovereign over all things. And so does that mean that this is the way

He operates and God is communicating to us in a special way? No, we have the scriptures.

So I would definitely call myself a closed canonist in that, in that everything that we need,

God has revealed to us in the scriptures. Does God act in certain ways through providence and revelation of His selves and things happening throughout the events of our lives that cause us to act a certain way?

Absolutely. So I think that we can, as reasonable people, we can just trust that God is sovereign and He's going to communicate to us through His word alone.

What are your thoughts on that, Bram? Have you got any thoughts on the whole cessationist stuff? Yeah. I do find myself, obviously, in the cessationist camp.

I have a site, actually, which I try and keep an accurate listing of different resources for people wanting to study and research the matter over at cessationism .org

slash resources. And it basically organizes it by different type, like a book or an article or a sermon, or even now there's the cessationist movie by G3.

But I know that there is a lot of noise with the, I guess we could call them two different cessationist camps.

And I know our friend Ryan is claiming that there's a form of cessationism that the reformers had.

And I guess, and contrasting that some with the likes of,

I guess, Grace to You, G3, et cetera, right? Is that an accurate statement? Yeah, I think that'd be accurate.

And I think there might be some contention there as far as, well, maybe you have this reform figure here or this reform figure there, but I guess as far as the broader,

I guess, reform movement and a lot of the different guys, I mean, I'd have to look into it more with what he's claiming, but I definitely agree with what the sentiments

Tom shared about being close canon. I would definitely find myself in the view of the extraordinary spiritual gifts.

There still are spiritual gifts, but the extraordinary ones, like the healings, the tongues, and the prophecy have evidently ceased since what we read in the

New Testament. But as far as God granting and His providence, echoing what

Tom said, these different things, which would be, I guess, heightened, like a great measure of discernment or wisdom, like you said, he was able to discern that he had that gloves.

I definitely think that would just fall under the ordinary spiritual gifts, and I don't really have a problem with those things.

Now, the interesting thing, like you brought up with Knox on the dead people coming back to life, like you said,

I mean, it could be that we're basically running into a very rare case where someone,

I guess, is resuscitated, right? That would be the correct term, versus a resurrection, like we saw with Lazarus, who was dead -dead.

So, I don't know. Well, I mean, things like that did happen, though, not to go on a totally different rabbit trail, but I've been doing a little bit of research for a weird little project that I'm working on.

Anyway, the whole myth of vampires, right, where that comes from and everything, and they would put bells inside of the graves because they would find these scratches on the coffin.

It was possible to think somebody dead and actually go through with the burying of that person and then find out, which, just imagine,

I've been thinking about this for some reason, just imagine walking through a graveyard in the 1500s at night and all of a sudden you hear these bells going off and you're like, what in the world is going on?

Get the shovels! Yeah, you've just buried your grandmother, but she's down there just pulling on that bell, which is terrible, but it happened, right?

Yeah. So, it's possible. That's what Knox was experiencing. I will say this, that if I'm dead, or appear to be dead, please don't pray that I come back.

I'm with the Lord. I'm going to pray harder even now. Yeah, don't do that. You guys,

I'm with the Lord now. I don't want anybody, I don't want to come back. Just let me alone. Let me go.

It is an interesting subject. I would, if anybody's ever read Sam Waldron, The Cascading Argument for the

Cessation of the Signed Gifts, I definitely would agree with that. The Apostles of the

Lord, that office has obviously ceased. And so, it's not out of the realm of possibility for there to be other gifts that have ceased like that.

And it would appear during the early church days, even in the days of the Apostles, there were things like people were touching napkins and getting healed because the

Apostles touched them. Like, that doesn't happen anymore. And you see that even in Timothy.

He says, drink a little bit of wine for an upset stomach. Call the elders to come over. You see what I'm saying? He doesn't say, hey, just wait for the napkin to get there.

Because it seems to be that those things might have even started to dissipate in some of their practices even in the days of Paul.

And so, yeah, I would not go so far as to say that I don't think that those things can happen.

It's just that it's definitely not. I don't think, I think what was happening in the days of the

Apostles, it was almost like they had that ability to turn on and off the switch of the miraculous in that sense, right?

Analogy and just using terms. And I don't think anyone today has the ability to turn on and off that gift.

Right. So, I think another helpful way of looking at it is through prayer,

God is able to accomplish the exact same things. Absolutely. The difference is

I can't go up to somebody and just touch them and poof, they're healed. But I can pray for them.

And God is able to sovereignly answer that prayer, which is part of the reason why we as elders, you know, and James were called to go forth and pray for those who are sick.

The prayers of a righteous man availeth much. So God is still very much answering prayers.

He still is very much able to do supernatural, miraculous things. And I think going back, again, rabbit trail here, but when we're thinking in terms of,

I can't think of his name, but the guy that's been posting about the two different camps of cessationism and everything.

Brian. I think to try to be fair to him, I think what he is trying to prevent against is an anti -spiritualistic

Christianity. Right, yeah. Where we totally ignore that there is a spiritual realm or that our

God actually does accomplish miraculous things. Absolutely. But he clearly does.

He accomplishes miraculous things. He is spirit, right? And there's a lot that goes along with that.

But I think, yeah, there's a lot of moving pieces there. And back to the Knox thing, it's what he experienced.

It's what he saw. And again, it's just a matter for us to interpret that, I think.

I want to get back. So you kind of left off when after the whole preaching, they all got arrested.

They went into the French galleys and everything. How did he ever write anything with regards to how that shaped his ministry, how that experience of being a slave, what did it do to him?

Interestingly, not a ton. So even in his, not really biography, but his history of the

Reformation in Scotland, he is interesting in that he often doesn't write a ton about himself.

He will. He'll mention himself, but there's really not a lot of great insight into what is

Knox thinking at this particular moment or how is this shaping him. But this is one of the things that I love about history.

Personally, this is just something I enjoy doing, trying to figure out, okay, how did this shape this person?

Because obviously it did, but how, even if they're not going to write about it? So for Knox, I think one of the main things that it did for him is it prepared him for a ministry of suffering.

And that would really be one of the best ways to describe his ministry, that it was filled to the brink with suffering, kicked out of different places, on the run, on the move.

People want him dead. People hate him. The Roman Catholics hate him. At one point, the Protestants hate him, even though he is a

Protestant. There's just so many different moving pieces to his life where the core theme seems to be suffering.

Now, the beauty of it is, or the irony, I guess, is that some of the suffering is self -inflicted, like we were saying earlier.

He's a rash man. He often does things without first consulting with others to see whether or not this is the wisest possible move

I can make at this point in time. But he's passionate. And it seems like that passion, that love for Jesus, and there's no denying that he loved

Jesus, that love for Christ compelled him to keep moving forward despite all of the suffering.

And I think that that time that he spent as a slave on the ship, I think that prepared him for a lot of what he was going to face internally, emotionally, even spiritually.

And so you do have letters where he writes about some of the different trials that he's going through.

And one of my favorite exchanges in Knox's life actually happens when his first wife dies with Calvin.

So Calvin is writing a letter, and it's just this really, really kind, gracious, loving letter where Calvin acknowledges that he loved

Knox's wife. She was a great woman. And you get this little bit of insight then, almost like reading between the lines, right?

You got to be careful when you do this. But you get this insight into the fact that he was suffering.

He loved this woman. She died. He's now on his own. He does find another wife.

But he keeps pressing forward in the cause of the gospel. And I think, again, that that time on that ship really did prep him for what he was going to have to endure as a minister of the gospel.

So he expected persecution. He expected suffering, you think? He did. He did, for sure.

Well, think about it this way. The very first guy that he follows dies basically right in front of his eyes for preaching the gospel.

He knew what he was in for. Same thing. You could look at any of the magisterial reformers,

Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, all of these guys knew. Odds were not horribly in their favor to survive.

So he clearly counted the cost of what he was getting ready to do. Absolutely.

He knew the cost. He counted it. And he saw that, you know, like Moses leaving

Egypt, he saw Christ as greater. He's a greater treasure. Wow. And then trusting in the sovereignty of God.

Just no matter what's going to happen. Yeah, that's incredible. Amen. All right. Now my question is,

I want you to try to present the gospel as if you were John Knox in a Scottish accent. No.

I would make my friend John William Noble so angry right now if I tried to do that, because he's from Scotland.

OK. And he would probably disown me as a friend if I did that. So every time

I have talked to him, though, on a recording, I'm pretty sure I've done this. Every time we're on a recording together,

I do try to tell him that my favorite Scottish movie is Braveheart. Yeah. Which just annoys him.

So just make sure you tell that to Scottish people. But no, I can't do the

Scottish accent. I wish I could. Yeah. It would probably sound more like Shrek. I mean, just think if you could, you could actually preach like that and then everybody would be like, hey, look at Alistair Begg.

You know? Sinclair Ferguson. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Church would be filled on Sundays.

I know, right? I could just pull that one off. Yeah. Church growth strategy.

Learn a Scottish accent. Yeah, just fake an accent. I think there's a scene in Braveheart when they're getting ready to go for war and I don't know,

I can't remember all the names. The guy goes, well, we didn't get dressed up for nothing. Get ready to go for battle.

I'm going to do that next time I preach. You should. You should. Do the whole thing.

Just fake an accent. Yeah, there we go. Actually, I read this the other day. I have no idea if it's true.

I'm going to insist that it is, though, because I read it on the Internet. This this post I read the other day said that our

American accent, as it is now, is actually closer to the

English accent of the 1700s. That theirs actually is the accent that changed.

Ours is closer to an English accent. And if that's true, that means we actually sound more like John Knox would have sounded as a

Scotsman in the 1500s than current Scottish folk do. So take that, Sinclair Ferguson.

Bring it on. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I've heard that about the Appalachian region specifically, too.

So that's that's almost scary. Suddenly the spelling makes perfect sense when you read the books.

Yes, that's right. No wonder they got their F's and S's confused. Exactly right.

Yeah. So so in what way has he influenced your preaching in your in your.

I mean, you look at the. So, you know, Martin Luther, they all had a cultural.

What do you call it? A something that they were facing of the day. What was what was the main opposition of his day?

So two different questions there. Right. So how does it influence me? What was the main opposition of his day?

Let me start with the first one. So when I first started preaching,

I guess a good way to describe it is I was afraid and I still am when

I preach. There is a fear within me, not of the people that I'm speaking to, though I do care what

I'm going to present to them. You know, I do care about the fact that these are immortal people that are in front of me and they're going to spend eternity somewhere that weighs on me.

But the thing that weighs on me more is that this is God's word and I want to preach it in an unadulterated form.

And I want to make sure like I know I'm not perfect. I know that I'm a sinner saved by grace and I know

I make mistakes and I know I mess up and I can even look back over the past 10 years and I can see things that I preached 10 years ago that I would look at now and I'd go, oh, that's that's not good.

But there was a lot of fear. And when I say there was a lot of fear, I would get up there. I don't really have anything good.

I can hold this in front of me. So I would get up there. Let's say this is my manuscript. And I would just hold the manuscript and here would be my face.

And I would never look up at the audience. I would never put any emotion into what

I was saying or doing. I wouldn't allow myself to because I was so fearful of messing this thing up.

Right. So I knew that what I wrote in my manuscript was probably as close to accurate as could be.

So I was just going to read that manuscript and I wasn't going to do anything else and I wasn't going to make a show of it.

I wasn't going to show any emotion. I was just manuscript. That's it. Which I actually learned from Jonathan Edwards.

Sounds like Jonathan Edwards move right there. Yep. It was. It was. But so did he did he wait?

Did John Knox have a manuscript? Did he preach for a manuscript? Did he do you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Knox. What were the lengths of his sermons? How many did he preach? Sometimes he did.

He also preached extemporaneously. So without notes. Yeah. And he's an interesting case too.

And that sometimes it seems like his sermons just reading them lengthwise. It seems like they differed.

Like sometimes they were relatively short. And I don't know if that was because of how they were being recorded. Like maybe parts of them are missing or if he actually just differed in length that much.

Which if he did, you know, that's fine. You know? Lord keep people on their toes. Yeah. Yeah.

Is it going to be 15 minutes or is it going to be two and a half hours? Are we getting lunch or dinner?

You know, that's interesting. You think about how and I've heard this before, especially in the topic of expository preaching and stuff like that.

There's a lot of people that talk about, you know, it could get monotonous. It's always the same thing over and over and over.

Do you think that the preachers back then and that day were more in tune with what their congregation needed to hear?

Oh, yeah. 100%. And I can point to any number of the Puritans to kind of make that case in a compelling way.

So you think of any of the Puritans and you read through their sermons today. And here's the fascinating part.

Yeah. They still speak. Right? So totally different culture, totally different time.

But I can pick up off my shelf any number of these Puritan guys or any number of the reformers.

I can read their sermons and be edified by them. Whereas there are certain times today and I won't name any preachers, but, you know, relatively well -known preachers that preach at big conferences.

And if I listen to that sermon that I listened to the first time and I was like, yeah, that was pretty good. You listen to it again.

You're like, that means absolutely nothing to me. It doesn't edify me. It doesn't strengthen me. It doesn't encourage me.

It's almost like an effort of theirs to try to sound as smart as humanly possible.

It's an intellectual exercise rather than a convicting, moving message.

And that's been something that has, in one sense, grated on me quite a bit.

And it's also been something that I've had to repent of because I think there was a short phase where for about a year

I was in that mode where I was like, I want to be like these big name preachers at the conferences and I want to sound like them.

But when you read the Puritans, you know, these sermons that have actually lasted, they're preaching in a down -to -earth way, easily understandable, and they're preaching about the things that their people are actually going through.

So if you're reading about, let's say, a Puritan or a pastor or a preacher that is, say, in a seaside town, they're going to have a ton of metaphors about sailing and ships and the sea and everything else.

One of my favorite examples of this actually comes from Moby Dick. So if you read Moby Dick -

Absolutely. Yep. He's preaching from, a matter of fact, the bow of the ship as a pulpit.

That's right. It's actually, I think R .C. Sproul said this too, so I'm in good company saying this.

It's one of my favorite sermons to read. And it's like, he just uses all of these different metaphors throughout that a ship -faring people would understand.

And I think when you read Knox or you read Calvin, these guys understood that. So they're still heavyweight intellectuals.

They are still brilliant, brilliant theologians. They are pastor theologians through and through. But they understand how to communicate that to the people because they know their people and they love their people.

And I think sometimes we're missing that today, and there's various reasons for that.

There's, of course, things that stand in the way of it, culture, today being one of them.

I mean, every person in my church works a full -time job, right? Yeah. So we can't be together every single day.

Not only that, just because of where we live, just to give you a simple idea, I drive 20 minutes to get to our church.

I drive 45 minutes to get to the school where I work. The next, you know, just going down through the list, different families.

One family drives half an hour to get to the church in a totally different direction. Another family drives 40 minutes to get to the church in a totally different direction.

So we are, like, spread out all over the place. So in order for me to actually be in tune with my congregation, which

I'm called to do, I have to intentionally reach out to them. It's not as simple as I walk out the door, wave my hand from the parish, and there everybody is, you know, just walking about, living their lives.

No, we're... There is a tyranny of the urgent, if you will, that has really upended our lives.

And in some ways, I'm not sure that this is exactly how God intends for mankind to live, but that's a story for another time.

Nonetheless, yeah, they were definitely more in tune. This is another way in which Knox has encouraged me.

And going back to his preaching style, the other thing that he really helped me with was just being more bold in my preaching and allowing myself to become emotional, as it were, right?

So I'm not the most emotional person in general. I'm not one that's given to fears, for example.

I'm not given to fits of excitement and things like that. But I can be impassioned.

Have some unction. Yeah, there can be unction. So Knox taught me not to fake it, but just simply allow yourself to feel it.

And if that's what you're feeling in the moment, then it's maybe okay to express that in your preaching.

I like that. Really good. That was a really long way for me to answer that question.

Sorry about that, Tom. No, I really like that. I mean, I think it's... You know, we listen to a lot of preachers, and there's a lot of preachers who hold to the nuts and bolts of the preaching.

They want the structure there, and they're so focused on the structure and the proposition and the step one and the step two and the step three, and there's no feeling in it.

They're teaching what's there, and they're communicating the text from head to head, but they're forgetting to communicate it from your heart to their heart, you know?

Right. And make it effective. Make them, you know, if there's... You know, you're telling people about Christ, and I think somebody...

As a matter of fact, it might have been you, Braden. You said, you know, you want to leave them with a pebble in their shoe as they leave.

What was it about that sermon that they just can't shake throughout the day? They're walking away with a pebble in their shoe, and I think that's what effective preaching does.

For example, Jeffrey Johnson. I listen to Jeffrey Johnson. He's not the most studious.

I'm sure he's very intellectual. We know he digs deep down into the text, but he communicates in real life what you need to hear, you know, from the text, you know, and makes it real.

Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, I was bouncing off that. I thought you were done. Keep on going. No, I'm done. No, go.

All right. So these last couple of weeks at our church really wanted to, because I'm a new pastor here in Moore Park at Grace Bible Church, and I'm really wanting to encourage people doing evangelism and really wanting us to be known as an evangelistic church that's going out and loving our neighbor, loving

Christ enough to tell people about him. And something that we just recently did, we did two evangelism classes, but in the second one of the two, we titled it

How Evangelism. And something that I drew out was when you go and look at the words from Acts chapter two of Peter preaching the gospel, comparing it to Acts chapter 17 with Peter, or Paul, excuse me,

Paul preaching the gospel, they're communicating totally differently. It's still the same message of salvation.

It's still the same gospel that they're presenting to the different forms of people that they're talking to. But you can see how we're genuinely different types of people, and we talk differently with one another.

But especially in the case of Paul, Paul recognizes, he notices there,

I think in verse 22 and on, he notices that there's false gods in the areas he's at.

He reads the inscription that's on there, we worship an unknown God. And then he calls them out using those things.

He knows the area that he's in, and he's able to position himself, recognizing what he's talking to, recognizing his audience, and he's able to take them to the cross in that moment.

And so I think that there is something that is to be said about a pastor who can read their audience, recognize where they're at, not only obviously being in a church is gonna be a little bit different than Paul in that situation, but recognizing where the sheep on the hillside is located at, and how can you get them to the green pastor down the road?

How can you get them to the cross here in this message? And I think that that involves passion.

I think it involves exegesis. I think it involves a lot of things coming together right there.

Let me ask you this, out of all the study that you put into reading about John Knox and writing about him and all that, after all of that, if there was one question you could go up to John Knox and go, man,

John, I need to know more about this. What would it be? That's another good question.

Honestly, it's one of those things that we actually, we know a lot about, but I would love to hear more from him personally about what is it like to go in front of somebody that you know has the power to kill you and to call them to repent and to believe the true gospel.

So there's so many fascinating accounts of his interactions with Mary, Queen of the

Scots, and even Bloody Mary as well.

But there's these events where it's like she's coming to him, and despite the fact that he has called her to repent and he's told her, you know, you're

Jezebel, you're wicked, you're sinful, all of these different things, she's still coming to him and asking him for advice and asking him like, should

I marry this man? And Knox is like, no, you shouldn't. It's dumb, don't do it.

Or, you know, yeah, you should do it. And it's just such a weird, weird relationship.

And yet you get the sense that Knox actually wants her to be a

Protestant. He wants her to be saved. He wants her to be a Christian. I would just love to talk to him more about that relationship.

Because I think, and this is one of those things that I'm almost certain people will disagree with me on, but I think

Knox actually did love her. And he actually, not in a romantic way. He loved her as somebody that he wanted to see saved.

I believe that he wanted her saved. And I believe that he wanted her to be part of his cause, which is really just the cause of Christ.

And his big concern was that by returning to Roman Catholicism again and again and again, Mary was going to totally shipwreck not only her own faith, but the faith of the entire

Scottish community. And I would just love to talk to him more about that.

Maybe one day, Lord willing, we'll be there and I'll be like, hey, now's the time we can have this conversation.

But yeah, I think that a lot of the caricatures of Knox, where he's sort of this deplorable, hateful, angry, misogynistic dude,

I think that's not only overplayed, I think that it's totally wrong. I think that it completely misses who he was and what he was attempting to do and also the culture of his day, you know, where he was, what he was operating under.

He was not going to be romantically involved with Mary or anything like that.

But he was going to counsel her as a pastor. And again, just fascinating relationship to me that I would love to personally talk to him more about because it would almost be similar.

Praise the Lord that this didn't happen, but it would be similar if Kamala Harris would have become president and one of us is called to go into the

White House and give her some counsel. Nose goes. I want to do it.

I'll try it. I would have done it. I would have gone. Not sure what would have happened, but I would have did it.

So when you describe those characters, hateful and all that, in a way, do you think that they were necessary?

His personality, the way he was, was necessary for what he faced? Or was there any mistakes?

He could have done it this way. Maybe a little more grace. He could have done a ton of things better.

But yeah, no, he was the man for the job at the time. This was the guy that God used.

But look at any reformer. I mean, people hate all of them, right?

So you look at Luther and they're like, this guy hated everybody. He was angry. Calvin, he was angry.

He hated everybody. Zwingli, actually, he was kind of angry and maybe hated a lot of people. But then you go down through the list and it's like all of these guys, you could point your finger at and go, oh, he was awful.

He was terrible. He hated everybody. He wasn't loving enough. He wasn't kind enough. He wasn't nice enough.

That 11th commandment always gets everybody, you know? So it's amazing, though, when you think about it, because everybody loves the reformers until one's in their church.

Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. And it's 100 percent true. We need the reformers.

Yeah, you need the guys that are going to rattle everything and shake things up. The guys that are going to say, thus sayeth the

Lord. And we haven't been doing it. So we're going to start doing it. But I think you also need that sort of patience to see reformation take root.

And I think that maybe sometimes that's where Knox kind of slips up a little bit.

I think there are occasions where, and I don't think he would have looked at it this way, but there are occasions where in retrospect, you know, we can look over his life and we can say,

OK, he was behaving a little bit more as a revolutionary rather than a reformer.

He was never a revolutionary, by the way. So let me just make that clear. He behaved sometimes sort of in that way.

But he wasn't. He was a reformer through and through. Nonetheless, when you compare him to somebody like John Calvin, John Calvin was patient in his work.

He was patient in his reformation. People still hated him, but he was he was loving and careful in what he was doing.

Knox was loving and what he was doing, just not always careful and what he was doing.

Right, right. And that that can make all the difference in the world. But I say that while at the same time acknowledging

I actually really appreciate the fact that he wasn't so careful. And I think that his lack of sensibility sometimes actually really helped the reformed effort in Scotland at a time where it's it's kind of doubtful that much would have happened if Knox wouldn't have spearheaded a lot of that charge.

So, again, God is able to use us despite our imperfections, our weaknesses, our sinfulness.

And sometimes you need the person that's not careful at all, I guess, to make something happen.

But again, I think that's an interesting concept. Everybody loves the reformers till they show up in their church.

100 percent true. But we need more reformers today. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I've been asked.

I've been asking too many questions. Brantley, what do you got? I haven't looked it up, so I don't know.

So that way I can be able to ask the question and not know the answer. I mean,

I know he's dead. He had to die at some point in the 16th century or so. But though he's dead, yet he lives.

Amen. I guess I was sort of interested if we could, stop me if I can't, but I wanted to sort of jump to the end of his life and see, did he have any last sermon or deathbed words that are notable or profitable?

He does, actually. But what did he say in his deathbed? Hold on one second. I have this written down somewhere. You wrote it.

You probably wrote it. It's probably in the book. If only you had a copy. Yeah, if I had one,

I would open it up right now and look at it. It was something about wanting true pastors.

But what did he say? Hold on. Yeah, you can Google it and probably explain it a lot more better than what

I'm going to be able to come up with by Google search. Oh yeah, I can Google it. That's true. I was trying to look through the

PDF real quick to the last chapter on the death statement. Okay, yeah, here it is.

So John Knox's last words. Lord, grant true pastors to thy Kirk. So Kirk being the

Scottish word for church. Yeah. So that in and of itself, I think, again, shows you his heart.

So here you have a guy, deathbed, dying. He's been part of the Reformation in Scotland. He's been a huge figure in the movement.

Maybe not as much as a Calvin or a Luther, but I would argue pretty important. And there he is dying in his final prayer, his last words.

Lord, grant more pastors. Send us more pastors. And that I think is something that has been influential to me in a couple of different ways.

So I'm 30. Lord willing, I have a few more decades that the

Lord will allow me to live. But I'm already thinking in terms of, okay, how do I help raise up more pastors?

How do I help raise up more reformers? So this is one of the big things that we focus on at our church.

We have kind of this tagline, if you will, I guess. So Christ Keystone Church has reform the church, rebuild biblical communities, and reclaim culture for Christ.

So reform, rebuild, reclaim. And the idea behind that, that I explain to the church relatively frequently, is that we are not impatient revolutionaries, but we are patient reformers.

So this is work that's going to take us a lifetime. We're living in a community where we are surrounded by Arminianism.

We're surrounded by, this is Amish Mennonite community, you know? Church of the Brethren. I mean, on and on it goes.

Surrounded by these things. We are, as far as I know still, I think the only reformed church in like a 35 mile radius or something like that.

Although I did hear recently that there's possibly a PCA church that's going to be coming in, which nowadays might not mean that much.

I'm not sure what's going on with the PCA. But anyway, we're one of the only reformed churches in the area.

We're also one of the only - Have I featured your church, Jacob, yet? I don't think so.

I'll have to do that soon. Hey, thank you, Brandon. There you go. I appreciate it. So yeah, you can't just go in with a hammer.

Right, right. And it's going to take time to basically chop through these roots that have gone down thick into the soil.

So we're fighting against so many different things here. Part of it, yes, is our mini in doctrine in general.

You'd be amazed how many people still we get. Calvinism is a cult. One star Google reviews.

They're actually my favorite reviews to get. So we get that still relatively frequently.

We're also the only church that does expository preaching in a pretty big radius.

So when people are like, what are you preaching this Sunday? And it's Saturday night. I'm like, well, we're going through the gospel of Matthew.

So tomorrow I'll be in Matthew 24. Ah, when are you going to work on that? Well, I mean, it's

Saturday night. Sermon's done. Been done since Wednesday. You know,

I had to study for that. And then, you know, they'll get up there and they'll be like, well, I don't study at all because that would be a waste of the

Spirit's gift. And I just get up there and I let her, I let her rip. You know, I don't know if you guys deal with that at all.

I know people like that, though. They'll get up there and they'll literally just open up their Bible when they step into the pulpit and they'll be like, the

Lord will give me my message at this point. Those are the same with the American flag right in the behind them.

Yeah. Yeah. Very Lord is not speaking through them either. It's not good.

So just the fight against things like that. Yeah. It's going to take a long time.

So patient Reformation, give us faithful pastors. So this is one of the things that we're working on at our church.

Now, you know, we're again, new church, relatively small. I think we have 40, 50 people. If I count kids, we're at 50.

So I'm going to count. So, yeah, we got about 50 people right now in two years, which

Lord, you know, the Lord is blessed. I don't think that's bad. But when you look at some of the other churches in the area, it can be a little discouraging in that.

It's like, well, they're the complete opposite of us. You know, they're they're preaching health, wealth and prosperity and everything else.

And it seems like they're growing and we're kind of just, you know, every few months we have a family come in and maybe they'll stick with us or maybe they'll be like Calvinism is a cult or, oh, my other favorite one is that we don't use the

King James every Sunday. Yeah, I know. I know those KJV only as they how big, how big of a town or how big of a town are you in,

Jacob? Ah, so I think the town that we're in, the church,

I think has a population of like twelve hundred. OK, oh, wow. So you are small. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's I was I was pastoring in a town of nine hundred. So I feel your pain that you're talking about right now. You know,

I want to say it's actually smaller than I can Google that, can't I? Probably. Yeah, I'm going to Google it. You should.

All right. Keep talking for a second while I Google this. Yeah, I just I can. I can really I be inside the church that I was at previously.

We were there for four years and it was it presented a lot of challenges being in a small town like that.

And we also had a large, well -known Christian denominational church there.

And so that was where everybody in the town went to if you were Christian and then being in Idaho, there was a lot of LDS.

And so it was the same thing. You were seeing a lot of growth, but it was slow growth.

And so you had to be very patient and being just continually faithful to the text. And yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I just looked it up. It's thirteen hundred people in the town, but very similar. We've actually it's one of those weird situations.

It's not necessarily the town where we thought we would plant in. So when we started looking into this,

I was talking to a few brothers around Pennsylvania, but also in different states about having a reformed church.

And I had an offer to actually go to a different state to pastor at a totally different 1689 church.

And I really considered it, prayed about it, thought about it, but also just felt like the

Lord wasn't calling us to leave this area just yet and felt really compelled.

I thought, you know, if we leave what? What light is there left?

Not saying that these Armenian churches don't preach the gospel, right? That's not what I'm saying at all. But if we leave, there's no other reformed church nearby.

And honestly, Knox was one of the things that I kept thinking about. Give me

Scotland or I die. And I was like, can I pray that? Like, give me central Pennsylvania or give me

Pennsylvania or I die. Is that really what I should pray? And I think that's obviously, obviously that's where God has led us for for now to to be here, to plant this church and to see what

I pray to be a a church raised up that will last until Christ returns a reformed church that will be faithful.

And that means raising up ministers. That means fighting against a lot of very harmful false doctrines that have propagated and permeated the area for centuries, literally centuries, right?

There's a fight here. There's a spiritual battle to be waged. But my thing that I talked to the brothers that are about was if we don't do it, who will?

Yeah. Yeah. And surely, you know, God can raise up other people. It's not like we're the be all end all. But if we don't do it now, you know, it could be a while.

So, yeah. Well, Jacob, brother, I am greatly blessed by tonight's conversation.

I'm really thankful to have you in the kingdom, brother, and you're doing some solid work. And I'm excited to get my hands on a copy of this book and read through it, brother.

Seriously, you've gotten me jazzed for John Knox. Like, you know, it's too late this point to bring him up in a sermon tomorrow.

But maybe not. It's never too late. Well, will you post a picture of the book again? Yes, I'm doing that actually right now.

So, if you are watching us, it says that we have 72 viewers right now watching on different platforms.

Go check out Resist Tyrants, Obey God. It's by our dear brother here with us tonight,

Jacob Tanner. You can find that on founders .org. Go get your pre -order on and get this book in your hands because I can guarantee you just from tonight's conversation,

I feel like I can confidently say that you're going to be blessed by picking it up and reading it. So, don't just buy it, but actually read it as well.

On the note of different plugins, we got Striving for Eternity, Andrew Rappaport Apologetics Live.

Thank you so much to Andrew for allowing us to be able to live stream the show onto his different platforms.

Please, if you are not subscribed to his stuff, go check out his stuff, Striving for Eternity, Andrew Rappaport Apologetics Live.

And also, if you have not yet subscribed to our channel, we would really, really appreciate if you go and check out Open Air Theology on YouTube.

Go check us out. We'd love for you to join us every single week. Currently, we're meeting on Saturdays on the evening, just like tonight, and continuing to have great guests like we have on tonight with Brantley and Jacob.

So, thank you, brothers, for being on here tonight with us. Also, we have this conference, not we, but two of the brothers that are here on tonight are going to be speaking at this conference.

Both Tom and Jacob are going to be speaking at this. Grace and Truth Conference of 2025. Go look at that conference.

Hopefully, that can bless you as you partake in that. What other plugs do I need to drop? Brantley, yeah.

Plug 1689. Brantley. Bam. Yeah, 1689 .com. We do have a giveaway again for Jacob's book and some other books on the topic of Christianity and the civil magistrate or government.

Go to our Discord, discord .gg slash 1689, and you can enter there.

I do have one final question for Jacob. Jacob, do you have a theologian bust of John Knox?

No, I don't. Oh, man. So, someone get this man, a John Knox. I think you get him from Mission Aware or something, right?

Mission Aware, I think. That would be cool to have. I have a... Hold on one second.

What do I have here? Oh, you probably can't see it. Here, I'll show you this one. This is the closer one.

I've got these mugs. You got the mug. All right. No. This is the Calvin mug. The Knox mug is up there, but I can't get it without tipping everything over.

But yeah, thank you all for having me on. And if you're in the Charlotte area, I'm with Coriam Deo Reformed Baptist Church, similar to Jacob.

Not much in Reformed... Not much Reformed theology around. So, come check us out if you're here in the area on a

Lord's Day. So, thank you. Yeah. Also, so just to reiterate what Brayden said, 75 watchers right now.

All... Well, 77. Everyone, go on Open Air Theology on YouTube right now.

Click subscribe and like and share it. Please. It's really going to help us out. We'd like to be able to continue this, the conversations.

We're going to do it whether there's three or not. We're going to keep on glorifying God. So, we thank you guys for listening to us.

Jacob, thank you for having us on. The book is awesome. I'm definitely going to get one. And it was such a blessing.

And most importantly, most importantly, you guys know our marching orders.

We have marching orders to go out and share the gospel. If you haven't gone out to share the gospel this week, make it a point after the

Lord's Day. Make it a point. Covenant with God. Covenant with...

Have an accountability partner to go out and share the gospel with somebody, whether it's your neighbor, your boss, an employer, whatever.

Just all you have to do is walk out the door. And somebody's there that needs to hear about Christ. So, go proclaim the gospel.

Amen. Amen. Jacob, last words from yourself, brother? No, just thank you again, guys, for having me on.

I appreciate the show. I appreciate everything you guys are doing. And this was fun.

I love talking about Knox. So, thank you for letting me kind of nerd out about John Knox for a little bit tonight.

I appreciate it. You'll be on again, no doubt whatsoever, brother. Tell us about your church again, where it's located, what time you meet on Sundays.

Sure. So, it's Christ Keystone Church. We meet in Middleburg, Pennsylvania at 10 .30

a .m. And if anybody is listening to this right now and they're in the area, great news is we just got new signs up.

So, there's actual signs now in front of... We didn't have them. Now we have them. Now you'll know where the church is.

So, yeah, if you're in the area and you're looking for a solid biblical church focused on the expositorial preaching of God's Word and also focused on Reformed theology.

And I saw one of the people in the chat kept on posting about the Westminster Confession.

I joke a lot about my Presbyterian brothers, but guess what? We have quite a few in the church.

And we're more than happy to have more. So, even if you don't hold to the 1689, if you hold to the 1646, that's fine.

I think that you'll still find some solid fellowship within the church to be a part of.

So, yeah, we'd love to have you. Amen. Brayden, close us out. I will.

I'm trying to think, what is this? Show notes. What are show notes? Show notes are usually after the show.

So, like links to stuff? Is that what they want? I don't know. I gotta let them find out what show notes are because now it's...

Somebody Google show notes. Google show notes. We haven't graduated yet having show notes. This is just open air theology.

Oh, book titles, et cetera. Okay. Book titles. Get the book title back up there.

Let me get it up here. We're going. We're moving. Resist Tyrants, Obey God by Jacob Tanner.

Go check that out. Go check that out. And let me get it down here now so then it's not in our list.

And a link to the book. So, if you go to... It's on there again, but let's go ahead and pull it up.

I believe it's founders .org, right? Yeah. It's press .founders .org.

Go check that out. I think it'll list off, if I remember right, when I checked that out, it'll list off several different things in there. But I see somebody says they'll

Google it. That should probably work. Well, and do this. Order one and order one for your friend. Ooh.

And I could be anybody's friend if you want to order me one too. At this point, I could also be a friend because I still don't have a copy.

Okay. Jacob would like an autographed copy. I just Googled or I typed in...

Let's see here. Let me get this down again. I just was able to... Pulls up this on a cell phone right here.

And it looks like if you scroll through, you can find that book located in this section of founders.

So, press... Let's see here. Exciting stuff right now, everyone.

Press .founders .org. Go check it out. That's the place that you got it. In fact, actually, look at that.

It's right there. Yep, there it is. Along with the mug. Scroll away. There it is.

Scroll away. There it is. Look, that's your book right there, Jacob. That's it. It exists. That's exciting stuff right there.

Go buy it. Go check it out. Yeah. So, my name's Brayden. It's a blessing to be on here with these brothers.

The pastor of Grace Bible Church. So, if you live in Moore Park in the Ventura County area, that's where we're located at is in Moore Park.

And so, it'd be a great blessing if you live in Southern California to see you tomorrow at 1030 in the morning as we worship our mighty

Lord and Savior who has redeemed us. So, it's a worthy endeavor to meet together and assemble in fellowship and sing

Him praise and worship. And I would agree with Tom. What have you done this week to demonstrate the love of Christ that controls us?

What have you done this week? Get out. Tell your neighbors. Don't be ashamed of the gospel for it's the power unto salvation.

Great blessing tonight, brothers. Amen. All right. Well, we will end it there. Thank you for joining us tonight, everybody.