November 18, 2025 Show with Daniel Holstege on “Go Into All the World: Embracing the Mission Mandate of God’s Covenant”

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Daniel Holstege, Wingham Protestant Reformed Church, and Go Into All the World

I am thrilled to have a first-time guest today. His name is Daniel Holstege, and he is an author and pastor of Wingham Protestant Reformed Church in Ontario, Canada. Today, we're going to be addressing the theme of his new book, Go Into All the World, Embracing the Mission Mandate of God's Covenant.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for the very first time, Pastor Daniel Holstege.

Yes, thank you, Chris. It's a pleasure to be on your show today.

And I completely forgot to ask you before the program began if I was pronouncing your last name correctly.

Well, I hate to correct you right at the very beginning, but of the last part, you got a little bit wrong. We usually just say Holstege.

Holstege, okay. And I will hopefully remember that for the remainder of the show. Tell our listeners something about the Protestant Reformed Church in Ontario, Canada, the Wingham Protestant Reformed Church in Ontario, Canada.

Sure. The congregation here, probably one of the more unique things is that it's the only Protestant Reformed Church in Ontario, Canada. There are two other PRCs in Alberta, but we are the only one in Ontario, which, as you know, is a very large province.

There are many other Reformed churches here, Canadian Reformed, United Reformed, Christian Reformed, but we would be the only Protestant Reformed Church. We're just a small congregation in a small town.

Wingham is a town of about 3 ,000 people or so in a rural setting. So yeah, it's been a good place for my family and me for about the past four years.

Great.

And for those of you who might be traveling to Ontario, Canada, or perhaps you have family, friends, and loved ones that live there, and you'd like to pass on this website to them so that they may visit that congregation, the website is winghamprc .org, winghamprc .org, and wingham is spelt W-I-N-G-H-A-M.

And I'll, God willing, repeat that later on in the program. Well, Daniel, you are a first-time guest, as I announced in the beginning of the show, and we have a tradition on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Whenever we have first-time guests, we have those guests give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include the religious atmosphere in which they were raised, if any, and the types of providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

So we would love to hear your story.

Yeah, okay. Excuse me. So my salvation testimony begins when I was very young, and I wouldn't be able to tell you or pinpoint for you a particular day or time when I believe that God came into my life for the first time.

My view as Reformed is that salvation begins in our life when God the Holy Spirit comes for the first time into our hearts and makes his dwelling there. And I believe that he did that at some point when I was very young, and I don't know when that happened, but I believe that when the Holy Spirit first came into my life, that I was a young child, and he united me to the Lord Jesus Christ, and that's when I was saved, in my experience.

As I was growing up, I grew up in a Christian home, as it mentions in my book. In the introduction, I had Christian parents, a father and mother who were married, still married, and raised my three siblings and me in a healthy and solid Christian home.

We went to church every Sunday twice, and we were sent to a Christian school. So that was the kind of, yeah, it was a religious environment. It was a Christian, it was a Reformed environment in which I was raised, and very thankful for that.

It was a great blessing to be raised in a home like that. A father who set a good example, who read the scripture to us, had family devotions and prayed. So I think as I was young, from my earliest days into my teenage years, I was learning about the Bible, I was learning about God and Christ and the gospel, and I don't ever remember as a child refusing what I was learning.

I was absorbing it. I was learning and growing in my faith. Yeah, I went to a Protestant Reformed church. My parents also grew up in the PRC. Our church was located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which as you probably know, that's a place where there are many Reformed churches.

So yeah, I went to church there, and I would say when I was a teenager going through high school and college, I made public profession of my faith when I was 18. And that was, I think, a moment or a time when I was definitely being matured in my faith.

The Lord was deepening my understanding. I would say this too, that around that time, I learned more what it means that I'm a sinner, and I became more conscious of my sins and the seriousness and gravity of sin, my need for a Savior.

And since I was going to church regularly, there were definitely times when I heard sermons that had a more profound impact on me, sermons that really hit the heart, and the sermons that really got to the heart of the gospel and set forth Christ crucified and the forgiveness of sins and justification through him.

So when I was maturing and becoming an adult, my God was working that salvation in me at a deeper level. And then I would say, since we believe salvation includes justification and sanctification, my salvation testimony includes that as I was growing, becoming an adult, the Lord was sanctifying me.

As I was coming to see my sins, he was not only showing me that he forgives me, but also that he began that work of sanctification and continued it and deepened it and led me to confess my sins, to repent of them, and to strive to live a new and holy life.

So since I was in my young years until today, I'm 42, it's been an ongoing work of salvation. The Lord saves me every day. He delivers me from Satan, from sinful choices and actions. And he deepens in my mind, the knowledge of his love and his grace.

And as you know, probably too, Chris, salvation in that sense is kind of a, it's a thing that ebbs and flows. It's a process. There are unique, distinct elements in it, but there is certainly a process in which God sanctifies us.

And so I expect that he will continue to save me and preserve me in that faith until he calls me home. Amen.

The Great Commission and the Covenant-Missions Connection

Well, this is a very important topic that you have tackled in this book. It involves the Great Commission. We have a couple of texts in the scriptures that address the theme of your book. We've got one of them in Matthew 28, 16 through 20.

Well, actually it's, I'll begin at 19. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to follow all that I commanded you and behold, I am with you always.

And we also have the text in Mark 16, 15, where Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. This is a theme that throughout the centuries, faithful Christian men have written on this theme, have exegeted the scriptures on this theme.

Why did you come to the conclusion? You know, as much as I love a lot of what is already in print out there and have made use of it in my life as a Christian and in my service as a minister of Christ, there's some things of my own that I want to say about this.

Tell us about how this dawned on you to write this book, go into all the world, embracing the mission mandate of God's covenant.

Yeah, that's kind of a big question.

We have two hours.

Yeah, right. So we can take our time, I guess.

Yes.

In the introduction to my book, I tried to get into that a little bit and try to set down why I wrote this book. Part of that is personal, having grown up in a reformed church and a church that emphasizes the covenant, covenant theology and covenant thinking in life.

I felt that as I was growing and thinking and becoming a pastor, I felt that there was a need for more literature in my circles that I grew up in on this topic. We had lots of literature on various topics and I felt like there wasn't a lack in this area.

So I was, to a large degree, I was writing to the people in my own church community and denomination. And I tried to write the book in a way that anybody might be reading it. So I tried to make it a broad audience, but I was in a special way speaking to the people that I know, my own family, my own friends, my own fellow church members, and trying to stir them up as I feel the Lord has stirred me up and many others too in my denomination as well to continue that stirring process of getting us to see our calling to missions.

And I was struck too somewhere along the line and there was a friend that I mentioned in the introduction who, Alex Kelsby, who suggested this topic to me. But I was struck by the connection between the covenant and missions.

And I think a lot has been written about missions. There's lots of books on missiology and all kinds of theory of missions, practice of missions. But I didn't think there was a lot written about the covenant, the biblical doctrine of the covenant and missions, especially the reform doctrine of the covenant, certainly not in our circles.

So I started to think about that. Is there a connection between the two or is the covenant really just about us and our children, grandchildren, catechizing the children of the church, establishing good Christian schools, raising our children?

Is that all that the covenant is or is it broader than that? And I knew it was broader, but I think it was an area that seemed worth exploring. And then how it connected to missions. And the more I explored it, the more I realized there really is a big connection there.

And there were others who were saying things. There was a sermon I heard once from Professor Corey Grease, who kindly endorsed my book, Professor of Missions at our seminary, who preached a sermon in our church.

And I was sitting listening to the sermon. I think it was on God's promise to Abraham to make him a father of many nations. And he talked about this idea that God, his plan is to establish his covenant in these two different directions, not only within the church, but also out into the world through missions.

So yeah, long story short, all of these different things and other factors too, I think is what led me to write it.

And could you give us perhaps a more detailed definition on your understanding of the covenant? It's a very important word and concept in the scriptures and in the Christian life. And there are people who have varying views on what is called the covenant.

So why don't you tell me about where you're coming from and be just a little bit more detailed on that?

Yeah, that's a good point. The covenant is a massive subject in theology and there's a wide variety of views out there on the covenant. There's, of course, dispensational theology, which has a very different view of the covenant.

Roman Catholic theology would have a very different view of the covenant. The Reformed churches though, don't all have one view.

Right, exactly.

It'd be great if we did.

Yeah, in fact, I'm a Reformed Baptist and I know that our view is somewhat different than that of many Pato Baptists and not even all Pato Baptists agree.

Right, right. Even among Pato Baptists, there's pretty wide ranging views of the covenant from views that would call it a conditional covenant, those who would call it an unconditional covenant, those who would view the covenant as a pact or an agreement or an alliance between God and certain people.

There's the whole debate about covenant and election, whether the covenant is with the elect or is it with more than the elect, maybe with believers in all their children. There's a debate there. So where I'm coming from in the Protestant Reformed churches is that I grew up being taught this and quite frankly, although I've learned lots of views, studying theology over the years, and this is an area where I would say I definitely have grown stronger in my conviction that the covenant is in its essence, it's a relationship that God establishes with believers and believers in our definition as Reformed would be an elect child of God to whom God has given faith.

So God establishes this covenant with believers and with their children after them, the elect ones, but also he extends it out into the nations. But in its essence, I believe it's that relationship and it's a structured relationship.

And I've come to see that too. It's not like the relationship between two friends. There's similarities there, but there's a difference there too. God is always God and we are always humans. So God is always infinitely above us.

And yet he comes down to us and establishes this relationship, friendship with us, fellowship, like a father with his children. And I think the Bible uses two illustrations from human life, compares the covenant to that, the father-son relationship and the husband-wife relationship.

And when we look at both of those, it's clear that they are essentially a relationship of fellowship and friendship, intimacy, but there's also that the husband is the head of his wife and the father is over his children.

So there's that structure also. So yeah, that's what would make this book unique as well, coming from a PRC perspective on the covenant and then connecting that with missions.

The Covenant, Election, and the New Covenant in Christ

Now, the way you described it, there is a lot of similarity between your understanding and the Reformed Baptist view, because we believe that the covenant is exclusively for the elect with Christ. And I know that there are many Pato Baptists who believe that children, by virtue of their baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are added to the covenant, even if they are not of the elect.

And therefore you can have people later on who become apostates or rebels and enemies of Christ, they can be kicked out of the covenant. I believe that is somewhat, I know I may get some of the federal visionists who may hear this interview angry that they think I'm misrepresenting them, but I think I've got their view understood correctly when I describe it that way.

Yeah.

That the covenant

Do you want me to reflect on that?

Yeah, the covenant in their minds is not a guarantee of eternal life. And that always has baffled me because you have Christ as a mediator between himself and the Father with those in the covenant. So how on earth could he lose anyone for whom he is mediating or intercessing?

Yeah. Right. Yeah, when I think about it too, I don't see how the covenant could be with more than the elect. You have to twist things around a bit to get to that, I think, because we'll just think of, for example, when Christ instituted the Lord's Supper and he said the bread and the wine, this, the wine is the blood of the new covenant.

So he's talking about the blood that he would shed on the cross. And he's calling that the blood of the covenant. So if the blood of Christ was shed for the elect, which that's what we believe in the Reformed tradition, then the covenant also would be with the elect.

And I think the Cans of Dork also bears that out and head to article eight, that Christ died for the elect and that in his death, he confirmed the new covenant. So just one avenue to reinforce what you're saying there.

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Welcome back, if you just tuned us in, our guest today is Daniel Holsteg, and we are discussing his book, Go Into All the World, Embracing the Mission Mandate of God's Covenant. If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, and give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

If you live outside the USA, before I continue with our discussion, I just want to read a commendation for this book, which was written by an old friend of mine, Pastor Paul T. Murphy of Messiah's Reform Fellowship in New York City.

He says of this book, all churches would benefit from reading through, absorbing, and putting into practice what is here written. And that reminds me, I've got to try to arrange another interview with Pastor Murphy since it has been quite a long time.

And one of the things that I think that we should discuss about this book is the biblical overview that we have from Adam to Noah, and the covenant in the very beginning. Can you begin at the beginning?

You'd like me to summarize that section?

Yes.

Okay. So yeah, the first two chapters after the introduction, I just called that biblical overview. Chapter one is Adam to Noah, and then chapter two would be Abraham to Christ. So in that section, I just scanned the history of the covenant in scripture, beginning with the covenant with Adam in the beginning.

And I did that, tried to do that from the perspective of showing that from the very beginning of time, God in his covenant purposes had a plan to extend his covenant to the whole world. So his plan was never merely to establish his covenant with one nation, or today we would maybe sit in one ethnic group or even in one denomination or anything like that.

God's purposes was always to extend his covenant throughout the world. So yeah, in the first chapter, I start with Adam, and it's just striking when you think about, there's a lot of things you can say about the covenant of God with Adam, right?

There's the debate about the covenant of works. I don't agree with that notion depending on how it's articulated, but I prefer to call it a covenant of creation because I believe God established his covenant with Adam and Eve at the moment he created them and through his creation of them in his image.

So he established that relationship with them from the very start. But they were his elect, but they were also human beings, the first human beings, and that's just striking. It shows that God intends to establish his covenant with mankind.

And then mankind, of course, develops from there through the fall and then the flood. And we see there at the flood that God saves Noah and his family. So as I'm scanning this history, I'm trying to draw out what I call in the book, the particular and universal notes in the music of God's covenant.

So God is revealing and unfolding his covenant and he's showing us there's aspects in which it's particular. It's only with the elect, it's only with Noah and his family, only with Abraham, God is showing his election.

But then he's also showing that it's very broad, it's universal, cosmic. So like the rainbow after the flood is the sign of the covenant and the rainbow arches over the whole world. And Noah and his family are the ancestors of all human beings that exist today and God made his covenant with them.

So, and then especially when you get to Abraham, did you want me to keep going, Chris?

And yeah, sure.

So I think when you get to Abraham in Genesis 12, it gets really interesting and striking how explicit God is, that his plan is through Abraham to bless all nations, all families of the earth and be more particular to establish his covenant in all nations of the earth.

So he says that in chapter 12 already, but then later in the subsequent chapters, he tells Abraham, especially in chapter 17, I'm changing your name from Abram to Abraham, a father of many or a multitude because his plan was to establish his covenant with many nations or with his elect in many nations.

So yeah, then you just follow the Old Testament history from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the history of the nation of Israel, the judges, the kingdom period, and you just follow that whole history and you constantly are seeing these particular and universal aspects.

And the particularity is seen in, here God has his covenant with the nation of Israel in the middle of all these other nations God has chosen this one nation. There's something particular there, but then God is telling Israel the time is coming in the day of the Lord, when those Gentile nations, which right now they're heathen worshiping other gods, they're going to be converted, they're going to flow into the church, into the covenant, into the kingdom of God.

So when Jesus comes, the New Testament era begins, that's the day of the Lord. And now God is fulfilling these prophecies through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, preaching of the gospel in all the world, the great commission.

God is now extending his kingdom, his covenant into all nations as he promised. That's kind of a summary of how I see it.

Old Covenant Particularity and New Covenant Universality

Okay, well, we have a question from Lorraine in Garden City, New York. And Lorraine asks, do you think that one of the problems that exists in correctly understanding the covenant amongst Christians is that while those in dispensationalism might make the differences of the old and new covenants too stark in contradiction and contradicting, there are many in the Reformed community that seem to try to make the entirety of God's covenant with his people one covenant.

So there's nothing really new and better about the new covenant. Can you please give your own thoughts on that?

Yeah, that's a very interesting and perceptive question. Difficult question to answer. Covenant theology is a challenging subject. When you study the scripture, when you are a serious student of scripture, and you try to understand what the covenant is, and you try to piece together all the different parts, the old covenant, the new covenant, how are they all related?

And I have found in my own studies over the years that it has been challenging sometimes to interpret certain texts. For example, when Paul in Galatians 4, he speaks of the two covenants, one at Mount Sinai and one at Mount Zion, two covenants.

And then there's this relation or this teaching of scripture that there's an old covenant and a new covenant. So yes, it is difficult to understand it all and how it fits together. Can you remind me maybe what the main part of that question was or the main thrust of that question?

The listener, Lorraine, was asking if the problem in understanding the covenants correctly in the church is that there are those that go from one extreme to the other, and she, and I'm assuming that Lorraine is a she, not like Lorraine Bettner, but the extreme from dispensationalism of making perhaps too stark of a contrast between the two.

And you even have not all, but some dispensationalists would even say that there was a different way of salvation in the Old Testament, a different gospel. So that would be one abuse, and I think she's correct, or he, I'm sorry.

And the other one is the, I've even heard the phrase by some Pato Baptists that there's one covenant and two administrations. And the way that the covenant is explained, it really reduces the fact that the new covenant is better.

And so I think that's where Lorraine is coming from.

Yeah, and it's difficult to know exactly what's the best language to use. It's the covenant that God established with Adam in the beginning. We can debate what to call that, but then how is that connected to the covenant with Noah and the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the covenant with the nation of Israel, the covenant with David, the old covenant and the new covenant?

How are these all connected? And I think that whatever your overarching system of theology is, it's definitely going to impact that. I think the dispensationalists, or not only they, but others too sometimes can be simplistic and say, if you just study the Bible, then you'll come to our view, right?

If you just read the Bible for what it is, get away from your creeds and so on, then you'll certainly come to see it our way. So yeah, I mean, for me personally, I believe that the covenant with Adam and the covenant in Christ, they are distinct.

I don't think maybe it's quite accurate to say they're just two different administrations. I'm not sure if that's what you're referring to those two, but yeah, something unique with the covenant with Adam, because he was the head of the human race and then Christ is the head of the elect.

So there's something distinct there. And yet I do think that the essence of those two is still basically the same, that it's this relationship between God and his people, in which he says, I'm your God and you are my people.

So I think if you do look at scripture and you follow it all the way through, you will see that this covenant formula helps us to understand what the essence of the covenant is. I am your God, you are my people.

That's the relationship of fellowship, friendship, light, and love. And then you can see that all the way through, and then you can see that each of these times that God establishes his covenant, he's revealing something new and different about the covenant.