May 19, 2026 Show with Pascal Denault on “The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

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

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

And now here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 19th day of May, 2026.

Before I introduce my guest and our topic of the day, I want to let everyone know that the interview that I had recently with the lead actor in the movie

A Great Awakening, Jonathan Blair, who portrayed George Whitfield in this film, and the director of this film,

Joshua Enk, were both on my program on May 14th.

That was Thursday of last week, and they did a wonderful job.

My co -host was Kurt M. Smith, who is not only a Reformed Baptist pastor, but he is a biographer of George Whitfield.

That wonderful interview is now uploaded on ironsharpensironradio .com,

and if you're listening at some future date, when this will no longer be at the very top of the archive list, just type in the name

Blair, B -L -A -I -R, and that's the last name of Jonathan Blair, the lead actor in the film, and that link will come up.

The video of this interview, with all ads edited out, is also available at Jeremiah Nortier's YouTube page for The Apologetic Dog.

So, we want to thank Jeremiah Nortier and his team at The Apologetic Dog for providing us with a video of this very special interview.

And I am so thrilled to have a first -time guest today. If you're a

Reformed Baptist, you likely know this name. Pascal Danot is our guest today.

He's a lecturer in covenant theology at Reformed Baptist Seminary.

He's an author, and he's a pastor in Quebec, Canada, as we

Americans call it, Quebec. And I dare not even attempt to pronounce the

French name of the church where he pastors, but he's been pastoring there for quite a while, for 21 years, since 2005.

He has also been a chaplain in a federal prison for four years, but today we are going to be addressing a book by Pascal Danot, which is

The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology, with the subtitle,

A Comparison Between 17th -Century Particular Baptist and Paedo -Baptist

Federalism. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trippin's Iron Radio, Pascal Danot.

Hello, Chris. Thanks for having me on your show. I'm thankful to be here, and greetings to everyone who's listening.

And if you could, tell us something about the church where you pastor there in Quebec.

So, it is called the Reformed Baptist Church of Saint -Jerome, but it is not named after the

Catholic saint patron. Saint -Jerome is the name of the city.

Yes, that's a load off my mind. And, yeah, so it was not planted as a

Reformed Baptist Church. It was an evangelical church, which

I joined in 2005. I was preaching there since 2002.

They had no pastor. And in the same time,

I was coming to the Reformed faith, and more precisely the

Reformed Baptist faith, through the influence of Raymond Peron.

That's the way Americans pronounce his name. In French, we say Raymond Peron. He was a missionary.

He was supported by Reformed Baptist churches in the United States to work in Canada, and he became my mentor.

And so, becoming a Reformed Baptist myself,

I had brought some Reformed preaching into this church that eventually adopted the

Second London Baptist Confession. And so, I'm serving this church now for, as you said, 21 years.

And does this fine congregation have a website? Yes, it is

Preche La Parole, Preche La Parole, which means Preach the

Word. That's the injunction that Paul is giving to Timothy to preach the

Word. So, in French, PrecheLaParole .com. And you'll have to spell that. P -R -E -C -H -E -L -A -P -A -R -O -L -E dot com.

So, Preche La Parole dot com. And we have a

YouTube channel that has the same name. That's YouTube .com

slash Preche La Parole. And you can find some podcasts, sometime in English.

Lately, I did a podcast with one of your former guests, James Renahan, who is visiting us for a course, a modular course of one week here in Quebec, Baptist Symbolics.

So, when sometime I have a guest speaking in English, but otherwise all the resources on the website and on our

YouTube channel is in French. Praise God. Well, we have a tradition here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pascal.

Whenever we have a first -time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which they were raised and what kind of providential circumstances our sovereign

Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them. And we would love to hear a summary of your story.

So, you want a two -minute version? You can give it for as long as you want to give it.

This is a two -hour show, so no need to rush. So, just give us as fully detailed description as you care to.

Okay. Well, don't hesitate if you want to step up with some questions.

So, I was born to professing Christian parents. There was a big evangelical revival here in the province in the 70s, and my mom got converted in those years, around 75, 76 maybe.

So, she joined the Mennonite Brethren Church here in St. Jerome. Eventually, my father followed through and was also baptized.

And so, when I was born, there were already members in this church.

I have three siblings, one older brother who lives in Pennsylvania, actually.

He's in Johnstown. He married an American, and so he's an

American now. And my two sisters, they are both members with my parents in the church

I'm pastoring. So, I was raised in a normal evangelical church, heard the

Bible stories in church. It was not at all

Reformed. I've never heard about anything about the doctrines of grace.

I didn't know about John Calvin. The only John Calvin I knew was the

African pastor who eventually baptized me. His name was John Calvin Kitataki Bandamawishi Manungamavco.

He kept his African name. And so, never really heard about the gospel -centered preaching, but was decently exposed to the gospel message during my youth.

Never doubted that God is true, that the Bible is His Word, but was unconverted until I was 18 years old.

So, during my teenage years, I was rebellious to God's Word.

I went into the world and did worldly experience with anything worldly that can bring you to be a slave to sin.

And my sister, my oldest sister, was back from Africa.

She went for serving for a temporary mission for a year.

And when she came back, she seemed to be very zealous about her

Christian faith. I had never openly rejected it, but I had not really embraced it by conversion.

But one thing she brought with her was some books she had read when she was in Africa.

Maybe you heard about Rebecca Brown, He Came to Set the Captives Free. So, it's a book about the ministry of deliverance, and it's a bit of a

Ghostbusters evangelical thing. So, casting out demons.

But I read the first book of the series of Rebecca Brown, and it had a big impact on my mind, captivated me because I wanted to have similar experience, spiritual experience that she had had, that she presented in this book,

God talking to her, visions, miraculous experience, supernatural stuff.

And I was looking for that, seeking that God would reveal

Himself to me. I kind of become a bit disappointed with my sinful life.

I was 16, 17. And so, I start reading the

Bible, start calling on the name of the Lord to reveal

Himself. And eventually, He responded. I never heard

His voice, never had any vision. But He responded with a very deep conviction of sin that my life was displeasing to Him.

And so, I went through a process of repentance that was not just one day but four months because I had some issues that I was resisting to deal with, some past sins, small robberies that I had made.

And I felt that the Holy Spirit was convicting me to go back to those stores.

It was not hold up, but, you know, stealing and go denounce myself.

Some lies that I had tell to my parents or small stealing from them that I was resisting to confess because I felt it was too humiliating and shameful.

And so, for four weeks, I struggled with my conscience and with God pressing me to full repentance to produce fruit of repentance.

And I felt that salvation was withhold from me until I really went through the complete confession.

I was also reading books like Charles Feeney and those type of experience.

I was pietistic to a bit of an extreme in my view of Christianity.

But the Lord really used that to mark my conscience and brought me to fear

Him and to never want to sin again. So after a month or two of struggling,

I eventually repented of all my sins. And from that day,

I wanted to serve God. So I was still seeking for those charismatic supernatural experiences.

They never came. But what came was that someone gave me the advice after two years of Christian life to go to seminary to be trained.

If I wanted to serve God, I would be more useful. And that's where I met some great teachers, where I met my mentor,

Raymond Perron, and that eventually all my theological world was reformed.

I abandoned my pietistic, mystical views and discovered that, you know,

God through His word, through His revelation, reformed my understanding of salvation, of the

Christian ministry. So, yeah, that's about it. And slowly started to serve in the church with the youth and preaching

God's word to them and eventually to the church. Now, as far as your discovery of Reformed theology and specifically

Reformed Baptist theology, was that prior to you choosing the seminary where you were educated or did you discover these things at the seminary?

Yeah, second option. I entered seminary a bit reluctantly.

My goal to serve God was still, I wanted to be an apostle, kind of.

I had bought my pack sack, my tent, my sandals and sneakers, and I was ready to go hitchhiking and go south, go west, go fast and pray into the mountains and southwest in the

United States. And I was preparing for that. But in the meantime,

I received that advice, maybe you should try seminary. And so on my way to this trip to go southwest,

I was with a friend. It was kind of a road trip. I was reading a book and it was a theology book, very dispensational about the second coming of Christ.

But that book was kind of the first more theological book that I was reading.

I had read those books by Rebecca Brown and Watchman Lee and Charles Finney, which was all about experience and pietism and having some spiritual encounter with God that was more mystic.

And that's what I was seeking for. But that book was presenting an argument using

Scripture, compare Scripture with Scripture, making interpretation and deduction and really brought some kind of reflection that I had not had.

I had a very mystical approach to the Bible. You open the Bible and God reveals Himself to you and say some specific word to you.

But now it was like more, it's objective, it's a message. It's not just a message for you, but it's the message for the entire church.

So I was slowly questioning my understanding of God and decided I would not pursue that mystical trip southwest, praying and fasting.

Maybe I was a bit fearful also to do it, not committed enough.

So I came back to Quebec, to Montreal, and I registered to that seminary not knowing anything about seminaries, about academia, about university.

I had finished my high school and had been working since then. And the only books

I had read was those Christian books. So I was not so much of a reader. And in seminary,

I found a bit what I was looking for, but not where I was looking for. I was looking for God. I was thirsty of knowing who

He is and what's His will for me. And I thought it was just by some direct revelation that I would get that.

But instead, I understood that God reveals Himself to His people, that it was through covenants, that you need to learn to understand the

Bible. And it's not just some private reading. It's read in the context of a community.

So understanding church history, it didn't come out just after one session, one semester.

That's the word I'm looking for. After one year in seminary,

I kind of abandoned my mystical views. And after one semester,

I bumped into Raymond Peron, and he was a Reformed Baptist minister.

He did his PhD on Cornelius Ventile. He was connected with Grace Baptist Church Carlisle and had been supported by that church.

And so he brought some great questions to my mind in the classroom.

It was an incredible time there in that classroom. It was a classroom of about 30 students.

And I was just coming into that, into seminary, and there were students who were finishing their bachelor or are doing their

MDiv. So they were way ahead in front of me.

So I was just trying to follow through the conversation and all those concepts that I had never thought of,

Calvinism and Reformed understanding of faith. So it really shook my world.

I didn't become convinced from the get -go, but eventually I was persuaded that the

Reformed understanding of salvation, of Christian life, of pastoral ministry is really biblical.

And I just embraced the faith. And eventually I asked this teacher if he would accept to become my mentor, because in my church milieu,

I had no mentor. No one I saw that could really teach me and help me to understand what

Christian ministry is about. And he joyfully accepted, and he was very generous by his investment into my life, the time he took to care for me and to help me go through serving the

Lord. Hallelujah. And if you could, before we get into the specific area of Baptist covenant theology, could you please describe as best as you can why this is so significant and how it totally transformed your thinking about the

Christian faith when you finally understood and embraced the doctrines of sovereign grace?

You know, some people, when they hear Christians having conversations like this, they mock conversations like this as if we are trying to count the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

And they think that what we are discussing is nothing but unnecessary trivia that brings division in the body of Christ, that we are bringing up things that end friendships and so on.

And we always have to put God and His truth above the feelings of humans, and we are to fear

God and not men. But tell us, if you could, as best as you can, how this made, specifically, how it made an impact on you and transformed your thinking.

Yeah. Well, if I can use an analogy for me to have this shift of paradigm in my understanding of salvation and God, it's a bit like before being

Reformed, I had like a geocentrical view of the universe.

You think you're in the center, and you think that everyone revolves around you.

You're kind of the center of the universe. Now, you don't mean that literally, do you?

There are professing Christians who believe in geocentricism. Well, I use it just for the sake of the illustration.

Right. Okay. It's not about –

I'm not arguing in the cosmology, in any particular cosmology, but it's – so,

I didn't know what Arminianism was, but I think I had by default this

Arminian view that I had accepted the salvation.

I have decided to convert myself. And so,

I'm in the center of what made the difference in my eternal destiny.

And I think – well, I tend to be more heliocentric. I don't want to dispute those who have another view.

But the point is, when you look to the universe from a geocentric point of view or a heliocentric point of view, it changes everything, the way things work together, why the celestial bodies move in this way.

So, it was a bit like that. It's not the universe that revolves around me.

It's not God who revolves around me. God is the light in the center, and everything goes around him.

And this paradigm shift really helps to explain all the rest.

So, understanding the gospel is not, first of all, about me, but it's about God's glory.

Of course, it's about – don't undermine the fact that God loves us.

But the center, it's not so much we that are at the center, but it's the honor of God.

It's the affront that was made against his glory, against his word. And so, understanding that it's not me who loved

God first, but he loved me first. And I love him because he loved me.

It just realigns everything from that point. It humbles you, and it helps you to understand some of the elements that otherwise can seem very mysterious.

Or when you put man in the center, why is this, why is that?

And understanding that God is sovereign, that everything that he does, he does it for his own glory.

This made so much more sense, made his grace much more precious also, much more valuable.

Yeah, that's not me who elected God. God elected me for no condition that I could accomplish, but for his own good pleasure and for his glory.

And I gave his son, of course, for the world. But we understand that in a particular – that's what

Particular Baptists is about. It's particular redemption. It's not just general atonement that Christ died for everyone, and you have to activate the efficiency.

But his death is efficient because he died effectually or efficaciously for the elect that were given to him.

So, he died for his sheep, he died for his bride, he died for his friends.

So, God's love, therefore, is not just universal, unpersonal category.

It's very personal. It's destined to you. And so, this really shook my entire world, the sense of the meaning of my life, and brought much more light to understand the rest of Scripture from the light of the doctrines of grace.

Amen. By the way, I have to ask you before we go to a first commercial break. I love

Montreal, Canada. It's where I spent my honeymoon with my late wife back in 1991.

And we loved Montreal. We even visited Quebec City or Quebec City.

But there was a favorite restaurant of ours. I don't know if it still exists in Montreal called Biddle's Jazz and Ribs.

Is that still there? We need to check on Google.

I don't remember. Is it a jazz club? Yes, and a restaurant. And my late wife and I, when we were on our honeymoon, we ate there many times because it was right across from our hotel.

And even when we visited other restaurants, we very often wound up back at Biddle's to listen to music.

But I just thought I'd bring that up because it's such a precious memory. Do you remember which street it is?

Well, I have the website right here. I don't know if it's still open though, but let me see.

Okay. The restaurant is…

Well, let me see if I can find this. I don't know why it's so difficult to find.

I was just a few weeks ago in the upstairs jazz club, which is also a restaurant.

And there are a few where some very good jazz musicians are doing some very good music.

But I don't remember going to the Biddle's. But if you recommend it,

I will certainly try that because I love jazz music. Yes, and hopefully by the time that the commercial break is over,

I'll have found the address. For some reason, I can't find it on the website, which is making me wonder if they close now.

But anyway, if anybody would like to join us with a question about Baptist covenant theology specifically, or you could just ask anything about Pascal's salvation testimony, something about Reformed Baptists in general, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state, and your country of residence.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pascal Deneau after these messages from our sponsors.

I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Originally from Cork, Ireland, the

Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession, we embrace congregational church government, and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost, and the glory of our triune

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In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every

Sunday. We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org.

That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.

Hello, this is

Brian Nye, President of Hearts for the Lost Ministry. Our sole mission is to serve the local church and work directly with and alongside pastors and elders with their efforts to equip, excite, and educate their flock in biblical evangelism.

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James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and the Dividing Line webcast here. Although God has brought me all over the globe for many years to teach, preach, and debate at numerous venues, some of my very fondest memories are from those precious times of fellowship with Pastor Rich Jensen and the brethren at Hope Reform Baptist Church, now located at their new, beautiful facilities in Corham, Long Island, New York.

I've had the privilege of opening God's word from their pulpit on many occasions, have led youth retreats for them, and have always been thrilled to see their members filling many seats at my

New York debates. I do not hesitate to highly recommend Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island to anyone who wants to be accurately taught, discipled, and edified by the

Holy Scriptures and to be surrounded by truly loving and caring brothers and sisters in Christ. I also want to congratulate

Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham for their recent appointment of Pastor Rich Jensen's co -elder, Pastor Christopher McDowell.

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

That's hopereformedli .net, or call 631 -696 -5711.

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I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight -volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the

Westminster Larger Catechism titled Authentic Christianity by Dr. Joseph Morecraft.

It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology.

Dr. Morecraft is pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.

For details on the eight -volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com, westminstercommentary .com.

For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,

heritagepresbyterianchurch .com. Please tell Dr. Morecraft and the saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr.

Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sends you. And folks, please continue to pray for my very dear friend,

Dr. Joseph C. Morecraft III, pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, who you just heard spoken so highly of by his dear friend,

Dr. Joey Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Pastor Morecraft, as many of you may have heard if you listen to the show regularly, fell in his home a few months ago and was hospitalized for weeks and has been in a physical rehabilitation facility now for weeks.

And today is supposed to be the day where the doctors decide whether or not they can discharge

Dr. Morecraft and allow him to go home. So please pray that he can go home to his wife and that he can even ascend back into his pulpit soon and begin preaching again and that he can return to Iron Trip and Zion Radio as a guest again soon.

So please pray for Dr. Joseph C. Morecraft III. And by the way, I have sad news for you,

Pascal. The Biddle's Jazz and Ribs closed down in 2003 after its owner,

Charlie Biddle, who was a jazz bass player, and he was the owner and passed away in 2003.

And the restaurant closed and was purchased by another family and reopened in a different name, so I have no idea if it's as nice as it once was.

I just thought I'd let you know. All right. Well, thanks. Well, if you come, we'll bring you to the upstairs.

Okay, great. Well, if anybody has just tuned in, we are talking about the distinctiveness of Baptist covenant theology.

It might be a good idea for you, especially for those in our audience who are new to the

Reformed faith. Perhaps they're still not in the Reformed faith and they're just learning about it for the first time.

And perhaps they don't hear about concepts like the covenant too often.

Why don't you define the covenant first of all? Well, I don't have the formal definition right in front of me, but the covenant is a pact that is made between two persons or more.

So when we talk about the covenants that God made with man, there are different covenants where he established the terms of his relationship with man.

So a covenant can usually have some promise, something to offer, and conditions, something for man to do, to respond.

And it can come with some threat if the covenant is broken.

And so the promise is usually the reward. So we would say that some covenants are conditional, others are unconditional.

Sometimes we talk about covenant of works, which you have something to do to earn the benediction, to earn the blessing, or a covenant of grace, which is fully given.

So there are different types of covenant. Even marriage usually is seen as a covenant between man and husband and wife.

You can have a covenant between two parties, two human parties.

But when you study the theology of covenants, usually it's about specifically the covenants that God has established between him and human beings at different times in the history of salvation.

Well, since the area that we are discussing today is a primary difference, not only between Presbyterians and Reformed Baptists, but non -Reformed

Baptists as well differ with us on this understanding, perhaps even especially

Dispensationalists. Not that they would disagree with everything about what we believe, but if you could give us some basic areas where we as Reformed Baptists, who used to be more popularly known as Particular Baptists, what are these core differences between, first of all, our

Presbyterian brethren on the covenant? Well, we both agree usually with the basic framework to our covenant theology that divides the covenantal history between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.

So usually the classic covenant theologian will subscribe to this framework that first of all, there was a covenant of works between God and Adam, and not only

Adam as a private person, but Adam as a public person, as the representative of the entire human race, because he was the first human being, the head of humanity.

And so God's dealing with Adam impacted all that would come afterward.

And we see that not only when we read the book of Genesis, but also when we read how the

Apostle Paul will interpret the dealings of God with Adam and what it means for us, especially in Romans 5 and also in 1

Corinthians 15, where there are parallel that is established between Adam and Christ.

But what we can see in those passages is that what happened between God and Adam had an impact for the entire human race just by the sin of one man, sin entered the world, and with sin, death, and death spread to the entire human race.

I'm just paraphrasing Romans 5 .12 from French to English.

So how come we are born under sin? Well, we are born under sin because there is a federal connection, spiritual connection, or we could say covenantal connection between humanity and Adam.

So Adam, by sinning, brought condemnation. And so God said that if Adam disobeyed, he would be cursed.

He would be under the power of death and die. And that's what happened when he broke the covenant that was made with him.

And all of his offspring is born under this broken covenant of works.

So this is the basis for understanding in what context every human being is born.

They are born under a broken covenant. They are condemned. And this is a

Catholic, small c, Catholic doctrine that is also known as original sin.

Original sin, you can, of course, explain it without the highly detailed, reformed doctrine of the covenant of works.

But if you don't subscribe to this idea of original sin, it's difficult to be an

Orthodox Christian afterward and explain carefully what is the gospel if you don't have a right understanding of what is the fall, what is sin, and how is covenant playing into that.

So covenant of works was something that God put in front of the first man that he could earn eternal life by keeping

God's word. And he had to obey, live out of every word that comes out of God's mouth.

The idea of living of God's word is not just to meditate on the scripture, but it's obeying

God's word. And living of God's word means attaining life by obedience.

That's why we call it the covenant of works. So this can seem strange for evangelical

Christians to hear that Adam was to attain eternal life by works because it seems to be works salvation.

But it was before the fall. Adam had to earn, had to merit eternal life.

And it was by that first covenant. And so I don't know if I should just go on if you want to intervene.

Yeah, sure. Sure, you can. So this is not anything particular about particular

Baptists, this view of the covenant of works. All the reforms subscribe to this view,

Presbyterian and Baptist alike, historically. And while some disputed this view, like John Murray, for instance, but it's a confessional view.

It's right there in the Westminster Confession of Faith. It is also in the Second London Baptist Confession. So after the covenant of works was broken, we needed another way to attain eternal life than works because there's no way that a sinner can accomplish what is required in the covenant of works.

Once it's broken, it cannot be recovered. Man is under the curse of the law.

He's under the curse of the broken covenant of works. And he cannot save himself from it.

He cannot repair it. God said the day you will eat of it, you will surely die.

And so he's under that curse, that death curse. So what

God did immediately after the fall was to curse the serpent and to give a gospel promise to believers into the cursing of the serpent.

We read that in Genesis 3, verse 15. I can just pull up my

Logos Bible right here in front of me. And while you're looking,

I'll just give our email address again to our listeners. If you want to join us, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. So Genesis 3, verse 15,

I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. So this is a curse to the serpent who seduced a woman and who brought the fall upon human being.

And so the father of lies, the ancient serpent, the devil, Satan. But there's also a promise that an offspring will bruise his head.

That offspring will have to bleed.

You shall bruise his heel, but he shall bruise your head.

So usually Christian theologians, even before Reformation, saw into that the first revelation of the gospel.

That offspring, it's the hope of the future

Messiah who will come and save us, who will come and redeem us. And if we bring that into covenant theology, we would say, well, that's the gospel.

That's the covenant of grace right there that is presented to Adam and Eve and to all of human beings after them that they can hear the gospel and be saved.

So into that they don't have to work their way to eternal life.

They will receive freedom from the power of the devil, the power of sin and the power of death by a conqueror, by a seed, a special man that will come, a descendant of the woman who will break the power of evil.

So the entire Old Testament is built on that promise, on that hope, on that waiting.

And this is the basis for our covenantal theology. We wait the promised seed.

And so this foundation, both Baptists and Peter the

Baptist, Presbyterian reform, agrees on that. The difference is how this covenant of grace that is there presented to us is how is it related to the other biblical covenants that will unfold as the history of redemption will happen.

So how is it related to the covenant that we see six chapters later in the

Noahic covenant? Well, it starts two chapters later in Genesis 6, but really it's after the flood in Genesis 9 that God established this

Noahic covenant. So how is the gospel promise or the covenant of grace related with Noah and the covenant there?

And more especially in Genesis 12 where God will call

Abraham out of his country and will make a promise to him that He will give him the land of Canaan, but also that all the families of the earth will be blessed in his seed.

So we see a parallel between the first gospel promise of the seed of the woman, then becoming the seed of Abraham.

God has not renewed the idea of the seed of Noah, but of Abraham.

So here we have a more specifically gospel promise there, and then

God will renew another covenant with Moses and eventually with David and eventually with the new covenant established with Christ.

So the way we will set up all the biblical covenants in relation with the first broken covenant of works and the second covenant of grace is the way we will frame up and relate those biblical covenants will explain the difference between Presbyterian and Baptist.

So when I discovered at first covenant theology, I was in seminary.

I was around 2006 -2007. I was reading O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the

Covenants. And I thought, wow, this is so amazing. We see the gospel of Jesus Christ right there in the

Old Testament and typology. And I could see how it was consistent, how it was coherent, that it's right there unfolding and it's just one plan of salvation from beginning to end.

And I could not really see how this view of covenants was leading toward Presbyterian ecclesiology and toward pedo -baptism until I was doing my research for my master degree, my

THM. And I wanted to make a research comparing the

Presbyterian understanding of theology with Baptist.

And I was not going necessarily to focus specifically on the covenants. My idea to start with was just to use the

Westminster Confession of Faith and the Second London Confession, which is commonly called the 1689

Confession of Faith, and go through and see where Baptists who came a few decades, well, the

Baptists were started in the middle of the 17th century and they had a

First London Confession who was just in response to the

Westminster Assembly to state their views of why they were rejecting pedo -baptism and if they were

Orthodox. It was not a complete view of their theology, the First London Confession.

But afterward, during the decade that unfolds after the

English Revolution, after the act of restitution of the monarchy in 1662, the non -conformists, including

Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, they were persecuted, they were marginalized, they had to submit to the

Church of England and to the Acts of Uniformity. And those who refused were facing persecution.

That was in those years that John Bunyan was in prison for non -conformity.

Eventually, one of those particular Baptist churches, Petit -France, decided that it was important for different reasons in the historical context to write their

Confession, a new Confession of Faith for the particular

Baptist movement to bring unity in their midst, but also unity with the other reformed believers and especially those of the non -conformist side that were

Orthodox. And so what they did is, it was in 1677, we're celebrating in a year the 350th anniversary of that Confession of Faith.

And so they decided that they would use the Westminster Confession of Faith and the revision of the

Westminster Confession of Faith called the Savoy Declaration, and they would use those documents, using also other sources but mainly these two, and produce their own

Baptist version of the Westminster Confession. So to compare those three confessions,

Westminster, Savoy Declaration, and Second London, side by side, you can see where Baptists and Presbyterians and Congregationalists agree and where they disagree.

And sometimes it's just some minor changes here and there, stylistic. But so I had read the

Second London, but I had never really studied the Westminster Confession until I started my research for this paper

I was writing. And when I arrived at comparing Chapter 7 of the

Covenant, it's the chapter in the Westminster, Savoy, and Second London that deals with covenant theology.

Well, in the Second London, it was not just some minor details that were just changed, as we could see when we compare

Chapter 1 or Chapter 2, they keep the same number of affirmation paragraphs.

Change some words here and there to be more technical or different style.

But when it comes to Chapter 7, it's a complete rewritten of the covenant theology.

So I felt that there was something important here. They didn't just repackage the covenant theology of the

Presbyterian, they write their own. And so I could see a throat there to something interesting to study.

So I came across an important treaty of a particular

Baptist named Nimue Cox, who wrote a treaty on the covenant theology.

And Cox is believed to be the main author of the Second London Confession of Faith.

His treaty had been republished by Dr. James Renan and the

Reformed Baptist Academic Press, and Richard Barsolis was involved in this project and with other editors.

I don't have their name in my mind right now, and I don't have the book in front of me. But they just re -edited and republished, in a modern edition, the treaty of Cox that was forgotten for centuries.

And this treaty on the covenants has really brought me all the keys

I needed to understand what happened in Chapter 7 of the Confession of Faith.

What did the Baptists reject from the Presbyterian -Pedo -Baptist view, and what did they affirm?

So there are many similarities, but the distinctions are essential to understand why we don't have the same ecclesiology, why we don't baptize babies, infants.

So even though we agree on so many things, we agree on the centrality of Scripture, on the doctrines of grace, our soteriology fits well, but our ecclesiology does not fit.

And in between, there's a connection between soteriology and ecclesiology that is called covenant theology.

And for me, discovering the distinction, the distinctiveness, that's the name of my book, the distinctiveness of Baptist covenant theology, helped me see what was the foundation of the difference.

So for me, covenant theology is not the point of arrival of what our difference is, it's the point of departure, where why we don't baptize babies, we explain it through our particular view of the covenant.

So I'm just going to stop there if you have some questions, and then I can keep going with what are those distinctions.

Well, I'll bring up some more questions when we return from our midway break right now. And we do have a couple of people also in the audience waiting to have their questions asked and answered by you.

And our email address, if anybody else wants to join them, is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

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Now, and last but not least, if you are not a member of a Christ -honoring, biblically faithful, theologically sound, doctrinally solid church, like the church where my guest

Paschal Deneau is the pastor in Canada, I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the world and have helped many people in our audience spanning the globe find churches that are biblically faithful, sometimes even just a couple of minutes from where they live.

And that may be you too, so no matter where you live in the world, if you're without a biblically faithful church home, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

and we will try to help you find the church nearest you that is biblically faithful.

And also, that's the same email address to send in your question to Paschal Deneau, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. And before we go to any of our listener questions,

I just wanted to have you clarify a couple of things. Isn't it true that basically one of the primary differences that separate

Reformed Baptists from Presbyterians and also separate us from non -covenantal

Baptists, perhaps especially dispensational, is that we find more discontinuity and less continuity between the two covenants, the

Old and New, than our Presbyterian brethren do, and we find more continuity and less discontinuity than our non -Reformed

Baptist brethren do? Would that be fair to say? Oh, yes, very fair.

It's a very good way to put it. I think it comes a lot about that question, what does continue between the

Old Covenant, the Old Testament? What is changed? Why? So we see lots of changes, of course, between the worship under the

Old Covenant, all the sacrifices, the temple, circumcision under the law, and now it seems to be different under the

New. So why is it so? And so you well said that the

Reformed Baptists will see more discontinuity than the paedo -Baptist

Presbyterian, which tends to see the Old and the New as two administrations of the same covenant of grace.

And that comes down to what I was saying before, how even though we both subscribe to the idea that there is just one covenant of grace, from Genesis to Revelation, the way we relate that covenant of grace with the other biblical covenants is crucial.

And that's what I discovered, if I can just complete my presentation. So what we can see when we compare the two confessions is not only what the

Baptists have put into their confession, but what they left out.

And there's a particular understanding of the covenant of grace that was rejected,

I would say, because it's not into the 1689 Confession of Faith.

And it's the idea that there is one covenant of grace under two administrations, the old administration and the new administration.

So the way that Presbyterians see Old and New, it's just some superficial differences, but not substantial differences.

So it used to be more carnal, more limited into Israel.

But the differences for them between Old and New are just external, and it's just in terms of administration.

But if you say, what do you get in terms of promise, in terms of blessings by being under the

Old and under the New? Well, you get the same thing. For them, it's the covenant of grace. The Old Covenant is the old administration of the covenant of grace, and the

New Covenant is the new administration, where Baptists disagree with that.

I know that some Baptists will embrace that framework of covenant theology, but I think that that's not the view that is held in the

Second London. And I'm not saying that the Baptists who agrees with this

Presbyterian framework are not confessional, but I think that they would do well to study those treaties of particular

Baptists of 17th century, where you see that they disagree with this view.

And even John Owen, who was not a Baptist, who was a paedo -Baptist, but not Presbyterian, he was congregational, and he, at some point, rejected the idea that the

New is just a new administration of the covenant of grace that was administered by the

Old. He would say that those two covenants are substantively distinct. They don't have the same promise.

And when God announced that He would make a new covenant, He says explicitly, not like the one

I did with them when I called them out of Egypt. So, it does not have the same substance.

So, we don't have time to go into every detail of how it relates with the

Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic, the Davidic, but let's just wrap up the Old Covenant as including

Abraham, Moses, David, and say that's the Old Covenant. And it was something different.

It was not the covenant of grace. So, where was the covenant of grace if the

Old Covenant is not the covenant of grace? What Baptists will say is that it was present as a promise.

It was revealed through the Old Covenant, through types and shadows.

But in essence, the Old Covenant was not the covenant of grace because it didn't offer eternal life.

And it didn't even treat with eternal punishment those who came under its curse.

That's what we see explicitly in Hebrews 10 when it says that the one who transgresses the covenant under Moses will just face capital punishment.

There's a punishment that is even worse, but it's not administered by the

Old Covenant, which was limited to earthly realities. It was just a typological covenant for life in Canaan.

But through that Old Covenant, God revealed the heavenly realities.

Through the promise of the land of Canaan, God was pointing toward the heavenly

Canaan, was pointing toward new creation. And if we mixed the

Old and the New, well, we bring the type with the anti -type, and we mix that into just the same covenant, and we lose the distinctions that are very important to understand what is continuing and what is left behind.

And that's a major theme in the New Testament. Should we stick to the old forms or there's something new?

And what is brought by the new? So we would say, to make it simple, that what we call the covenant of grace that was revealed in Genesis 3 .15,

and that is all the thematical about all the history of redemption, the covenant of grace is, we say, the

New Covenant. But it's the New Covenant before the covenant was actually established, before the blood of the covenant was shed, before the mediator of the covenant came into the world.

So was the gospel present? Of course it was present. Of course it was efficient even before Christ's blood was shed.

But on what basis was those gospel blessings given?

It was through the revelation or through the promise of the

New Covenant that was to come, and not properly by the

Old Covenant. The Old Covenant was just a vehicle, was just there to reveal as a type, as a shadow.

But in essence, it didn't offer eternal life and didn't offer forgiveness of sin to procure peace with God.

That offer was there, but it was there by the

New Covenant that was already efficient and revealed and promised. So when it was accomplished, all the types, well, they just disappeared.

We don't need anymore the typological blood when we have the blood of the

Lamb of God. And so we cannot bring the elements of the types into the

New Covenant to define the terms of the New Covenant.

And that's where the Baptist and pedo -Baptist view come into a disagreement.

Because pedo -Baptists, the reason for them to baptize their infants is grounded in the

Old Covenant. Because God said to Abraham that he would be his God and the

God of his offspring and that he ought to circumcise his children. And if you say, well, that was the same covenant of grace that we are in, well, we should continue to apply the covenantal sign to our infants.

So it's the same covenant of grace, it's just the sign that was replaced. It used to be circumcision, now it's baptism.

So it's just external, but it's the same essence. Well, for that we need to agree that Old Covenant and New Covenant are the same in essence, which

Baptists, particular Baptists, rejected. And they would say that, well, the

Old Covenant was there for a specific reason. It was there to keep

Abraham's offspring under a pedagogical law in order to protect and preserve that lineage from corruption, from ethos, and from idolatry, and make additional laws, positive laws to just keep

Israel under a specific covenant to protect the seed of Abraham Christ.

And Revelation 12 gives us a nice picture of the entire redemption history when it talks about the woman that has conceived, that is pregnant, and that should deliver an infant that will rule the entire nations with an iron rod.

So this picture is about the nation of Israel and the people of God under the

Old Covenant that is kind of pregnant with the Messiah that ought to come, and it's the seed of Abraham.

But the earthly covenant that God has put in place are not in essence the covenant of grace.

They are subservient to the covenant of grace, which is the New Covenant. And we cannot define the

New Covenant by the terms of Abraham, Moses, or David.

We can use them to show how they were a prefiguration, a type of the

Messianic kingdom that came when the king entered the scene when

Christ was born. But when the heavenly reality was established by the

New Covenant, by the mediation of Christ who is the mediator of the New Covenant, well, the old paid away and it passed because it was just there temporarily to preserve that lineage and to bring that heavenly gift that God gave not only to Israel but to all nations for them to believe and trust into this

Lord. So this will, when you apply consistently the distinctions with what is in continuity, what is in discontinuity, will lead to a whole distinct view of church because we won't ground our understanding of church on the

Old Testament using Israel as our model as a mixed nation of two kinds of seed, believers with natural seed that are mixed into one people of God.

We will say that was just old covenant. But the New Covenant is just everyone in the

New Covenant that are truly in the New Covenant know the Lord because that's in essence what is promised in Jeremiah 31, 31.

No one will continue to teach his neighbor saying, know the

Lord because they will all know me. So Presbyterians say, yes, but that's not for now. That's for the future at the resurrection.

It's for the new creation. Well, it's only the Scripture that can tell us when the

New Covenant and its promise is accomplished. Hebrews 8 tells us and applies all those promises that everyone will know the

Lord because everyone will have God's law written on his heart because their sins will be forgiven.

This is actual blessing of the New Covenant. It's for all New Covenant members.

And so this makes that we look for believers only churches, churches of believers only as true members that they confess.

We agree that they can be some false profession, but we don't think that the true church of Christ should be a mixed body of believers and their seed and just the nations or church of multitudes and masses.

The church ought to be those who truly profess faith and obedience to Christ, and we should baptize them and them alone.

So, yeah, do you have any questions that you think would be helpful to clarify this view?

Well, I think what you're saying ties in beautifully with Paul's words in Romans 2 when we go down to verse 28.

For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh, but he is a

Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that which is of the heart by the spirit, not by the letter.

This seems to perfectly coincide. The circumcision of the heart is only made evident when a person demonstrates repentance and faith.

Isn't that true? I mean, that's when we give the sign of the covenant, when people can demonstrate that they've been circumcised in the heart, right?

Yes, exactly. Yeah, they would say, though, that, well, what

Paul is saying there was true also under the old covenant and that it continues to be true under the new, that not all

Israel is Israel. So there were some who were Jews just outwardly, as there are some

Christians in name that are not truly regenerated, but they would argue that they are part of the covenant community because they were baptized and they were confirmed and until they contradict their baptism or their confirmation by a sinful way of life and they reject or they become unbelievers and are subjected to discipline, they are part of God's people even though they are not regenerated because it's a mixed people.

Well, in order to say that they have to import the old covenant model where it was a mixed people, you had in Israel some

Israelites according to the flesh and others according to the spirit.

Hebrews had two kinds of seed, natural seed and spiritual seed, but that was for a time.

That was under the old covenant terms because God used that nation, that physical nation, and there's no way where the new covenant imports that hybrid model into the church where it gives the natural seed of the

Christian a membership based on the fact that they are part of the

Christian family. You need to be born again to enter God's kingdom, and there's no mixed seed.

There's no two kinds of seed into the church. So in order to justify their ecclesiological model, they rely heavily on the

Old Testament. Well, that's where we say we have to define the new covenant on its own term and not define baptism by using circumcision.

We define baptism by what Scripture reveals to us about baptism. We see no command of baptizing other than believers and no example of baptism being applied to infants.

It's always to people who profess faith. So we define each covenant on its own term, and this leads to a different view of church and of baptism.

It doesn't mean that we don't agree on many things with the rest of the reform, and I hear that you have lots of Presbyterians that are friends of the show, and we see them more than friends.

It's our brothers, but that explains why we do have a different view of church and baptism.

And that's a disagreement, and we'll have to wait the return of Christ to know who was right and who was wrong over that debate.

Okay, we have Anthony in Hoshton, Georgia, and Anthony says,

Brothers, in his excellent book, The Distinctives of Baptist Covenant Theology, Brother Pascal says, 1.

Under types and shadows, it had before the confirmation of promise, which is an oath, it had now the confirmation of a covenant, which is blood.

2. Before Christ, the covenant of God was announced.

After Christ, it was decreed. Does this explain, in part, our different view of the covenant with our

Paido -Baptist brothers? Yes, indeed, it does. And actually, that was a part of a quote from John Owen, if I remember correctly.

So, when it says that the covenant of grace used to have the seal of an oath, which—can you reread that?

Because I just go by memory and I don't want to mess it up. All right, let me go back to Anthony's question. Brother Pascal says, 1.

Under types and shadows, it had before the confirmation of promise, which is an oath, it had now the confirmation of a covenant, which is blood.

Yes, well, that's the reason why, in my book, I probably offended a lot of people who love

John Owen because I called him John the Baptist Owen. Knowing that he was not a

Baptist, okay, I know that. He did love John Bunyan, though.

He did, indeed, and he had a very good fellowship with many

Baptists. Crawford Gribben wrote a very good thesis about that, the fellowship, that owing and respect that he had for a particular

Baptist. So, he was close. I've got to have him back on the show to discuss that. I've had

Crawford on the program before. Oh, very good. So, that was because, you know, our ecclesiology is based on the congregational understanding of church.

John Owen, at some point, was a Presbyterian, and he rejected that view, and it had a lot to do with his covenant theology.

So, there is nothing in his commentary on Hebrew, especially in Hebrews 8, with which we don't agree.

The book I was mentioning about Cox, Nehemiah Cox, who was a particular Baptist, was published, and it was joined with that part of Owen's commentary on Hebrews 8.

Because Cox, when he started to write his treaty on the covenant, he had stopped at the

Abrahamic covenant and didn't write anything on the Mosaic covenant. Because he said he was happily prevented to do it because he didn't need to do that because Dr.

Owen had just published his commentary on Hebrews 8.

And he refers his readers to that saying, well, that's our view.

That's what we do believe. And oftentimes, particular Baptists were relying on Owen saying, well, we don't know how he can justify his pedobaptism.

And that's to you, man, to explain that. But we fully agree with his view of the covenants.

And in that quote, what John Owen is saying is that the covenant of grace was not administered by the

El. He rejects that. He says it was just promise. And what is the seal of a promise?

It's an oath. God has made an oath to Abraham, and that was the basis for their receiving of the gospel.

They believed God's promise that was sealed, and the old God said, I swear by myself. He could not swear by anything higher than himself.

But what is the difference with the covenant of grace when we come to the new covenant? It now has the seal of a covenant, which is blood.

So it was not in a covenantal form before. And the other covenants were not the covenant of grace.

They were earthly covenant pointing and subservient to the covenant of grace. But the covenant of grace is, in essence, the new covenant.

So that's why Sam Haranian calls it in his book the new covenant of grace.

So what we call the covenant of grace in reality is the new covenant. It was promised. It was revealed.

But now it is accomplished, and it's sealed, and it's in the covenantal form. And John Owen agrees with that.

And we have to go to our final commercial break. We'll go to Ted in Moundville, Alabama when we come back.

If anybody else has a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

If you live outside of the USA, please only remain anonymous.

If your question involves a personal and private matter, let's say you're in a church where you disagree with their understanding of covenant theology, we wouldn't want you to identify that church.

That would just be one reason why you should remain anonymous. But everybody else, please just give us your first name at least, city and state, country of residence.

We'll be right back. Please don't go away. I'm Dr.

Tony Costa, professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God, like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word, and to enthusiastically proclaim

Christ Jesus the King and His doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.

I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love, as I have.

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

That's hopereformedli .net. Or call 631 -696 -5711.

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York, that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Lindbrook Baptist Church, a

Christ -centered, gospel -driven church looking to spread the gospel in the southwest portion of Long Island, New York, and play our role in fulfilling the

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At Lindbrook Baptist Church, we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired

Word of God, inherent in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation, and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak.

We believe in salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This salvation is based upon the sovereign grace of God, was purchased by Christ on the cross, and is received through faith alone, apart from any human merit, works, or ritual.

Salvation in Christ also results in righteous living, good works, and appropriate respect and concern for all who bear

God's image. If you live near Lindbrook, Long Island, or if you're just passing through on the

Lord's Day, we'd love to have you come and join us in worship. For details, visit Lindbrookbaptist .org.

That's L -Y -N -Brookbaptist .org. This is Pastor Keith Allen of Lindbrook Baptist Church reminding you that by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.

It is the gift of God, not a result of words, so that no one may boast of the

Lord's blessing and the knowledge of himself. Hello, my name is

Anthony Uvino, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corum, New York, and also the host of the

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And finally, if you're looking to worship in a Reformed church that holds to the 1689

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to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, send me an email to chrisarnzen at gmail .com

and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line. And we have, as I promised, a question from Ted in Moundville, Alabama.

I have a critical cultural question for your guest. Can he assess the chances of his hometown

Montreal Canadians against the Carolina Hurricanes in the

Stanley Cup playoffs? Can the Habs make it back to Stanley Cup finals?

You can choose to ignore that if you'd like. That was obviously Ted wasting our time again, but go ahead.

I will respond. I will just say one thing. Go Habs, go! Yeah, this time,

I think, well, we're well on our way to the Stanley Cup.

It's been more than 30 years, but we're still on the record,

I think, 24 Stanley Cups. So, we used to be a very good team. We lost a bit of that brightness, but are on the verge to recovering it.

All righty, we have Bobby in Palmetto, Georgia.

Bobby says, aren't there different views of covenant theology, even from Baptist perspectives?

Yes, yes, yes, indeed, there are. Yeah, and regarding specifically covenantal views, we could put into the

Credo Baptist camp or the Baptist camp, to make it shorter, at least three distinct views.

The New Covenant Theology, the progressive view of covenant theology.

There was a book published, I think 2012, called

Kingdom Through Covenant by Stephan Wellum and Gentry.

What's his first name? Oh, is it Ken? Ken Gentry?

No, not Kenneth Gentry. Anyway, it will come to my mind after the photo shoot.

Ken Gentry is a Presbyterian, right? Yeah, and so this is a similar view.

I don't want to make publicity for another show than yours, but there's a good show, a podcast by Caleb Leonard called

Theology for the Church Podcast. And last year, I think, or maybe it was two years ago,

I can't remember, he did some podcasts with some comparison between the 1689 federalism, which

I defend, progressive covenantalism, Stephan Wellum, and lots of the covenantal

Baptists from the southern, southeastern seminaries. And New Covenant Theology, which had been a thing among Reformed Baptists for some time, but I hope it's like the

Old Covenant, that it will pass away. By the way,

Troy in East Heaven, Connecticut, said it's Peter Gentry that coauthored the book with Stephan Wellum.

Yeah, that's it. Okay, well, let's see, what time do we have? Because I want to make sure, yeah,

I want you now, because we're running out of time, to please summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we go off the air.

Oh, wow. So federalism, it comes from a

Latin word, which means covenant. So it's the covenant, the covenantal view of the 1689

Confession of Faith. And there has been some books that were published.

So there's Mine, the Distinctiveness of Covenant Baptist Theology. There is also

Sam Renian's book, The Mystery of Christ, which is excellent.

It goes through more the biblical theology. Mine is more historical theology, biblical theology using the kingdoms.

So those are very good resources. I think it's not a gospel issue. It's not about both on the both sides of the pedo -baptist and credo -baptist view, our brothers, gospel believers.

But the issue is about who is in the covenant? Are we to baptize our children because they are covenantal children?

What is the church? Who is in the church? How do we get into the church? How is the church distinct from Israel or similar to it?

So those are very important questions to understand Scripture. So I hope people will listen to what

I had to say, won't think that this is about splitting hairs. Those are substantial questions that are structurally important to our view of Scripture and church.

Amen. Well, I would love to have you back on, brother. There are definitely more things that I wanted to talk about, such as the emphasis on why the new covenant is a better covenant and some other issues that really can drive home the issue that we are talking about today.

I want to make sure that our listeners have your websites. First of all, your church website is

P -R -E -C -H -E -L -A -P -A -R -O -L -E dot com.

That's P -R -E -C -H -E -L -A -P -A -R -O -L -E dot com.

And you can get Pascal's book on the distinctiveness of Baptist covenant theology from Broken Wharf publishers.

Go to Broken Wharf dot com, and Wharf is spelled W -H -A -R -F as in Frank E.

Broken Wharf dot com. I want to thank you so much for being such a wonderful guest, Pascal.

I want to thank everybody who listened, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater