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 Deneau 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 Deneau, 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 Trip and Zion Radio, Pascal Deneau.

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. It's 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 a 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, who 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, 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 PrecheLaParole .com. And we have a YouTube channel that has the same name. That's YouTube .com slash PrecheLaParole. 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 Reform. 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.

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, you know. 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 about 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, 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.

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 this, 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 dot com. Chrisarnsen at gmail dot 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 and 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 God.

We are also devoted to living out the one another commands of scripture, loving, encouraging and serving each other as the body of Christ. 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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Contact us today at heartsforthelost .com. That's heartsforthelost .com. Now have a heart and go share your faith.

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 Coram, 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 Coram, 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 Coram 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. That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, that you heard about them from James White on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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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 sent 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 go 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 that offspring, it's the hope of the future Messiah who will come and save us, who will come and redeem us.