December 14, 2016 Show with Doug Van Dorn on “Covenant Theology: A Reformed Baptist Primer”

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 14th day of December 2016 and before I introduce my guest and topic today,

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But today we have as our guest again on Iron Sharpens Iron, Doug Van Dorn.

He is pastor of Reformed Baptist Church of Northern Colorado, and our theme today is going to be another one of his books,

Covenant Theology, a Reformed Baptist Primer. This is a very controversial subject, not only among Christians in general, crossing denominational lines, but even amongst

Calvinists, and even among Reformed Baptists. But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Doug Van Dorn.

Hey, thanks for having me on, Chris. That five dollar thing sounds pretty amazing. Yeah, you're talking about the debate.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, well I hope you can, I would love to see you both of them if you could come out here. And well,

Doug, as we typically do, tell us something about not only your personal salvation, about the religious of your youth, and the providential occurrences that the

Lord brought about in your life to draw you to himself, but then also what led you to the pastorate of Reformed Baptist Church of Northern Colorado, and then you can, at that point, explain something about that.

But if you could, tell our listeners something about your own background. Sure. My family has been

Christians on both sides for three or four generations, I suppose, maybe more in some cases. I grew up in church, came to an awareness of my need for salvation at a really early age, and I've really not doubted that I was saved or anything like that for a good long time.

I went to a Christian college, Bethel College at the time.

Am I still on the air? Yes, you are on the air. I'm not sure why you thought you weren't. Yeah, I heard like dead silence, so I was just making sure.

Well, you are talking, so I don't want to interrupt you. And by the way, when

I'm finding it, it really enhances the audio when I am not speaking to put my own microphone on mute.

Sounds good. Yeah, so I mean, I just kind of grew up in evangelical circles, went to an evangelical

Christian liberal arts college, where I kind of stumbled upon the old Calvinism thing, kind of the soteriology part of it, the five points.

There was a dispensationalist, we'll probably talk about that a little bit today, five -point Calvinist.

He was both on my freshman floor and really got me interested in thinking about really total depravity and predestination mostly.

College dorms will definitely give you education on total depravity. This one wasn't actually too bad, believe it or not.

I had some lifelong friends, and most of them are Christians to this day. So anyway,

I started thinking about those kinds of things and hadn't been trained in Reformed theology at all, and stumbled across some

Reformed guys on this program called the White Horse Inn. Oh yeah. And that's where I got my informal training and ended up going to Denver Seminary here in town.

Yeah, I've had all of those guys from the White Horse Inn on my program, with the exception of Rod Rosenblatt.

I haven't had him on, but I've had Mike Horton on a number of times, I've had

Ken Jones on a number of times, and I've had Kim Riddlebarger on a number of times. Yeah, they're all great guys.

They've taught me so much, I don't even know where to begin, but I'm sure you know the feeling. So as I was going to Denver Seminary, graduated, and really started thinking about the issue of baptism, because there's no

Reformed Baptist churches around, which is kind of what I found myself being at the end of that time. And so I tried as hard as I could to become an infant

Baptist, and I just couldn't do it. So we, knowing nothing about the

Reformed Baptist movement, that there even really was one, we ended up starting a church with the blessing of the kind of Armenian church,

I guess, that we were in. They sent us off, and I still have a good relationship with them to this day, and that's kind of how

I ended up becoming a pastor. I've been there since 2002, and so coming up on 15 years now,

I guess. And tell us something specifically about the Reformed Baptist Church of Northern Colorado.

Yeah, it was just a church plant. It was north of Boulder at the time. We've been in four different locations.

We're renting, as it is so many places across the country, property is really, really expensive, so we haven't been able to purchase anything yet.

And we are a 1689 confessional church. We just joined a brand new confessional association called the

Reformed Baptist Network last month. Yeah, my former pastor on Long Island, Mark Romaldi, and also

Doug Totter, who's also one of the pastors there. They, I believe, joined, didn't they? Yeah, Doug was there.

Mark wasn't able to be there, but it was good to see Doug there. Great, and I believe they joined that network, didn't they?

They did, yep. Okay, great. And let me give our email address right now for anybody wanting to join us on the air with a question for Doug Van Dorn on Covenant Theology or Reformed Baptist Primer.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And please only remain anonymous if it is about a personal or private matter.

Perhaps you are disagreeing with your own pastor on something and you don't want to identify yourself.

We will grant that request, but we would appreciate it if you give us at least your first name, city, and state, and country so we can get an idea of where our listeners are listening right now.

So, going back just briefly to your own testimony, I'm assuming then you are the first theologically

Reformed Christian that you know of in your family. Yeah, that would be the case.

Both my parents grew up, you know, just kind of typical evangelical

Baptist, I guess. Not kind of fundamentalist, not really. Baptist General Conference and, you know, so there's some

Reformed people in those groups, but they weren't. They were just kind of, they didn't really care too much about that discussion either way.

By the way, I would love to see that phrase on a church sign. Kind of fundamentalist, but not really.

That's funny. The Jerry Forwell Memorial Chapel. But anyway,

I'm sorry. They're also, I grew up pretty heavily dispensationalist, so that's kind of maybe where some of the fundamentalism comes in.

Okay, and how did your parents react to you becoming theologically

Reformed? Well, if you know anything about my family, we enjoyed very vigorous evening meal conversations over the course of several years.

They just started dropping like flies, and believe it or not, all of my immediate family have become Reformed.

Oh, wow. Well, praise God for that. Well, you should, since they seem to love debate, you should drag them all out here to Pennsylvania to the debate that I'm having.

Well, covenant theology is an interesting concept because of the fact that you have a

Baptist saying that no Baptist can believe in covenant theology, and you also have

Presbyterians who are covenant theologians who would agree with that. They would say no

Baptist is really a covenant theologian, and of course you have Baptists who are

Reformed saying that they accurately understand what consistent covenant theology really is from the scriptures.

And then, of course, there are divisions even among those subcategories, and you have those who would embrace what is now called

New Covenant theology, those Calvinist Baptist brothers of ours who would say that the

Decalogue was meant only for the nation of Israel, but that nine of the

Ten Commandments are perpetual in the Church because of the fact that Christ reiterated them in the

New Testament, and there are other obvious differences that I don't have the time to go into because you're going to do as much of that as possible, but if you could give us a basic background and definition of your understanding of covenant theology.

Let's see, in the book I just make a pretty simple definition. It's not a technical sort of a definition.

I try to make this book approachable to laity as much as I could, and I've read a couple reviews in the past yesterday just to see how things are going on Amazon with it, and I seem to have, you know, some people seem to at least think that I've managed to do that, so I'm glad about that, but in the book

I just define a covenant as a formal definition of a relationship between two parties, and the idea of covenant theology then would be an extension of that, that God has entered into a relationship with humanity since the very beginning of time, and he's done that through various covenants that have existed from the

Garden of Eden on down to the present day with the new covenant in Jesus Christ. And, obviously, from what

I said earlier in the description of our topic today, you have a

Reformed Baptist primer related to covenant theology because there are

Presbyterian brethren of ours who believe that their interpretation of, or description, or definition of covenant theology would have some differences, obviously, because they baptize infants, they believe that circumcision has been replaced by baptism, and therefore it would include infants and so on, but if you could tell us your understanding of what makes

Reformed Baptist covenant theology unique amongst other covenant theologians.

Oh, that's a tough question. Probably several different answers on it, depending on who you would talk to. I think one of the things

I would say is that, so there's this concept called the covenant of grace that is a theological term that was just made up by some theologian long ago as a way of trying to comprehend the unity of the covenants in the

Bible. So I accept the idea of a covenant of grace, but the way

Presbyterians usually talk about that, and some Reformed Baptists do too, this is more so in older stuff as opposed to the newer stuff being worked on, as some of the

Reformed Baptists have been recovering some of the older ways of thinking about this from our own fathers, our own heritage.

But Presbyterians would say generally that the covenant of grace is the covenant that it extends from the

Garden of Eden after the Fall, all the way through the New Covenant, so that every covenant in the

Old Testament is the covenant of grace, and the New Covenant is the covenant of grace.

And like I said, some of the Reformed Baptists will speak like that. I take the position that the covenant of grace is really the

New Covenant, and the old covenants, covenants in the Old Testament, have continuity and discontinuity with the

New Covenant. So they're, I call them typological, they foreshadow the covenant of grace, but they also have works principles in them.

I would argue that all of them do that. Even the Noah Covenant, at least at the beginning, because he had to build an ark, and if he wouldn't have done that, then there wouldn't have been any salvation.

But nevertheless, they're all typifying grace, and God is extending grace in each of those

Old Testament covenants. So it's not like dispensationalism that, especially the older dispensationalism, where, you know, they would say that people in the

Old Testament, at least at some points in it, were saved by works. That's not the case at all. People have always been saved by grace.

They've always been saved by faith, and I would argue they've even always been saved by faith in Christ, which was the subject of the

Christ book that we talked about a couple of months ago. Now, years ago,

I interviewed Jeffrey D. Johnson. Do you know Brother Johnson? Yeah, I do. Yeah, and he wrote

The Fatal Flaw, and the full title is something,

I can't remember the exact full title, but the subtitle has to do with the refutation of infant baptism.

Right. And he took the position, as best

I can remember, that he agreed with you that the covenant of grace is the new covenant, and that the old covenant is a covenant of works, not because works ever saved anyone, not that the works of men ever saved anyone, but that that covenant wasn't about salvation.

It was about temporal and earthly promises, whereas the new covenant is a permanent covenant that involves eternity.

Do you, and I hope that I'm somewhat accurate, or extremely accurate, in the way

I've remembered Pastor Jeff Johnson's summary of those two covenants, do you agree with that, or would you have any other additions to that definition or changes from that?

Yeah, I think I would nuance that a little bit. I mean, I would say... And I'm sure he would too. Yeah, I think he probably would too.

I would say that old covenants are... They show grace, and they're showing the grace of Christ, but they're doing it on a basis of God looking into the future to see the work that Christ would certainly and necessarily do according to the predestined plan of God the

Father. So they're being saved according to the blood of Christ, but it's being done because God is looking into the future.

That's kind of what Romans 3, I think it's verse 25, is talking about. And so the sacrificial system is a type of the death of the coming

Christ. So, you know, I wouldn't say that they're all works. I would say that they're gracious, and they're works, and they're typological.

All three of those are going on at the same time. Yeah, and the subtitle I just found, it was

The Fatal Flaw of the Theology Behind Infant Baptism and Covenantal Dichotomism.

And we do already have a couple of listeners here. We have, let's see,

I'm getting to my inbox here, and we have

Pastor Ron in Wading River, Long Island, New York.

Let's see here. He says, no dispensationalist ever says that anyone is or was saved by works.

And he also says, isn't it true that covenant theology is basically a theological system based largely on the

Presbyterian Westminster Confession of Faith originating in the early 17th century?

What is the biblical justification for the covenants as defined by covenant theology? The covenants are not identified as such in Scripture, as are the covenants recognized by other systems.

Yeah, there's a lot there. You know, I would certainly, there's no modern dispensationalist that says that anyone was saved by works.

They've changed that. And even if you go back and read the Schofield study notes, you'll see him disagreeing with himself on that.

So you can see why somebody would make that comment, but you can also see if you're reading, you know, the whole thing, why somebody would say that dispensationalists said that people were saved by works.

As far as what, you know, kind of the longer part of that question, can you, can you kind of summarize it for me again there,

Chris? Yeah, he is saying, what is the biblical justification for the covenants as defined by covenant theology?

The covenants are not identified as such in Scripture, as are the covenants recognized by other systems.

Yeah, that's kind of, and I'm kind of confused on what he's asking. You know, that he might be getting to one of the reasons why

Reformed Baptists don't call the Old Testament covenants the covenant of grace.

Presbyterians use that language. Okay, and in fact, that lends itself to his second question.

What is the motivation for Baptists adopting a Presbyterian system of belief?

Well, I would argue that it's a biblical system of belief. You know, even Catholics talk about covenant theology to some degree.

So, you know, my motivation, basically, I'll lay this out at the beginning, is that I've come to see the

Bible as a whole unit, not as two separate, very divergent parts, which some people, it's kind of the way

I grew up, there's some forms of dispensationalism that have seen that, and it's kind of what

I call it a watershed. When you're in Colorado and you're walking on the high peaks, there's a place you can go called the

Continental Divide, and on the Continental Divide, you can literally have one foot on the left and one foot on the right, and all the water that will fall on your left foot will end up in the

Atlantic Ocean, and all the water that lands on your right foot will end up in the Pacific Ocean. Even though you're right there together, it seems so close, there's a watershed, there's a divide between how we understand continuity and discontinuity.

And I'm of the persuasion, that's kind of what one of the motivations for the book, that the

Bible is basically a book of continuity. There's certainly discontinuity in what

Jesus did, we can sure, we'll talk about that in the next couple of hours, but it's a unity, it's, you know, it's a whole thing.

So, and I see the Covenants with regard to the unity of that, in a way,

I suppose it's more similar to the Presbyterians than it would be the Dispensationalists. Well, there are some

Presbyterians who use the phrase that there is one covenant under two administrations.

Do you agree with that concept? Well, so now we kind of need to broaden out a little bit,

I think. Most Covenant theologians, Baptists or Presbyterians, will say that there is a covenant that existed in eternity past, and they'll label that usually something like the

Covenant of Redemption. And the idea is that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit made an agreement with one another.

They defined their relationship between themselves in terms of creating the earth, creating man, and then, you know, however you want to order the decrees, and then finally culminating in the death of Jesus, the

Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. And so, the way I look at it is that that Eternal Covenant, which

I spend quite a bit of time doing some exegesis arguing that it's a biblical covenant, works its way out in history, okay, through first the

Covenant of Works, so the Covenant of Redemption, part of that is to describe the holiness of God and what kind of a character that He has that's defined by the law, and it's defined by, for us as humans, by our relationship to Him and that we're supposed to be submissive to what

He tells us. And then after that, in terms of the covenants working themselves out in history, as they progressively explain more and more about who

God is, they're explaining more and more about the grace that He's going to show in Jesus. So, I would say in answer to the question that there's one covenant, but I wouldn't say that it's

Old Testament, New Testament covenant, I would say that it's the Covenant of Redemption being worked out in various ways in the

Bible, climaxing, culminating in the New Covenant with Jesus, which is really a fulfillment of all the

Old Testament covenants, whether it's the Covenant of Works that He obeys in His own obedience, or it's the, you know, the various promises that are given in the various Old Testament covenants, be it to Abraham or David or Noah, it doesn't matter.

He's the fulfillment of all of those covenants. Well, we are going to a break right now, and by the way,

Pastor Ron in Wading River, you have received, or I should say, you have won a free copy of this book we are discussing,

Covenant Theology, a Reformed Baptist Primer, by our guest Doug Van Dorn, and if you give us your full mailing address, we'll have that shipped out to you by Covenant, I'm sorry, by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for biblebookservice .com, and the book is being given to you compliments of Waters of Creation Publishing, the publishing ministry of the

Reformed Baptist Church of Northern Colorado, so we thank both Doug Van Dorn and cvbbs .com

for shipping out your free book to you, and we are going to be going to a break right now.

If anybody else, and we do have quite a number of people already waiting to have their questions asked and answered, but if anybody would like to join them, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we're going to be right back after these messages with Doug Van Dorn, and more of our discussion on Covenant Theology, a

Reformed Baptist Primer. I'm Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and here's one of my favorite guests,

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Hoping that you can join Chris and me at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, my new hometown.

It is going to be a bang -up conference called the G3 Conference, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the

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Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to a visit to the pastor's study every

Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am

.com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions.

Our time will be lively, useful, sometimes controversial, but never dull. Join us this

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So we hope you begin or continue listening every Saturday 12 noon to 1 p .m.

Eastern Time to Pastor Bill Shishko of a visit to the pastor's study.

And if you just tuned in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is

Pastor Doug Van Dorn, who is the pastor of the Reformed Baptist Church of Northern Colorado.

We are discussing his book, which is Covenant Theology, a

Reformed Baptist Primer. And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And I'll tell you, Doug, we have really got a huge lineup of people already waiting to have their questions asked.

And well, I'm going to ask one more from Pastor Ron for now, and if we could squeeze any more of his questions later,

I'll squeeze them in. He wants to know why covenant theologians are amillennialists.

And I don't think that they are all amillennialists, but what's your comment on that? Yeah, I don't think that they all are either.

For example, I think Dr. James Boyce was a covenant theologian, and he was completely premillennial.

Right. And there's all sorts of guys that are postmillennial.

So the majority of them, I suppose, are amillennial, but I don't think that those two questions are necessarily related to one another.

Right. But obviously, covenant theologians would never be pre -tribulational.

No, no. Yeah, so you would be talking about the premillennialism of Boyce would be along the lines of George Ladd.

So it would be, you know, I guess if you had to term it something, it would be post -tribulational. Yeah, and I know

Orthodox Presbyterians and Presbyterians in the PCA who are historic premillennial.

And even though that would be a minority, I know some. I know some Reformed Baptists who are 1689

London Baptist Confession adherents who are premillennial. And the

Confession of Faith doesn't really, the 1689 nor the Westminster, doesn't really prohibit those other eschatological views, does it?

No, no, that's right. All right, we also have Ted in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

What I can't figure out about the arguments of people like R. Scott Clark, that Baptists by definition can't be

Reformed, is that it would seem logically that the practice of Believer's Baptism over and against Pado -Baptism places the

Baptist further away from Rome. Shouldn't that characteristic enter into the calculus of what is

Reformed and what isn't? Boy, I mean, you're getting into the, you're seeing how different people are defining the word

Reformed. So, you know, the way that I would define

Reformed would be, you know, basically a Protestant confession. You know, that probably may be a little bit too broad, because you might include

Lutherans in that or something. They're Reformed in some ways, in terms of they believe in, confessionally speaking, you know, like you were talking,

Rod Rosenblatt earlier, right? From the White Horse Inn. They believe in predestination, total depravity, and those kinds of things.

I'm not sure where Lutherans stand on Covenant theology, but, you know,

Rome basically has a Covenant theology, and I would think that Lutherans probably do, too.

I know Anglicans do, Presbyterians do, and Reformed Baptists all do. So, you know, where the

Presbyterians are willing to say you're not really Reformed is because of the issue of infant baptism.

And, of course, they get that from their understanding of Covenant theology.

And so, they make the argument that if infant baptism comes from Covenant theology and you don't baptize infants, therefore you can't be a

Covenant theologian and you can't be Reformed. So, I just think that that's a nonsense argument, which is one of the also why

I wrote the book. Right. And some of these terms are, you know, are man -made.

Reformed is not a biblical term. It's a historic term. And many of those who would call themselves

Reformed Baptists, perhaps all of those who would call themselves Reformed Baptists, would legitimize using the term

Reformed because they believe, or we believe, that we took the

Reformation to its logical conclusion. Not that we're not in need of any more reforming.

I'm not saying that we've arrived at perfection or something, but I'm saying that don't you think that those who are from the

Reformed Baptist strain, which used to be called Particular Baptists, have really taken the five solas of the

Reformation even to a more logical conclusion, especially when you're talking about sola scriptura and separating from Rome, if you will, even further?

I mean, that would certainly be an argument that I would make in terms of just, you know, that we didn't take sola scriptura with regard to baptism far enough in the

Reformation. But, you know, if you look at the confessions of faith with the Baptists and the

Presbyterians, they're 90 % exactly the same.

So they're differing on the issue of baptism, they're differing on the issue of church government, but they're not differing on the basic concept of there being some form of unity and covenant theology in the

Bible. Right. And, of course, there are people who agree with us on every jot and tittle, but do not call themselves

Reformed out of choice. They just don't like that label, and some of them don't like the term Calvinist.

And I have a number of friends who agree with nearly everything I believe, but they refuse out of choice not to identify themselves as either

Reformed or Calvinist. Yeah, it's funny. And out here, I mean, I suppose it depends upon where you're living in the country.

Out here we have a lot of brothers that are pastors, they're

Baptistic, they're Calvinistic, they're Dispensational to one degree or another.

And many of them would use the word Reformed. They'd say, I'm Reformed. And so you can see that even there people are using the word a little differently.

So when I use the word Reformed, at least in this book and in my teaching, I'm really trying to root it in the confessions of faith, of which

I stand in that tradition with the 1689 London Baptist Confession. Yeah, and also for those of you listening who might wonder what the church down the road called the

First Reformed Church of such and such town or so on believes, you're going to have a hit and miss there because the

RCA, the Reformed Church in America, which was the Dutch Reformed Church, is largely a liberal denomination today and really has lost most of its

Calvinistic roots or has abandoned their

Calvinistic roots and their moorings. And there are exceptions.

Please, I don't want my RCA friends who are faithful to the Reformed faith into the

Bible to get upset with me about that, but they even know more than anybody that they are surrounded by people that typically disagree with them.

And you have even the Christian Reformed Church has become very liberal, which is why the

United Reformed Church of North America was even formed because, you know, so you're going to have people using that term that we would disagree with strongly on many issues.

Yeah, it's just too broad of a term, frankly. Right. Well, Ted in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, please give me your full mailing address because you have also won a free copy of Covenant Theology, a

Reformed Baptist Primer by our guest, Doug Van Dorn. And we have Osinachi, and I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name correctly, and please forgive me,

Osinachi, if I am mispronouncing it. And if you could email me to let me know if I am or not, and maybe give me a phonetic spelling if I am mispronouncing it.

But Osinachi in Lagos, Nigeria says, Hi Chris, thanks for this topic.

Can you please ask Doug the following? What is the real importance of Covenant Theology to a believer's walk with the

Lord? And number two, is dispensationalism a slight error, or is it a heretical error, given the trial and error mode of salvation?

It seems to espouse, it seems to espouse. Okay, so I'll give you those two questions to start with.

The first is, what is the real importance of Covenant Theology to a believer's walk in the Lord, or with the

Lord? Yeah, there's all sorts of practical implications of Covenant Theology, from the way that you understand the unity of the

Bible, to the way that you understand the working of Jesus in both Testaments, to how you baptize your children, to, you know, and there's all sorts of things like that.

And, you know, and kind of maybe a more abstract way of answering the question is that theology is supposed to be something that drives you closer to your walk with the

Lord. It's not supposed to just be a head trip. And so, if it's not, if it's just a head trip, then

I would, you know, it may not be doing anything for you. But if it's something that's, you know, increasing your devotion, your love, your worship, your praise of Him, then, you know, that's the chief end of man, and I can't think of anything more practical than that.

And Osadachi also wanted to know about dispensationalism.

How serious an error do you think it is? I can tell you up front, as far as I am concerned, that I have dear brethren in Christ who are dispensationalists, who are also theologically

Calvinistic, soteriologically Calvinistic, who I would prefer going to their congregations and sitting under their leadership than even some

Covenant theology churches that I'm aware of. And it is interesting to me that these issues that separate a theologically, soteriologically

Calvinistic dispensationalist from a Reformed Christian very often are not at the forefront of what is preached and taught from the pulpits.

I mean, look at John MacArthur, for instance. Once in a blue moon, he gets a lot of Reformed people upset when he will criticize

Amillennialism and Postmillennialism and Covenant theology, but that's rare, it seems, anyway.

But for the most part, all of us in those camps are applauding nearly everything that he says.

But anyway, if you could comment on your own there. Yeah, for me, the word heresy is a lot like the word

Reformed. And I think in our day, that word is being thrown around too often.

Heresies in the early church were over the central issues of who is Christ, what is God, who is

God, those kinds of things. Very, very important questions of how are we saved.

But in terms of are we reading the Bible heretically to say that I see dispensations instead of covenants, and that's the way that I view the

Bible? It's not a heresy in terms of we're going to make somebody lose their salvation.

Most of my family has been dispensational, still are, and some of them I consider to be the most godly people that I know on the face of the earth.

And Osinachi's last question is, please shed some light on New Covenant theology and the dangers it poses.

He's assuming that you believe that it poses dangers. Yeah, I mean, dangers, you know,

New Covenant theology, I would say on a watershed, in my opinion, it falls on that discontinuity side of the watershed.

It's probably a lot closer to my feet than it is to the ocean. You know, they want to talk about covenants.

They want to, you know, focus on the work of Jesus. Frankly, dispensationalists want to focus on the work of Jesus, too.

So there's differences in how you're going to, at the end of the day, understand especially the relationship of the

Old Testament to the New Testament. And the farther I go along in my study as a pastor and teaching the

Bible, the more I see that that's really a significant thing, but it's not something that's going to, you know, destroy somebody's salvation.

Well, thank you, Osinachi, and you have won a free copy of Covenant Theology, Reformed Baptist Primer.

We thank you for giving us an American address where you have a pastor friend here in the

States who is going to get you those books, because that saves Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service a ton of money.

That's why we typically do not ship out any books, Bibles, or other gifts to overseas listeners.

So we thank you very much for providing that American address, and God willing, that will be shipped out to you within a week or so.

And thank you for participating in the program with excellent questions. And by the way,

Osinachi says that he is a member of the only Reformed Baptist church in Nigeria, which is pretty remarkable.

Yeah, I think I've never met him personally, but I think I know who he is. Oh, really? Uh -huh. Wow. All right.

Let's see here. We've got so many questions. I'm trying to pick listeners that we haven't ever heard from before or haven't heard from in a long time.

And by the way, while I'm looking, I will repeat our email address again. It's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, city, and state, and country of residence.

We have Chris from Runnels, or Runnellis, Iowa.

Runnellis, Iowa. And I could be mispronouncing that also. Can you ask Doug if he would agree with John Owen's comments on Hebrews 8 through...

I'll have to enlarge this. I am going blind. I can't even read the emails that are coming in because I don't know why they're microscopic font sizes.

That might be a lesson for you listening folks, if you could enlarge your email fonts before you send them to me.

Can you ask Doug if he would agree with John Owen's comments on Hebrews 8 verse 6, where he says, and I am paraphrasing, men were saved under the

Old Covenant, but no one was saved on the basis of the Old Covenant. And that's

Chris from Runnellis, or Runnels, Iowa. Yeah, again,

I think I would nuance that. They had to do the things in the Old Covenant that were required.

Let's talk Moses specifically. They had to, first of all, they had to believe in the right object of faith.

That was a requirement of that covenant. And then they also had to do those animal sacrifices.

So to say the basis of, I mean, that can be kind of an equivocal language. But ultimately, and this is what

I was talking about a few minutes ago when I said that God was showing grace based upon what would happen in the future, it was, they were saved by the blood of Christ because those animals were types of what was coming.

So I think generally speaking, I would agree with what Owen is saying there. And thank you very much.

And you have also received a free copy of Covenant Theology, a

Reformed Baptist Primer by our guest. So Chris in Runnels, Iowa, please give us your full mailing address.

I only have Runnels, Iowa. And we'll have Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service ship that out to you as soon as they can.

And let's see here. We have Joe in Slovenia who says,

I'm very intrigued to hear that the priestly covenant is vital for a proper understanding of the continuity of the practice of baptism from Old Testament to New Testament and the answer to why we never find infants being baptized in the

New Testament and a more precise way to parse the legal aspects of the

Old Testament economy, thereby helping us understand why the moral law continues today.

Please, Brother Doug, unpack as much of these aspects as time will allow.

Yeah, somebody's been reading my stuff. Well, your book is somewhere floating around in Slovenia then.

Must be. So he brings out there at the beginning of the question in a way, the

Levitical covenant, and this actually becomes an argument that I think is fairly unique to me.

A lot of Reformed Baptists will base baptism on the New Covenant exclusively, and they'll say, we're under the

New Covenant, and therefore the sign of the New Covenant is baptism, and just kind of leave it at that.

And I don't disagree with that. I actually think that's true. But I ask a different question that I'm not seeing a lot of people ask, which is why was

Jesus baptized in the first place? And I actually give a covenantal answer to that, which is that his baptism was done in fulfillment of the priestly covenant, which

Malachi, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, they all call it the Levitical covenant. Yeah, you brought that up in our interview on baptism in the waters of creation.

Yeah, exactly. And so what I'm doing there is I'm saying that Jesus is actually obeying an initiation covenantal rite ceremony, where the priest had to be clothed and he had to be baptized in order to begin his ministry.

And that's exactly what we find going on with Jesus. He's 30 years old, he's baptized by a priest, he meets all these conditions that could only account for a priestly baptism.

The only one that's different is that he's from the order of Melchizedek. And actually I think that's the reason why Hebrews starts talking about Melchizedek, is because he's not from the

Aaronic line, and yet he's doing all these Aaronic priestly things. How can this be? Well, it's because he's got a priesthood that is greater than Aaron.

So, and essentially what this boils down to for me, in terms of the argument for baptism, is that you hear the paedobaptist saying that the sign of the covenant, that's very important language

Chris, the sign of the covenant in the Old Testament is circumcision.

And I just completely deny that. I think that's bunk. There's a whole bunch of covenants in the

Old Testament, and they all have their own signs attached to them. The Abrahamic covenant was only one sign of one covenant in the

Old Testament. This is, it's helped when you take a

Reformed Baptist view that all of those covenants in the Old Testament are not the covenant of grace, they're their own distinct individual, typological, legal, gracious covenant.

And circumcision was the introduction sign of the nation, but not the introduction sign of the priest into his covenant.

And so, but even if you don't hold to a Reformed Baptist view of that, there's real problems in saying that the sign of the covenant in the

Old Testament was circumcision, because what do you do with Noah? Wasn't he in the covenant of grace on those terms?

And you would have to say yes if you believe they're all the covenant of grace, and yet Noah and his children were not circumcised.

In fact, Peter says they were baptized. So baptism becomes a thread, and so my two books on Baptism and Covenant Theology really are working together to show, you know, a baptismal covenant theological argument that's a little different than what most people have.

So I think that's what the writer was talking about, what he wanted me to discuss a little bit.

And we thank you very much for the excellent question, and you are also receiving a free copy of Covenant Theology, a

Reformed Baptist primer. If you get us your full mailing address as soon as possible, we only have your city and state, so we hope, actually we only have

Slovenia there. So, actually I remember now, we were shipping this to your daughter in Georgia.

We appreciate you also, Joe, giving us an

American address to make it much less expensive for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service to get that book out to you.

So thank you for the great question, Joe in Slovenia, and keep sending those excellent questions over.

We have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who wants to know, isn't it interesting how the

Presbyterian brothers and sisters say that infants are a part of the covenant even if they are unregenerate and unelect or reprobate, whereas the book of Hebrews chapter 9 in verse 15, the writer says, for this reason he, meaning

Jesus, is the mediator of a new covenant, so that since a death has taken place for the redemption of transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.

So therefore, does this not contradict a notion of Jesus mediating for anyone who is going to hell?

Yeah, I mean, that argument is one that Baptists make a lot, and it hasn't won very many, well,

I mean, it's won some Presbyterians over to the Baptist side, but a lot of them it hasn't really done much with.

In a lot of ways, people are talking past one another when they talk about those sorts of things, and there's just, there's assumptions on both sides that are kind of, they're just not allowing us to understand one another.

But don't you think that Hebrews is making it very clear, though, that if Christ is mediating for those in the new covenant, that they will inherit an eternal life?

Yeah, I mean, I think that that's the case. That's, you know, as a Reformed Baptist, that's my position. That's not what a

Presbyterian is going to answer. One of the things I like to point out about this idea of children in the covenant is that people will say that you

Baptists don't like to have children in the covenant, and I would actually say that we do.

There's all sorts of children that are mentioned in the new covenant, and Peter talks about them, and John talks about them, and Paul talks about them, and they're always believers.

He calls my little children children. You're acting like infants and babes.

In fact, I was reading, I think it was Clement of Alexandria this morning, on something completely unrelated, and he brings up this exact same idea of how the children of the new covenant are believers.

And, you know, it's interesting also that the 39 articles of religion of the

Anglican Church that were drafted by Thomas Cramner, a thoroughly

Calvinistic Anglican in the 16th century, he worded the area on baptism very interestingly.

He said that we cannot forbid children from being baptized, but he doesn't use the word infants.

Yeah, that's such an important point, Chris. I equivocate on those two words all the time, and it's just really frustrating.

I've baptized lots of children. I've never baptized infants. I baptize children because they profess faith in Christ. Right, so I actually tell my

Calvinistic Anglican friends that I could agree with everything, nearly everything, in the 39 articles, even on baptism.

I like that. But, C .J., you've won our last copy of Covenant Theology, a

Reformed Baptist Primer, so please give us your full address, and we will have that shipped out to you by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service as soon as possible.

And that is a gift to you from Words of Creation Publishing, the publishing ministry of the

Reformed Baptist Church of Northern Colorado, where our guest is the pastor. And we are going to our station break right now.

We've got a lot of people still waiting for their questions. I'm sorry that we don't have any more books for you, but we appreciate you writing in those questions, and we will get to you as soon as we can after this break.

If you would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. If you would like to join those already waiting, and hopefully we'll be able to get to you before the hour is over, the next hour, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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USA. And we ask of you only to remain anonymous if it's about a personal or private matter that you are asking about.

Perhaps you are disagreeing with your pastor on theology or something like that. We will be right back after these messages with Doug Van Doren.

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Saturday, 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time. Welcome back. We are interviewing today

Doug Van Dorn on his book, Covenant Theology, a Reformed Baptist primer.

If you would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

and this program, this topic certainly has sparked a lot of interest today, because we have a lot of people who are emailing us, and I wonder if we're going to be able to have time to get to them all.

But let's see here. I want to get another listener that we haven't heard from before.

Let's see. We have Howard, and I'm not sure what city and state

Howard is listening in, but you're going to have to get me your full address, Howard, because you are a first -time questioner to Iron Sharpens Iron, and you're going to win a free

New American Standard Bible as a result, compliments of the publishers of the NASB, and it will be shipped out to you by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, so please give us your full mailing address.

But Howard wants to know, have you read Truth or Territory?

A Biblical Approach to Spiritual Warfare by Jim Osman. It is a book by a dispensational

Calvinist, I think, against pseudo -charismatic practices of spiritual warfare, such as rebuking and binding

Satan and preying a hedge around an individual. If you have read it or heard about it, what do you think, or do you know about any other reviews of it?

Oh, I'm sorry, I had you on mute, Doug. Oh, yeah, unfortunately, I've never heard of the book.

Okay, well, perhaps we'll investigate that book a little further and be able to give you a better answer at some point in the future,

Jim. And, I'm sorry, Howard, Jim is the author, Jim Osman. I've never heard of it either, so give me your full mailing address so that we can get you the, oh, we have it right here.

Jim, I'm sorry, Howard in Auburn Hills, Michigan.

Howard in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Well, thank you very much for sending that question.

And, by the way, Howard, and he goes by the nickname Hardy Smith, is pastor of New Covenant Church in Auburn Hills, Michigan, and that is a submitting a question for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Smith, and we will get out to you that Bible as soon as possible.

Let's see, who else do we have? We have another pastor, Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker in Greensboro, North Carolina, and he says,

I've tried as a New Covenant Christian to find the covenant of works in Genesis 128 through 30 and 215.

Seems to me that God's instructions to Adam and Eve is a law. What differentiates

God's law to Adam and Eve and establishes a covenant? Is this a

Caesarian covenant? Yeah, I would say that it is a

Caesarian covenant, as opposed to a royal grant. Those are kind of the two main types of covenants people talk about.

The difference is that in a royal grant, generally the hire of the two parties just kind of gives a grant to a person, like what happens at the end of, or yeah, at the end of the

Flood, the beginning of Genesis chapter 9, God just grants Noah this promise, you know, he'll never again flood the earth, and that ends up becoming a promise to the whole world.

So I would say that it is a Caesarian sort of a thing. One of the things that I think can help people see this idea of a covenant there is that, in my opinion, there's blood that's shed at the breaking of the covenant.

So when Adam and Eve break the covenant, it says that the Lord goes and finds this animal, and he covers them with the skins of the animal.

And I actually take that quite literally. I take the Lord there to be the angel of the Lord, who entered into covenant with Adam and Eve just like he does with everyone else in the

Old Testament. He's their God, as Jacob calls him. It's kind of the focus of my

Christ in the Old Testament book. All these things are kind of circulating around one another.

There's a reason why I've kind of done the work that I've done. So he enters into a relationship with them where he gives them this, you know, this command, and it kind of just follows the same basic pattern that you find of the other covenants in the

Bible. They break the law. There's a punishment for breaking the law, and then there's a sacrifice that takes place that covers their sin and atones for them, you know, in my opinion.

So covenant of works is one of those difficult covenants that covenant theologians don't all agree on it.

Like John Murray didn't really like the idea of a covenant of works as a Presbyterian. I do think that it's a valid idea in the

Bible, and so I kind of uncover that as much as I can in the book. We have

Murray in Kinross, Scotland. How would Doug Van Doren's primer on covenant theology differ theologically from Thomas McComiskey's book?

Thomas McComiskey's book, which sadly I no longer have. Are you familiar with Thomas McComiskey's book?

I think maybe. The name certainly rings a bell, and I think I might be able to picture the front of the cover, but I haven't read it extensively.

Did she say anything about what she wants in particular there? No, this is Murray, not

Mary. Murray does not explain anything.

Hey, Murray, obviously I'm thinking that you must be still listening. Email us another clarifying email about specifically what you mean by the question and perhaps tell us something about Thomas McComiskey's book, and I'm sure that I'm pronouncing that in a very different way than you would.

Let's see, we have Jeff in Clinton Township, Michigan. Please explain what replacement theology is and how covenant theology is sometimes accused of replacing the

Israel of the Old Testament. I was also taught that covenant theology will always lead to anti -Semitism, and that's really an absurd accusation.

I think a slanderous one. I'm not saying that Jeff is absurd. Yeah, I understand that. Yeah, I've heard the same thing.

I have a relative who, if she's listening right now, I love her to death. She accuses me of replacement theology, and that term actually is sort of slanderous too.

The idea seems to be that when you presuppose that God has a people in the

Old Testament and that that people is the physical nation of Israel and that's it, then you come along and you say the

Church is now God's people, and so they're replacing

Israel as if God no longer cares about the Jews or something like that. And so, you know, one of the hallmarks of dispensationalism, and this is according to Ryrie, you know, he gives like three of them, and the very first one is that there's this major distinction that has to be made between Israel and the

Church. That's like, that's what sets the thing apart from covenant theology.

He says all dispensationalists agree on that. So the accusation then is that the

Church is replacing Israel and God doesn't, you know, He no longer cares about Israel.

And the way I respond to that is that according to Paul and Paul's reading of the

Old Testament, there was always two Israels in the Old Testament. There was a spiritual

Israel and there was a physical Israel. That's why he says in Romans 9, not all who are descended from Israel are

Israel. There's two Israels in the Old Testament. One is physical and that people is typological of a people within a people.

So you have a spiritual people that are also physical Israelites in the

Old Testament, but you have many physical Israelites who are not spiritual Israelites at all. That's why

Jesus would call the Pharisees, your father is the devil. You know, imagine what they would have thought as they heard him say that, as they're saying our father is

Abraham. And so covenant theology will come along and do things like look at the way that the word ekklesia, which is the word for church, is used in the

Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. What you end up finding is that that's a word that's used all the time throughout the

Old Testament for the gathering of the nation of Israel. And so Jesus is purposely using a term there when he says upon this rock

I will build my ekklesia, I will build my church, that has rich Old Testament background to it.

And there's other language that we find in the New Testament as well that does the same thing, so that we're called true

Jews. The church is called true Jews in Romans 2, or it's called the

Israel of God in Galatians 6, or it's called the circumcision in Philippians and other places.

All of these terms are Old Testament terms that are identifying the church somehow as having a relationship to Israel.

So covenant theology would kind of see it in terms of an analogy of an acorn and a tree, so that the

Israel of the Old Testament is the acorn, and it grew into the tree, which is the church.

Now there's similarity and dissimilarity, isn't there? There's a, you know, you can't look at a tree and just kind of by looking at the tree go, this came from an acorn.

It's very mysterious how the growth works and stuff, but there's an organic unity that exists between the two.

So if there's a unity between the church in terms of that kind of an analogy, then there's no way it replaces anything, because it is that thing.

Now it's not, the church is not physical Israel. Nobody's ever said that the church is physical

Israel, as if Jews no longer exist. The church is made up of those who profess

Christ and are believers. They have a visible expression in local assemblies, and not everyone who confesses

Christ is a Christian in terms of being saved, but there's that continuity there that exists between those things.

So that's how I would answer the question of replacement theology. It's not replacing anything at all.

Right, and it's also interesting to me that I don't know how, and in fact

I have to ask the next time I discuss this with either a messianic Jew or a dispensationalist brother or sister in Christ, especially if they use that term, that pejorative term replacement theologian in regard to those outside of their understanding,

I wonder how they view Romans 11, where the

Gentiles who are becoming Christians are described by Paul as being a wild olive that we're grafted in, and if we are being grafted in, if they are saying that the church is not the fulfillment of Israel, then what are we being grafted in?

Are we being grafted in the nation of Israel? They wouldn't say that. Yeah, exactly, and that's a really important metaphor,

Chris, because that language of the vine there, and Jesus uses that, I'm the vine, you're the branches, but that comes out of Isaiah 5, and Isaiah 5 calls

Israel the vine. Right. And again, it's another deliberate connection back to the

Old Testament to say that this thing in the New Testament is somehow organically related to that thing in the

Old Testament, and it can't be physical in terms of biological. Like you said, nobody's claiming that, and so therefore it has to be something else, and that something else is the spiritual aspect of it.

Yeah, and also, who is Peter talking to in 1 Peter 2, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own profession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

He can't be speaking about the physical ethnic people, can he? I mean, isn't he speaking to Christians?

Exactly, and another one, that's another one, that goes back to Exodus 19, where Israel is called a royal priesthood, a holy nation.

I mean, all of these terms are taken straight out of the Old Testament, and that's something that's brought out not anywhere near enough by people who are looking at these passages.

It's not just being made up by the New Testament authors. It's deliberate. And let's see, we have another listener.

We have David in Ada, Ohio. David asks, what does covenant theology hold to as far as the end times position?

Now, we already addressed this briefly, 1 Corinthians 15, 20 through 16, but now

Christ has been raised from the dead. The first fruits of those who are asleep were since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive, but each of his own order.

Christ, the first fruits, after that those who are Christ's at his coming. Then comes the end, which he hands over the kingdom to the

God and Father, when he has abolished all rule and all authority and power.

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death.

The end comes after the resurrection with no time for a seven -year tribulation or a thousand -year reign.

How does covenant theology explain this? Yeah, I would say that it doesn't.

That's a different issue. Like we said earlier, most covenant theologians are probably amillennial, and I would read that as an amillennialist myself, but covenant theology doesn't address that question.

And of course, the postmillennialists would say it definitely would be leaning in their direction.

Yeah, premillennialists would say the same thing. In terms of just the resurrection in general, all of us, even dispensationalists, have the same view that we're going to be raised in Christ.

So getting to that question earlier about heresy, that's a major thing that's in the

Apostles' Nicene Creed about being raised with Christ, and no one is denying that.

Well, thank you, David, from Ada, Ohio, and keep listening to Iron Trepans Iron, and keep spreading word about our program wherever you may travel.

And we really have been blessed with a lot of listeners who are very enthusiastically asking questions about this topic.

And let me repeat our email address so that in the event we can squeeze some more of you in before we run out of time, we will do so.

It's chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

And please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the good ol'

USA. And only remain anonymous if you are asking about something personal and private, like perhaps you're disagreeing with your own pastor on theology or something like that.

We're going to be going to our final break right now, and if you'd like to join us, once again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

So don't go away. We're going to be right back with Doug Venner. I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries. The New American Standard Bible is perfect for daily reading or in -depth study.

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And we are in our final half hour of today's interview with Doug Van Dorn.

We are discussing his book, Covenant Theology, a Reformed Baptist Primer. And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. I'm going back to the final two questions that Pastor Ron of Wading River, Long Island, New York, asked earlier that I didn't get to read because we had so many people sending emails in.

And you already touched on this, but perhaps you could add anything to it that you might not have said.

Is there a future for national Israel in the eschatological plan of God? And what do you say about Paul's statement in Romans 9, verse 4, that the covenants pertain to Israel?

Yeah, the second part, the covenants come through Israel. There's no question about that.

They're not being given to Gentiles in the Old Testament. They're being given to Israel, and that seems to be his point.

It's from them that these things come. As far as national Israel goes in the future, again, that gets to the question of eschatology.

And it's really curious to me that so many people are kind of equating covenant theology with a certain eschatology.

That's interesting to me, because like we've been talking about, covenant theology, properly speaking, doesn't necessarily answer that question.

It does talk about how there is some kind of a relationship between Israel and the

Church, so it's kind of a natural extension to want to ask those questions about eschatology, but different covenant theologians have come down differently on that.

And in fact, even within amillennialism, just as an eschatological system, there's differences of opinion on that.

So some amillennialists will say that there is a future for national Israel, and others will say that there isn't.

You know, Kim Riddlebarger says that there is, and he's a complete covenant theologian.

Yeah, and there are optimistic amillennialists who believe that either most or all of those who are ethnically

Jewish when Christ returns will become born -again Christians by his grace, and there are obviously post -millennialists who have varying degrees of viewing that.

And I even know of some post -millennial theonomists who will say that although they don't believe that the

Israel that we see in the Middle East today is a fulfillment of prophecy, they will say that God has obviously, being

Calvinist, they believe that God sovereignly brought that about, and that there may be a reason for that we don't know, perhaps the localization of many people of that ethnicity in one region where there will be massive evangelism going on in the future, and masses will come to saving faith in Christ.

But obviously, since these things aren't happening yet, we don't know specifically the details, but there are, like you said, there are differences of opinion even amongst amillennial and post -millennial people.

Yeah, who are all covenant theologians. And, you know, very few people outside of dispensationalism within the

Reformed community, within Reformed Christians, among Reformed Christians, would actually say that God is no longer doing anything with ethnic

Jews. I mean, that would be some kind of a bigoted bias that they have imported into their theology, and it also would mean that they're blind to what's going on around them.

There are Jews coming to Christ all the time. Yeah, you know, that reminds me of the guy's question earlier about replacement theology, and he finished it with this idea of antisemitism, which you kind of touched on right there as well.

And have there been antisemites who have kind of been covenant theologians?

I mean, I'm sure there have, but I just read the New Testament, and all of the disciples were biological

Jews. He's been saving Jews, biological Jews, since the very beginning.

I'm friends with some of them, personally. To say that, you know,

God no longer cares about physical Jews is just, it's something that theology doesn't teach.

Right, and just to be fair, I have heard from theologically

Reformed brethren in the UK who say there is something really disturbing going on amongst quote -quote covenant theologian

Christians there in regard to replacement theology, where that actually is a term that they use for themselves.

For instance, in the United States, I don't know anybody who is a covenant theology

Christian who calls themselves a replacement theologian. I don't know if you do.

I've never met one. I've never met a Calvinist. I've never met one either, no. But I spoke with a brother in the

UK who is laboring there to evangelize the

Jewish people, and he says there are some Calvinistic groups among Anglicans and other groups, and I'm going to be very careful not to broad brush, but who are actually using the phrase replacement theology, and who mean it in a way that we would thoroughly and completely reject.

So, I don't want to act like it doesn't exist, this mindset, but it's something that's a lot rarer than is being assumed by a lot of people, wouldn't you say?

Yeah, and just from my own perspective and even the way that I wrote the book, given my own background and how many personal friends

I have are dispensationalists, I don't approach this topic polemically in terms of I want to somehow destroy somebody's dispensationalism.

I try to make it a very positive presentation of what I believe, and you have to interact with the opposite views, but you don't have to do so in such a way that is unfair or is demeaning or is even going to some of the lengths of some of the questions of it being heresy or anything like that.

Just, I think that covenant theology is a better way to read the Bible than dispensationalism, and so I want people to see why

I think that, and I believe dispensationalists are my brothers, and this anti -Semitism is just...

you're not getting it from any covenant theology that I'm aware of. I don't know where it's coming from.

There are a handful of loopy people out there that I have read, and I think it's a minority of people, but there are people who believe that there are no ethnic

Jews today and things like that, which I think that kind of rhetoric is a nonsensical waste of time, because there are people who identify themselves that way anyway, and you have the same obstacles for evangelism before you, so why even go into some ridiculous things like that, you know?

I mean, it's, you know, like, these are just nothing but the ancestors of Russians, Russian Gentiles, who centuries ago adopted

Judaism or something, but... People that believe in the flat earth today, too.

We have Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, and I know that you have touched on this already, but he says,

Are Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians... Are Reformed Baptists and Presbyterian covenant theology similar in their view of the

Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants? Um, I would say to answer that, that even within, talking

Presbyterianism for a minute, even within Presbyterianism, they're not all the same. So that you got arguments among Presbyterian covenant guys of,

Is this a covenant of works? Is this a covenant of grace? And they disagree with themselves.

For this particular Reformed Baptist, you know, we've kind of broad -brushed this a little bit, that most

Reformed, most of the newer Reformed Baptists who are actually the older Reformed Baptists, and what I mean is, there's been kind of a rediscovery of the way that the guys who wrote the 1689, who also happen to write a lot about covenant theology, believe it or not, they've been rediscovering their writings and have come to see that these guys actually said some things that maybe some more modern

Reformed Baptists were not aware of, because the more modern Reformed Baptists were reading

Presbyterians and developing their system based on that. And so, this is where you get this difference between,

Is the Abrahamic covenant the covenant of grace? Or is the Abrahamic covenant typological of the covenant of grace, which is the new covenant?

You know, things like that. The same would then would be true of Moses as well. And what would you have to say about the

Levitical and Davidic covenants? I view those two covenants, first of all, nobody talks about the

Levitical covenant, and David is marginalized. I mean, he's mentioned in most covenant theologies, but maybe given a short chapter, but not very much.

I view those two covenants as almost like guardians, so you can picture like the two cherubim that are sitting on top of the

Ark of the Covenant. One is a priestly covenant, one is a Davidic covenant, and their purpose was to guard the

Mosaic law, and to make sure that the people would keep it, and to make sure that if they broke it, that there was a way that atonement could be made for breaking it.

So those are both post -Ten

Commandments covenants, and their purpose is to help the people guard them.

So I try to help people think about those three covenants as Moses was the greatest prophet, so I call it the prophetic covenant,

Levi is the priest, that's the priestly covenant, and David is the king, that's the kingly covenant, and all of a sudden you have in those three covenants, prophet, priest, and king, which is

Calvin, and many others have pointed out, these are the threefold offices of Jesus. And when you say that, and all of a sudden you're tying it to covenant, and you go, well, now wait a minute.

So what that means is that Jesus' obedience as a prophet, as a priest, and as a king are all tied directly to covenantal obedience.

And we have Bebe in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, in summary, what is your reaction to the federal vision movement who believes that all those who are baptized into the covenant are

Christians, but being a Christian is not equivalent necessarily to being among the elect?

They will say that reprobates are also true Christians in that they have been baptized and are identified with the covenant, but they are not guaranteed that they are of the elect, nor are they guaranteed of the eternal life, if they abandon covenant keeping.

I'm not familiar that 1689 Federalists teach that. No, no, no, no, not the 1689

Federalists. The federal vision, Auburn Avenue, Presbyterian. Oh, I'm sorry. I misheard that.

Well, you know, my view is, and this differs from some of the higher

Calvinists, I guess, that my view is that we're supposed to baptize upon profession of faith, and not everybody who professes faith is among the elect.

They think they are at the time, and those who baptize them hopefully think that they are at the time as well, or they wouldn't do it.

But, you know, a good example of this in the Bible itself is in Acts 8, where Peter has baptized

Simon the sorcerer, and then Simon the sorcerer, he turns around and he says, you never believed this in the first place.

You only did it in order to make money, and may your money perish with you. And the idea is that he actually calls

Simon a believer there. Well, believer and elect are not being used the same way in that passage as they might be in another passage.

So the Bible is using terminology sometimes that's not as precise as some of our systematic theologies want it to be.

So we can't baptize the elect, because how in the world could you ever know if somebody is elect?

We want to, we hope that they're elect, and that's why they're professing faith, and we're trying to see if their profession is real as far as we can tell externally, but we can't get inside somebody's heart to find out if they really mean it.

Otherwise, how would you ever get to the point where you'd baptize somebody? So, I mean,

I think that the federal vision there is pointing out something that's true, but then they go to the, you know, to the lengths of what really all

Presbyterian systems do, where they just end up getting in trouble with, kind of, the

Church becomes more automatically than those who are even professing faith.

You get people that are, you know, they just have been baptized, and for them, that's a whole bunch of infants who may not be elect at all, and to me, it just becomes a mess.

I know they don't think that that's the case, but as a Reformed Baptist, I think that it just gets you into all sorts of trouble.

Right. Well, Reformed Baptists, and correct me if I'm wrong, or at least if I am not representing you, because I'm also a

Reformed Baptist, the way that I see it, and the way many Reformed Baptists I know see it, is that only those who are regenerate are truly a part of the covenant, and when we baptize someone that later turns out to be a false convert, we would not say that they were ever truly in the covenant, nor would we say they were ever truly

Christian. The Federal Visionist folks, the Auburn Avenue Theology folks, say they were truly in the covenant, and they were truly

Christian. Right, and I think one of the problems with this is that there's a third word here, the word

Church, that becomes a synonym for covenant. If you're in the Church, you're in the covenant.

And of course the problem is that the Church has an invisible aspect, which is the elect, and it has a visible aspect which doesn't necessarily include the elect.

The wheat in chairs. But if you say that the Church is the covenant, then you end up going that direction that they go, and you really have to, because the

Church is different than the covenant. The Church is not the covenant. The Church is the place where the covenant comes, but it's not the covenant.

Right, well in one sense though, wouldn't you say in contradiction to our landmark Baptist friends, that the invisible and universal

Church are or is only comprised of those born again.

The outward physical Church is not. Right, right, exactly, exactly.

And that it is, right, and that's the goal as a Baptist, and actually it's the goal as a

Presbyterian too, in terms of when they baptize adults. There's no Presbyterian who's just going to go around just baptizing adults willy -nilly.

They're going to go, and they're going to want to know, well are you confessing the faith like the Ethiopian eunuch did?

Do you understand what it is that you're confessing? They're going to want to know certain questions before they baptize, and they're not just chucking water on the

Vikings in order to convert the whole town to Christianity. So you know, this is something that it's funny, because Presbyterians kind of bring that up.

I've seen it many times, and it's like, well you guys do the same exact thing when it comes to adults. I hope.

Well yeah, that's why we even have the divide amongst Presbyterians over paedo -communion.

Yeah, yep. And believe it or not, I don't know if you saw the debate between Dr.

James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and Greg Strawbridge, who is a federal visionist

Presbyterian, and embraces what has been nicknamed the

Auburn Avenue Theology. He will baptize the unbelieving spouses of believers, because...

Yeah, I think that is perfectly consistent with his world view.

Right, but it's dead wrong though. I think it's completely wrong, but it's consistent with his world view.

Right, he realized when someone from the audience asked him, well I'm not saying he realized it just then, because he actually said, when somebody in the audience asked the question during the audience

Q &A, do you baptize unbelieving spouses who are married to believers, he said, he said, yes

I do agree with that, and I do that. He said that he did. And it's interesting though that he backtracked a bit and said, if they are saying, well

I want to honor this Jesus of my spouse, so I would like to be baptized because this is the faith of my husband, and I want to honor

Jesus. He kept like saying something to that effect of honoring Jesus, and I want to get to know Jesus. Well that's not really a comparable thing.

It would be that if the spouse said, I do not believe in Jesus, nor will

I ever believe in Jesus, but I'm just being obedient to my husband, so baptize me.

That would be more in line with that consistency, wouldn't it?

I completely agree with you, Chris. Completely agree. You know they talk about household baptisms, and they want to go to infants all the time, but they never want to go to like the grandma who's in the house, and the three brothers that are in the house, and the 13 children that are in the house that are ages 18 down to three, you know.

Like, are they baptizing all of these people against their will in the New Testament? Just because that's what you do, you have to baptize the household, and I think what

Greg Strawbridge is showing there is that even they recognize that, well, in those households there was probably some sort of submission going on, you know, of wanting to honor the

God of my father or something like that. It's not just they're doing it against their will. Right, and you know, so therefore it was really not as consistent as it may have appeared originally.

Exactly. I want you to have the next five minutes to really summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today about this subject.

You know, like I said starting off, I grew up in a different system.

I grew up with Clarence Larkin, kind of early 1900s dispensationalism.

With all those charts? Oh yeah, I love him, man. He's the chart man. I like, you know, his spirit is actually pretty good for the most part.

He's not blasting on his opponents all the time. He's trying to give a positive presentation for his own view, and I respect that about him.

I think I've come to believe that he's wrong. There's certainly listeners that are probably tuning in right now that think, no,

Clarence Larkin is right and you're wrong. And one of the things that I want to communicate is that as we talk about something like covenant theology and dispensationalism, for me, while it's important, and I think that it has some real ramifications, as we said earlier, for how you understand the

Bible, how you understand unity and discontinuity in the Bible, how you understand

Christ in the Old Testament, all sorts of things like that. I think those are really important questions, but they're not like deal -breakers in terms of Christianity.

And honestly, I would like to see Christians behave towards one another better than they have been on issues like covenant theology.

So, I tried to give a positive presentation in my book for what I believe is true.

You know, I interact with both Presbyterians and Dispensationalists at appropriate times to give what

I think are, you know, better answers. If I didn't think it was a better answer, then

I wouldn't believe it in the first place, right? So, we can disagree within the Church on these kinds of questions.

There's always been room for that, even as there is in eschatology. And by Church, I mean the broader

Church. But, you know, I'm a confessional Christian, and my confession is covenant in the way that it approaches

Scripture. I think that it's a right thing. I think that it's a

Biblical thing. I start every chapter in the book off with a Biblical explanation, rather than some kind of an historical theology explanation of, well, my father's believed it, so I believe it.

Or, you know, a systematic explanation of, well, you need to believe this because it helps make sense of the Bible.

I think those are true, but, you know, I want my beliefs to be as Biblical as I can.

Hopefully I'm refining them as I go along in age. I'm not right about everything that I believe, but, you know, and if I come to believe

I'm wrong, I want to have the humility to change it. At this point in time, I believe covenant theology is the best way to read the

Bible, and it's been extremely helpful for me. And actually, you know, some of the questions, funny that some of these questions have been talking about eschatology, and for me one of the reasons

I really have liked covenant theology is because it's kind of helped me stay away from all that.

Kind of strange, but I mean, when you grow up in dispensationalism, every book you read is about how

Jesus is coming back, you know, next week. At least the dispensationalism I grew up in. It's all about the newspapers and reading the latest happenings in terms of the end of the world, and I just got so weary and so tired of that.

And covenant theology has grounded me more in what has already happened in the Bible as opposed to me going around speculating about things that I may or may not be right about in the future.

And of course, I'm sure you agree with me to repeat that there are a great number of our dispensationalist brethren who we agree with wholeheartedly on soteriology that would not be prone to the newspaper gospel, or the newspaper eschatology,

I should say, that are not even focusing primarily on that, although they may bring it up, that the main message that they are preaching is the life -saving gospel of Jesus Christ.

And at least that is my experience with brethren who are dispensationalists who are soteriologically in our camp.

Like John MacArthur, I can say that the pastor of Wading River Baptist Church on Long Island, who sponsors this program, that church is identified as a dispensationalist church, but it's also thoroughly

Calvinistic. And I have hardly ever disagreed with anything that I've heard from that pulpit, because I happen to actually edit their radio program,

River of Life, which airs on a radio station out on Long Island. They're a client of mine, and I can listen to those sermons and hardly ever hear anything that conflicts with my belief system.

You know, what you're saying there, Chris, I think it's great, because in the circles I grew up in, soteriology played a backseat to dispensationalism.

And what you're pointing out is that there is a group of people, and I have some friends out here that would be the same way, that soteriology is more important to them than dispensationalism.

And I think that that's a better way to think about it. And it should probably be the way it is with covenant theology too.

How are we saved? You know, who is it that saves us? Those are more important questions than what we're talking about today.

Well, I know your website is dougvandorn .com. That's d -o -u -g -v -a -n -d -o -r -n .com.

I thank you so much for being a part of the program today, Pastor Doug, and I look forward to you coming back very soon. Thanks a lot,

Chris. And I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. We look forward to hearing from you and your questions for our guests tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.