April 1, 2021 Show with Dr. Nathan Busenitz on “Long Before Luther”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 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 in 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, Lake City, Florida, 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 Thursday on April Fool's Day, the 1st of April, 2021, and remember, folks, if you're playing a prank on a friend, family member, or loved one on April Fool's Day, make sure that no one gets physically hurt because, as the old saying goes, those kinds of things are only funny until somebody is seriously injured and then they're really hilarious.

No, I'm only kidding. This is a wonderful day for me because I have been wanting to interview my guest for quite a long time.

As soon as his book actually came into print, I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of two or three years ago,

Long Before Luther, Tracing the Heart of the Gospel from Christ to the

Reformation. That is a book by our guest today,

Dr. Nathan Busenitz, who is Dean of Faculty and Associate Professor of Theology at the

Master's Seminary, the seminary in Sun Valley, California, established by John MacArthur of Grace To You Ministries and the pastor of Grace Community Church there in Sun Valley, California.

This is an important subject to me, as many subjects are important to me that I discuss in this program, obviously.

I would say that they're all important, but this has got an extra level of importance, being a former

Roman Catholic and somebody who has been personally involved in arranging live, public, moderated debates with all sorts of representatives of different religions and so on, but probably primarily the debates that I have arranged over the years.

In fact, not probably. I'm certain that most of the debates that I've arranged over the years have been with representatives of Reformation theology, such as Dr.

James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, who has conducted most of the debates I've arranged, and Dr.

Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary is another. They have debated

Roman Catholics, some of the very finest that Rome has to offer in modern -day apologetics, and this is a very important subject to me, because this is the issue that Rome claims is their ballpark.

They believe that this is the ultimate proof that they are the true Church, and they believe falsely,

I might add, that it is the Achilles' heel of Protestantism, and that is the history of the

Church and the history of the Gospel dating back to Jesus Christ, but it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trumpet's Iron Radio, Dr.

Nathan Bucinitz. Chris, thank you so much for letting me be on the program.

It's a delight to be here. It is my pleasure, my brother, and first of all

I want to give my listeners our email address right away. It's chrisarnson at gmail .com

if you have a question, especially if it involves the contrast between Roman Catholicism and Biblical Christianity, or any subject involving the

Protestant Reformation and the Gospel and the Reformers and the Gospel, and the Church Fathers and those that existed before the

Reformation, which is actually the primary theme of our subject today, which is the primary theme of Dr.

Bucinitz's book, Long Before Luther. But our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Before we have you give your own personal testimony of salvation, which is a tradition on Iron Troupe and Zion Radio whenever we have a first -time guest, tell us something about the

Master's Seminary, where you serve as the Dean of Faculty and Associate Professor of Theology.

Yeah, thank you, Chris. The Master's Seminary is actually celebrating its 35th year this year, and we, by God's grace, have seen many men be trained for gospel ministry.

Our focus is on the text of scripture and in developing both sound doctrine and biblical convictions in the lives and hearts of the men who train here.

And then we have the joy of watching them graduate and go out across the country and around the world to shepherd

God's people in local congregations all over the globe. So we train pastors, and we train them to preach the word, to reach the world, and to teach others also.

So that's what we do here at TMS. And if you want to investigate more about the

Master's Seminary in Sun Valley, California, go to TMS .edu.

That's TMS for the Master's Seminary dot edu. Well, as I just mentioned before our little discussion here on the

Master's Seminary, it's a custom here whenever we have a first -time guest on Iron Trip and Zion Radio that they give a summary of their salvation testimony, including the religious atmosphere in which they were raised, if any, and the providential circumstances that our

Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them.

So let's hear your story. Yeah, of course, and it's always a joy to share the work of God in our lives, and we recognize that the

Gospel is, in fact, a work of God for which we take no credit, but for which we give him all the glory.

I had the privilege of growing up in the Church. In fact, I grew up at Grace Community Church out here in Los Angeles under the preaching ministry of John MacArthur.

And so I grew up in a Christian home and heard the Gospel from the earliest time that I can remember.

As a young child, I remember praying a prayer of asking

God to save me, but I didn't really understand the implications of the

Gospel in terms of what it really means to follow after the

Lord Jesus Christ. And it was when I was in junior high and high school that the implications of the

Gospel became clear to me. And really, in high school I had gone to private

Christian schools for elementary and junior high school, but in high school I transferred into our local public high school, which was about 2 ,500 students at the time.

And it was that experience, those four years there, that the Lord really put my faith to the test.

And it was coming out of that experience that I really came to love apologetics, because I encountered so many different fellow students from different walks of life, those claiming to be atheists.

There were many in my school who were Mormon, others who were

Roman Catholic, some who were part of the LA Church of Christ, which is a cult movement.

Oh yeah. Yeah, so it was engaging in conversations with people in the classes that I had there in high school that really put me in a position where I was forced to go back and search the

Scriptures and understand why I believe what I believe and to defend that faith. And so,

I believe the Lord saved me very early on, but the real understanding of my faith and the testing of my faith took place in high school, and I praise the

Lord for that experience, because it was that experience that gave me a desire to pursue apologetics and pursue a greater level of theological understanding as the truths of the

Gospel come under attack, than to defend those truths and to reach out with the

Gospel of Truth to those who are perishing around us. So that's kind of a summary of how the

Lord saved me, and then after high school, going into college and pursuing ministry as a calling.

But it was in those young years that the Lord, in His grace, reached down and saved me.

Well, you've got to tell us about how you wound up in what some who have the aspiration to be a professor would view as a dream job, being a part of the faculty at, of all places, the

Master's Seminary, the seminary founded by John MacArthur. How did that all happen? So, my dad,

Dr. Irv Busenitz, was actually a faculty member at Talbot Seminary back in the mid -70s, and he was brought, or he came, he was sent by Talbot, actually, to come to Grace Community Church in 1977 and to start seminary training here on the

Grace Church campus, along with Dr. MacArthur and others who were here.

And that Extension campus, then nine years later, became the Master's Seminary in 1986.

So I grew up around the seminary and actually grew up not only knowing who the professors at the seminary were, but having the privilege of knowing them personally.

And so after I graduated from college and believed that the Lord was calling me into full -time ministry, there was no other school that I wanted to go to other than TMS.

And it was because I knew the integrity of the men who taught here. I knew the quality of their lives, and I knew

I could trust not only what they were telling me, but I knew that it came from lives of credibility that backed up what they were teaching in the classroom.

And so I came to TMS. I thought that the Lord was going to send me into either pastoral ministry or maybe missionary, a missionary context somewhere else around the world.

But in His good providence, He opened doors of opportunity, actually, for me to serve at Grace Community Church for a number of years.

And then I began teaching church history in a part -time capacity for the seminary, and then eventually in a full -time capacity teaching historical theology.

So I tell my students that I'm often stuck in the past, and I love it, because I love seeing what the

Lord has done over the last 2 ,000 years of His working through the church in the world to advance the gospel and the kingdom of His Son, the

Lord Jesus Christ. So that's a little bit of a snapshot, but in answer to your question, how does somebody pursue a calling like that,

I think it starts with just asking the Lord to use you however the

Lord wants to use you, and then going to a place where you can be prepared for whatever ministry opportunity

He might have, and then trusting Him with where He leads. Great. I've got to ask my very dear friend,

Ron Glass, if he knew your father. I'm not 100 % sure what years

Ron was a professor at Talbot, but he was a professor there, and I'm fairly certain it would have been in the 1970s, because when

I met Ron, it was in the late 1980s, when he was already the pastor at that time of Wading River Baptist Church in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York.

He has since retired and moved to South Carolina, Greenville, I believe. But I've got to ask him about that, because Ron actually is a very dear man and dear friend who was instrumental in my radio program relaunching in 2015 after a four -year hiatus that we were on, after the death of my wife.

He and Wading River Baptist Church were faithful financial supporters of this program.

We never would have been able to get off the ground and get launched without his support. So I've got to ask him about that.

I was just going to say that Dr. MacArthur did his

MDiv training at Talbot, and many of our initial faculty here at TMS were guys who either graduated from Talbot or who taught at Talbot.

So my guess is many of them would probably remember your friend Ron. Great. Well, as I already said at the outset of the program, this is a vital topic we are discussing today, and it involves a vital book that everyone should get their hands on, no matter what side of the

Tiber River you are swimming in, whether you are

Protestant or Roman Catholic. You've got to get a hold of this book that we are addressing today, long before Luther, and I think that,

God willing, it should make a very convincing argument to you about the rich heritage of Reformational teaching even before the

Reformation, and that is something of great dispute between Roman Catholics and Protestants.

What was the catalyst that led you to say, I've got to get this book into print?

Yeah, thanks Chris. So it actually goes all the way back to, I think it was the year 2007, we were doing a series of blog articles on a blog associated with our church's ministry here, and it was,

I believe it was right around Mother's Day in 2007 that Francis Beckwith, who had written quite a number of apologetic books from an evangelical perspective, he was at that time the president of the

Evangelical Theological Society, made an announcement that he was removing himself from that role because he was no longer going to identify as an evangelical, and instead he was going home to Rome.

And he explained how he had grown up Roman Catholic, and now he had become convinced that Roman Catholicism was a better choice than Evangelicalism, and for some reasons related to his family, he had decided that that was the time that he was going to make this all official and become

Roman Catholic. And we actually wrote some articles on, or published some articles on that blog, some by John MacArthur, some by others of our pastoral staff, responding to this move on the part of an evangelical leader, at least an evangelical academic, to quote -unquote go home to Rome.

And in the comment section of that blog, these articles lasted for about a week, daily articles, and in the comment section

I engaged in conversation with a Roman Catholic gentleman whose name was

Jerry. He never gave me a last name and it really doesn't matter, but we engaged in conversation about the claim that Rome represents a more historic understanding of the

Gospel, and in particular Jerry made the claim that as far as Protestant doctrines go, they did not exist prior to 1500, that was his claim.

And I asked him, well what doctrines are you talking about, and he said specifically sola scriptura and sola fide, so scripture alone and faith alone, and those of course are the two cardinal doctrines of the

Protestant Reformation. Scripture alone is the formal principle of the Reformation, it's the principle out of which everything else is formed, and sola fide is the material principle of the

Reformation, it's the substance of the Gospel. And the two areas where Rome is most vociferous in opposing?

Oh, no question about it, no question about it. The authority and sufficiency of scripture on the one hand, and then the essence of justification and an understanding of the

Gospel on the other. And so he and I engaged in a week -long interchange, and it was very respectful in terms of its tone, it was not hostile, it was not angry, but we engaged in a healthy debate about whether or not you can find or trace evidence for sola scriptura and also for sola fide in the

Pre -Reformation Church. That got me so interested in those two topics that I went on to do further study, in fact did my

PhD dissertation in tracing the elements of the

Reformation doctrine or the distinctives of the Reformation doctrine of sola fide through Pre -Reformation

Church history, which is what then, in a distilled version, became the Long Before Luther book.

And I was so grateful that Moody was willing to publish it and that they would be willing to publish it in 2017, because that's the 500th anniversary of the

Reformation. So for me it all kind of brought things full circle, and that's how the book was born.

So you just clarified to me that it was four years I've been trying to get you on the show! Yeah, I guess so, and I am really grateful to be here.

I'm sorry it took me so long to actually come on, but thank you again for the opportunity.

Oh, thank you for accepting. In fact, I've got to interject here so that Josh Bice and Virgil Walker don't get upset with me, that Nathan Bucinitz is one of the key speakers, over 20 speakers, that will be featured at the upcoming

G3 conference. The G3, if you were wondering what that stands for, it's

Grace, Gospel, and Glory. I may have gotten them out of order, but those are the three words that they stand for, the three

G's. And this is a conference that I have attended every year for the last three years.

This will be my fourth. I'm so looking forward to it. I'll be manning an exhibitor's booth for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio at this conference.

This conference has meant more to me and has more of an impact on my radio program and my walk with Christ than any conference that I've ever attended.

And I'm not exaggerating, that is not hyperbole. I urge you to take a train, plane, or automobile, however you can get there, parachuting down into Atlanta to this conference.

And why don't you tell us a little bit, I don't know if you know your exact subtitle that will be your theme of teaching and preaching there, but the umbrella theme is,

Christ is supreme over all. Do you know yet what specifically you'll be speaking of?

Yeah, I don't know my specific topic yet, but I am really excited about the theme.

I'm excited about the theme not only from a historical perspective, but also in terms of its implications for the present.

Historically speaking, the Reformation really is the result of that conviction, that Christ alone is the head of the

Church, and if Christ is the head of the Church, then His Word is the authority for the

Church, and if His Word is the authority for the Church, then the Gospel in Scripture is the true

Gospel. So it was a commitment to the supremacy of Christ as head of the

Church that really is the catalyst that explains the Reformation, going back even to Wycliffe and Huss, and even the

Waldensian movement before them. And then in the present day, especially at a time when governments are shutting down churches, and they're obviously doing so under the guise of certain health restrictions and these kinds of things,

I think it's just such a helpful reminder for pastors, church leaders, and faithful believers to remember that Christ alone is the head of the

Church, not the government. And even the Puritans give us a historical precedent for that, because they were often persecuted because they taught

Christ alone, not the King of England, is the head of the Church. And in our day, we need to remember that Christ is the head of the

Church, not the government, not the health department. Christ is the head of the Church. So it's better to obey

God than to obey men, as Peter said in Acts 5 .29. So I'm really excited about the

G3 Conference and the theme, and I love your charge to your listeners.

If they can make it there to Atlanta in October, it would be a joy and a delight to see them there at the

G3 Conference. Yes, actually September 30th through October 2nd. In fact, they have a pre -conference event,

I believe, on the 29th of September. Okay, yeah, great. Thank you. And just to give you an idea of some, it would take me so long to read the entire speaking roster that we'd be out of time and the show would be over by the time

I was finished. But speakers include Stephen Lawson, a man who

I believe is the greatest preacher alive on the planet Earth, Dr. Conrad M. Bayway, a personal friend of mine since 1995, who is going to be returning as a guest to this program,

Paul Washer, John MacArthur, Anthony Mathenia, who happens to be

Paul Washer's pastor, another extraordinary preacher that is largely unknown to most

Christians today, even probably most Reformed Christians, and he is extraordinary, Hensworth Jonas, he has preached at the church where I am a member and I've seen and heard him preach at the

Banner of Truth, Michael Riccardi, who's going to be my guest in the not -so -distant future,

Justin Peters, who's been a guest here many times, Joel Beakey, who's been a guest here many times,

Phil Johnson, who's actually going to be my guest again next Tuesday, the 6th of April, James White, my dear friend since 1995,

Bob Kauflin, who is also going to be on the show, he's going to be on the show on May 19th, which is a

Wednesday, and I could go on and on, and this is an event that you don't want to miss, go to G3conference .com,

G3conference .com. We're going to return to our discussion on Long Before Luther, with our guest

Nathan Buthanus, right after these messages, and remember folks, if you have a question, send it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA, only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away, we'll be right back with Nathan Buthanus.

Hi, I'm Phil Johnson, host and executive director of Grace to You, the media ministry of John MacArthur.

I hope you plan to join me and Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, for the

G3 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Thursday, September 30th through Saturday, October 2nd.

The theme this year is Christ is Supreme Over All. My friend Chris Arnzen and I will be joined by several of our other friends, including

Votie Balcom, Justin Peters, Daryl Bernard Harrison, Virgil Walker, and James White.

More than 20 other speakers will be joining us, and the lineup this year includes my pastor, John MacArthur.

For details, visit g3conference .com, that's g3conference .com.

Chris Arnzen and I hope to see you September 30th through October 2nd at G3 2021.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Our guest today for the full two hours, if you just tuned us in, is

Dr. Nathan Bucinitz, and we are addressing his book, Long Before Luther. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Obviously, at the heart of the divide between the

Reformers and Rome, and between Biblical Christians, basically, and Roman Catholics that are loyal to the dogmas of Trent, the core issue is the area of justification.

And it is Rome's claim that this idea of sola fide, justification by faith alone, is something that was a 16th century novelty.

Nobody believed it before Luther, and in fact Luther introduced, in their opinion, that is

Roman Catholic apologists, a number of things that are novel into the church that were never before believed or practiced in the history of the church until the 16th century.

But is justification by faith alone an invention or a recovery?

Yeah, well, you're right. Not only do modern Roman Catholic apologists make that claim, but even in the 16th century, the opponents of Luther and Calvin and others made a similar claim.

And the Reformers, and we're specifically speaking of Luther and Melanchthon and Calvin and Beza and guys like Martin Chemnitz and others,

Knox, who were part of sort of the foremost group of Reformers that we think about, their response was to say, we're not inventing anything new, we're not innovating, we are recovering something very old.

And they sought to demonstrate that first and foremost by looking to the

New Testament itself. And so they grounded their defense primarily in the

Scriptures, which of course is consistent with their belief that Scripture alone is the highest authority for all matters, especially those things related to faith and doctrine.

And so they make their defense first and foremost from the pages of the

New Testament, the exegesis of the Bible itself. But they didn't stop there.

As a secondary line of defense, they argued that the early

Church Fathers, really the Church Fathers all the way up until Luther would have said all the way up until Bernard of Clairvaux, who really technically isn't a

Church Father anymore, he's a medieval scholar. But they argued that their understanding of the

Gospel, that is the Reformers' understanding of the Gospel, was consistent with and in line with what

Church leaders throughout all of prior Church history had asserted based on their collective understanding of the authoritative truth of Scripture.

So they went back to the Bible first and foremost, but they also argued that what they were saying was not something new on the pages of Church history, but rather a recovery of that which had been taught before.

We do have a listener with a question. His name is Grady, and he is a very faithful listener and financial supporter of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

He is from Asheboro, North Carolina. And Grady says, Greetings brothers.

If I'm understanding you right, your book goes back in history further than Wycliffe and Huss.

Is this correct? I find that astonishing and look forward to getting a copy. Yes, Grady, thank you so much.

That's a great question. The answer is yes. Actually, the book goes all the way back to the

Apostolic Fathers, starting with Clement of Rome, who wrote in the 90s of the 1st century, and then including guys like Polycarp and others.

In fact, there's an appendix at the back of the book that has citations from probably two dozen or so Church leaders who lived in the first 1 ,200 years of the history of the

Church. The book doesn't actually get to Wycliffe or to Huss, or even to the

Waldensian movement. It stops before that. It gets up to Bernard of Clairvaux in the 12th century, and then stops right around there.

With the Waldensians and with Huss and with Wycliffe, their emphasis was more on the authority of Christ and the authority of Scripture.

This book is focused primarily on the substance of the Gospel, and we see both of those things in the

Reformation, an emphasis on both the authority of Scripture and also the substance of the

Gospel. But yes, it goes back long before Huss and Wycliffe and the other pre -reformers.

Well, Grady, guess what? You have just won a free copy of Long Before Luther, Tracing the

Heart of the Gospel from Christ to the Reformation, thanks to the generosity of our friends at Moody Publishing, and specifically

Janice Todd, who put that all together. And also thanks to our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com,

who will actually be shipping the book out to you at no expense to you or to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

So please, Grady, make sure we have your full mailing address so that you can get your copy of Long Before Luther from CVBBS .com.

This area is probably most complicated as far as my own interaction with Roman Catholics and witnessing debates and arranging debates.

It's most complicated because of the prominence of the place of baptism in the

Roman Catholic Church. Every Christian should believe that baptism is vitally important, but obviously

Rome elevates it to a whole new level of it being required for regeneration, which in some ways makes absolutely no sense because we are at the stage.

And, of course, those that gathered at the Council of Trent would never have believed what

I'm about to say and may have called for the execution of those modern Catholics, including the current

Pope, that believe that Muslims and non -Christian

Jews and Buddhists and Hindus and even some agnostics and atheists will all inherit heaven if their lives are in the hands of God.

They are lived according to the light they have been given. But tell us about that fly in the ointment of baptism.

Was this something that, as Romans claimed, was universally believed by the Church as far back as we could trace the extra -biblical data?

Was it always believed to be salvific baptism? Yeah, that's a great question, Chris. So the issue of baptism is a little bit complicated, and I don't deal with that particular aspect very much in the book.

What I'm looking at in the book primarily is the focus on justification. What is it that the

Church understood justification to be, and how is it that justification, when does that take place, and how does that take place in the life of a believer?

With regard to the issue related to baptism, this is where the principle of sola scriptura becomes so important.

And I tell my students this in our Church history classes many times each semester, that if Scripture is our authority, which is what the doctrine of sola scriptura teaches, it's also what the

Bible teaches about itself. 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, God is our authority, therefore

His inspired Word is our authority. And I think of even Jesus in Mark chapter 7, who made it so clear that Scripture is the authority over tradition, not the other way around.

That when we think about Church history, we always have to evaluate

Church history against the lens of what the Bible teaches. And the

Bible is very clear that we are saved by grace through faith apart from works, and that water baptism is the symbol of what the

Spirit does in regeneration at the moment of conversion. Baptism does not bring the remission of sins.

Water baptism symbolizes the remission of sins, which takes place at the moment of salvation.

And there's many biblical passages that we could look at, even 1 Peter chapter 3, where Peter makes it clear that it's not the removal of dirt from the flesh, it's not the physical water that brings salvation, but rather the cleansing of your conscience, which is something that the

Spirit does at the moment of conversion. I think maybe the clearest biblical example is

Cornelius in Acts chapter 10. Oh yeah, that's a great one. Yeah, who received the

Holy Spirit, because some who teach baptismal regeneration taught that you didn't receive the

Holy Spirit until after you received water baptism. And Acts chapter 10 is just so clearly the opposite.

Cornelius received the Holy Spirit, he was clearly saved, justified, regenerated, and it was then that Peter said, oh, these men have received the

Holy Spirit, who can then prevent them from being baptized? So the biblical order is, we are saved, we are regenerated, we have the remission of sins, all at the moment of conversion, and then subsequent to that, we are baptized in water as a symbol of what

God did for us at the moment of conversion. Now, as we get into church history, there is some confusion about baptism.

There is some confusion about when someone should be baptized.

You have the introduction starting in the 3rd century and then becoming more prevalent in the 4th century of infant baptism.

And then you also have some confusion about what baptism accomplishes. And there were those in the early church who taught that water baptism is what produces the remission of sins, but that's not biblical.

And so, one of the things that Protestants need to understand, and it's actually one of the joys of understanding that scriptures are authority, is that we can be critical of church history when church history departs from what the

Bible teaches. And we should be, because scriptures are authority, not church history. At the same time, what

I find so interesting is that even among some of the early church leaders who would have held to some version of baptismal regeneration, they were very inconsistent in that, because they simultaneously teach that we are justified by grace through faith apart from works.

And so there is a theological inconsistency in some of the church fathers with regard to how they view baptism.

And, you know, even some of the Nicene and Post -Nicene church fathers, like Augustine and others, said you don't have to be baptized in order to be saved, you just have to desire to be baptized, because the desire to be baptized shows that you've truly been converted.

So there is some complexity to the question that you asked about baptism in particular.

What I, again, tried to bring out in the book is more related specifically to the doctrine of justification, and it's fascinating to see a consistent refrain from many early church leaders regarding their understanding that we are justified by grace through faith apart from any works.

The way they tried to make that work with baptism is they said, well, baptism is not a work.

And I think we would look at that and say, you guys are being really inconsistent on that point. And that's where we would appeal to Scripture, just as the

Reformers appealed to Scripture, and we would say, although we appreciate the testimony of church history, here's one area where Scripture makes it clear that some in church history departed from the biblical paradigm.

Yes, it's interesting that Rome clings to the idea, as do many even within our own circles of fellowship in the

Reformed faith, but Rome clings to infant baptism, and yet the earliest extra -biblical document that we have to catechize

Christians is the Didache, and infant baptism is nowhere to be mentioned in that document. Yeah, that's right.

The Didache, coming from the end of the 1st century or early 2nd century, was, as you said, really almost a book of Christian ethics intended to catechize baptismal candidates and probably also used to just inform people who were new to the

Christian faith about what the Christian faith looks like in practice. It has a very interesting passage on baptism, and you're right, there's no mention of infant baptism.

It seems clear that it was a believer's baptism that was practiced, and it makes it very clear that it was baptism by immersion in that particular part of the

Didache as the preferred mode of baptism. Well, one of the areas that is claimed by Rome, as you even mentioned in the outset of the program, that Rome claims is a 16th century novelty, an invention, is sola scriptura.

But isn't that how Luther and the Reformers really brought clarity to the scriptures by going back to what the scriptures taught and cutting through the inventions of Rome?

It was Rome that were really the inventors of novel ideas throughout the centuries before the

Reformation and after, and sola scriptura, even though Christians do not throw out all tradition and extra -biblical writers and writings, but we believe that the scriptures are the sole infallible authority over the church.

Doesn't that help to bring clarity to major issues that divide the

Reformers in Rome and the heirs of the Reformers today? Yeah, absolutely.

So, you're right, we do value tradition as Protestant, tradition just from our

Latin word that means that which is handed down, and there are customs that are handed down from one generation to another, and when we study church history, really, that is the study of the church's tradition of the things that were handed down.

The question is, what is the higher authority? Is tradition of an equal or greater authority than scripture, or is scripture the higher authority over tradition?

And that's where Mark 7 becomes such a helpful passage, that's where Jesus confronted the Pharisees, because they had elevated the traditions of men above the word of God, and Jesus rebukes them for doing that.

And the Roman Catholic Church has done the same thing, they've elevated the traditions of men above the word of God.

In the Catechism, it presents it as if tradition and scripture are on equal authority, but in practice, they elevate the traditions above the scriptures because they use tradition as the lens through which to interpret the scripture, and they are willing to distort the true understanding of scripture in order to keep their tradition.

Actually, we have to go to our midway break, and if you could pick up right where you left off, if you could make a note where you left off there, because we have to go to our midway break.

And if anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

Please be patient with us, this is the longer than normal break, please be patient with us, and we'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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Before we return to our discussion on Long Before Luther with our guest, Dr. Nathan Bucinitz of the

Master's Seminary, we just have a few important announcements to make. First of all, please don't forget about the

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Dr. Nathan Bucinitz, our guest today. Go to g3conference .com to register, g3conference .com.

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That's also the email address where you can send in a question to our guest today, Dr. Nathan Bucinitz.

And once again, we are addressing his vital book, a very important book, that should be in the hands of anyone listening, everyone listening, whether you are

Protestant, Roman Catholic, or neither, and you want to understand not only what the

Bible truly teaches about the gospel, but what history has to say about this important teaching, even before the

Protestant Reformation, long before Luther, tracing the heart of the gospel from Christ to the Reformation. And again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And one of the things, Nathan, that is troubling about this day and age, even though we are delighted that Roman Catholics and Protestants have the freedom to interact and disagree in a respectful manner without fear of persecution from the governing authorities, at least in most places in the world, obviously where Christians are being persecuted.

It's rarely because of a violation of Roman Catholic teaching or belief, except perhaps in Central and South America there are probably places where that does happen.

But we have a freedom and a liberty to be honest about these differences, and yet the evangelicalism of the 21st century is so contaminated with a heretical level of ecumenism that would basically be teaching that these matters, and it might be even given by some of these pastors, preachers, teachers, scholars, theologians, they may even say that the differences are important, but they wouldn't bring them to the level of being of salvific importance, even when it comes to the gospel.

But this is a tragedy, isn't it? Yeah, Chris, you're right in it.

It really all comes back to that fundamental principle that Scripture must be our authority in all things, and Scripture has to be an authority over the spirit of the age, in the same way that Scripture has to be the authority over tradition.

And going back to that passage in Mark chapter 7 where Jesus rebuked the

Pharisees because they had elevated their own religious traditions above the Word of God, Jesus makes it clear that if God is our authority, then

His Word must be the authority over all aspects of life. And it is tragic to see contemporary evangelicals succumbing to this ecumenical spirit of the age that says, well, we're just going to downplay doctrine in an effort to try and just get along, and sort of the pluralistic approach of, well, hey, as long as it's good for you, and it's very postmodern in the way that it's presented, but as long as something works for you, then who am

I to say that you're wrong? The reality is the authority of Scripture is an authority over the pluralism of our day.

It's an authority over our opinions. And so when we, as Bible -believing

Christians, say to someone who does not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, when we say to them, unless you believe, you will perish, or when we say to them, there is only one name under heaven by which you may be saved, the name of Jesus, or when we say to them that Jesus Christ alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the

Father apart from Him, we do so on the basis of biblical authority.

And so it's that biblical authority that gives us the platform as Christians to say with confidence that if you are to be saved, you must believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ, and that the biblical gospel is a gospel of God's grace, meaning undeserved favor.

It is granted through faith, meaning not on the basis of our works, but simply because we look to Christ and embrace

Him in saving faith, and it is given to us on the basis of what

He completed in His finished work at the cross, which is why we reject the notion that our good works could contribute to our salvation in any way.

It's on the basis of biblical authority that we take our stand on the truth of the gospel.

And so that principle of Scripture's our authority above all else, that principle governs how we think whether we're talking about issues related to the

Reformation or whether we're talking about issues related to the present day, a commitment to the authority and sufficiency of Scripture is at the heart of it, which then leads to a commitment to the purity of the gospel, a gospel of grace apart from works.

Okay, we have a question from Mike in Monroe, New York. Can your guest elaborate on other

Roman Catholics who sought reform and saw the corruptions, as did

Luther, who did not follow him as far and in fact stopped well short of reform, even where many were sympathetic to Luther?

Yeah, thank you, that's a good question. I assume that the question relates to those living in the 16th century who were sympathetic with some of the things that Luther and the other

Reformers were saying, but were not willing to break with Roman Catholicism. The corruption of the

Roman Catholic system in the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th century, even prior to that, going all the way back, really, to the 8th and 9th centuries, the corruption of the

Roman Catholic system was very evident to everyone living in medieval Europe. They saw the corruption, and many of them were critical of the corruption, including those like Desiderius Erasmus, the well -known 16th century

Dutch humanist, who was involved in actually producing the first critical

Greek text of the New Testament. Yeah, he debated Luther on the bondage of the well, did he not? He did, yes, and he definitely took the wrong side of that issue.

He was more semi -Pelagian in his approach to salvation. Luther was more Augustinian.

But Erasmus, I think it was 1509, published a book called The Praise of Folly, in which he criticized the

Roman Catholic system for the evident corruption that was obvious to all. And yet,

Erasmus and others did not follow Luther in breaking away from the

Roman Catholic system. And in that sense, although they recognized the corruption, they were unwilling to take the bold step of saying, with the spirit of 2

Corinthians 6, that we must come out and be separate from that which is clearly antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So, to your caller's question, yes, there were those who recognized the corruption, and yet stopped short of the courage that it took to break free from that in an effort...

You know, Luther's initial intention was to reform the Church from within, but when it became obvious that that was not possible, then breaking away from the

Roman Catholic system became necessary. And it was Luther who coined the term evangelical.

He referred to his churches as the evangelical churches, which, of course, is from the Greek word euangelion, which means gospel, the gospel churches.

And then it was Tyndale who brought that term over into English. And so we, as evangelicals, are those who celebrate the purity of the gospel in contrast to the works -based, sacramental, synergistic system of Roman Catholicism.

Well, you also... Oh, by the way, Mike, make sure you give us your full mailing address in Monroe, New York, because you have also won a free copy of Long Before Luther.

And give us your full mailing address so CVBBS .com can ship that out to you.

That's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com. Look for that in the return address section of the package in the mail.

So we want to thank again CVBBS .com for shipping these books out. And also, again, obviously, we want to thank

Moody Publishers for providing us with the books to begin with. You address in your book the church before Augustine.

Now, I know that Calvin owed a great debt to Augustine, and many people have viewed

Augustine as basically the grandfather of Calvinism, if you will, a man who was very right on the money when it comes to soteriology, but very, very wrong on ecclesiology, at least from the view of heirs of the

Protestant Reformation. But obviously we could put too much emphasis on Augustine as if he was the inventor of these things as well, but he was not, was he?

No, he was not the inventor of these things. You're right. He did have a significant influence, especially soteriologically, on both

Luther and Calvin. But the Reformers were careful, again, to go back to the

Scriptures as their primary line of defense. And as an evangelical

Protestant, whenever I engage in discussion with Roman Catholics, and this would be something

I would encourage your audience to do as well if they're talking with family members or with co -workers who are

Roman Catholic, that when they engage in these discussions, that they always take things back to the

Word of God, because it is the Word of God that the Spirit uses to convict the heart.

It's the Word of God that the Spirit uses to illuminate the soul. And so we always want to go back to our authority, which is

Scripture, first and foremost. After that, then it's appropriate to start talking about the

Church history. But if we go only to Church history, then we circumvent or circumnavigate our true source of authority, which is the

Word of God. And when we look at Scripture, there are so many passages, Chris, that make it clear that we are saved by grace through faith, apart from works.

Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 is one that, of course, comes to mind. Luke 18, the tax collector who went home justified, having done nothing but cried out for mercy.

Romans 3, 4, and 5, how for Abraham, his righteousness was credited to him on the basis or as a result of his faith, on the basis, of course, of the grace of God.

Galatians 3, 8, Philippians 3, where Paul says that he was not saved because of the righteousness of his own derived from the law, but that he needed a righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.

Hydas 3, 5 -7, that we're not saved on the basis of works. You know, one of my favorite verses, actually, in this regard, is

Romans 11, 6, where it talks about how if we are saved, it says, if it's salvation is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.

And even Paul's great appeal in Acts 13, 38 and 39, where he says that it is through faith in Christ that we have forgiveness and that we are justified from that which the law of Moses could not justify us.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. So when the Reformers are saying, hey, we believe that sinners are justified by God's grace through faith in Christ based on the finished work of Christ, they're doing that from the platform of the

Scriptures. It's the Scripture that is their authority. And then secondarily, they're looking to the

Church Fathers. But first and foremost, they're looking to the Word of God. And if we're to be consistent as Christians, and not only that, as Protestants, if we're going to be consistent with that principle of sola scriptura, we have to base our defense in what the

Scripture reveals. We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, and he's asking something that actually has a lot of bearing on what you just said.

How would you differentiate between sola scriptura and solo scriptura, where there are

Christians who believe that we should reject all creeds and confessions, not read commentaries, not read the great works of the

Reformers, but only read the Bible and hear the teaching and preaching of our own pastors?

Yeah, I appreciate that question. There are groups that want to reject all of Church history as somehow being a corruption, but that's, in my mind, a clear overreaction.

First of all, it's internally inconsistent to say that you're going to listen to contemporary voices, but you're going to reject

Christian voices from previous centuries. But not only that, when we study the history of the

Church, what we find is that there are many voices from genuine believers in the centuries, throughout the centuries, who are looking back to the

Word of God just as we also look back to the Word of God. And we need to be like Bereans, Act 1711, we need to search the

Scriptures always to examine if the things that they are saying are indeed consistent with what is revealed in the

Word of God. But there is great value in studying what these

Christian leaders, what they learned as they were investigating the same truth that you and I investigate when we look to the

Scriptures. And I would argue that it is an overreaction.

It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater to say, well, just because there are some corruptions in Church history, we have to get rid of all of Church history.

A much better approach is to say, no, we can learn from Church history both the good and the bad, but all of Church history must be subject to the authority of Scripture.

It must all be evaluated through the lens of Biblical truth. Yeah, you would have to... Go ahead,

I'm sorry. I was just going to say you'd have to have a view of either yourself, your pastor, your denomination, or what have you, that they or you are infallible and inerrant in order to believe that we should reject everybody else except for your own knowledge and understanding of Scripture and your pastor's teaching and preaching.

I mean, you'd have to have some view of their inerrant infallibility. Yeah, that's exactly right.

So, scholars talk about what they call Tradition Zero, Tradition One, and Tradition Two. Tradition Two is the

Catholic view that says Scripture and Tradition are on equal authority. Tradition Zero is the let's -get -rid -of -Church -history -all -together view, which, actually, the

American cult groups like Mormonism and the Jehovah's Witnesses are a

Tradition Zero kind of group. They don't want Church history to be part of what they're doing because they believe that through Joseph Smith or through some other false prophet that there's some new movement that arises in, you know, the 19th century.

We would hold to what we call Tradition One, which is to say that we appreciate

Church history because we appreciate learning from those who, from Christians who lived before us, but we always will subject that tradition to the authoritative standard of Scripture.

And so, the Reformers were Tradition One, and Evangelicals in the last 500 years since the

Reformation have consistently held to a Tradition One standpoint, which, again, says we value

Church history, but we always subject it to the authority of the Word of God.

Amen. And, by the way, I hope that an Anglican brother is listening who was a guest of mine recently,

Paul Castellano, because during an off -air conversation he misunderstood me and thought that I was advocating solo scriptura, which obviously is a confessional

Reformed Baptist who has a high view of the great creeds and confessions of the

Church that would obviously be incompatible with somebody who believes in solo scriptura.

And, in fact, if you are an advocate, which you should be if you're a Christian, of solo scriptura, that the

Scripture is our only final authority over the Church that is infallible and inerrant, the

Scriptures themselves teach the importance and vital and essential place of teachers in the

Church, and that there are qualifications that those teachers must meet, and, therefore, we should not throw away teachers in the

Church just because they're dead, or just because they're not necessarily in our own local congregation, even if they're living in contemporary and they happen to be biblically sound.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And you see in places like 1

Thessalonians 5, 19 -22, Paul saying, look, you're to examine everything carefully, and that is the biblical standard.

We always take what we hear, that which claims to come from God or to represent

Him, we always take that and we compare it with what we know to come from God, namely the

Scriptures, to see, as the Bereans did, again, Acts 17 -11, to see if these things are so.

That which accords with Scripture we embrace, that which is contradictory to what

Scripture reveals, we reject. And that's what it means to be a Bible -believing Christian, that's what the

Protestant Reformers were advocating in the 16th century, and that's what we need to be advocating today.

Well, you bring up another vital aspect of justification in our discussion today.

You bring this up in your book, a justification, a divine declaration, and if you could, please differentiate between what the

Church historically has taught, the biblically faithful Church, that is, and what the

Scriptures teach on that divine declaration on forensic justification.

Compare it and contrast it to the serious and damning heresy that Roman Catholics very often, especially those in the apologetics arena, will broad -brush all of Protestantism and Evangelicalism as those that teach cheap grace, easy believism, living like the devil, living any way you please until the day you die and you're still going to heaven because you said a prayer when you were eight at Bible camp, went forward for an altar call when you were 15 at a crusade.

You know, these things are not the true teachings of the Reformers. They're not the true teachings of Protestantism throughout history, other than aberrant groups that rose up later on, like, for instance, in the 19th century with Finney and so on.

But if you could, let us know what your thoughts are on that. Yeah, well, that's an important question, and a question, actually, that we could probably answer for a long time.

But you mentioned forensic justification. So when we think of the Reformers' understanding of justification, some of the distinctives of that Reformation understanding of justification are an understanding that justification is a forensic declaration of righteousness, meaning that it is a declaration by God that the sinner is righteous in the courtroom of Heaven.

So it's a forensic declaration of righteousness. And then secondly, a second distinction is that justification is distinct from sanctification.

Sanctification is the progressive growth in holiness that is seen in the life of a believer.

Justification is the momentary and immediate declaration of righteousness that takes place at the moment of conversion.

And then thirdly, the imputed righteousness of Christ. That the reason the sinner, at the moment of conversion, the reason the sinner can be declared righteous by God is because the sinner is clothed in the righteousness of Christ, and so positionally the sinner is righteous because he's hidden in Christ.

And this is a result of his union with Christ, which, of course, takes place at the moment of conversion.

And so positionally, sinners are justified. They are declared righteous by God. Justification, the

Reformers taught, is simultaneous with regeneration.

Regeneration is the Spirit's work of cleansing the heart, of creating a new creature in Christ, a new heart, so that the sinner who hated

God now has the capacity to respond in love for God. The sinner who did not believe has the ability now to believe, all because the

Spirit has done this work of regeneration in the heart. And that creation of a new heart being born again now will begin to evidence itself in a changed life.

And the Bible calls that evidence fruit. It's the fruit of repentance. It's the fruit of the

Spirit. And it's seen in actions and attitudes that please God. So a true believer, one who has genuinely come to saving faith, at the moment of salvation is justified.

He's declared righteous by God. That's positional. And then, he begins subsequently to progress in holiness, to grow in holiness.

And that's the result of regeneration. And we call that progressive sanctification.

And we see in that believer's life the fruit or evidence of that sanctifying work of the

Holy Spirit. And that's seen in attitudes and actions that honor the Lord. So, all of that to get to this, if someone professes to be a

Christian, but there's no evidence of a changed heart, then it falls into question whether or not their profession of faith is actually genuine.

So the Reformers did not teach some sort of easy believism. They did not teach some sort of decisionism that you just pray a prayer, walk an aisle, throw a pine cone in the fire, and you're saved.

You've got fire for eternity. That was not their gospel.

Their gospel was that genuine saving faith is the kind of reality in which the sinner by God's grace is justified and also regenerated.

God doesn't justify anyone who he does not also regenerate. And the result of regeneration is a changed life, and the evidence of a changed life is obedience to Christ out of love for him.

So we look at that as the fruit, but here's the important distinction with Roman Catholicism.

That obedience is not the grounds of our justification. It's not the root or the cause of our justification.

It is the result, the fruit, of our regeneration which accompanies justification at the moment of conversion.

So we're not saved because of our good works, but rather we do good works because we are saved.

And that's a critical difference. By the way, I made a big boo -boo and I forgot to allow you to pick up where you left off on the importance of sola scriptura to clarify what the

Scriptures teach when we came back from the midway break, and I don't know if there was anything further you wanted to add to that.

Well, I just think it's so important for Protestants to understand, and we've talked about it already, that Scripture is our authority.

And so while we appreciate... And by the way, for the early Church Fathers, Scripture was their authority as well.

In fact, Augustine has this great quote where he says, you know, if I see something in an earlier writer that doesn't correspond with Scripture, I'm free to disagree with that earlier writer because I must always agree with what

Scripture teaches. And then he goes on to say, I want people to do the same thing with my writings.

If they see something in my writings that doesn't correspond to what Scripture teaches, they have every right, in fact they should, disagree with me because we're always bound to Scripture.

So we have to read the Church Fathers, we have to read Church history through a lens that submits what we've learned from history to the authority of Scripture.

And that's what it means to be a faithful Bible -believing Christian, and it's because we always put the authority of God first, and therefore we put the authority of His Word first above any other would -be authority.

And I just feel like that's such an important thing to emphasize as a Protestant because it gives you the ability to appreciate

Church history without being prone to some of the errors that do arise in Church history, whereas, you know, for the

Roman Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox, they find themselves in a very difficult position when the traditions of the

Church are contradictory to the teaching of Scripture. And we have to go to our final break right now.

It's going to be a lot more brief than the other breaks. If you have a question, send it in immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail dot com.

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We'll be right back with Nathan Bucinitz and Longwill Fort Luther after these messages from our sponsors.

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And we have an anonymous listener with a question for Nathan Bucinitz.

I was nearly persuaded by the arguments of Roman Catholic apologists and thankfully to God I discovered a three -volume set by William Webster and David T.

King called Holy Scripture the Ground and Pillar of Our Faith which contains the patristic evidence of the very things that you are talking about today the existence of the

Reformation teachings on soteriology before the Protestant Reformation. Have you read these books and do you also highly recommend them as I do?

Yes. So great question. I do highly recommend that three -volume set.

Volume 2 it's more about bibliology than soteriology that really focuses on the authority of Scripture the inerrancy of Scripture and the early

Church Fathers' commitment. So Volume 2 is in particular very, very helpful.

It overviews the patristic evidence related to their belief in the authority and sufficiency of Scripture and actually

William Webster Bill Webster is a pastor in Battleground Washington Yeah, I was going to say

Vancouver but you're right just north of Vancouver Battleground Washington and he's written a number of books that I would commend to your listeners.

The Matthew 16 he's a former Roman Catholic now an Evangelical pastor Reformed pastor he wrote one called the

Matthew 16 Controversy which shows that the early church did not interpret

Matthew 16, 18 to mean that the Bishop of Rome was supposed to be the head of the church.

He's written another one that's really good called the Church of Rome at the Bar of History which goes through a lot of these different things and you can find more at his website which is christiantruth .com

he's got a lot of his articles and things there so to your listeners question I would say yes I find

Bill Webster's work to be excellent. Amen. In fact he's a dear friend going back to the early 1990's and he and David King are going to be returning,

God willing to this program they've been interviewed both together and separately on a number of occasions you can also look up the

Church of Rome at the Bar of History at banneroftruth .org who is the publisher of that particular work I've given away many copies of that book especially to Roman Catholics By the way,

Anonymous you've also won a free copy of Long Before Luther make sure you give me your full name of course in an email off the air and your full mailing address so that we can have cvbbs .com

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service ship that book out to you and we thank again Moody Publishers for their generosity

In your book you basically going back to something that we were discussing earlier we were talking about the patristic evidence of Reformation theology before Augustine but you also talk about the

Church during and after what's the contrast there? Yeah, so we work through in the book we work through the

Church Fathers from the Apostolic Fathers which would be the Church Leaders right after the

Apostles all the way up until Augustine and Augustine lives in the late 4th, early 5th century he was born in 354 and dies in the year 430 and what we try and show is we try and show that there is evidence among Christian leaders theologians, writers for these

Reformation distinctives with regard to justification so forensic justification a distinction between justification and sanctification the imputed righteousness of Christ do we find evidence in the writings of the

Church Fathers for those distinct doctrines and the answer is yes going all the way back to Clement of Rome as I mentioned earlier

Polycarp of Smyrna the Anonymous Epistle to Diognetus Basil of Caesarea John Chrysostom and others these are all pre -Augustine or pre -Augustine and then with Augustine moving forward all the way up until Bernard of Clairvaux we again find evidence that supports their understanding of these distinct aspects of the

Reformation doctrine of sola fide or justification so Augustine Prosper of Aquitaine Theodore of Cyrus the

Venerable Bede Anthem of Canterbury and then Bernard of Clairvaux and then of course we could go on to those like John Wycliffe and then up to Luther, Calvin, Knox and the rest and what it does is it just provides number one verification that when the

Reformers said hey we didn't invent something new look at all of these earlier theologians who maybe because they were fighting different battles didn't go into as much depth on these things as the

Reformers did but look they're saying things that are the same as what we're saying so it validates the

Reformers' claim that they were recovering something old and then secondly it serves as just a wonderful secondary affirmation for us as Evangelicals today again our primary authority is that these things are taught in the

Word of God but then secondly how encouraging to see these same truths reflected in the writings of church leaders not starting in the 16th century but going all the way back to the earliest periods of church history and then being somewhat obscured by tradition in the late medieval period to be then recovered by the

Reformers in the 16th century so that the things that we celebrate today we go wow there's

Biblical precedent for this of course because it's taught in the New Testament but there's also historical precedent for this our

Gospel is not 500 years old our Gospel goes all the way back to the

New Testament it's the Gospel of God Himself the Gospel of Jesus Christ and it was what believers championed throughout the centuries of church history not just the last few hundred years it's just very encouraging

Chris very encouraging Amen well folks remember you can get Long Before Luther Tracing the

Heart of the Gospel from Christ to the Reformation by Dr. Nathan Bucinitz from our sponsors

CVBBS .com Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service CVBBS .com make sure you tell them that it's a moody publishing publication

Long Before Luther also don't forget about the G3 conference September 30th through October 2nd in Atlanta, Georgia where Dr.

Bucinitz will be joined by 20 other speakers I'll be there with an Iron Sharpens Iron Radio exhibitors booth go to G3 conference .com

to register G3 conference .com I want to thank you so much Dr. Bucinitz for being such a superb guest

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