June 2, 2025 Show with Zach Maxcey on “An Overview of the Upcoming John Bunyan Conference in Franklin, Tennesee”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have 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 Arnson.

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 Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on the second day of June 2025.

Those of you who listen to my program regularly will know that I am a Reformed Baptist. I'm a member of a confessional covenantal Reformed Baptist congregation in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and many of my closest friends are also confessional covenantal Reformed Baptists.

But I've also maintained friendships for as long as I've been a born-again believer with those from a theological camp known as New Covenant Theology, which has a lot in common with confessional covenantal Reformed Baptists, but there are some distinctives.

And I am not one of those who believe that this issue should be a cause, not the fellowship with our brethren who disagree over these matters. In fact, it grieves me deeply when I hear that there are brethren out there who have that state of mind and opinion and that level of sectarianism.

And I find it quite interesting that sometimes the closer you are to brethren in Christ in matters of doctrine and theology, sometimes the differences that you have with them are more monumental in the minds of many.

I can recall, for instance, a covenantal confessional Reformed Baptist, one particular bookstore that was very prominent. They would sell books by John MacArthur, a dispensationalist, but they wouldn't sell books by New Covenant Theology authors, so that's kind of an odd thing in my mind.

I've learned a great deal from many men in ministry who are from the New Covenant Theology background. One of my modern-day heroes was John Riesinger. I used to attend the John Bunyan Conference in Louisburg, Pennsylvania, and then later in New Ringle, Pennsylvania.

I did attend one at their new location for the Bunyan Conference, Franklin, Tennessee, and actually was given the honor and privilege to moderate the Q &A with the audience and the speakers. So I hold that memory very dear in my heart.

But today we have joining me again a returning guest who is from the New Covenant Theology camp. His name is Zach Maxey, and he's president of Providence Theological Institute of New Covenant Theology.

And today we are going to be having Zach provide an overview of the upcoming 2025 John Bunyan Conference in Franklin, Tennessee, and the theme will be Israel, Past, Present, and Future. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Zach Maxey.

Brother Chris, it's great to be with you. Always a pleasure. And I do remember when you shared the question and answer panel, it was a good time.

Yeah, I enjoyed it very much, and it seemed that the audience and also the panelists enjoyed it a lot as well. So why don't you remind our listeners about Providence Theological Institute of New Covenant Theology.

So Providence Theological Institute of New Covenant Theology is a successor to the seminary that I graduated from, so Providence Theological Seminary, which was in Colorado Springs. And it closed its doors in 2017.

I graduated in 2012. But just because of low enrollment in them, we were also competing against seminaries that are very well established and very solid. So one in particular, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which is a great seminary, and I've recommended quite a few people to go there.

And so we found that we wanted to work alongside them, not against them. And so we decided to transition the seminary into an institute. And so, at least for right now, the Lord has seen fit to provide openings for us to come alongside of like-minded churches.

So we've hosted many conferences. We've hosted some mini-conferences down in Texas. We, of course, have our annual conference that's down in Franklin, Tennessee. So it started off as the Council of Biblical Theology for PTI, but now has transitioned as the successor to the John Bunyan Conference of Old.

And we look forward to really building bridges, so not only within New Covenant Theology, because as any theological system, NCT is not monolithic by any stretch. And so we're trying to build bridges internally, and then, of course, build bridges with our Reformed Baptistic Brethren and other members of the Reformed community, and just continue to press forward the principle of Semper Reformanda, so always reforming.

And so holding to the doctrines of grace, holding to the solas of the Protestant Reformation, and then just trying to work together to come to an even better understanding of the Scriptures through the power of the Holy Spirit, and being able to agree to disagree in disputable matters of the faith.

So I echo what we said earlier, where it does grieve me in particular when brothers decide to end fellowship over disputable matters of the faith. We want to lock arms in the essentials, and we want to be able to agree to disagree and have Christ-like discussions and debates about disputable matters of the faith.

But that's really the goal of the Institute—it's to build bridges. And then years from now, if the Lord does allow the opportunity to open back up as a theological institution, if conditions change, then we would go from there.

But at least right now, we just view ourselves as partnering with other like-minded New Covenant theological churches.

Yeah, and I remember that as strong as the late John Riesinger was in his beliefs about New Covenant theology, he was irenic enough and gracious enough on occasion to have Covenantal Reformed Baptists speak at the John Bunyan Conference, one of whom—I don't know why his name escapes me—I believe was of British background, and I believe he may have pastored in Canada.

I know that he was at one time Kirk and Stephen Wellam's pastor, I believe, and maybe you remember his name, but I don't. But he is also in eternity with Christ now. Perhaps if anybody listening remembers his name, they will send me an email with a reminder of this brother, because I remember how powerful a preacher he was.

But I just remember John—I mean, John knew that I was also from a Covenantal Reformed Baptist church, and he never treated me with suspicion or disdain, and I was always warmly welcomed at the conferences, and he always came on my program when I invited him.

And one thing that I noticed over the years is that both sides of this divide have maligned and slandered the other side with exaggerations, distortions, and outright falsehoods about what the other believes.

So those kinds of things should never be permitted.

And, Chris, if I can interject, it's funny you say that, because I have a lot of folks in the NCT side of things that want me—because I'm currently working on my doctorate very slowly and I've had to pause it.

So I teach at a classical Christian school in Middleborough, Massachusetts, and I teach a variety of subjects, and I love it. I teach Greek, I teach the high school Bible, I do some of the Western civilization, so I just absolutely love it and love teaching.

And prior to that, I worked for Best Buy, and I was able to get a little bit of more of my doctoral work done, but a lot of my NCT brothers have come alongside. And basically, you need to shift what you're working on and really contribute to this discussion between Reformed Baptists and New Covenant theologians.

And it's funny you said what you said earlier with the maligning, because that certainly took place, and that grieves me when I read about it. But I think also that that maligning happened due to some misunderstandings.

So for example, I'm shifting my doctoral work to focus on, really, what is the division between—or has NCT understood the First London Baptist Confession as well as they claim to? Because NCT folks really grasp onto the First London because 1644.

And just because of its length, it doesn't go into as much detail as the 1689 does. Now that being said, I think we in NCT, I think that we have attempted to pull the 1644 over to our side, because I've shifted my doctoral work, and I'm going to try to get it approved by this coming summer.

And I think what happened was folks like Walt Chantry and then some of the folks that John Reisinger and other NCT folks were interacting with early on, when the 1689 was basically rediscovered and folks were really delving into it to see the distinctives between it and the Westminster, I think, at least in some of Walt Chantry's writings, he's reading the concept of the covenant of grace from the Westminster into the 1689 a bit.

And then I think New Covenant Theology did the opposite, whereas we attempted to read New Covenant Theology into the 1644. And I don't think those two confessions, mind you, I don't think there's a sharp divide in what they teach.

I think they're very close in line, because the signer that signed both of them, I have yet to find any really strong theological shift in his own position. And so I think that the 1644, I think we've probably overstated what it is in New Covenant Theology, hoping to really grab hold of a confessional.

And it's a great confessional statement, but I think we've read too much into it, because I think that the 1689 and the 1644 are very much teaching the same thing.

Yeah, from what I understand, and I don't know if this story I've heard is in error, but I have heard that the reason that the 1689 London Baptist Confession even came into existence was an effort to demonstrate to the Presbyterians that Baptists were not an oddball cult, and they purposely copied, not in a underhanded way, it wasn't plagiarism, but they intentionally copied nearly all of the Westminster Confession and included it in the 1689 London Baptist Confession, with the exception, obviously, of things that were uniquely Baptist, things involving church government, things involving the ordinance of baptism and so on.

And so there you have that. So that's what I have heard, and the men, as you said, that were involved in the framing of the second London Confession, who were also a part of the first, it's not because they changed anything, they just wanted to offer that more vivid olive branch to the Presbyterians.

And of course, it also includes some of the doctrines that were available in the Savoy Declaration, the Congregationalists' Confession of Faith.

Absolutely.

But I just hope that, and I do see a greater warmth and a greater willingness to work together and enjoy fellowship between the two groups than I've ever seen. When I was first saved in the 1980s, that was very rare outside of my own church, even though my church was a covenantal, confessional, Reformed Baptist church.

We had some New Covenant men like Tom Wells speak at our church, and there were a couple of others. Tom Smith, who eventually actually became an Anglican minister, but he was at the time in the 80s, a New Covenant Theology Baptist pastor, and we had others.

My pastor was not so sectarian that he did not welcome into his pulpit men that he had so much in common with, that he believed were gifted preachers. So I just thank God for that. That was Mike Gaydosh, my very first pastor as an evangelical, after I was saved out from Roman Catholicism.

And even today, some of my dearest friends in covenantal Reformed Baptist churches, like Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Coram, Long Island, they've had Tony Costa preach there. Tony, as you well know, is a New Covenant Theology man because he has preached at the John Bunyan Conference in Franklin, Tennessee, and others.

So I'm glad to see that that is occurring. I hope it starts occurring in an even greater way. People who believe in the doctrines of sovereign grace, I'm not saying that we should be so open and loose in our standards that we invite anyone into the pulpits of our churches.

But at the same time, if we believe in the sovereignty of God, we've got to stop being so paranoid over the fear of, oh, we can't have that person speak for us because they believe this or that, and they may draw people away from our church into that thinking.

Now, it's ironic that Reformed Baptists routinely have Presbyterians preach in their pulpits. And they have taken, not that this was their goal or intention or anything, but there have been many Reformed Baptists who have left Reformed Baptist congregations and become Pato Baptists because of starting with their admiration of Pato Baptist preachers.

For some reason, we have no fear of that. And yet, we tend to be hyper-paranoid about things that I think are even less seriously different to have folks from the New Covenant theology. And I'm sure that that occurs in New Covenant theology churches, too, where they would never in a million years have a 1689 man in their pulpit.

But hoping that this program can just be another example of how a brethren can have enough humility and also discernment and recognition of the gifts and the valuable contributions that we can make to the body of Christ, even if we disagree with each other over things.

And I'm not even saying that they're trivial differences. I'm just saying that... And by the way, I want to make sure our listeners know—we'll, God willing, be repeating this later on—but we were just mentioning the Providence Theological Institute of New Covenant theology that is hosting this upcoming John Bunyan Conference to be held at Grace Church at Franklin, who actually are sponsors of this show in Franklin, Tennessee.

The website for that organization is ptinct .org, ptinct .org, and the website for Grace Church at Franklin, the location where the John Bunyan Conference will be held, is gracechurchatfranklin .org, gracechurchatfranklin .org.

What is the exact, or what are the exact dates of the John Bunyan Conference?

Yes, sir. So it will be Sunday, June 22, 2025, to Wednesday, June 25, 2025. So on Sunday night, the conference, we're going to have arrival and registration at 4 to 6, and we'll have two messages Sunday night, and then the conference will end Wednesday at 8 .30 p .m.

Great, and we'll repeat that later on. And it's interesting that we are talking about a desire for greater unity between New Covenant theology Baptists and Covenantal confessional Reform Baptists, because the theme that you have chosen, Israel, past, present, and future, is a theme where there is an enormous agreement between the two groups of Baptists.

Wouldn't you say that many, if not most of the time, that there is complete agreement over these issues?

I would absolutely agree. One of the reasons why this theme was chosen by myself and the board was at last year's conference, if you remember, so in April, was when Iran attacked Israel with the 40 missiles.

And so that was fresh in everyone's mind. And then so it triggered a lot of conversations about Israel at the conference. And then the other reason why it was chosen is because NCT shares way more in common with the Reformed tradition, but it also has some commonalities with dispensationalism.

And so our hope is to try to bridge the gap between the Reformed camps and then the dispensational.

Camps.

And of course, Israel is a major topic of discussion and a major area where the Reformed tradition disagrees with dispensationalism. And so we would agree with the Reformed tradition with regards to Israel, the vast majority.

Of them.

And then we would differ with certain aspects about Israel with dispensationalism.

And because, as I remember from my attendance at the John Bunyan conferences, especially when they were being held in Pennsylvania, there was quite a diverse group of folks there that all claimed the title of New Covenant theology.

And this is an area where there wasn't really a monolithic representation, especially because you had disagreement over... You had amillennialists there. And one of my favorite speakers and authors, Fred Zaspel, was at least at the time a historic premillennialist.

I don't know if he still is. But there were definitely differences on how the state of Israel in the future is to be viewed. But anything more you care to say about that?

Oh, certainly. So I would say even now there's still significant disagreements within NCT. Again, it's not monolithic when we deal with Israel. So just to give you an example, I know John Riesinger, through his writings, held that Galatians 6 .16, the Israel of God, applied to the Church, or believers, and peace be upon them who keep this rule, even the Israel of God.

And so John, in his writing on Galatians, interprets that contextually going through the entire book, where your birthright doesn't matter, but faith matters, circumcision doesn't matter, but faith matters.

And that's the point of difference between John Riesinger and then my mentor, Dr. Gary Long, who passed away this past summer, where Dr. Long believed that Galatians 6 .16, the Israel of God, actually applied to an elect remnant of Israel that was going to come to faith right before the Lord Jesus returns.

And so even that. And then we've had board members who are also historic pre-millennialists. Most of us are probably Amels on the board, if I were to say. But that's one of the reasons why we stuck away from that particular issue.

So Revelation 20, we didn't deal with that one. We tried to deal with some of the other more prominent ones related to Israel and prophecy, and then how do we deal with these certain texts and whatnot.

Yeah, well, there are obviously, as you know, people who would believe both of those descriptions of Israel in the future are true. Both those that believe the church is a holy nation, a royal priesthood, and also who believe in an optimistic hope of ethnically Jewish people coming to Christ in masses, both amillennialists and postmillennials very often have that understanding.

Yeah, absolutely. So definitely, NCT is not monolithic on that. So we tried to stick away from the rapture and whatnot in the millennium and then stick to other passages where we can really build an exegetical contextual argument around.

Well, we're going to our first commercial break right now. If you have a question for Zach Maxey on the theme, we're going to be addressing Israel, past, present, and future, which is the theme of the next John Bunyan conference.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Don't go away. We're going to be right back right after these messages from our sponsors.

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And don't forget, cvbbs .com is now shipping worldwide. Well, welcome back. My guest is Zach Maxey, and we are discussing the upcoming John Bunyan Conference in Franklin, Tennessee, on the theme, Israel Past, Present, and Future.

If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Chrisarnsen at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and country of residence. If you live outside the USA, only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

We have a question from a very dear friend of mine. I usually don't give out the full names of listeners who write in questions, but in this case, since he is a pastor, I always like to plug churches that I greatly appreciate, and pastors for that matter.

Pastor Jason Contino of Harborview Christian Church in Port Jefferson, Long Island. He has three questions. I'll read them one by one for you, Zach. Could Zach give us some recommendations for books to share with people interested in learning more about or sharing New Covenant theology with others like Blake White, David Gay, etc.?

Sure. At the top of my list, I'll just name off some that were really instrumental to my understanding of NCT. The first is a real easy primer to read. It's called What is New Covenant Theology by Blake White, and he basically goes through and talks about seven of the essentials that are not necessarily unique to NCT.

It just happens to be that these seven group together. That particular arrangement and association is unique, and one of the unique things about NCT. Everything from one plan of God, which we have in common with our Reformed brethren, but also that the New Testament interprets the Old, which of course we share with the Reformed, but then it goes into things that we would differ with our Distanciationists as well, and some of the things that we have in view.

So What is New Covenant Theology is a very good one. One of the other good ones would be a classic, in my opinion, from John Riesinger, The Four Seeds of Abraham. That was a very eye-opening book with just the questions that John is asking in the book, and basically goes through and talks about the physical seed, the spiritual seed, the special seed, which is, of course, Christ, and then the believing physical seed, which is the believing remnant of Israel.

So going through the four seeds and discussing all of those things. The other one, some might take a little issue with this, but I would say Kingdom Through Covenant. Now, Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellam used, at least in the original version of Kingdom Through Covenant, would say that progressive covenantalism, which is what they hold, was a subspecies of New Covenant Theology.

They have since dropped that association where they no longer call it that. But I will say, speaking for the board of PTINCT, everything that is in Kingdom Through Covenant written by Gentry and Wellam, we agree wholeheartedly with.

So I would still view it, although some would make more of a distinction that that's progressive covenantalism. At least PTI entirely agrees with that. Even my mentor who founded PTS, Dr. Gary Wong, would say that he agrees with all of that, and that's NCT.

So those are the three that come to mind, but Blake has tons of other works. So does John Reisinger. I'm going to be laboring this summer to publish my master's thesis that I wrote when I was at PTS, which is a New Covenant view of Daniel 9, 24 -27, so the 70 weeks prophecy.

But those would be the three I would recommend. What is New Covenant Theology by Blake White, Four Seeds of Abraham by John Reisinger, and then Kingdom Through Covenant.

Great. And Pastor Contino's second question is, do you recommend a church search engine to help people find New Covenant Theology churches like Cross to Crown Ministries?

Yes, I would go through something like that. So I know Doug Gooden, who heads up Cross to Crown. We know each other personally. His resources are great for finding an NCT church. I know Jeff Volker also does something similar at In-Depth Studies.

We actually also have our own list at PTS and PTI, so when folks reach out to me. But I mean, I wouldn't be so exclusive, going back to what we were originally saying. So if you can find an NCT church, if you're a particular advocate of New Covenant Theology, by all means, avail yourself of it.

But I mean, I would still recommend any solid Nine Marks church, where you have solid biblical exegetical preaching, the doctrines of grace being preached, the sacraments being practiced. So I would still recommend that.

But if you can avail yourself of an NCT church and you hold a New Covenant Theology,.

By all means. And last but not least, any commentaries or study Bibles that you can recommend that are New Covenant Theology-friendly or supporting of biblical.

Theology, i .e. D .A. Carson, Thomas Schreiner, etc.? I would say Tom Schreiner's commentary on Galatians is excellent, so I had to use that for seminary, and I still use it to this day when I'm referencing the book.

I would say his other work, The King and His Beauty, by Tom Schreiner is great. I mean, there's a whole variety. There are no books that are exclusively NCT. There are plenty of folks who do lean that way but have not embraced the term.

So if you can remember back to the Master's Seminary, their seminary journal put out a series on New Covenant Theology, and although they were kind of Frankenstein-y New Covenant Theology, where they were kind of taking from one and then trying to put it together because NCT is not monolithic, so it sounded a little more discordant than what NCT actually is, they were fair in their critique—and not to say that they were unfair with the other stuff— but they were fair in their critique that NCT is a theology of the internet, in the sense that there's no institution that's exclusively devoted to NCT like PTS was, which is the forerunner of PTI.

So if the Lord does shift PTI back to that route to reopen as PTS and then begin publishing things like that, that would be something, potentially, that could take place. But in lieu of that, this is why I do not see a sharp distinction between New Covenant Theology and Progressive Covenantalism, which is that system of theology that's really promoted by Dr. Stephen Wellham out of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

So PTI agrees wholeheartedly with Progressive Covenantalism. So again, they have Kingdom Through Covenant, they have a book called Progressive Covenantalism, and so those are also very helpful guides in terms of that.

He also has a book called, I think it's called From Beginning to End, Price to the Scriptures. I could be off on that title. But as I understand it, Dr. Wellham is also working on his own systematic theology right now at Southern, as I understand it.

So given how PTI NCT agrees with Progressive Covenantalism to the extent that it does, and it does not view a sharp distinction between the two, that would be something that, when it comes out, would be excellent.

And I'm unaware if that is actually published yet.

Now, this is a question of my own, since Pastor Contino brought up D .A. Carson. D .A. Carson was also one of my modern-day heroes. I've interviewed him at least once, enjoyed the interview very much.

But I was thrown for a loop when he developed that close relationship he had with Tim Keller and joined forces with Tim to create the Gospel Coalition, which is definitely a number of steps to my left.

And I always had difficulty to in any way promote the teaching of Tim Keller. I'm not saying that everything he taught was off-base, but definitely some of the things he taught were dangerous. For those of you who don't know, he passed away not all that long ago, several years ago at least, I believe.

But do you know of anybody who might have been on friendly terms with Dr. Carson, whoever asked him about that strange alliance?

No, I do not. I know my mentor, Dr. Wong, I think had some meetings with Dr. Carson, but it was nothing extensive where that particular subject came up. But I'm also familiar with those concerns about Tim Keller, so I understand what you're talking about, but I don't know of anyone who engaged Dr. Carson on that.

Okay. And by the way, I highly recommend the aforementioned Gary Long, who also went home to be with the Lord, was that a year ago or so?

Yes, it was last early July.

Okay. Well, I highly recommend his book, Definite Atonement. I'm assuming you could get that on Amazon and perhaps other distributors. I have purchased and given away many copies of that book, Definite Atonement by Dr. Long.

And also, anybody that cares to listen to a fairly recent, wow, it was a year ago, I can't believe it, almost a year ago, July 31st of 2024, I interviewed, it was the last time I interviewed Dr. Stephen J. Wellam, along with Levi Secord, on political engagement in light of the lordship of Christ.

It was actually a three-part interview. That was part one of the three parts. So you can look that up in the search engine of ironsharpensironradio .com and just type in Wellam, W-E-L-L-U-M. And the last time and only time that I have ever been to the Franklin, Tennessee version of the John Bunyan Conference, I had the wonderful pleasure of having lunch during a break with Wellam brothers, Kirk and Stephen.

That was really a great time of fellowship. So I hope to have both of them back on the program. Let's see. Oh, let me plug Pastor Jason Contino's website. Anybody who lives in Port Jefferson is traveling through there, visiting that area in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, or if you have family, friends, and loved ones who are living in that area, recommend them to visit harbourviewchristian .church, harbourviewchristian .church.

And I really love that brother, Jason Contino, whose family owned Amado's restaurant, which is no longer in existence. But Amado's restaurant was well known on Long Island, New York. It was in Amityville, Long Island, where I was born and raised.

It was well known to be one of the finest Italian establishments in New York, and that would include New York City. And celebrities dined there, and they also have the infamous connection of having mafiosa dining there.