August 7, 2025 Show with Sam Waldron on “Take Heed to the Reformation Pillar of Sola Scriptura”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday. On this seventh day of August 2025,

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I am thrilled to have back on the program a returning guest to discuss something of vital importance, perhaps even especially to Baptists.

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My guest today is Dr. Sam Waldron, President and Professor of Systematic Theology at Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary, pastor of Grace Reform Baptist Church of Owensboro, Kentucky, an author and conference speaker, and he's going to be addressing the departure of Matthew Barrett from his

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Baptist faith, another reminder to take heed to the Reformation pillar of Sola Scriptura.

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It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Sam Waldron. Thank you, brother.

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It's good to talk to you again about this important subject. Amen. And before we get into the topic, remind our listeners something about the

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Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary of Owensboro, Kentucky. Well, Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary is dedicated to the vision of exalting

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Christ throughout the world, and our mission is to make excellent seminary training and teaching available to men in an affordable and acceptable kind of way, and in a way that is firmly confessional and embraces the full subscription of the 1689

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Baptist Confession of Faith. Great. And just for the sake of our listeners who may want to either join that seminary because you believe you have been called of God to be a preacher, teacher, and pastor, you can find out more about the

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Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary at their website,

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CBTSeminary .org. That's CBTSeminary .org,

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CBT for Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary .org. And now tell us something about the church where you pastor,

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Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Owensboro, Kentucky. I'm delighted to be one of five pastors at Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Owensboro, Kentucky.

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We serve God here, trying to evangelize and spread the gospel throughout our community, and we're really thankful for God's blessing upon the ministry.

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We started as a very small group of people about 12 years ago, and now

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God has given us a building at the center of Owensboro and the privilege of ministering to as many as almost 200 people on a

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Sunday morning. Great. And if anybody wants to find out more information about Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Owensboro, Kentucky, especially if you live in that area and would like to visit and perhaps even join that church, or if you have family, friends, and loved ones living in the

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Owensboro, Kentucky area, or if you're just traveling through that area on the Lord's Day, go to grbco .org,

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grbco .org. Well, I can't believe—go ahead.

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Were you saying something, brother? I said, thank you, brother, for saying that. I can't believe that when we first discussed the issue that we are going to continue a conversation on today, took place three years ago, more than three years ago.

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I'm astonished by that. It was June 17, 2022. In fact, if you're listening today and you'd like to hear this pre -recorded interview that we did—or past interview,

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I should say—that we did on June 17, 2022, just go to the Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio website and in the search engine type in Sam Waldron, W -A -L -D -R -O -N, and all of my interviews with Dr.

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Waldron will come up. And that will be the second one from the bottom, because I did interview

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Dr. Waldron on a different subject in 2023, a year later,

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How Then Should We Worship? But the one that is the precursor to today's interview,

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Do We Still Believe Sola Scriptura? A Word of Caution to Reformed Churches and Leaders About Present -Day

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Dangerous Paths and Slippery Slopes on the Rise Among Us. Now, you just recently wrote an update to that blog post that you first wrote back in 2022, and this update is one of the reasons that we are even conducting this interview today.

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Tell us about the background of what compelled you to write this, and I know a lot of it has to do with the recent conversion of Matthew Barrett to Anglicanism.

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And I want to make it clear to our audience that Dr. Waldron and I are not going to use this program to disparage

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Anglicanism. Anglicanism is a wide spectrum of belief and practice, and you can easily find that out by watching the infighting that constantly goes on amongst

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Anglicans. But there are men who are dear friends of mine for many years who are thoroughly

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Calvinistic, thoroughly Reformed, confessional Anglicans, dedicated to the Thirty -Nine

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Articles and most of all to Scripture, who also despise the

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Anglo -Catholic element of that tradition and they despise the leftist element of that tradition.

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So we're not going to be broad -brushing Anglicans today. But if you could, tell us about who

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Matthew Barrett is and why his conversion from being a

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Southern Baptist and a Reformed Southern Baptist on top of that, why his conversion to Anglicanism is such a weighty issue to you.

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Well, it's a little bit of a long story, but let me go into it a little bit.

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I wrote over three, three -and -a -half years ago almost now, an article,

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Do We Still Believe in Sola Scriptura?, and just cited anonymously a number of statements that we had heard at Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary that I had read that troubled us that there may have been some slippage with regard to Sola Scriptura.

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And substantially, the response to that from a number of folks, a number of Brother Reformed Baptists, was nothing to see here, there's nothing going on, there's no danger in what's being done with regard to Sola Scriptura.

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And, well, you know, I took it on the chin in a few circles because of trying to point out this danger.

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And I'm not one that enjoys taking it on the chin and these kind of issues any more than anybody else,

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I suppose. But fast forward now three -and -a -half years later, and one of the leaders in what's called the

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Retrieval Movement, or the emphasis on the necessity of interpreting the

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Bible according to what's called the Great Tradition. Fast forward now these three years, and Dr.

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Matthew Barrett has been a leader in that movement, and that's clear even in the articles he's posted with regard to his going into Anglicanism, has now,

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I think, vindicated, in a sense, my concerns and shown that there is a real danger here with regard to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

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Now, I agree with everything he said about Anglicanism and the need not to broad -brush condemnation, but one thing that can be said, and I think must be said about Anglicanism, is that from its foundation, from the time that Richard Oaker wrote the

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Laws of Ecclesiastical Quality, until today, those gentlemen have a slightly different—I would say a significantly different—view of Sola Scriptura than the

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Reformed. In fact, the original argument about the regulative principle of the Church was an argument that basically can be summarized if you quote, on the one hand, 22 .1

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of the 1689 Baptist Confession, and compare it to one of the 39 articles that are the foundation of the

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Church of England. And the difference, then, is that Anglicans, like Lutherans, do not believe that Sola Scriptura extends to the practices, government, and polity of the

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Church. They believe, and they believe to this day, that Church government and the polity of the

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Church, and even practices like infant baptism, do not need to be supported by Sola Scriptura, but it's sufficient to show that they were the practices of the first centuries of the

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Church. And the main issue for them is whether that tradition supports them, and not whether you can find episcopacy or whether you can find infant baptism in the

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Scriptures themselves. This is the issue I'm concerned about. So let me put it like this.

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No, Anglicans are not Roman Catholic in their view of believing in Scripture plus tradition.

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With regard to doctrine, as they would say, but they do occupy a position similar to Roman Catholicism in saying that the worship practice and practices of the

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Church do not need to be supported by Sola Scriptura, but can be supported through a combination of Scripture plus the tradition of the first five centuries of the

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Church. In fact, years ago, I had the privilege of writing in a book entitled

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Who Runs the Church and Defending the View of Church Government, which they entitled

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Plural Elder Congregationalism there. And one of the people I wrote with in that book, and since it was a four -view book, wrote against in that book, was a well -known

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Anglican by the name of Peter Thune. And sure enough, when he came to the subject of Church government, when he came to the subject of defending

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Episcopal Church government, he argued that it was not simply Scripture, but Scripture plus the first five centuries of Christian tradition that lays the foundation and is the basis upon which he would defend

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Episcopal Church government. So all of that to say that there's a phrase that's been used in the debate about this, and the phrase is, well, people said, there's no danger of anyone swimming the

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Tiber, that is, going back to Rome. And I'm not saying that Matthew Barrett is going back to Rome, but I am saying that he has now swum to an island in the middle of the

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Tiber, and that island is the one that's always been occupied by Lutherans and Anglicans when they taught and when they said that the

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Church and its practices and its government and its worship does not need to be governed in sola scriptura, but can be informed and guided, and you can base practices on Scripture plus the first five centuries of the

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Church's tradition. So this is why the whole thing is so significant to me.

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You know, Chris, I don't like to, you know, I'm not usually a guy that says, I told you so.

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In fact, I kind of think it's impolite to do that. But then I realized that in Scripture, there is an example of the

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Apostle Paul saying, I told you so. There it's there in Acts 27, when he told them not to keep trying to find a better weathering quarters for the ship, and he told them not to keep sailing, and they did anyway, and they ended up in the storm that finally shipwrecked them.

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And he came back to them later and said, brothers, you should have listened to me. And I guess that's what

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I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say there is a problem here, and it is a problem with an extreme version of the retrieval movement and a position that says that we must give the great tradition of some sort of quasi -authority in the way we interpret the

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Bible. By the way, folks, I just recently conducted an interview, August 5th, actually, day before yesterday, with Jason Wallace, who is pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church of Magna, Utah, an

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Orthodox Presbyterian congregation. And even though Jason is a Pato Baptist, he is not pumping his fist in the air that another

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Baptist has become a Pato Baptist, and he has equally great concerns about this so -called great tradition and how it is definitely paving a pathway to Rome and making that pathway a more logical step for those embracing the so -called great tradition.

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Now, if you could be a little bit more detailed in your description of the retrieval movement, is this something that exists primarily amongst

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Reformed Baptists, or is it equally involved in Reformed Baptists and Presbyterian churches, and also, of course, define the great tradition itself?

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Well, first of all, let me say that I appreciate what you just said about your friend

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Jason Wallace, because Presbyterians do not, they do not hold the view of tradition and of total scriptura that the

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Anglicans do. Calvin is famous, and justly so, for saying and trying to support his view that if we're going to practice a different baptism, we must have a scriptural argument for it.

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That was quite different than Luther and later than the Anglicans. And so, let me make very clear that I fully embrace the views of our

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Presbyterian brothers on the subject of total scriptura, and I'm of one mind with them about this.

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But with regard to the whole subject of the retrieval movement and the great tradition, you know,

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I feel a little bit strange, Chris, because I've been teaching church history now for 40 years, and one of the things that I really realized early on into teaching church history is that we certainly should give much more credence to the teaching of the great pastors and teachers of the church in the way we interpret the

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Bible than we do. And I think I was probably an early voice saying, look, you know, if we're interpreting the

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Bible in a way that nobody's interpreted the Bible for 20 centuries, there's something wrong.

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We ought to at least rethink and take a second look at what we're talking about in the

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Bible, right? So, there's a sense in which I feel a lot of sympathy, in certain respects, for the need to be much more aware of the traditional teaching of the church on a lot of subjects than a lot of Baptists have been in the last couple of centuries.

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So, then I find myself now having to say, but hey, wait, we have to be careful here, and there are some cautions and roadblocks that people are jumping over that they shouldn't be jumping over.

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I feel like I'm in a strange position, Chris, because there's a good part of me that really appreciates the need to pay a lot more attention to the best part of the church's tradition in the way we interpret the

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Bible than we do. I simply draw the line at giving that tradition any infallible authority at all in terms of our teaching.

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Everything must be what Sola Scriptura can defend, or we must not embrace it as teaching.

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So, I just want to say that kind of a way of qualifying what I'm saying. So, there's a lot about this whole desire to be much more in tune with the best parts of the historical teaching of the church that I really liked.

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But the problem is, and this is what I was pointing out two or three years ago, that I felt like we were going from saying, let's listen closely to the tradition and see if it supports the way we're reading the

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Bible, or maybe it suggests a better way to read the Bible than we are.

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Because I do believe that we ought to have the attitude of the

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Ethiopian eunuch, you know, when Philip climbed into a chariot, the conversation was, do you understand what you're reading?

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And the eunuch said, well, how can I except someone guide me? So, I'm really thoroughly convinced that we all need teachers.

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We all need guides that can help us understand what we're reading. On the other hand, the whole point of a guide and a teacher is that when he's done teaching, you say, oh, now

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I see it in the Scripture. Now it's clear to me. It's not like, well, if I take

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Scripture and add to it this tradition, now maybe I can say this doctrine or that.

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Well, that's not the way to use tradition at all. So, and another thing that I think we have to talk about here, and this whole thing is related to a desire to retrieve classical theism.

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That's really at the heart of this whole thing, the desire to make sure that we're in line with the great creeds of Nicaea and Chalcedon.

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And again, I couldn't agree with that more. I certainly thoroughly hold both

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Nicaea and Chalcedon myself and find them to be a great help in my teaching and a great guide to what the

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Scripture actually teaches about the Trinity and about the person of Christ. So, praise

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God and hallelujah for the Nicaean Creed and the Chalcedonian Creed.

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But, again, there's a tendency now for this to be taken in directions that I find

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I have to stay away just a second. One of the problems,

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Chris, is that when people talk about the great tradition, it almost sounds like that the great tradition is a monolithic tradition that speaks with one voice about everything, and that's simply not true.

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We aren't looking for what the Church has always said everywhere at all times. That's the

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Roman Catholic view of the tradition, and it's not a Protestant view of the teaching tradition of the

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Church. Another problem is—and so what I want to say is, yes,

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I think we have to listen closely to what classical theism has said.

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And at the same time, we have to say, look, even the classical teachers of theism did not always agree among themselves.

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And so I think it's pretty clear that with regard to saying the truth for the existence of God and natural theology and things like this that are getting brought forward, that we don't have to go back to Thomas Aquinas, who was being held up as the greatest of the teachers of the

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Church, and their alternatives to the Thomist understanding of classical theism.

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And it's clear, I think, and I think it's very defensible, that Thomas did not agree with Anselm and did not agree with Augustine about some pretty basic issues about natural theology, for instance.

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So what I find objectionable is the presentation of the tradition as if it's something that is what is said everywhere, all the time, at all times.

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And that's simply not the nature of the tradition. It's instructive, but it is not always uniform.

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And it has a center, but there are alternatives in the great tradition.

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And those alternatives don't all lead us back to Thomas Aquinas. Now, I just want to announce to our listeners, you mentioned the

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Council of Nicaea. This happens to be the 1700th anniversary of the

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Council of Nicaea, and Dr. Tom Nettles will be joining us in a week or so.

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I'll find the exact date momentarily, but he is going to be discussing the importance of the

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Council of Nicaea. And being a Calvinistic Baptist, I think he has a proper understanding of that.

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And one thing we probably should make clear, just in case people get confused when they start doing research on the

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Council of Nicaea, that they're not getting it confused or mixed up with the Second Council of Nicaea.

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Am I right? Mm -hmm. Which has got some very heretical and Romanist teaching in it.

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Yeah, that's true. And when the term retrieval movement is being used, that implies that Reformed Baptists are saying, we are lacking something, and we need to retrieve something to make ourselves superior to what we have been.

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Now, I understand that all Christians should believe in Semper Reformata, that we should be always reforming, and we should always make sure as Bereans that whatever we believe and practice is being done according to Scripture.

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And if we realize that something is in error, we've got to discard it and return to the

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Scriptures and so on. So, I understand that the Reformed Baptist movement has not only never been monolithic completely, and it's never been perfect, but at the same time, it worries me when a word like retrieval is being used, and then all of a sudden, everyone who does not jump on the bandwagon with this group of retrievalists, they're considered the oddballs and the aberrant ones.

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Am I making sense? Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, one of the things that you have to be aware of is the other two issues that Dr.

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Barrett mentioned that he changed his view about in going over to a conservative

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Anglican position, and that is episcopacy and the baptism.

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Now, if you follow the retrieval mindset, then you're going to go in the direction of saying, well, if this is what the first four or five centuries of the

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Church practiced, then we've got to adopt it. Now, I think there's a good argument both for Believer's Baptism from the early history of the

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Church and also from the earliest history of the Church for what we defend as CBTS, and that's

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Puritan Congregationalism. But the fact of the matter is that the retrieval movement kind of assumes, it does assume a different view of Church history than I defend.

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It assumes that if you can find it in the first three or four centuries of Church history, then it's almost certain that that's the correct view, and whatever you think your

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Bible says that might be different than that is wrong. But the fact of the matter is that that's not true.

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I believe and teach in my classes a developmental view of Church history, which takes into account that after the

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Apostles died, the Apostolic Fathers, for instance, loved the

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Apostles, thought they were following the Apostles, and didn't depart from them intentionally.

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But it's clear when you read the Apostolic Fathers and some of the other early Fathers that there were a lot of ways in which they simply did not understand the

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Apostles. And that shouldn't surprise us, because the Apostles were inspired, and their followers were not.

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And so I teach in my Church history class, and I believe there's a kind of cliff phenomenon in the early

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Church, and we have to take that into account. So the fact that you find Episcopacy in the 2nd century—and you do— and the fact that you find increasing references to Antibaptism in the 3rd century doesn't mean and doesn't imply at all that the earliest

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Church, the Apostolic Church, taught or practiced either of those things.

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And I think that's really important to understand. And the fact is that what you have in Church history is a gradually developing theological tradition in which the

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Church is more and more able—and this is even evident with regard to the Trinity and the person of Christ— more and more able to properly articulate, to properly state the right doctrines concerning the doctrine of God and the

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Trinity and the right doctrines concerning the person of Christ. And this is a development that takes place in the early

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Church through all sorts of debate, in the midst of all sorts of heretical teaching, or in other cases, very immature teaching, because the

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Church was like a child learning how to talk and to say things the right way. So, I think that there's fundamentally something wrong with the notion, with the view of Church history that's held by those who give an almost infallible authority to the tradition of the first five centuries.

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Yes, and we have to go to our first commercial break, and if you'd like to join the conversation with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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

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Oh, and folks, by the way, I found out that Dr. Tom Nettles will be discussing the importance of the

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Council of Nicaea on Friday, August 15th, which is a week from tomorrow.

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And I'd also like to plug a program I'm doing with a name that should be familiar with many

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Reformed Baptists, especially if they're my age or older. Greg Nichols, who is currently the pastor of Amazing Grace Church, a

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Reformed Baptist church in Catskill, New York, is going to be on the program with a deacon of mine at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and they will be discussing the duties of church members to their pastors, drawing from the writings of John Angel James, John Owen, and even

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Greg Nichols. So I hope that you will mark your calendars for those two

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Fridays, the 15th and 22nd of August. But we will be right back after these messages.

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Please don't go away. James White here of Alpha Omega Ministries announcing that this

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September, I'm heading out to Pennsylvania to speak at two events that my longtime friend

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Chris Arnzen has lined up for me. On Thursday, September 18th at 11 a .m.,

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I'm speaking to men in ministry leadership at Chris's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon at Church of the

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Living Christ in Loisville. Then on Sunday, September 21st at 1 .30

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p .m., I'm speaking at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle on the theme, Can We Trust the

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Bible is the Authentic and Inerrant Word of God? I hope you can join Chris and me for both events.

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For more details on the Free Pastors Luncheon, visit ironsharpensironradio .com.

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That's ironsharpensironradio .com. For more details on Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, visit trbccarlisle .org.

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That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, I'll see you in September in Pennsylvania for these exciting events.

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So go to royaldiadem .com today, mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with Dr. Sam Waldron, who is the president of the

41:39

Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary in Owensboro, Kentucky. He's also the pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church in that same city and state,

41:50

Owensboro, Kentucky, and he's an author and conference speaker, and we are discussing a very important topic today, perhaps most important for Reformed Baptists, as it appears that many sharing that title of Reformed Baptists are diminishing the importance and meaning of Sola Scriptura in favor of a retrieval of a so -called great tradition.

42:24

And if you have a question, our email address is chrisarmson at gmail .com. Give us a first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

42:31

Before I forget, I just wanted to let you know that a mutual friend of ours, Dr. James R.

42:36

White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, loves your latest blog article, and he wanted to let you know that he has your back, and he is thrilled with it.

42:46

And I know that you two disagree over eschatological issues, but I know that he has a very high regard for you and wanted you to know that he has your back.

42:56

Wow, that's great to know. Thank you for passing that on. Hey, Chris, before we—

43:03

Hello? —I really want to make sure I get right.

43:11

And so I looked it up on the break. What amounts to the

43:18

Roman Catholic view of the tradition is what's stated by a monk and he was concerned that Scripture wasn't sufficient to bring us to unity.

43:35

And he actually said, and I'm quoting now, all possible care must be taken that we hold that faith, which has been believed everywhere, always, by all.

43:46

And that's the Roman Catholic view of tradition. And it's a view of tradition that wrongly regards that tradition as monolithic, and I think that's the kind of view that I'm concerned about.

44:02

Yeah, they often use the phrase, unanimous consent of the fathers. And the fathers were disagreeing over many, many things over the centuries.

44:13

Yeah, that's right. And those fathers were in the process themselves of gradually being able to articulate the teaching of Scripture more clearly.

44:26

And the early fathers themselves actually acknowledged this. There was one of the

44:32

Cappadocian fathers, as I recall, who actually said of some of the earlier men that they said things that were not quite right about the

44:45

Trinity, and he went on to say that it's important that we understand that what was a little thing then is a little thing no longer.

44:57

In other words, he was admitting that there is a maturation that was taking place in the early church, even with regard to their ability to properly state the doctrine of the

45:09

Trinity, and that this means that we have to take the teaching tradition as a whole, and we can't try to find some unanimity that actually doesn't exist in it.

45:25

Right. And do you think a part of this problem, it seems to be a part of it to me, I hear this from converts to Roman Catholicism, where they seem to stamp with a seal of biblical approval or Christian approval anything that they deem as old and ancient, that it must be true if somebody of an ancient era believed and did this.

45:55

Right. And they also often wrongly make things in their minds and in their speech older than they really are.

46:06

And even if they were going all the way back to the biblical era, the Bible itself contains condemnations of wrong belief that rose up, even in the apostles' day, which they warn about in the

46:23

Scriptures themselves. So being old doesn't mean you're right, does it? No, no, it absolutely doesn't.

46:31

And a lot of things that are taught in the earliest writings after the apostles are clearly not something we want to embrace.

46:42

One famous illustration of this is, I think, in one of the best of the Apostolic Fathers, 1

46:47

Clement, and he relates the story of the phoenix, you know, how the phoenix lives so many years and then collapses in a ball of fire and then an egg is somehow found in the ashes and a new phoenix grows.

47:04

He relates that as a proof of the resurrection and relates that story and says, well, we're true.

47:11

And this has been one of the best and earliest of the best of the Apostolic Fathers because 1

47:18

Clement's epistle to the Corinthians is highly regarded, but of course not regarded as scriptural.

47:26

So, I mean, and there are all sorts of things like that in the Apostolic Fathers that I think are evidence of what

47:33

I call the cliff phenomenon and that the rapid descent into a lot of ignorance and confusion that took place after the apostles died and they were no longer invited for speaking of the church.

47:47

Right. So, whenever you hear the nonsense of Catholic apologists that there was a unanimous consent of the fathers, you just realize that the person is speaking falsehood.

48:07

There was even an early church father, Irenaeus, who believed

48:13

Jesus lived to be 50 years old. I mean, all kinds of nonsense.

48:24

And the Reformed Fathers and the Reformation, both

48:29

Reformation periods, while they respected the tradition of the church and Kelvin certainly thought that what he was teaching had support in the early church, there were all sorts of things that were there that they had the liberty to disagree with.

48:50

I mean, the common understanding of Catholicism about Christ descending into hell and as that phrase occurs in the

49:03

Apostles' Creed, Kelvin disagreed with the way that was interpreted as a literal descent into Tartarus or Hades, and so did most of the

49:17

Reformed. They did not feel—they felt that that phrase should be— Are you there,

49:24

Dr. Waldron? You've cut out. ...residing in the grave for three days, or with regard to Christ experiencing hell on the cross.

49:33

And this was, I think, the majority view of the

49:39

Reformed at the time, at the Reformation, post -Reformation period.

49:44

So they did not have the kind of respect for the early tradition that some kind of people attribute to them.

50:01

Yes, and in fact, one of the most dangerous heretical cults around today that has gained acceptance from evangelical

50:14

Christians in many circles are the Word of Faith Pentecostals, and they actually hold, or at least many of them do, as one of their primary tenets that Jesus Christ was tortured physically in hell after dying, and according to some of them, became the first born -again man in hell, as if Jesus needed to be born again.

50:38

Right. Oh, my. I never heard that. That's awful. Oh, yeah. That's what

50:44

Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, and many of these other heretics teach and taught.

50:51

So apparently it wasn't finished when he died on the cross.

50:57

Right. He didn't go to paradise that day, right? That's right. That's what it appears to be, according to these people.

51:04

Now, what has been, do you know, of the reaction of some of our fellow

51:12

Reformed Baptists who have been really strongly pushing this retrieval movement and the so -called

51:20

Great Tradition? Have you heard any responses to Matthew Barrett's conversion to Anglicanism?

51:28

No, I really haven't, brother, and I wouldn't be qualified to talk about that.

51:37

So I do hope that it gives some folks pause and makes them, you know, rethink some of the direction that they're going.

51:48

I really do. And I hope it does. Anyway. Now, I remember before the program, you had said to me that you perhaps believe that you held back a little too much during our first interview about this three years ago.

52:05

Is there anything that you want to clarify today that you were more hesitant to reveal the last time?

52:12

You know, I think we've basically been talking about the issue.

52:18

And I had my concerns back then.

52:25

I'd expressed my concerns. I'd been widely dismissed when

52:30

I expressed those concerns. But now I see in Dr.

52:38

Barrett's preference for and conversion to Anglicanism, if I could put it that way, a clear evidence that there was an issue in terms of one of the leaders of this movement with his view of Sola Scriptura.

52:55

And so I think that's really significant. I mean,

53:01

I've seen other evidence. I don't know of this personally, but I've seen people talking about the fact of, anecdotally, there have been people that embracing this movement have finally returned to Rome.

53:17

I think that has happened. It's not a myth. It is a reality. Yes, it is.

53:23

And we have to go to our midway break right now. And we do have some people waiting to have their questions answered by you,

53:30

Dr. Waldron. But if anybody else would like to join them, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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Give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence. Don't go away.

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01:05:58

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01:08:34

Sam Waldron on our conversation today, which is basically sounding an alarm for Reformed Baptists primarily to return to a very high view of sola scriptura and the dangers of the retrieval movement and the so -called great tradition movement.

01:08:59

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

01:09:06

And I know that there are no Reformed Baptists, or no professedly

01:09:14

Reformed Baptists, who are flat out saying, I don't believe in sola scriptura. How do they explain themselves to get over that accusation?

01:09:24

Have you heard the explanations? You know, it's a good question.

01:09:34

It's a good question, brother. You know, if they affirm the confession of faith, and they do, then you've got really sola scriptura and the sufficiency of Scripture in every paragraph in one way or the other expounded in chapter one of the

01:09:55

Confession of Faith. But I think that when you—it's simply a higher and higher esteem and reverence for theological tradition, in which you can't really imagine that there could be— and what the difficulties in part,

01:10:26

I agree with this, but not the way it's taken. You can't go in the direction of saying, is this aspect of a part of the tradition really that clear?

01:10:45

And is it to be embraced in spite of the fact that there are other aspects of the tradition, but more importantly, the clear teaching of the

01:10:55

Bible? So it's a difficult thing to talk about, and I don't quite understand that they have sensitivity to the problems that are developing.

01:11:12

Okay, we have Doyle in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania.

01:11:21

And Doyle says, I understand that this group of Reformed Baptists who upholds the so -called great tradition are great admirers of Thomas Aquinas.

01:11:33

Now, I'm not saying that there was nothing to learn from Thomas Aquinas. He was a brilliant man.

01:11:38

But at the same time, it is clear he had a different gospel than the one we cherish.

01:11:44

He believed the same things that were centuries later articulated and made dogma in the

01:11:49

Council of Trent about the gospel. So how on earth could these men uphold as such a primary hero someone who has a false gospel, and unless he repented before death will be in hell?

01:12:08

I don't know how to respond to that, except to say I'm not sure what they would say with regard to that.

01:12:16

Here's one of the things. Since Dr. Barrett is out now and not embarrassed about what direction he's gone, in his book,

01:12:32

Simply Trinity, he says this. Thomas Aquinas not only wrote an extensive apologetic for theology called the

01:12:42

Summa Contra Gentiles, but an extensive unfinished guide to theology for students called the

01:12:48

Summa Theologiae. Sadly, Protestants today, especially Evangelicals, avoid Thomas like the plague, thinking he is

01:12:55

Roman Catholic. Now, he says that is a caricature that needs to die a sudden death.

01:13:01

But the problem is that in every particular doctrine that you might want to talk about, he was

01:13:13

Roman Catholic, up to and including defining and defending transubstantiation, the heart of the

01:13:21

Roman Catholic doctrine of the mass. And so I read that when I was reading Simply Trinity a number of years ago, and I thought to myself, what?

01:13:29

How can he say that? Perhaps they don't believe, and I can't speak for them, but perhaps they don't believe that the things that he taught with regard to the

01:13:47

Roman Catholic doctrine of the mass and transubstantiation were a heretical doctrine.

01:13:54

But I don't think they believe it. But are they making light of it, so light of it that they think that he could have taught such things?

01:14:06

And it makes me speechless, really.

01:14:13

He was, in every particular way that you want to ask about Roman Catholicism, a

01:14:21

Roman Catholic. And so how Barrett can say that this is something that the caricature is really beyond me.

01:14:32

Yes. We have Kevin in Biloxi, Mississippi, who says, if these men are so steeped in history, as they seem to claim that they want to retrieve these things that are uniquely a part of the great tradition, shouldn't their history also teach them that this is very foreign to their own

01:14:56

Baptist history? Oh, now their own

01:15:07

Baptist history. I'm not quite sure what that means. Well, one of the things that, and this goes in an entirely different direction, but one of the things we have to appreciate, and that our

01:15:26

Baptist forefathers very clearly appreciated, was that they were persecuted by Roman Catholics.

01:15:38

However, I'm not sure what's implied in this question. I will say,

01:15:45

I do agree with Kelvin and the other Reformers who did not think of themselves as Restorationists, but as Reformers.

01:15:55

That is to say, they did not think that the Church had been lost for a thousand years and that they were restoring it.

01:16:01

That's the view of a lot of Charismatic and others. I do believe that they were right to think of themselves as Reformers.

01:16:13

I think there is an argument for a believer's Baptism in the history of the

01:16:19

Church. But I don't make a big distinction between Baptist history and Church history, and I'm not quite sure what that means.

01:16:30

I will say that, in my view, a particular

01:16:36

Baptist emerged in the early 1600s in London, in England, and spread from there.

01:16:46

And that's the true origin of our own particular Baptist forefathers.

01:16:53

There are views of Baptist history out there, like the

01:17:00

Trail of Blood theories, that I don't think can be supported from a proper view of Church history.

01:17:06

So I'm not sure if that's what's being implied. I'm not saying it is, but I think of those kind of things when

01:17:12

I hear a question like this about Baptist history. I think I'm taking you down a

01:17:20

Professor of Church History's rabbit trail. Well, Kevin, if you want to clarify yourself with another email, that's fine.

01:17:29

My guess could be that the very fact that these guys like to use as a pejorative term,

01:17:45

Biblicists, that would indicate that those of us who are holding

01:17:53

Sola Scriptura as such a sacred thing and making sure that we keep sounding the alarm that all of the creeds and confessions are very subordinate to the

01:18:06

Scriptures, that we are some kind of like hillbillies or something. And of course, making a caricature as if we have nothing to do with Church history and that we have nothing to do with creeds and confessions and that we believe in going out into the woods by ourselves and getting a proper understanding of the

01:18:29

Bible without any teachers. That could be my Bible and God, right?

01:18:34

Right. It's the mentality of a Biblicist. Right. So, I mean,

01:18:41

I think that there has been a danger of a kind of Biblicism, but Biblicism is not to be equated with a firm and tenacious grasp on Sola Scriptura and with an insistence that doctrine needs to be provable from the

01:19:04

Bible. It's not permissible to combine the

01:19:11

Bible with tradition, whoever tradition you're talking about, and get your doctrine that way.

01:19:16

It must be, by good and necessary inference or explicitly, deduced from the

01:19:22

Word of God. And that's not Biblicism. That's Sola Scriptura.

01:19:28

Amen. And by the way, I do despise using the term Biblicism as a pejorative term, because we don't believe, historically as Baptists, anything—we're not supposed to, anyway— anything that is not clearly taught in the

01:19:42

Bible. And why use that root word for Bible as some kind of an insult?

01:19:48

I just don't get it. Yeah. Now, are there any dialogues occurring between those who are for and against the retrieval movement so that there can be some, perhaps, greater understanding, some healed wounds, anything of that nature?

01:20:11

Well, there have been some responses to some of the things

01:20:19

Dr. Barrett has written, and you're going to see them online more and more, because his choice to go to a conservative kind of Anglicanism is going to make those critiques much more popular.

01:20:38

I think the fact of the matter is that it's very difficult to talk about these issues, and why

01:20:52

I was so reluctant to do so three years ago, without getting yourself in a real difficult situation.

01:21:02

And so my impression is that there isn't a sufficient conversation about this.

01:21:10

I've made my own views on this pretty open and public.

01:21:17

My concerns about the natural theology of Aquinas are out there and things.

01:21:28

And I think there needs to be a conversation about those things, Chris. But I'm not sure there is the kind of conversation that there needs to be.

01:21:39

Okay, we have Tammy in Utica, New York, who asks, do you have any counsel and ideas about steps that could be taken by Reformed Baptist pastors to ensure that their congregations will not be deceived by these retrieval movements and leave sound biblical theology and ecclesiology?

01:22:12

Oh, that's a really good question. You know,

01:22:19

I think that one of the greatest, what's the word

01:22:28

I want, preventive or protection against this, is simply a commitment to consecutively, expositorily, and textually and topically, preach the word of God week after week after week, and to insist on the very doctrine of Scripture that we have in Chapter 1 of the

01:22:53

Confession, which I think it may seem funny, I don't think it is, because the

01:23:01

Confession is the great witness to Sola Scriptura. Yes. I mean, I think in every one of the 10 paragraphs in Chapter 1, in a different way, you have a light tone on the subject of Sola Scriptura.

01:23:16

And a biblical exposition of the foundation of those statements would go a long ways,

01:23:26

I think, to protecting people against the notion that in any way, shape, or form, tradition should trump the teaching of Scripture.

01:23:38

And I think also, we have to understand, I think we have a right view of the nature and value of the teaching tradition of the

01:23:50

Church. It will help us not to misunderstand it and take it in a wrong way or use it in a wrong way.

01:24:00

And I'm not sure if this is the best way to say it. I've tried to say it in any number of places in my own ministry.

01:24:09

And maybe this is just too homely and ridiculous, but I'll share it with your listeners and maybe it'll be helpful.

01:24:16

You know, I have what I call the Mrs. Kelly illustration. Mrs. Kelly was a teacher of mine.

01:24:23

I'm not sure if it was kindergarten or first grade, but she taught me to read. But once Mrs.

01:24:31

Kelly taught me to read, I didn't need her standing over me and telling me everything, because I could read for myself.

01:24:43

The value of the teaching tradition of the Church is the cumulative ministry of the pastor -teachers that Christ has to be giving to His Church for 2 ,000 years.

01:24:54

And the value of their ministry is simply this, that we don't understand

01:25:01

Scripture clearly, and then we don't trust ourselves to be the perfect interpreters of Scripture.

01:25:11

And so we go and say, well, Christ has given to His Church pastor -teachers, and He's been giving them for 2 ,000 years.

01:25:19

Maybe I should go to the best of those pastor -teachers and see what they say about this text. And we read them, and we consult several of them, and we read our commentaries, and then we say, oh, that's what the text is saying.

01:25:37

No, we're not dependent on those pastor -teachers after that, are we? Because at the point where they have enlightened us and we say, oh, yeah, now

01:25:46

I see what the Bible says, at that point, their value has been achieved, right?

01:25:52

We don't say, well, I've got to make sure that Benjamin Keach is with me all the time.

01:26:02

Mrs. Kelly teaches us to read. Keach and the other forefathers teach us to read our

01:26:09

Bibles. Once we're reading our Bibles and we see it there, the goal is achieved, and we're not in any kind of way dependent upon them after that.

01:26:21

So that's my pretty homely way of trying to teach the value of tradition on the one hand, and on the other hand, the fact that they're not our final authority.

01:26:31

They only help us to understand our final authority. Okay, we have

01:26:38

Mel in Brandon, Vermont, and Mel wants to know, it seems that some of these professed confessionalists in Protestantism don't realize that they are beginning to imitate

01:26:55

Rome's understanding of their own creedal statements where they place them on an equal par with Scripture or above them.

01:27:04

Isn't this what many must be unconsciously doing? Well, let me talk about that for a while.

01:27:15

It's certainly true that Rome places their creedal statement, their theological tradition, their oral tradition that they promote from ex cathedra, places that on a level with Scripture.

01:27:32

And so I'm sure they place the Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian Creed and some of their other creeds on a level with Scripture.

01:27:41

That is emphatically wrong. But that has never been the

01:27:52

Protestant view and should never be the Protestant view of our creeds and confession.

01:28:00

I'm a strong believer in creeds and confession and teach this.

01:28:06

I'll be teaching it again to our new members class this coming Lord's Day. I'm a strong believer in creeds and confession as a necessary and an obligatory action of the church.

01:28:23

The church doesn't have any choice but to confess their understanding of Scripture.

01:28:28

And you even wrote a commentary on the London Baptist Confession. Yes, that's true.

01:28:36

And I wrote it because I thought that the confession was so valuable, a help in understanding

01:28:41

Scripture. And so I certainly believe that the creeds and confessions are not only useful but obligatory.

01:28:54

As I was about to say, it's not enough for God to say it and for the Holy Spirit to inspire it. The church must confess it.

01:29:01

That's part of the obligation of the church, to confess what it believes Scripture says.

01:29:07

Now, having said that, but the

01:29:14

Protestant view, the Reformed view of creeds is that they are not a final authority.

01:29:24

They're not divine authority. The Protestant view of creeds is that they are a form of human authority.

01:29:31

The church, in its own way, like the family and like the faith, the three spheres of authority, the church has a certain authority.

01:29:42

A part of its authority is to confess the truth of Scripture. And so the church's obligation to confess the truth of Scripture is a kind of human authority.

01:29:58

It's not divine authority. But I will agree with—was it Nelf? I will agree that some

01:30:05

Protestants begin to forget themselves, and they treat their creeds as if they were divine authority.

01:30:13

And that should never be done. Our creed is a form of human authority and never divine authority.

01:30:22

Divine authority is infallible and so forth, but not our creeds.

01:30:29

They are always subject to improvement and always subject to being made better than they are because they're a development of church history.

01:30:44

Are they important? Should they be revised lightly or quickly? No. But is that a reality because they're simply human authority?

01:30:55

Yes, it is. Amen. We have Vernon in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

01:31:03

And Vernon says, Do you advise that people not join

01:31:08

Reformed Baptist churches that are a part of this retrieval movement? No, that's not my advice.

01:31:20

Because the fact of the matter is that there are all sorts of different levels of this and different understandings of this, even within the retrieval movement.

01:31:33

I would never give that advice. In fact, I can't say

01:31:42

I would never give that advice. If someone was actually beginning to treat their creed as if it was divine and not human authority,

01:31:50

I might advise that. But I don't know if anybody was actually saying that or doing that. To say something like that would be to undermine the ministry of men in churches that I love and respect.

01:32:05

And I'm not going to say that. There might be an odd situation where things have gotten so extreme, or if I really understood, maybe.

01:32:15

But I'm reluctant to respond to that question. Wouldn't one of the elements that might give you pause in regarding to recommend a church is how frequently and forcefully they proclaim and insist upon these things of retrievalism?

01:32:35

Like, for instance, I've had people ask me, would I ever join a dispensationalist church?

01:32:42

And if there was not a confessional Reformed Baptist church in my area where I really believed the pastors had the hearts of shepherds, because you might have a

01:32:55

Reformed Baptist church where you have a tyrant as a pastor or pastors, plural. But if you can't find a good, solid

01:33:05

Reformed Baptist church and there's a sovereign, grace -believing, Calvinistic, dispensationalist church, as long as they're not one -string bandros or primarily teach their eschatology, because that might be something that you hardly ever hear from their pulpit, then

01:33:23

I would be a lot more comfortable to join such a place. Does that make sense? Sure.

01:33:30

Sure. And what I'm concerned about is a tendency that's illustrated by Dr.

01:33:41

Barrett's conversion to Anglicanism. And I'm giving a warning to people, brothers in churches, that I love.

01:33:50

That's my spirit. Right. Amen. And it seems that Reformed Baptists, through every decade that passes by, develop things that set them apart from other

01:34:10

Reformed Baptists, and they do so very often with a militant spirit. And sometimes

01:34:16

I wonder, are we going to keep dividing with such frequency that we no longer exist on the planet before the return of Christ?

01:34:24

I mean, it really gets disturbing to see how many times there are infighting and wars going on amongst us.

01:34:34

Yeah, and that's something that we really need to be cautious about.

01:34:41

I know a friend of mine, Pastor Jeff Smith, and he believes that historically that there was a kind of self -satisfaction and—yeah, maybe self -satisfaction is the right word— that particular

01:35:04

Baptist in a previous age had with themselves that made them stand aloof from the

01:35:12

Great Awakening. And the fact of the matter is that, in many respects, maybe the

01:35:19

Great Awakening passed them by. And it was because they felt that they were fine as they were and didn't need anything like that.

01:35:31

And now, this is the danger, I mean, because do

01:35:37

I think our ecclesiology is right? Do I think our view of baptism is right? Do I think our view of Reformed theology is correct?

01:35:44

I absolutely do. But, boy, we're in trouble if we lose a teachable spirit and if we allow that to make us become proud, right?

01:35:59

That's a real danger. And I think one of the things that we've tried to do at CBTS is avoid big fights over issues like this.

01:36:13

We do take stands. We have to teach what we believe, but we try to do it with a

01:36:20

Catholic spirit, what I'd call a Catholic Reformed Baptist spirit of love for our brethren.

01:36:28

And it's only because this issue of sola scriptura is so fundamental that we're forced to say something about it, and that we choose to make this the issue we want to talk about.

01:36:43

Amen. Just out of curiosity, has anyone—I know this is kind of a fairly new phenomenon, but as you've already demonstrated, you've been warning about it for several years at least.

01:36:59

But is there any book either available or in the works on this?

01:37:05

I know that you have blog articles, but is there a more substantial work in the works about this?

01:37:18

Well, no, not by us. Dr. Jeff Johnson of Arkansas at the

01:37:28

Bible Theological Seminary has written some things about this, and I believe he's worth listening to, and that what he's saying deserves a—what's the word

01:37:44

I want ?—deserves a respectful reading. Because one of the tendencies out there is to drive certain theological views, like the doctrine of simplicity, to extremes,

01:38:01

I fear, that take you clearly away from the teaching of the

01:38:08

Bible about some things. And I think his concerns about some of those things are well worth listening to, even though I hold the doctrine of divided simplicity myself.

01:38:19

And, of course, it's confessional. God is without body, parts, and passions, and I say, Amen, that's exactly right.

01:38:27

Amen. We have Parson in Mountain Brook, Alabama, and Parson says,

01:38:38

You mentioned before that Dr. Matthew Barrett converted to Anglicanism from out of a

01:38:45

Reformed understanding of Scripture that is Baptistic. Has he remained

01:38:51

Reformed as an Anglican, and have you heard of any notable figures who have actually gone all the way to Rome with this?

01:39:03

Well, the last question, I haven't heard of any notable figures recently that have done that.

01:39:09

I think there have been notable figures in the past that have done stuff like this. The question, has he remained

01:39:16

Reformed? So far as I know, in the sense that Anglicans can be

01:39:21

Reformed, he has. But, of course, it's essential for Anglicanism to hold a modified understanding of Sola Scriptura and to the normative principle of worship rather than the regulative principle of worship.

01:39:39

So, Sola Scriptura leads directly to the regulative principle of worship that the consistently

01:39:47

Reformed hold, whereas both Lutherans and Anglicans hold something that we call the normative principle of Scripture and do not hold to the regulative principle because they don't think that Sola Scriptura applies to issues like the government worship and worship of the

01:40:08

Church, including something like infant baptism. I didn't know this until a few years ago, but if you read some of the

01:40:18

Lutheran commentators on Luther himself, he didn't think he needed Sola Scriptura to practice infant baptism.

01:40:25

That just shows you one of the ways in which this becomes a very important issue.

01:40:31

Calvin, of course, disagreed with him and said, no, if we're going to practice infant baptism, we have to have a biblical argument.

01:40:37

And that's where the old, I think faulty, but Reformed argument based on circumcision and the old testament comes from.

01:40:48

Calvin put it together. I'm not going to say the person who held it, but he certainly is famous for holding it because he felt like you had to have a biblical argument for infant baptism if you're going to practice it.

01:41:05

Are you there, Dr. Brothers? Now, did he, after that, did

01:41:15

John Calvin say, okay, now will somebody come up with a biblical explanation for infant baptism?

01:41:21

What would he have called a biblical explanation? The only one that I'm aware of that could use the

01:41:28

New Testament to teach infant baptism are those that assume that household baptisms,

01:41:39

Oikobaptism, as they call it, included infants. But how else could you even biblically use

01:41:44

Scripture itself to prove infant baptism? I know they try to claim that it is the new covenant's version of circumcision, but that can't be proven from the

01:41:56

New Testament. Are you there, Dr.

01:42:02

Waldron? I think we've lost Dr. Waldron. Well, we're going to our final break, and hopefully we'll be able to recover

01:42:11

Dr. Waldron. And our email address, if you want to join us before we run out of time, is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:42:20

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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Botafogo and Associates, and Chris Arnzen of Iron Trump and Zion Radio. Dr. Waldron, are you with us?

01:52:45

Yes, I am. Great. I don't know why you dropped off, but these kind of technological things are the bane of my existence, and they do happen from time to time.

01:52:58

And I'm always delighted. I'm sorry. I feel a little defensive, but I don't think I did anything, but who knows, you know?

01:53:04

Right. Well, I'm always delighted when I see something like this happening on a multimillion dollar corporations network like Fox News, because it just shows me even the big boys can have this stuff happen.

01:53:17

But I was hoping, Providence did not allow us to do this, but I was hoping that you were going to be able to preach at a

01:53:28

Bible conference that's being held a half hour away from me in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania for the

01:53:35

Reformation Day weekend, and that was unable to be fit into your schedule due to a conflict.

01:53:42

But are there any other—go ahead, I'm sorry. Yeah, I was sorry about that, too.

01:53:49

I was already scheduled to preach at our own Reformation Day conference on that very day, and I hope that I can make it out there again some other time to do that.

01:53:58

Yes. Well, if you could, do you have any other speaking engagements or books or anything else that you want to inform our listeners about that are in the works?

01:54:14

Well, let's see. Well, of course, I'm still really excited about the publication of my book,

01:54:22

The Doctrine of Last Things, An Optimistic Millennial Viewpoint, that was published by Three Grades Pets and my friends down there.

01:54:33

I've been really excited about it. It's been doing very well. And of course, this book is the product of 35 years of teaching on the subject of eschatology.

01:54:46

And of course, some of your listeners may know that I have several books out there on the subject.

01:54:52

But this really takes the best of all those books that are out there already, combines them into one, and introduces them in a way that I think is really the way

01:55:06

I want people to approach this. I start the book by asking, is eschatology optional?

01:55:13

And then I talk about the fact that there is a core that every

01:55:18

Christian must believe, and that not to believe is really to leave the

01:55:23

Christian faith. But that core is held by the four major eschatological views that evangelicals and Bible believers have held over the years.

01:55:35

But so that our approach to this issue must take that into account.

01:55:43

Even though then I go on to defend Amillennialism in the book,

01:55:48

I say, oh, look, we've got to treat each other as friends and with courtesy and Christian kindness, because this is not an argument in itself between orthodox and heretic.

01:56:03

It's an argument, at least with regard to those four views, between Bible believers, and we have to behave ourselves in the way we conduct that conversation.

01:56:14

Yes, so in other words, if those of our listeners who already have

01:56:19

The End Times made simple by you, this new book would have more information not included in that volume.

01:56:28

Oh, yeah. One of the things that, you know, happened when I published that is a lot of things that I was already teaching couldn't be included in that book.

01:56:38

And so one of the things is the whole new introduction. There's a history of eschatology in the

01:56:46

Church as an assertive at the end. And then a lot of what has led me to what

01:56:55

I call optimistic Amillennialism, my understanding of the parables of Ustred's day, my understanding of the promises of Christ to his church in Matthew 16.

01:57:09

Those articles are now a part of this book. And so it really gives my entire teaching on that subject, and I do a basic class and an advanced class because we teach

01:57:28

Bible eschatology at the seminary. And when you say that,

01:57:34

I think you used the word developed into optimistic Amillennialism, this is a fairly recent development in your understanding of eschatology?

01:57:44

I'm not talking about the Amillennial part. I'm talking about the optimistic part. Well, over the years, my views of Matthew 16 and the parables of Ustred's days are not new.

01:58:01

But it has appeared to me that it's necessary to emphasize that Amillennialism can be understood in a more optimistic way.

01:58:15

Some of the attacks on Amillennialism have been that it doesn't have the optimism of certain other views like postmillennialism.

01:58:27

And I'm not trying to start a fight here, but I do believe that there are a lot of perspectives in Scripture that give us the right to be very optimistic about the church, about the growth and spread of the gospel.

01:58:46

And so that's led me to want to talk about an optimistic form of Amillennialism.

01:58:52

Well, we are out of time, and I want to make sure our listeners have your websites. Once again, Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary's website is cbtseminary .org,

01:59:04

cbtseminary .org. And the website for Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Owensboro, Kentucky is grbco .org,

01:59:13

grbco .org. Thank you so much, Dr. Waldron, for being such an exquisite guest.

01:59:18

I look forward to your return many times in the future. And I want to thank everybody. Great. And I want to make sure everybody remembers for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater