October 2, 2025 Show with Evan Dollar on “One Pastor’s Mission to Return to the Sovereign Grace Roots of the Seventh Day Baptist Church”

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October 3, 2025

October 2, 2025 Evan Dollar,Pastor of Covenant of Grace Seventh Day Baptist Church in Wellington, KY, who willaddress: “ONE PASTOR’s MISSION to RETURNto the SOVEREIGN GRACE ROOTS ofthe SEVENTH DAY BAPTIST CHURCH,A VERY OLD YET RARELY KNOWN DENOMINATION” Subscribe: Listen:

00:03: Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer
00:11: George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend
00:16: Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,
00:23: Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:31: Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
00:38: 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.
00:50: 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.
00:57: And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,
01:49: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet
01:54: Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.
02:00: This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this second day of October 2025.
02:10: And some of you may be wondering why I was playing that beautiful hymn right in the beginning of the program.
02:18: Well, it is somewhat connected to our conversation today. That hymn was a much beloved hymn going back to the 18th century on Jordan's stormy banks,
02:33: I stand. And the hymn writer was Samuel Stennett, who was not only a hymn writer but a pastor in England, a very close friend of the brilliant, globally renowned theologian
02:50: Dr. John Gill, a pastor with whom Gill had pulpit exchanges.
02:58: And one of the reasons pulpit exchanges were somewhat easy for John Gill and Samuel Stennett was that they worshiped on different days of the week, believe it or not.
03:12: Samuel Stennett was a Seventh -day Baptist, in addition to sharing John Gill's Reformed theology.
03:20: And we are going to be discussing the Seventh -day Baptists today with my guest
03:27: Evan Dollar, pastor of Covenant of Grace Seventh -day Baptist Church in Wellington, Kentucky.
03:33: And our specific theme is one pastor's mission to return to the sovereign grace roots of the
03:39: Seventh -day Baptist Church, a very old yet rarely known denomination. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Evan Dollar.
03:54: Yeah, thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me. Yes, I'm the pastor of Covenant of Grace Seventh -day
04:00: Baptist Church. We are located right in the heart of the hills of eastern Kentucky in Wellington, not too far from Lexington and Louisville, so we're pretty close to that.
04:13: We are a Reformed Seventh -day Baptist Church. I know that's one of the main things that we're going to be talking about here.
04:21: We're going to be talking about some of the roots of that, the particular Baptist in Seventh -day
04:27: Baptist history and Baptist history. And like you mentioned, how there was lots of pulpit exchanges between many of the great
04:36: Baptists in history and how there was genuine brotherly connection between Baptists and Seventh -day
04:42: Baptists throughout. And so we're just trying to continue that Reformed Baptist tradition within Seventh -day
04:48: Baptist here in Kentucky. We just started out this church plant. We just opened up in July, July 12th.
04:56: It was a good opening service. And so here we are, just a church plant trying to get started.
05:05: And why don't you tell us the website for that church? Yeah, you can find us, Covenant of Grace, SDB.
05:14: That stands for Seventh -day Baptist, so it's covenantofgracesdb .com.
05:20: And we will repeat that later on in the program. And Evan is the fourth
05:28: Seventh -day Baptist to appear as a guest on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.
05:34: The first two were on the program on the same day. Back in April of 2010,
05:43: Kevin Butler and Nicholas Kirsten, and they did a program on the
05:49: Seventh -day Baptist, their history and beliefs. And then I had a four -day debate in May of 2010 between Seventh -day
06:00: Baptist Rod Henry and someone who is very familiar, no doubt, to most of my listening audience, a dear friend of mine,
06:10: Dr. Sam Waldron, who is a Reformed Baptist and one who worships on the first day like most
06:18: Reformed Baptists do, like most Christians in general do. And I am in the process of trying to get a hold of the recordings of that debate, that four -day debate from 2010.
06:32: My current webmaster can't seem to locate it anywhere, and I'm hoping that my webmaster who was volunteering for me at that time in 2010,
06:45: I'm hoping that he has it archived somewhere so we can share that with you. Well, as we do with all of our first -time guests on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Evan, please give us a summary of your salvation testimony, including the kind of religious background of your upbringing, if any, and what kind of providential circumstances our
07:17: Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you. Amen, Chris.
07:23: Yes, lots of that going on in my testimony. So my mother and father, they were never married, never together.
07:32: But nevertheless, I was born in 1993, and my grandmother was a very godly woman.
07:42: She is still alive today. Much of my testimony has to do with her. She somewhat raised me, her and my father, and my father was married to a woman at that time, my stepmother, and they would take me to church occasionally here and there.
08:00: And along with my grandmother, she would take me to church, to a Baptist church, and this was in Taylorsville, North Carolina.
08:08: And so by the age of seven, I was baptized, a professing believer, a genuine believer in the
08:15: Lord. My dad and stepmother, they ended up getting a divorce, and my dad never went back to church since then.
08:24: He occasionally will go now, but nothing very serious there. But my grandmother, she was faithful, and she would continue to take me to church on the times that she would have me.
08:36: But as any person who is kind of separated from the church of God, you can also become separated in your convictions and all those things.
08:48: And so I was growing up a rebellious, very rebellious teenager.
08:55: I'm arrested multiple times. Even right after getting out of high school,
09:01: I was arrested down in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for public intoxication.
09:07: So I had a pretty rough time during those teenage years.
09:12: But in 2018, first off, I'm married. I had six children and one on the way.
09:20: But in 2018, the Lord just really just in His providence and His sovereignty just gave me some sort of sense of revival of religion that just went to my soul.
09:35: Best way that I could explain it is the Lord just worked on me and I began devouring
09:40: Scripture just in the Word of God. It was a month or two where I read
09:47: Scripture from front to back and was just completely entrenched in it.
09:53: And so in 2018 was was really whenever I had this this moment of a serious revival in my life that I can only look back and say that this was the
10:04: Lord. And with that revival came my
10:11: Sabbath convictions. And so in the Word of God, seeing the Sabbath, which will bring me to where we are today.
10:19: But we went to multiple churches. As you know, kind of like what you said earlier, the
10:28: Seventh -day Baptists, they are not very well known. They are very old, old denomination, one of the oldest.
10:35: That's still going. But very few churches are around the area.
10:40: And so where I was at in North Carolina, there were no Sabbath churches. There were no churches that worshipped on the
10:46: Sabbath. You would either have to go to some type of Messianic congregation or Hebrew roots or whatever.
10:54: And that was never who we were, never were convicted on those things. And so the
11:00: Lord was gracious to us in that regard. But we did go to multiple churches.
11:06: We tried out multiple churches, never really feeling satisfied in anything.
11:12: And then a dear brother of mine who was a Reformed Baptist got in touch with me.
11:20: We went to his church here and there. He showed me the doctrines of grace.
11:27: And like many people, when you first hear the doctrines of grace, you get a little angry.
11:35: You grit your teeth a little bit. I can remember after debating with him a little bit on predestination and the doctrines of grace that I remember going into my kitchen there in North Carolina, picking up my child
11:55: Anson, I remember holding him in the air and crying, Are you of the elect of God?
12:01: I was going through a wild transition, but ultimately broke underneath the complete sovereignty of God and began to embrace the doctrines of grace and see how gracious they are and really seeing how wretched of a sinner all mankind is and what the
12:21: Lord does in his election. And so it was that it was during that time that the doctrines of grace and Calvinism and all that stuff started entering in.
12:32: So I was a Sabbatarian first, and then later I became convicted of the doctrines of grace and Reformed theology, eventually adopted covenant theology soon right after that.
12:44: But still yet, there was a sense of feeling lost in what
12:50: I believe. Like you said, most Reformed theology does not hold to a
12:56: Seventh -day Sabbath. And so here I am in the middle of North Carolina. There's no churches around, no
13:02: Seventh -day Baptist churches around. At that time, I don't even think I knew what a Seventh -day
13:07: Baptist church was. But there I was. And so we would just kind of go to some churches here and there.
13:15: We would go to my brother's church. And then on the Sabbath day, we got really convicted of abortion ministry.
13:24: We met some really godly people through some of the work that Jeff Durbin did. We started being influenced by the abolitionists.
13:34: And so on the Sabbath day, what we would do, we did this for a few years while we was in North Carolina. We would go to the
13:40: Asheville Planned Parenthood there and minister every Saturday. Saturday was the day that they murdered the babies there.
13:48: Asheville, North Carolina? Asheville, North Carolina. Yes, sir. We met up there.
13:55: There's a good brother there named Zach Hebb. Laura Lightfoot was there. And that was really my beginning into ministry of evangelism and open air ministry, which
14:06: I continue to do today. But yes, it was Asheville, North Carolina, where at least
14:13: I was able to feel like the Lord was using me on the Sabbath in some way, but still yet the lingering conviction of we ought to be worshiping on the
14:23: Sabbath. We ought to be keeping the Sabbath still continued to weigh on me. And then my brother who convinced me of the doctrines of grace, he actually sent me a podcast from Particular Pilgrims with Ron Miller and the
14:43: Man of God Network. I'm sure you maybe know him. But Ron, he had done multiple episodes on the
14:53: Seventh -day Baptist and what he called the Seventh -day men. And that was my really my first introduction into Seventh -day
15:03: Baptist, because at that time, like I said, I was feeling lost. I was in Reformed theology holding to the
15:08: Sabbath, but feeling as if there was no heritage for me whatsoever. And I don't want to be that way.
15:14: I don't want to be off on a limb, all on my own. And so whenever I listened to the
15:20: Ron of the Man of God Network, and he was describing all of these connections out of the
15:25: Reformation, there was the Seventh -day men, the Seventh -day Baptists who were working hand in hand with the
15:31: Baptists during that time, how they originated at the same time. All that stuff gave me some theological ground to stand on, theological comfort to stand on, a theological heritage to stand on, and a genealogy to stand on.
15:47: And we will be talking a good bit about that, I'm sure.
15:53: But still, yeah, this was just a podcast. And so it's not as if I am going to sit here and listen to this podcast over and over on a
16:01: Sabbath day. But what happened was, is when Ron introduced the Seventh -day Baptist to me, which
16:06: Ron doesn't even know who I am, but he did introduce it through his podcast, I began looking for Seventh -day
16:14: Baptist churches. And sure enough, there was a few I would have to drive over two hours to or whatever.
16:22: But even whenever I went to some of these Seventh -day Baptist churches, yes, we were worshiping on the
16:28: Sabbath day, but there was a neglect of seriousness.
16:34: Or, you know, I also have the Strong Reformed, the doctrines of grace, which to me is a doctrine that is held higher than the
16:41: Sabbath. And so I could go into these churches, the Seventh -day Baptist church. One was in Tennessee.
16:48: But I honestly, even there, I was not feeling content or comforted. And also it was a long drive.
16:55: And then I, by trade at that time, I was an independent insurance adjuster.
17:02: So what I would do is I would, anytime a storm would hit, whether that be Florida, Texas, Louisiana, wherever it would hit a hurricane,
17:11: I would go travel to those areas. And so a hurricane hit.
17:17: And while I was down in Tampa, Florida, there was a Seventh -day Baptist church nearby.
17:23: And I told my wife, hey, let's go to this church on the Sabbath day and see what they're all about.
17:30: And we get there. I honestly don't remember anything about the day. I remember very little about the day.
17:37: But what I do remember is that the pastor there gave me a book.
17:43: He gave me a book called A Choosing People, The History of Seventh -day
17:48: Baptist, by a man named Don Sanford. I ordered and read that book. I'm assuming, if my memory served me right, that it was in the late, mid to late 1980s.
18:06: I was just doing a lot of vast research. This is long before I had my own radio show.
18:13: I was doing vast research into all different kinds of denominations. And believe it or not,
18:21: I came across the Seventh -day Baptists through, and I don't mean to connect you with a cult, but it just so happens that a cult was trying to borrow one of your heroes from history, meaning one of the
18:38: Seventh -day Baptist Church's heroes from history, Stephen Mumford. And Herbert W.
18:46: Armstrong, who led that cult, the Worldwide Church of God, had a program where he was trying to pass off a history that included
18:58: Stephen Mumford in his lineage somehow. But I started looking up Stephen Mumford, found out that he was actually a
19:07: Seventh -day Baptist, and I discovered the Seventh -day
19:13: Baptist General Conference, I think it was, the organization. And then the
19:20: Sabbath Recorder magazine. And then I ordered that book.
19:26: I remember reading it from cover to cover. And I have always been fascinated by Seventh -day
19:34: Baptists. I never became one. I was never convinced of the Seventh -day Sabbath argument.
19:40: Some people may be wondering, why is Chris Arntgen doing a show on Seventh -day Baptists? Well, there are a number of reasons.
19:48: Number one, when I find out that there are theologically sound Reformed Seventh -day
19:56: Baptist congregations out there, like the one pastored by Evan Dollar, I want folks out there to know that when they are themselves already
20:08: Seventh -day observers, and they may be unfortunately drawn into a cult, or just a theologically horrible congregation that worships on the seventh day.
20:23: And so that's one reason. In fact, I'm going to ask you in a minute if you know of any other denominations that observe the
20:33: Seventh -day Sabbath that are theologically sound, because most of them, that I'm aware of, are cults.
20:40: And I'm sure that you are tired, sick and tired, just like I'm sure most, if not all
20:47: Seventh -day Baptists, of constantly having to say, not Adventist, Baptist.
20:54: Yeah. That brings up a good point, Chris, because whenever I was feeling lost, like there was no congregation to worship with, it doesn't take long before you get on Google and you search in Sabbath church, and the next thing you know, you have a cult
21:13: Seventh -day Adventist church right around the corner from you. And so never, never content, never content with those things.
21:22: And there are, and thank you for pointing that out, there are lots of Christians out there who are
21:27: Orthodox, who hold to Reformed theology, that do hold to the Sabbath, but reject all the other garbage that may come with it, like Seventh -day
21:38: Adventism, or Hebrew roots, or I'm not going to go and say that Messianics are out of the fold, essentially, but people don't want to be a part of that in the
21:54: Reformed Orthodox area. And so essentially what
21:59: I'm trying to do here, which has been done in the past, which was very prominent in 1600s, 1700s, is simply a
22:08: Reformed Orthodox Seventh -day Baptist church. And so there's lots of lineage and heritage there that I'm hoping to preserve in case there are others out there, like you said, who have convictions of this.
22:25: And I've been getting messages from people here in Kentucky, people who I'm connected with in the abolitionist movement, who are saying, hey, brother, there is a man here in our
22:35: Reformed church, but he holds to the Seventh -day. He has convictions on that. What can we do?
22:42: How can we help him out? And then give me their information and stuff like that. So you're exactly right. There are people, and there's always going to be people, who are convicted of the
22:52: Seventh -day Sabbath, and many of them are even in a lot of our churches, even within Presbyterian churches.
22:59: I know Presbyterians who wouldn't hold to that section on the Sabbath and would instead hold to a more
23:06: Seventh -day Sabbath. Really? So I've never even met a Presbyterian who had that view.
23:13: Yeah. Well, if you become a Sabbath keeper and believe that the
23:20: Sabbath hasn't changed, then you'll meet all sorts of people, and even within Reformed churches that do.
23:28: And so to your point, I appreciate you bringing me on here because this is a thing that I want to do.
23:36: I want to set the flag on the hill and say, hey, you do not have to go over here. We have a strong history, a strong history that has existed for centuries that was never tainted by Seventh -day
23:52: Adventism, which came 200 -plus years later, or anything that was unorthodox.
23:57: And just to give people that sense of safety and safeguards, like, hey,
24:04: I can hold to the Sabbath day, I can have this conviction, and I can have a strong tradition behind it.
24:12: And people, whenever they see that, they are comforted. And that's essentially my journey into Seventh -day
24:20: Baptist, is essentially that. And that's why I can relate with it so much, because I come from a
24:25: Reformed Baptist background and Reformed theology, and I don't want people to feel lost.
24:33: So if there are people out there in my area that have Sabbath convictions but yet are not going to go down to the
24:42: Adventist route or anything like that, then we have one. And we actually have. There's an
24:47: Adventist church up in Moorhead, Kentucky, not far from me, and we actually had a brother in Christ who has been a
24:55: Calvinist. And he was somewhat settling over there at that Adventist church, never feeling good, never feeling like it was anything that he should be in.
25:06: But now he's going to our church, and he's there. So that is one way. But like you said, there are multiple other areas that people go down, whether that's the
25:19: Hebrew roots or Messianic or Seventh -day Adventism. And I did want to make one clarification, and this may not reflect your view at all.
25:31: I'm just speaking for myself right now. Although I would never recommend anybody to join a
25:37: Seventh -day Adventist church, I do believe that there are genuine born -again believers in there.
25:45: Yes, absolutely. I think that the most problematic thing that is taught by the
25:51: Seventh -day Adventist church is the doctrine of investigative judgment, which really winds up denying the gospel of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.
26:07: And if anybody listening would like to hear a fascinating interview
26:13: I conducted in 2017—actually, December 26, 2017—with the late
26:21: Desmond Ford on the investigative judgment and the everlasting gospel, just type in Desmond, D -E -S -M -O -N -D, in the search engine, and you'll see a couple of interviews pop up with Desmond Ford that I had the honor and privilege to conduct with him before he went home to heaven.
26:45: And Desmond Ford was one of the most highly respected theologians in the
26:53: Seventh -day Adventist church, and he was excommunicated for publicly and aggressively and passionately protesting against and denying and exposing and refuting the doctrine of the investigative judgment.
27:11: So, just wanted to give that tidbit of information to anybody listening.
27:17: And Desmond Ford, although he continued, after leaving Seventh -day
27:23: Adventism, he continued worshiping on the Sabbath. On the
27:28: Seventh -day Sabbath, I should say, because those who are confessional 1689
27:37: Reformed Baptist Sunday observers will call
27:42: Sunday the Sabbath, so I have to make sure—we should make sure that we're clear on what we're talking about when we use the word
27:48: Sabbath. But yeah, Desmond continued worshiping on Saturday, and he developed a other well -known evangelicals that I know.
28:08: I don't remember anyone else right off the top of my head, though. But we're going to go to our first commercial break right now, and we're going to continue when we come back from the break if anybody has any questions.
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28:43: Don't go away. We'll be right back with Evan Dollar and our discussion of the Seventh -day Baptist right after these messages from our sponsors.
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37:06: That's royaldiadem .com. And we are now back with our guest today,
37:13: Evan Dollar. Evan Dollar, as I've already announced, is a
37:19: Seventh -day Baptist, and he is also theologically Reformed. And Evan is the pastor of Covenant of Grace Seventh -day
37:33: Baptist Church in Wellington, Kentucky, and we're addressing one pastor's mission to return to the sovereign grace roots of the
37:42: Seventh -day Baptist Church, a very old yet rarely known denomination. And one of the other reasons
37:51: I'm conducting this show is that I am trying to be some kind of positive influence to my fellow
38:01: Reformed Baptists who are Sunday worshipers, to perhaps be less isolationist than we have been prone to be.
38:13: It was a joy for me to hear my friend Dr. Sam Waldron, who is the president of Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary in Owensboro, Kentucky, and that was the light when
38:33: I heard him debating Rod Henry, the Seventh -day Baptist, 15 years ago on this program.
38:41: Dr. Waldron was very gracious and cordial to his brother in Christ, Rod Henry, and even had a lot of kind things to say about Seventh -day
38:51: Baptists in general. So I'm just hoping that a spirit like that continues, the same spirit that one of the heroes of many
38:59: Reformed Baptists, Dr. John Gill, 18th century hero of Reformed Baptists, the same spirit that he obviously had with his warm friendship, very warm friendship with Samuel Stennett, a
39:18: Seventh -day Baptist in London in the 18th century. As we said earlier, they exchanged pulpits, and Dr.
39:26: Gill asked Samuel Stennett to preach at his funeral when that day came, when he was taken home to the
39:33: Lord. And that day did come, and Samuel Stennett did preach at Dr.
39:40: Gill's funeral, and that funeral message has actually been put into print and is available in various venues.
39:51: But another thing that I'll quickly add to that before I return to my guest,
39:57: Evan Dollar, is many Reformed Baptists who are Sunday observers may not be aware of this, but a church that the majority of Reformed Baptists throughout the
40:12: United States and Europe and the rest of the world, a church that most of us have admired greatly, has been
40:23: Grace and Truth Church in Israel, which is a
40:28: Reformed Baptist church. Grace and Truth Christian Congregation is the actual name.
40:34: It was in Tel Aviv and now is located in a different part of Israel, but they are
40:42: Saturday observers. A lot of people might not even be aware of that. This is the church where Baruch Maoz formerly was the pastor for many years, and they currently have a different pastor there who
41:03: I've had on this program. But they have always been Saturday observers.
41:08: A lot of it had to do with the fact that they are in Israel, but that's just so that our
41:16: Sunday observers should not freak out when they hear about a brother in Christ worshiping on Saturday.
41:25: But if you want to pick up where you left off, Evan, and just tell us more about your journey.
41:33: Yeah, no, thank you again, Chris, for mentioning that and how Seventh -day Baptists and Baptists have genuinely been united in a lot of things, especially going back towards the
41:46: English Reformation. I do hope that that spirit does continue.
41:51: You mentioned Sam Waldron out here in Kentucky. One thing that I have noticed whenever we moved to Kentucky was that a lot of people actually know about the
42:01: Seventh -day Baptists. And I believe that that does come out of Sam Waldron's seminary over there,
42:07: Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary, because it does seem as if they have been gracious towards us.
42:14: And thank you for continuing that spirit. And I hope to encourage that as well. I know my friend
42:20: Eric, he tried to share something on a Reformed Baptist page, one of the main ones, and he tried to share this event, actually, this taking place, and it got rejected.
42:31: And it gets rejected for the very reasons that we're talking about. And so hopefully, conversations like this could unite brothers in Christ, especially in the
42:39: Reformed tradition, to embrace each other a little bit more. But where I was at was
42:46: I got that book from Don Sanford, and then Ron Miller also mentioned a book that I highly recommend for people who want to know about the
42:57: Seventh -day men during the Reformation. Ron Miller, on a particular Pilgrim's Podcast, referenced a book called
43:05: The Seventh -day Men. It's by a man named Brian Ball. And so I got
43:12: Don Sanford's book, I got Brian Ball's book, and I just devoured them. And the more
43:17: I devoured them, the more I felt at home with the historic roots of the
43:22: Seventh -day Baptists. And so that really put more of a spark underneath me. And so at that point,
43:28: I was visiting churches, scheduling times to visit with Seventh -day Baptist churches, even got connected with a church in New Jersey called
43:37: Shiloh Seventh -day Baptist Church, founded in 1737, began great relationships with those guys.
43:46: They come down here, we go up there, and they decided that they wanted to help sponsor us and sponsor our church plant down here.
43:55: And so they have been very gracious in all of that. And so that kind of brings me to that journey, that long journey of, you know, the
44:05: Lord working on me, the Lord working in my life, convicting me of the Sabbath, convicting me of Reformed theology, trying to find a place, and then finally finding a home here.
44:16: And a lot of that does come from the roots of it all, coming from the
44:22: English Reformation. I think that's probably where we'll move into now, is understanding that the
44:29: Sabbath was not some issue that was never discussed about, or as if it suddenly popped up with the rise of the
44:37: Messianic movement or the Hebrew Roots movement or Seventh -day Adventism. It never was.
44:43: It's something that popped up early within the Reformation. Although during that time, books were being circulated about the
44:51: Sabbath, books were being burned about the Sabbath. We do have some of those still preserved. But you do get evidence as early as 1584 by Puritan John Stockwood.
45:04: He wrote a book in 1584 called A Very Profitable and Necessary Discourse Concerning the
45:11: Observation and Keeping of the Sabbath Day. So when he refers to the Sabbath Day, he is referring to Sunday.
45:18: He is trying to encourage his readers that the Sabbath Day, he takes a very
45:23: Puritan approach to the Sabbath Day and says that the first day is now the Sabbath Day.
45:29: But in that book, he refers to Sabbatarians, some Sabbatarians as those who, quote, ostensibly and stiffly upheld the ceremonial observation of the
45:40: Sabbath Day. And so as early as 1584, we're seeing that there are people who are being, books are being wrote against them that are saying that there are people who are holding to this day.
45:52: One accusation that Seventh -day Baptists have got from time to time is that we are holding to the ceremonial law or we're often called
46:04: Jewish. But you mentioned how there is a church in Israel that is a
46:10: Reformed Baptist church worshiping, keeping the Sabbath Day. And supported by Sunday -worshiping
46:16: Reformed Baptists and very much beloved by Sunday -worshipping
46:23: Reformed Baptists globally. Yeah, that's great to hear.
46:29: I didn't even know about that. I'll have to look them up. David Zadok is the current pastor.
46:36: He used to be, but that's Z -A -D -O -K, David Zadok.
46:43: All right, nice. Yeah, I wrote that down. I'll try to reach out to him, see if we can link arms.
46:49: But what I was getting at is that this Reformed Baptist church in Israel that's worshiping on the
46:55: Sabbath Day, that's actually out of the normal. Instead, the
47:01: Seventh -day Baptists, they don't originate out of some Jewish movement. They don't originate out of some movement out of Israel or Messianic movement,
47:08: Hebrew roots. They originate in England, is where they really start to get their foot underneath them.
47:16: Because you have this idea of the Reformation that's taking place.
47:21: And like I said, in 1584, you have writings coming against the Sabbath. You have a guy named John Sprint.
47:27: He was another Puritan in 1607. He is trying to prove the
47:34: Christian Sabbath. And he referred to people what he considered to be
47:40: Jewish Sabbath, to hold to the Jewish Sabbath of the Seventh -day. And those people were claiming that it ought to be kept and observed.
47:47: So he's writing in 1607, which then really brings us to a guy named
47:55: Theophilus Braeborn. He was in the Church of England, very well -educated,
48:01: Paedobaptist, Anglican, had a high regard for authority. There was two guys,
48:07: Theophilus Braeborn and Alexander Greterichs. But Theophilus, he was born in 1590, and very well -educated man.
48:17: And in 1628, he wrote his first discourse on the Sabbath. And it was called
48:22: Discourse Upon the Sabbath Day. And this was whenever the first what we would call positive book on the
48:32: Sabbath has been made and it's not completely destroyed. And so now in 1628, the atmosphere is somewhat changing a little bit.
48:43: Seventh -day Baptists have always pointed to Theophilus Braeborn as being one of the first pioneers.
48:50: He was not a Baptist. He was a Paedobaptist. Many of the early guys who were formulating this were
48:57: Paedobaptists, which kind of goes to my point, how there are people within Presbyterian churches today that do hold to a
49:04: Sabbath, Seventh -day Sabbath conviction. And it's because the Seventh -day Sabbath doesn't necessarily hinge on a view of Scripture, whether it's
49:14: Paedobaptism or Credo -baptism. It's something in and of itself. But you have
49:20: Theophilus Braeborn. He writes this Discourse Upon the Sabbath Day. And then the
49:27: Sabbath day begins to really shake things up in England.
49:34: Theophilus referred to the Sabbath as now being the highest controversy in the
49:39: Church of England. Archbishop James Usher got involved with it. King Charles then ordered that the bishops and the clergy now prepare a defense for Sunday.
49:51: And so this issue of the Sabbath was pretty high, very well circulating, and people were starting to see it.
50:02: And then he has writings that come against him. He is eventually imprisoned. Braeborn goes to prison for his beliefs.
50:10: He gets out. In 1632, he writes a defense of the Sabbath. I believe he wrote multiple books after that, but those are his two main books.
50:21: The Discourse Upon the Sabbath Day and the Defense of the Sabbath Day in 1632. And so you have these
50:28: Paedobaptists who are advocating for it. Now, we do know that in his writings, Theophilus Braeborn mentions another book that was written before him.
50:40: That he lamented over as not being able to have because it was burned. I don't think it was by this guy.
50:46: We don't know who it was. So that just shows you that the idea of the
50:51: Sabbath was very much circulating during the Reformation period. But the first Baptist guy that we get to advocate for the
51:01: Sabbath was a man named James Oxford. In 1650, he wrote the book.
51:08: It's called The Doctrine of the Fourth Commandment Deformed by Potpourri, Reformed and Restored to its
51:16: Primitive Purity. And when he wrote this book, the English Parliament immediately declared for all copies to be burned and that James would be punished.
51:28: We don't know the history on what happened to James after that. But one copy did survive.
51:35: So if anybody was interested in that book, you can just search that online and you can begin to see some of the first ideas of a
51:43: Seventh -day Sabbath being kept by early Baptists in that time. And because these guys were being accused of holding to the ceremonial law and they were accused of being
51:52: Jewish and all this. In Oxford's book, he says the following, which
51:58: I think shows the very heart of Seventh -day Baptists and how they are gospel -centered men.
52:06: In the book, it says, he says, I am no Jew nor included to any Jewish opinions.
52:12: I seek not righteousness by the law, but by faith in the Son of God, according to the gospel.
52:19: And so Oxford becomes one of the very first guys to, one of the very first Baptists to start publishing works on the
52:29: Seventh -day Sabbath. Now we get into a guy that you may know,
52:35: Henry Jesse. Do you know much about Henry Jesse? No, I do not. Henry Jesse was part of one of the very first Baptist churches to exist, the
52:44: Jacob Lothrop Jesse Church. And in fact, could you pick up on Jacob Jesse when we return from our midway break?
52:56: And once again, if anybody wants to join us with a question of your own, we do have a couple of folks waiting to have their questions asked and answered.
53:05: But if you'd like to get in line with them, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.
53:11: C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.
53:19: Don't go away. We're going to be right back right after these messages. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the
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57:59: Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Avenio and thanks for listening. I'm truly grateful for many things that the
58:09: Trump administration has ushered in. But here's something that seriously concerns me.
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59:00: How stable is a stable coin? If your account is hacked or if the power grid goes down for a period of time, you can instantly be locked out.
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59:56: Tell them Chris from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio sent you. I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
01:00:09: Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.
01:00:18: At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession, we embrace congregational church government, and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's Word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost, and the glory of our triune
01:00:33: God. We are also devoted to living out the one another commands of Scripture, loving, encouraging, and serving each other as the body of Christ.
01:00:42: In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every
01:00:47: Sunday. We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org.
01:00:55: That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.
01:01:12: Greetings. This is Brian McLaughlin, president of the SecureComm Group and supporter of Chris Armisen's Iron Shopping Zion radio program.
01:01:24: SecureComm provides the highest level of security systems for residential buildings, municipalities, churches, commercial properties, and much more.
01:01:34: We can be reached at securecommgroup .com.
01:01:39: That's securecommgroup .com. But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor,
01:01:48: Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.
01:01:57: Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, and the radio ministry of John MacArthur.
01:02:04: In the film Chariots of Fire, Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt
01:02:10: God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.
01:02:16: I sensed that same God -given pleasure when ministering the Word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.
01:02:23: That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a Savior who died for sinners and that God forgives all who come to Him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver
01:02:35: Him. I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the
01:02:43: Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.
01:02:52: That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.
01:03:01: That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's Word and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.
01:03:20: God bless you. It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.
01:03:41: Here's Joe Riley, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,
01:03:49: Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland.
01:03:57: Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is
01:04:03: Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia are largely to thank since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.
01:04:15: Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.
01:04:22: Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards and Dr.
01:04:27: Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight -volume commentary on the larger catechism. Heritage is a member of the
01:04:32: Hanover Presbyterian Church built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone and tracing its roots and heritage back to the
01:04:42: Great Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers.
01:04:50: Scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, and God's glory alone. Their primary goal is the worship of the
01:04:57: Triune God that continues in eternity. For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit
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01:05:18: Joe Reilly, an Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener from a tie in County Kildare, Ireland, sent you.
01:05:26: Welcome back. Before I return to my fascinating conversation with Evan Dollar, the pastor of Covenant of Grace Seventh -day
01:05:37: Baptist Church in Wellington, Kentucky, I just had some important reminders for you.
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01:08:57: Go to www .ironsharpensironradio .com, click Support, then click Click to Donate. Now, last but not least, if you are not a member of a doctrinally solid, theologically sound,
01:09:08: Christ -honoring, biblically faithful church, no matter where you live on the planet Earth, I may be able to help you find a church because we have helped people spanning the entire globe and our audience find churches that are biblically faithful, sometimes even just a couple of minutes from where they live, and that may be you too.
01:09:27: So if you are in that sad position of not knowing where a biblically faithful church home may be waiting for you in your area, no matter where you live in the world, please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com
01:09:43: and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send us a question to Evan Dollar about the
01:09:50: Seventh -day Baptists, and our email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
01:09:57: Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence, and I want you to continue your thought before we go to any listener questions that you had brought up a specific historic figure within the
01:10:11: Seventh -day Baptist movement, and I had to cut you off because we were going into a break. Right, no.
01:10:18: Yes, so we was talking about Henry Jesse. Now, Henry Jesse was not a Seventh -day Baptist, but he was,
01:10:25: I do believe he was converted to the Baptist belief, and then eventually he ended up holding to a
01:10:32: Sabbath conviction. Well, this is, it's not very widely known, but he had a biographer named
01:10:39: Edward Whiston in 1671 who wrote that Jesse from that famous Jacob Larson Jesse Church ended up keeping the
01:10:48: Sabbath with others. He actually came out with a calendar and an almanac which showed that the
01:10:53: Sabbath was on Saturday, and so these are just some of the early, early guys funneling into this stream.
01:11:00: Now, here's where it starts to get interesting for you, Chris, as well, and for our other particular
01:11:06: Baptist, Reformed Baptist brothers out there that may be listening. This is where it starts to get a little bit interesting.
01:11:13: We start to have guys, Calvinist, a guy named Francis Banfield. He was the founder of Pinner's Hall Church, and Francis, I believe he was born around 1615, something like that, but he was also an educated minister ordained in the
01:11:32: Church of England. He was imprisoned, though, in 1662 for conducting unlawful worship service in his home.
01:11:41: He was in prison for nine years. He was such a well -known minister and preacher, it was said that he preached up to 16 times per week while in prison.
01:11:52: He ends up establishing a church there in prison. He's actually mentioned in a good
01:11:57: Baptist book called No Armor for the Back. That is a Baptist book about persecutions, early
01:12:04: Baptist persecutions, and Francis begins the
01:12:10: Seventh -day Baptist Church there, and it's here where we start to get more of the
01:12:17: Calvinistic, the particular Baptist together. You have multiple churches that are springing up in England, but you have
01:12:24: Francis' church, which is Pinner's Hall, which is connected to the Stennis, which we'll get to in a minute, but then you have this other guy.
01:12:31: His name is John Belcher, and he starts a particular Seventh -day
01:12:36: Baptist church in Bell Lane in England in 1661. This is where it really starts to feel like home here because he was the minister of this church.
01:12:47: He knew, and his church communicated with Stephen Mumford. This is the guy that you were talking about, early
01:12:54: Christian America. This is where I start to have a strong confidence that even the founding churches here in America, the
01:13:01: Seventh -day Baptists, were Calvinistic churches because you have John Belcher, who has a strong particular
01:13:09: Seventh -day Baptist church in England at this time, and we actually have letters that are being sent that we still have.
01:13:17: We have journal writings that are being sent from the Bell Lane church over in England all the way to the
01:13:23: American church in Newport, Rhode Island. They're having this communication, so much so that Stephen Mumford goes back to England and this guy named
01:13:33: William Gibson, who I believe he was an elder there at Bell Lane, but he was definitely a part of the
01:13:40: Bell Lane church there, the Calvinistic Bell Lane church, and he actually becomes the second pastor of the mother church here in America in Newport, Rhode Island.
01:13:50: That solidifies some of the strong, reformed Calvinistic stream right there all the way from England coming to America.
01:13:59: But you have him, you have the Francis Banfield, which, an interesting side note there,
01:14:06: Thomas, his brother, he was also a believer in the Sabbath.
01:14:12: He was actually presented to Cromwell and was installed as the speaker of the
01:14:18: House of Commons. And this will tie into some of the political things here as well, how they're in the founding of our nation, there was
01:14:25: Seventh -day Baptists in the Continental Congress, there were Seventh -day Baptist ministers in the
01:14:34: Army, so lots of history there. But Francis, why he's interesting is because he ends up meeting and communicating with Edward Stennett.
01:14:45: Now, these are probably names that if you are a Reformed Baptist and you have any knowledge of early
01:14:53: Reformed Baptist history, these names should be starting to click in your mind, like you mentioned
01:14:58: Samuel Stennett and those guys. Edward was the patriarch of the Stennett family, and he is really the one that brought the
01:15:06: Seventh -day Sabbath to his sons, Joseph Stennett, and then
01:15:11: Joseph brought it to his sons. But he was actually a pastor of a Seventh -day Baptist church.
01:15:18: It sounds like he was having this church inside of a crumbled Wallingford Castle over there.
01:15:26: But he also wrote some works on the Sabbath. In 1644, he wrote the book called
01:15:32: The Royal Law Contended For, which these words, The Royal Law Contended For, I hope your audience is hearing how
01:15:40: Seventh -day Baptists have always argued for the Sabbath. They always argued it from the moral law of God, just like the
01:15:48: Reformers would argue it. The first day from the moral law of God. They didn't deviate from that.
01:15:55: They were just being consistent with that and holding to the Seventh -day, which also brings an interesting thing because these guys, they were being accused of Judaizing and having sentiments towards that.
01:16:10: Stennett and three other congregations came together and they wrote a testimony. They signed a covenant testimony, and it was labeled,
01:16:20: The Faithful Testimony Against the Teachers of Circumcision and the Legal Ceremonies.
01:16:26: And so that helps show that this wasn't, Seventh -day Baptists did not come from a form of Judaizing.
01:16:33: They come from English Reformation principles. And so Edward Banfield, after Banfield dies,
01:16:41: Edward goes and he becomes the pastor for a very short time of the
01:16:46: Penrith Hall Church, which then is where we get into his son, Joseph Stennett.
01:16:52: I don't know how much you know of Joseph Stennett, but whenever I like to bring up Seventh -day
01:16:58: Baptist history, this is really the name that I go to. Ron Miller went to it a lot.
01:17:04: He wrote a lot of hymns. He was actually ordained. Here's where the interesting thing goes.
01:17:10: We talk about Baptists and Seventh -day Baptists linking arms together. John Belcher from the
01:17:16: Bell Lane Church, also with Isaac Lamb and Hansard Knowles, all ordained
01:17:21: Joseph Stennett at his ordination in 1690. And any of you
01:17:26: Reformed Baptist listeners will also recognize who Isaac Lamb was and Hansard Knowles was.
01:17:33: They were signers of the 1689 London Baptist Confession. They recognized that though Joseph was a
01:17:42: Seventh -day Baptist, they had a lot in common, and so they linked arms together. Joseph was very fluent in three languages,
01:17:51: French, Italian, and Hebrew. Whenever he got into the church, the church ended up growing massively to a number of 176 members there.
01:18:01: This was probably the peak. I would say this is the peak of the Seventh -day Baptist calls in England.
01:18:09: The Baptist of that time actually requested of him to write on their behalf against paedo -baptism.
01:18:18: There was a book that was being pushed around by a paedo -baptist named David Rusin, and the
01:18:24: Baptist selected Joseph, a Seventh -day Baptist, to be the one to defend against, to advocate for paedo -baptism.
01:18:32: Yes, so they select him. It is a very interesting thing. Also, in 1696, he was appointed by Baptists to be represented by them before King William III.
01:18:47: In 1704, here's where I think it's really interesting. In 1704, Queen Anne received a copy of one of Stennett's servants titled
01:18:56: The Thanksgiving for the Victory of the Battle of Hochstadt. She receives this, and she personally requests
01:19:04: Stennett to come. In 1706, he represents all Protestants, Protestant dissenting ministers of London, with a formal address to the
01:19:15: Queen. That's one of the high peaks of Joseph Stennett, is he represented all dissenting ministers before the
01:19:22: Queen there. Here's where the Baptist begins to flow into it.
01:19:31: Benjamin Keech and Joseph Stennett were actually good friends. They worked together, they were hand -in -hand together.
01:19:41: You actually have instances where Penner's Hall Church, the Seventh -day Baptist Church, what was going on was some of the
01:19:49: Seventh -day Baptist Church members were going back and forth, and some of the Seventh -day Baptist churches were arguing with each other a little bit.
01:19:56: They actually called in Benjamin Keech to help resolve the issue, which was a really great thing, and the issue did get resolved.
01:20:04: But in this time, you have Keech's church, Horsley Down. What happens, 15 members ended up converting to the
01:20:12: Sabbath, believing in the Sabbath from Horsley Down, and end up going to Stennett's church.
01:20:18: One of them included Keech's daughter, Hannah. Now, how did Benjamin Keech feel about that?
01:20:25: Yeah, you're exactly right. I remember how Whitefield lamented that many of his converts, and Whitefield was a
01:20:37: Pato Baptist, many of his converts were becoming Baptists, and the classic line from Whitefield in lament was, all my chicks are becoming ducks.
01:20:51: He was trying to equate Baptists with ducks since we're in the water and chickens are not.
01:20:58: Yeah, that's a good point. It does start to cause a little bit of an uproar there.
01:21:04: Keech said that the Sabbath issue, this was his quote, almost put the whole congregation into a flame.
01:21:11: His congregation was definitely feeling the weight of the Sabbath so much that even his own children were going over and being underneath Joseph Stennett and the
01:21:23: Seventh -day Baptist. But nevertheless, Keech and Joseph were good friends.
01:21:31: And they maintained the friendship after that. They maintained friendship, believe it or not. That's hard to believe in today's world.
01:21:40: But Keech requested Stennett to preach at his funeral, and so it was a sermon preached at the funeral of the late
01:21:49: Reverend Mr. Benjamin Keech, who departed this life July 18, 1704.
01:21:55: And so you have all these connections here, despite even members going to other churches.
01:22:04: They genuinely care for each other. They wanted to work with each other. The Sabbath issue definitely was a distinction, but it was never a point of absolute, you're out of here, you're heretic.
01:22:17: This just was not the climate in England. And even during early
01:22:22: American times, this was not the climate that we even find ourselves in. So you had two historic
01:22:30: Seventh -day Baptists preaching at the funerals of two very historic and highly regarded and beloved first -day
01:22:41: Reformed Baptists, particular Baptists. Absolutely. And not only that, they would even swap pulpits.
01:22:48: So there was times where members of a first -day church would go preach at a
01:22:56: Sabbath church. There would be times where a Seventh -day Baptist minister would go preach at a first -day church.
01:23:02: This was very common. This was something that happened very, very regularly.
01:23:10: But then Joseph, I got some other little notes here, but Joseph the Younger, this would be
01:23:15: Joseph's son, there was a Western association which held to the 1689.
01:23:22: So here's where it also gets interesting. And the 1689 we know is when the
01:23:28: London Baptist Confession was formulated. But there was an association that held firmly to the 1689.
01:23:36: However, it was noted that they who differ from the confession of faith with respect to the time in which the
01:23:44: Sabbath is to be observed are not to be understood by the subscription to contradict their particular judgment in the matter.
01:23:52: And so ultimately what this is saying is that inside of this Western Baptist association in this time, there were
01:24:01: Seventh -day Baptist men who were there that they didn't ultimately separate from.
01:24:08: And then we get into who you introduced earlier, Samuel Stennett.
01:24:13: Samuel, like you said, he preached at Gil's funeral. He wrote Jordan Stormy Banks' Majestic Sweetness Sits in Throne.
01:24:22: What's interesting is I actually introduced Jordan Stormy Banks to our Sabbath congregation, our
01:24:28: Seventh -day Baptist congregation a couple of weeks back. I got to mention how historic it was because you will find a lot of these hymns from Seventh -day
01:24:36: Baptist in your very own pulpit, I mean, in your very own pews. If you open up one of your hymnals,
01:24:43: I guarantee you, you can flip through it, whether you're in a Methodist church, whether you're in a Baptist church, you're going to flip through it, possibly even a
01:24:49: Presbyterian church, you're going to flip through it and you're going to find hymns from Seventh -day Baptist sitting right there. And so that really sums up the
01:24:59: English Reformation. And then we get to America. We already talked a little bit about Stephen Mumford.
01:25:05: He was a member of the Tewksbury Baptist Church in England. He arrives in America in 1664.
01:25:13: He ends up meeting a guy named Samuel Hubbard. And all these guys are part of the
01:25:19: First Baptist Church there in Rhode Island. Where, oh, who was it?
01:25:25: What was the guy's name? Roger Williams? No, Obadiah Holmes.
01:25:30: Obadiah Holmes and John Clark. Yeah, so they're all in this church together,
01:25:37: Seventh -day Baptist with Baptist. They're communicating. The Seventh -day
01:25:43: Baptists are feeling the tension. Obadiah Holmes at first was okay with it.
01:25:50: Then everything starts to kind of shake up a little bit. And this is really where we get to the first church in America, the
01:26:00: Newport Rhode Island Church being founded in 1671. The Baptist Church was formed by John Clark and Obadiah Holmes.
01:26:08: And you even had guys like Samuel Hubbard, a Seventh -day Baptist, who would go on missionary missions with Obadiah Holmes.
01:26:15: But what ended up happening was what kind of broke the straw between the members of the
01:26:21: Seventh -day Baptist Church and the Baptist Church was Obadiah Holmes ended up getting upset and preached a sermon saying that there are those who are ready to leave
01:26:33: Christ and go to Moses. And this was his way of poking at the
01:26:39: Seventh -day men that were in that church. That's what ultimately broke the straw in the camel's back and established the first Seventh -day
01:26:49: Baptist Church here in America, which is really the mother church of all
01:26:56: Seventh -day Baptist churches. Does it still exist? It still exists. It still exists.
01:27:01: It's still running. A good friend of mine, Pastor Dave Stahl, he's ministered in that church.
01:27:07: He helped grow that church. So, yes, the church is still going. Is it reformed? I cannot tell you that at all.
01:27:16: There are definitely churches in the conference that are Calvinistic.
01:27:23: How far reformed they go, whether that's covenant theology and all that, I'm not necessarily sure, but there is definitely a heavy
01:27:29: Calvinistic presence still within our conference. One other thing that I thought was pretty interesting to this is
01:27:40: Benjamin Keech's son, Elias Keech, he helped form the Baptist convention in Philadelphia.
01:27:49: And this just shows some more connections here where Elias Keech, he has five churches that come into the
01:27:59: Philadelphia Baptist convention, and they all agree to come together there.
01:28:06: And amongst these churches, these first five churches, there are Seventh -day Baptists that are there within those churches, which eventually become
01:28:17: Seventh -day Baptist churches in New Jersey. It's a lot of interesting stuff there.
01:28:27: In the Pennipec church where Elias Keech was, there was a minister there named Thomas Rudder.
01:28:33: Thomas Rudder was baptizing members there, but Thomas Rudder becomes convinced of the Sabbath, and there becomes a
01:28:38: Seventh -day Baptist church in Pennipec. There's also one of the churches in the
01:28:43: Baptist convention was the Piscataway Baptist church. And a guy from the Piscataway Baptist church was a man named
01:28:50: Edmund Dunham. Edmund Dunham, he was a minister there.
01:28:56: The story goes that he was watching a man work on Sunday.
01:29:01: He goes and he confronts the guy, reprimands him, and the guy essentially says, prove to me in the scripture where the
01:29:09: Sabbath has been changed. And Edmund, he takes it up. He goes back to the Pennipec church.
01:29:15: They're discussing it. And ultimately he's so convicted that he then begins the Seventh -day
01:29:20: Baptist church in Piscataway, Piscataway I mean. So then you even have the
01:29:25: Cohansey church, which is a mixed congregation of Seventh -day Baptists that formulated out of that. And Edmund Dunham, his
01:29:35: Piscataway church, maybe have you heard of Thomas Killingsworth? No. He was a famous Baptist during that time.
01:29:44: But 12 of the founding members of the
01:29:49: Piscataway church were actually direct descendants from the Plymouth colony, which was pretty cool.
01:29:55: But this area, Piscataway, New Jersey, the
01:30:02: Sabbath issue was so strong there that it got the name Quibbletown.
01:30:09: The Sabbath issue was so strong there it became a Quibbletown. To this day, you can go to Piscataway, New Jersey, and you can find a sign there that says
01:30:20: Quibbletown, a colonial hamlet, which was so named because of dissension as to whether Saturday or Sunday is the
01:30:28: Sabbath. Wow. I've been to Piscataway. That's the way they pronounce it, by the way. Okay.
01:30:33: My very dear friend, the late Dr. Robert J. Cameron, who was an
01:30:39: Orthodox Presbyterian pastor there. The church started as a Reformed Episcopal church, became
01:30:45: PCA, and then switched to OPC. But Robert J. Cameron pastored
01:30:52: Mount Carmel church there, and he has gone home to the Lord a number of years ago.
01:30:58: But I miss that brother very much. But I'm sorry, that was a rabbit trail there. You know, next time you're driving through there, see if you can hunt down that sign.
01:31:09: It's interesting. It's still there today. One other connection that I want to wrap up with the
01:31:16: American side of this is in 1707 that Philadelphia Baptist Convention was formed, but then that Baptist Convention ends up adopting
01:31:27: Keech's Catechism as the catechism that they use.
01:31:33: But what's interesting is we then, around that time, find a Seventh -day Baptist Catechism, which is identical to Keech's Catechism, with the exception of the
01:31:44: Sabbath. It changes the Fourth Commandment to say that the seventh day is the
01:31:50: Sabbath. And so that's what I actually sent you, an old copy of that catechism that's being passed around there.
01:31:57: So very interesting stuff there. The Seventh -day Baptist, they also have a lot of involvement in the founding of our nation.
01:32:06: There was a guy named Enoch David. Enoch David had a son named Ebenezer David, and we have
01:32:12: Ebenezer David's journals. He was really good friends with a guy named
01:32:18: Nicholas Brown, who founded Brown University. So these two communicated with each other, and Ebenezer was a
01:32:25: Revolutionary War chaplain, and he was there during Valley Forge. But Enoch David, you mentioned
01:32:32: Whitefield earlier, Enoch David, Ebenezer's dad, he was a Seventh -day Baptist.
01:32:37: He traveled and accompanied with George Whitefield through Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I always thought that was a really, really interesting fact there, that you have
01:32:46: Whitefield. Whitefield was very ecumenical in ways, and that even extended to the
01:32:53: Seventh -day Baptist side. Yeah, very cool. You have a guy named
01:32:59: Samuel Ward. He was a governor of Rhode Island, the Continental Congress, known for refusing the
01:33:05: Stamp Act, gathered secret intelligence of the British militia. He's the one that declared the sovereign rights of Rhode Island, and he was elected chair over the
01:33:15: Continental Congress. And let me know if this sounds familiar to you at all.
01:33:21: Samuel, who was a Seventh -day Baptist, he wrote a letter to George Washington saying this,
01:33:27: I have dedicated to you my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor.
01:33:33: Does that sound familiar? Actually, it doesn't. I'm sorry. That's the end of the
01:33:39: Declaration of Independence. Oh, wow. Yeah. I won't be teaching history anytime soon,
01:33:47: I guess. Hey, I would not have known that if it wasn't for studying
01:33:52: Seventh -day Baptist history, so you get a break there. And then his granddaughter,
01:33:59: Julia Ward, wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic. And so there's a lot of history there.
01:34:06: Even coming down to our church here in Wellington, our sponsor church is
01:34:13: Shiloh Seventh -day Baptist Church. They were established before we were even a country, established in 1737.
01:34:22: They come from that Cohansey Church, and that's kind of where they are founded.
01:34:29: Robert Ayers, he was friends with Stephen Mumford. There's an old book, a Seventh -day Baptist book, written by the
01:34:37: Shiloh Church that shows that Robert Ayers and Stephen Mumford were good friends. And he brings down the
01:34:43: Sabbath into New Jersey, and that's where you get the Cohansey Baptist Church, which was a part of Elias Keech's Philadelphia Convention.
01:34:56: And so you have this, but what happens is there is some strife within the church, and the
01:35:05: Seventh -day men are worshiping with the First -day Baptists. And what ends up happening is they end up breaking off, and it was said that the
01:35:13: Shiloh, the Seventh -day men, literally picked up the church, the church building. They had enough of it.
01:35:18: They picked up the church. They rolled it down the road until they got to a plot of land, and there they dropped the church and said, the art rests at Shiloh.
01:35:31: And it's really interesting because there are still members of the
01:35:36: Shiloh Seventh -day Baptist Church that have direct ties all the way back to these original founders.
01:35:43: And what I think is really cool for our church is we had the Ordination Council down here in Kentucky, and one of the members, one of the deacons of Shiloh Seventh -day
01:35:54: Baptist Church came down, and he has a direct tie to all these guys. So in some spiritual way, there's a lineage of Reformed Calvinistic Seventh -day
01:36:06: Baptists running down all the way to Wellington, Kentucky.
01:36:12: Now, very quickly, you said earlier that the daughter of some notable
01:36:17: Seventh -day Baptist wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Yeah, yep.
01:36:23: Samuel Ward, his granddaughter, Julia Ward Howe, wrote the
01:36:30: Battle Hymn of the Republic. Now, wasn't she, though, a Unitarian? That's what I— She was, yes. So she departed from her—
01:36:36: She ended up going down that road. Yeah, she departed from her father's— Yeah, I don't know when that happened, but speaking of that, what also is interesting is that Benjamin Keech, his daughter, she ends up having
01:36:51: Sabbath convictions, so Keech allows her to go over to Stenich Church, but then, years down the road, she ends up adopting a
01:37:02: Quaker view of Scripture and ultimately where Joseph had to excommunicate
01:37:08: Benjamin Keech's daughter. So pretty rough stuff there, but yes, that somewhat does a lot of the history of what
01:37:18: I would consider the particular Reformed Seventh -day Baptist coming all the way down here, ultimately, to Kentucky.
01:37:26: Cool. We have to go to our final break. I do want to give a shout -out to somebody that I believe, if I'm not mistaken, you know personally,
01:37:34: Ron Davis in Temple, Texas. He holds the record for traveling the furthest distance to an
01:37:44: Iron Trip and Zion Radio free pastor's luncheon. It was several years ago when
01:37:49: Dr. Conrad Mbewe, pastor of Cobuata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, he was the keynote speaker at my luncheon several years ago and may,
01:38:00: I appreciate your prayers, folks, he may be returning as my speaker in February or March of 2026, so please pray about that.
01:38:09: But Ron Davis drove all the way from Temple, Texas to Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
01:38:16: We had the luncheon in a Christian retreat center here in Carlisle that year.
01:38:22: So I wanted to give him a shout -out. Yeah. Ron is a great guy. He's came out here, too. Well, we're going to our final break, and if you want to join the conversation, if I were you,
01:38:33: I would send in your question immediately because we are rapidly running out of time. chrisarnson at gmail .com
01:38:42: chrisarnson at gmail .com As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.
01:38:51: Don't go away. We'll be right back. This is
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01:48:15: Westminster Larger Catechism titled Authentic Christianity by Dr. Joseph Khmorkraft.
01:48:22: It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology.
01:48:33: Dr. Khmorkraft is Pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.
01:48:45: For details on the eight -volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com, westminstercommentary .com.
01:48:52: For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,
01:49:01: heritagepresbyterianchurch .com. Please tell Dr. Khmorkraft and the Saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr.
01:49:09: Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sends you. And by the way, that ad reminded me to ask you once again, what was that specific significant figure from history with the last name
01:49:28: Belcher? John Belcher. Because I'm wondering, that commercial that you just heard recommending the commentary series on the
01:49:42: Westminster Larger Catechism by Dr. Joseph C. Khmorkraft III, his wife is
01:49:50: Becky Belcher Khmorkraft, and Richard Belcher, who is related to her, and I can't remember right now how
01:49:58: Richard Belcher is related to her, but he came out with a great book many years ago, back in the 80s,
01:50:04: I think, or early 90s, called The Sabbath Question. He has three different views presented in it.
01:50:12: You're not going to be happy because the Seventh -day view is presented by the Seventh -day Adventist, but he had two
01:50:20: Calvinist Baptists that disagreed on the Sabbath issue altogether, one being a first -day -of -the -week observer and one taking the
01:50:33: Lord's -day position, where Christ is our
01:50:39: Sabbath and we don't have a Sabbath day any longer. But it's a very good book. You might enjoy it nonetheless.
01:50:47: You may be connected. Let me go to Andrew in Brooklyn, New York, has a question.
01:50:56: I'm a Seventh -day Adventist that strongly believes in the Trinity and the five solas of the
01:51:02: Reformation. Do you consider people like me to be true Christians? Evan?
01:51:10: Yes, I do. Like I was saying with you, Chris, like you were saying,
01:51:16: I do believe that there are genuine Christians within the Seventh -day Adventist movement.
01:51:22: I see following the teachings of Ellen White as false. I believe she's a false prophet.
01:51:29: The investigative judgment, all that stuff. So I would not hold to those things, and I would ask you that if you do hold to those things, turn away from that.
01:51:38: We'd probably try to find you a Seventh -day Baptist church up there. Yeah, there's one in Brooklyn.
01:51:43: There's one in Brooklyn. Erickson Cooper is the pastor of the
01:51:51: Seventh -day Baptist Church of New York City, which is located in Brooklyn. And unless it's gone out of existence, apart from my knowledge, but he's still a
01:52:01: Facebook friend of mine. He came to one of my pastor's luncheons many years ago. I have no idea.
01:52:08: I do know that there are a handful of churches up in New York, even some older Seventh -day
01:52:13: Baptist churches. A good friend of mine, I mentioned earlier, Pastor Dave Stahl, he is from a church up there.
01:52:20: And so I know there are some faithful churches up there. I just couldn't tell you at the top of my head right now.
01:52:26: And I don't know if you heard me earlier, Andrew, but please listen to my interview with the late
01:52:35: Desmond Ford on the investigative judgment, because as I said, he was excommunicated by the
01:52:43: Seventh -day Adventist church for defending the gospel of grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
01:52:52: And he, being one of the most brilliant theologians formerly with the
01:52:59: Seventh -day Adventist church, knew that the investigative judgment was a contradiction to the true gospel.
01:53:08: So I would listen to that program, and I hope you are blessed by it.
01:53:14: Thank you so much for sending in your question. We have another listener.
01:53:21: I'm bringing that up right here. Let's see. We have a listener,
01:53:29: Eric in Pitts Grove, New Jersey. Are modern Reformed Baptists ecumenical with Seventh -day
01:53:38: Baptists? Why or why not? And he has a second part to that question.
01:53:43: Well, obviously, from what you had said earlier, some definitely are not.
01:53:50: I happen to be one that is, but if you have anything further to say, Evan.
01:53:56: Yeah, you know, I do know some Reformed Baptists who are definitely ecumenical, and we link arms together, we preach at festivals, pride festivals together.
01:54:08: Against the pride movement. Yeah, exactly. You got to make that clear.
01:54:16: Yeah. Yeah, well, we preach everywhere. Our local Sorghum Festival, there's a gay pride festival that comes in in Moorhead, Kentucky, and a lot of us
01:54:28: Christian men will go up there, we'll preach the gospel up there, and they know that I'm a Seventh -day Baptist. So there are faithful brothers, but there are those, tends to be those, maybe ones a little bit immature, that have no sense of who
01:54:43: Seventh -day Baptists are, don't know any connections, that they cannot see past it.
01:54:51: Like I was mentioning earlier, Eric tried to share this into a
01:54:59: Reformed Baptist group, a very popular one, and it got rejected. And the reason why is because they don't, they just simply have no understanding of the arguments of the
01:55:09: Sabbath, no understanding of the history of Seventh -day Baptists and Baptists working together. And so I appreciate that about you,
01:55:16: Chris, and especially Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary, how they have been very gracious.
01:55:22: That's why I was mentioning, when I come to Kentucky, it was quite interesting. I tell people, I'm a Seventh -day
01:55:27: Baptist. Oh, I know a Seventh -day Baptist, or I know about Seventh -day Baptists. And I think it's a lot to do with some of the work that Waldron's done and stuff like that.
01:55:37: But I hope that answers the question. And we have, oh, wait a minute. I forgot the second part of his question. Are there other
01:55:43: Reformed Seventh -day Baptist churches besides Covenant of Grace? How about church plants?
01:55:49: And you already said that there were. Yeah, there's actually, in North Carolina, there's a guy out there.
01:55:57: You can reach out to me, and I can try to get you in contact with him. He is a
01:56:03: Reformed guy. He actually came out of a 1689 church, and he is currently planting a church somewhere, a
01:56:12: Seventh -day Baptist church somewhere in, I think it's near the Greensboro area or something like that.
01:56:18: I would have to get that information a little bit more. But it depends on how you define
01:56:23: Reformed. Like I was mentioning before, there are a lot of Calvinistic churches and Calvinistic people within these churches.
01:56:33: Whether they hold to a more Reformed view of covenant theology and all that, I don't think that there's many of those.
01:56:40: I would say those types of Calvinists, maybe even more on the liberal side, maybe like a
01:56:46: Tim Keller side or that vein versus more of a Reformed side.
01:56:51: So I don't, I could not, I know that there are some in the works, and I know that some churches are
01:56:58: Reforming. I know of churches who are teaching through the 1689, but skipping over the
01:57:06: Sabbath portion, of course. But yeah, so there are. And I know at least a few years ago, the
01:57:14: Berlin Seventh -day Baptist church in Berlin, New York, upstate New York, that pastor there was a five -point
01:57:22: Calvinist. I don't know if the pastor, that same pastor is still there or not. I think he is.
01:57:30: That's the church that my friend Dave Stahl came from in Berlin. And so I'm pretty sure that he's still there.
01:57:39: I could be wrong on that. And quickly, we have Carol from Shiloh Seventh -day
01:57:45: Baptist Church. I think you said earlier that's in New Jersey, right? Yeah, that's actually our sponsor church there.
01:57:51: Okay. She says, Hello, just wanted to send greetings in Christ to Evan as a
01:57:58: Presbyterian convert to Seventh -day Baptist. And there go all my Presbyterian sponsors of my program.
01:58:06: We love you, Carol. And we are actually out of time. And can I quickly ask you, do you use the 1689 in an altered version, or do you have a confessional standard?
01:58:21: Well, you can look at our Statement of Belief on our website, covenantofgracesdb .com.
01:58:28: You're going to read through it. It's 12 points. And you're going to find that there is a lot of language that is taken right from the 1689 and other confessions as well.
01:58:40: But we do teach through the Seventh -day Baptist Catechism, which is connected to Keech's Catechism, which is connected to the 1689.
01:58:49: And so we do have beliefs in that regard. Okay, we're out of time.
01:58:55: And your website, once again, is covenantofgracesdb .com, covenantofgracesdb .com.
01:59:04: Thank you so much, Evan, for an absolutely fascinating conversation. It was a joy to interview you.
01:59:10: And I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater