October 3, 2025 Show with Matt Plett on “Why We Became a Confessional Church”

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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 in 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 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 Friday on this third day of October 2025.

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I'm thrilled to have a first -time guest today, and that guest happens to be

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Matt Platt, pastor of Trinity Fellowship, a confessional Reformed Baptist congregation in Niverville, Manitoba, Canada, or Niverville.

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He'll correct me in a minute. And today we are going to address why

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Pastor Matt Platt and Trinity Fellowship became a confessional church, having adopted the

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Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, also known as the 1689

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London Baptist Confession of Faith. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Matt Platt.

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Hi, Chris. Great to be with you. Well, tell our listeners something about the

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Trinity Fellowship. Is it Niverville or Niverville? It's Niverville.

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Niverville, Manitoba. That's right. Well, tell us something about that congregation. Sure. We are a young congregation,

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I guess in several ways. We started Trinity in spring of 2022 with small beginnings.

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It actually started as an evening Bible study and kind of testing the water to see how much of an appetite there was for something like this in our area.

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And that picked up and kept gaining steam week after week until we felt that it was probably advisable to move to Sunday mornings and start

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Sunday morning worship services, thinking that our numbers would dwindle because we had to have competition on Sunday mornings.

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But things just really kept going. And so we've been going for three and a half years.

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And by the Lord's grace, he is greatly blessed with our efforts.

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And yeah, it's been a very exciting time planting this church.

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It's well exceeded the aspirations or the expectations of us elders who planted it.

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Well, tell us something also about Manitoba, Canada. What other major cities might be near Niverville and that kind of thing?

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Okay, so Niverville is a town of about 5 ,000, I believe. It's growing rapidly, so it could be well beyond 5 ,000 at this point.

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The major city in Manitoba is Winnipeg. That's also our capital city. It's kind of in the southeast corner of the province.

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For Americans, I tend to just say we're about three and a half hours straight north of Fargo, North Dakota. So if you keep going north on I -29, you'll get the

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Canadian border, and that turns into the 75 highway here. And you'll get right to us. You almost have to drive right past our church to get to Winnipeg.

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And it's interesting that the reason why Pastor Matt Platt is on my program today came about through an act of God's providence where he had contacted my pastor,

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Simon O'Maney, of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, because a former member of our church who moved away had been traveling, and Pastor Platt contacted my pastor and had told my pastor that he was a very big fan of Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and I was very honored to hear that.

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Yeah, that's right. Yeah, when I was emailing with your pastor exactly then, the name sounded so familiar, and one of my email correspondents just said,

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Is that not where Chris Arnzen is a member? And he confirmed that, yes, Chris Arnzen is a member of his church.

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So, yes, small world. My pastors throughout the years, having moved a couple of times,

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I'm sure they're absolutely thrilled that the first thing that comes to mind when people hear the name of the church, is that where Chris Arnzen goes?

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And I'm sure that for a moment their heart stops and they're wondering why that person said that.

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Yeah. Well, if anybody wants more details about Trinity Fellowship in Niverville, Manitoba, Canada, go to trinityfellowship .ca,

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trinityfellowship .ca. And by the way, if I ever say anything that's incorrect, please let me know.

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I just discovered that one of my recent guests I announced as a first -time guest, and it was not his first appearance on my show.

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It was his second, and for some reason he never corrected me. As far as I remember, this is my first time on your show.

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Well, we do something here as a tradition. Whenever we have a first -time guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which they were raised, and what kind of providential circumstances our

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Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them. And also, when

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I have a Reformed Baptist guest such as yourself, I also love to hear about how you came to discover the doctrines of grace and embrace them.

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But let's start with your salvation testimony. Sure. So I grew up in...

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Southeastern Manitoba is very heavily populated by Mennonites.

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So I come from Low German Mennonites that moved to Canada from Russia in the late 1800s.

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And so I grew up in that environment. So believing family, both sides of my family, many believers, and in a fairly kind of, in some ways, you know, insulated community.

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This whole region where I was born was set apart as a reserve for the

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Mennonites that came from Russia. So lots of, at least from when I was a kid, lots of, you know, similar background people in my school and my sports teams and so forth.

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So I was raised in an evangelical Mennonite church, but maybe not quite the conventional way.

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My own parents struggled quite deeply with their marriage, and there was a number of very difficult years as a kid.

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And at that time, this was in the late 80s, I would say, divorce was more or less completely unheard of in our corner of the world.

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And my parents ended up divorcing. It was quite a difficult time.

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My dad had a dairy farm right next door to my grandparents, who also had a dairy farm.

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And so we spent a lot of time at my grandparents'. I rode my bike often over to their house.

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And to some, to a large degree, I would say I was raised by my grandparents. They were wonderful, believing people.

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And they were very much a calm in the storm in those years. Yeah, it just almost felt like heaven on earth when

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I was at their house, just given the kind of the turbulence that was sometimes happening at home. My parents did bring us to church.

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They brought us to Sunday school. We did do family devotions and stuff. So it's not like this wasn't happening in our home.

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But I'd say a really deep impression of a vibrant Christian faith came from, largely from my grandparents.

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I'd say I don't have a drastic conversion story. My testimony is maybe a little bit like John Piper's, where God saved me from a life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll at age four.

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I'm thankful to the Lord that I've been spared many things. He did get a hold of me. As far as I know, as a young child,

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I do recall repenting for my sins and wanting to be forgiven, wanting to know the

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Lord in a personal way. And I remember that quite vividly at age four. I did that at the top of my stairs as a little kid.

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Church life ended up being a little bit more complicated just because of the family situation.

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We ended up going to a church of the Nazarene in Winnipeg later on. I'm guessing you're familiar with the church of the

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Nazarene? Yes. In fact, I just had a debate on my program not long ago between a

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Reformed Baptist and a Nazarene pastor, Jared K.

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Henry. Very nice guy. Yes. Actually, I haven't listened to that episode yet, but I did see that one.

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Yes. And the things that we vehemently opposed about Jared's beliefs is he very strongly and passionately affirms the ordination of women to pastoral positions with authority above men in the church.

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And he also believes in the possibility of Christians to achieve— he doesn't call it sinless perfectionism, but he referred to it as freedom from known sin because he acknowledges that since we're not omniscient, that human beings could have sinned without necessarily knowing it or forgetting about it and so on.

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And therefore, he toned down the language that is more commonly used of sinless perfectionism.

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But anyway, those were two different debates, by the way. Yes. Yeah. And in my time in the

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Nazarene church, so I would have been probably an early teenager when we went to the Nazarene church.

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And there, if I recall correctly, I don't think they used the word sinless perfectionism either, but it was certainly part of the

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Wesleyan holiness tradition. And I believe they talked of total sanctification. And again, it was freedom from all known sin.

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There could have been unintentional sin, but all known sin that was being preached. After the divorce, my dad sold the dairy farm.

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We actually moved to Oregon and spent a few more years at a different church in the Nazarene in Oregon. Once I graduated high school,

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I moved back to Manitoba, became a member of my grandparents' church, the

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Evangelical Mennonite Church. And so I was there for many years. Loved it there.

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I actually served in leadership in various capacities. I started off as an adult Sunday school teacher, and then

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I was a deacon for, I'm going to say, maybe about eight years or so. And then I was actually a lay minister for a number of years as well.

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And so fond memories there. Thankful for my upbringing, despite some of the turbulence, but very thankful to have had

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Christians around me and share the faith with me my whole life. Now, you also wanted me to share about coming

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Reformed. Is that correct? Yes. How you came to discover the darkness of grace and embrace them.

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Sure. So in my Evangelical Mennonite Church that I was a member of here, I'd say in the early 2000s, maybe let's say 2005, somewhere in there, we were working through a deacon election.

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And at that point, there was a contingent in the church membership that was interested in pursuing adding a female deacon.

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And that created quite a stir. The leaders of the church at that time did a study paper and concluded that we should remain with male -only deacons.

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But this caused quite a rift and kind of caught my attention as a young man.

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So I would have been in my early 20s at that point. And I wanted to be on the right side of that issue.

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I had conservative instincts. So my instincts were to favor not female ordination, just because of historical purposes.

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But I bought some books by Grudem and Piper on that issue, recovering biblical manhood and womanhood.

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And it really kind of gripped my attention that you can't just isolate one doctrine from the next.

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And I started on a deep dive of starting to listen to John Piper sermons because of that book.

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And I loved and appreciated his passion very deeply. And I just couldn't listen to enough.

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And about the same time, you'll recall the emerging church movement that was happening at around that time as well.

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Yes, yes. And so in my little town that I thought was very conservative, full of conservative

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Mennonites, I found out it's not so conservative after all. There was also quite a push in the emerging direction.

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And I found that a lot of the men that I was reading and listening to that were really good on gender issues also happened to be quite good on biblical authority and on some of this emerging church stuff.

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But I noticed one strange thing about all of them is that they had this very bizarre view about Calvinism, which, of course, growing up Mennonite and then moving into Nazarene circles,

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Calvinism was not a feature of any of that whatsoever. So I knew by default that Calvinism was wrong, which surprised me that before I studied it,

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I knew it was wrong. But then it kind of surprised me that all these really good men that were writing about biblical inerrancy and this kind of thing,

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J .I. Packer and John Piper and R .C. Stroll and John MacArthur, they were all Calvinists, and that really made me very uncomfortable because, again,

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I knew that Calvinism was clearly wrong. I've been told that enough times that I didn't have to look into it.

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But it surprised me that the men who were strongest on inerrancy also happened to be Calvinists. And so I started to study that, emailing with a relative of mine who had become

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Reformed, is living in the state of Colorado, emailed with him back and forth a bit, and slowly but surely,

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I just kind of moved. And soteriology was the first thing that happened, my understanding of God's grace and salvation.

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His sovereignty and salvation was the first thing. And it just kind of kept going from there.

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You know, when you start looking into covenants, you start looking into historical theology, and the dominoes kind of just kept falling.

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So I'd say, you know, probably by about age 26, I would have said I was a Calvinist. And probably by about age 30,

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I would have said I'm, you know, I would recognize myself or I would identify with the

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Reformed tradition. So were you, therefore, fully convinced of Calvinism or the doctrines of grace or Reformed theology before you were called into the pastoral ministry?

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Yeah, so it's a bit of an interesting turn. So I guess I was old enough, when

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I became a Calvinist, I avoided the worst of the cage stage, I think, and I was already deeply involved in leadership in our church, the

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Evangelical Mennonite church. And I loved the history, I loved the roots, I loved the people so deeply that it never crossed my mind that if I would switch my view on salvation or so forth, that I would ever move on to a different church.

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And again, in the Mennonite tradition, there's a strong emphasis on holy living and on discipleship and not such a strong emphasis on doctrine.

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And so statements of faith tend to be fairly minimalistic. And so, you know,

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I'd say historically, Mennonites, of course, are Arminian and not Calvinistic.

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But there was nothing in the statement of faith of that church that I would need to take exception to or object to.

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And so I felt I was able to labor there for a number of years that way without it becoming a real issue.

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And I'd say that that worked fairly well until it didn't. A few other things came into play that it just seemed like the peaceful thing and the most gracious thing to do would probably to recognize that the best thing was to move on.

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Some of it kind of sort of related to Calvinism, but mostly other things at that time that made it just appear that some of us in leadership would be best to peacefully resign and move on and discover what the

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Lord had next. By the way, I want to strongly plug a wonderful book.

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I don't know if you're familiar with it. But since you had mentioned that God had used in his sovereign providence the means of discovering great and gifted men like R .C.

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Sproul and John MacArthur and others who believed in the doctrines of grace to lead you into those beliefs, we know that the greatest men on earth don't have the final say about anything.

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It's the inerrant word of God. But at the same time, we all know that he uses the means of men, of flawed men with sin in their lives.

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And he even commands such men, including ourselves, to spread the gospel.

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But a book that I highly recommend, especially to people who have heroes of history that many

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Christians who are not Calvinists claim as their heroes, for instance,

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Charles Adams Spurgeon. It's always interesting. Everybody loves Charles Spurgeon, and many people should not.

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Yes. Well, there's a book by Dr. Thomas J. Nettles, a dear friend of mine for many years, called

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By His Grace and For His Glory, a historical, theological, and practical study of the doctrines of grace in Baptist life.

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And it lists and details a whole host of great names within Baptist history that many

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Arminians in and out of the Baptist heritage claim to love and support as heroes, uphold as heroes.

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And for those of you listening who want to get a hold of this excellent book, you can get that from Founders Press, which is the publishing house of Founders Ministries, run by my friend,

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Dr. Tom Askell. And that website is Press .Founders .org. Press .Founders

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.org. And you can look in the search engine for By His Grace and For His Glory by Dr.

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Thomas J. Nettles. But now it's time for us to enter into our main theme today, which is why your congregation, where you pastor, had come to the conclusion that to preserve biblical purity— now, when

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I say that, I don't mean perfection, because everyone on this planet, until we're in glory with Christ for eternity, are never going to do anything perfectly.

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After all, we're not Nazarenes. But what

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I mean by that is to have guardrails to not only preserve your congregation from going off the rails into heresy in your present day, but also hopefully for generations in the future to do the same.

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Churches have developed and adopted confessions of faith. And in fact, since we're coming too close to our first commercial break,

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I'd like you to start that story when we return. And if anybody listening would like to ask a question of Matt Plett, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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

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Don't go away. We'll be right back with Matt Plett. I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

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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

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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.

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In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every

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Sunday. We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org.

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That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.

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In the film Chariots of Fire, Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And don't forget to mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with my guest today who came to be my guest as a result of a conversation with my pastor,

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Simon O'Maney, recently. And this is Matt Plett, pastor of Trinity Fellowship, a confessional reform

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Baptist conversation in Niverville, Manitoba, Canada. We're discussing why we became a confessional church.

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And I am so delighted that in spite of your background being a dairy farmer, you're not just serving the milk of the word.

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And I was just curious, are you influenced at all by the Calvinist theologian

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Douglas Moo? Sorry about those bad jokes. But I was wondering, as I stated before the break, how your congregation came to, even to begin with, start to have discussions on confessionalism and what led you ultimately to make that decision to become a confessional reform

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Baptist church? Okay, so when

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I kind of resigned and moved on from my previous setting, that was in conjunction with a few of the other leaders that made a similar decision.

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And so there was a group of us, I guess, that was not sure what was next.

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And we knew there were a few, a handful of reform Baptist churches in the area that we went to go visit over the course of that winter and trying to determine what was best.

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Do we plug in one of these churches? In terms of our leanings and our desire for what we would be looking for was quite similar.

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And so we started to visit churches and I talked with a number of pastors to see, what would they advise?

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What do they think is best? Do we plug in somewhere? Do we start something? What do we think about?

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And after a period of time visiting and plugging in with different churches, we started our evening study, actually, in the

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Heidelberg Catechism, is what we did to start with in the evening Bible study kind of thing.

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And kind of clearly set out. So I'd say, actually, the theological vision was actually set before the church really started.

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So we knew if we set out this way, we knew what we wanted to do, how to form it.

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So the vision was actually set before there was really people there. But the appetite clearly was there and people started to come.

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So in some ways, it's harder because we started from nothing. But in other ways, it was simpler because we're not trying to steer an existing church to confessionalism.

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We did it just right off the dock. And that came about because the four of us men who became founding elders,

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I suppose, we did share a common vision of what we wanted. We did want a conservative and orthodox expression of Christianity if this plant were to get off the ground.

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And so we identified with the London Baptist Confession right from day one.

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And again, I think there's no one cookie cutter way to make a church plant, how to start from scratch.

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There's many different ways, but we started with the leadership structure.

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We started with the confession and then the people started to come from there.

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So it wasn't a contentious thing. It wasn't difficult to, you know, it's not like we had to teach through it for five years and then really work hard at getting it through.

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The vision was there. You know, we weren't, you know,

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I don't think schismatic or obnoxious about it at all, but we didn't hide it either where we were going.

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Once we started meeting on Sunday mornings, we started an expository series in the

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Sunday morning worship service on First Timothy, which makes sense for a new church, kind of, you know, what's the biblical structure for a church?

38:36

But then for our adult Sunday school time, we started immediately working through the London Baptist Confession just to familiarize people with the structure and the contours of confessional

38:46

Christianity because I'd say the vast majority of our members do not come from a confessional background.

38:55

They come from a sincere, relatively conservative Bible -believing background, but confessionalism was something new to the vast majority of our people,

39:04

I would say. So when this was presented to the congregation, it was universally agreed upon with the elders to adopt the confession?

39:16

Yeah, so as elders, we set that direction, and it was early on that we constituted, and as we constituted, it was put in there that we were accepting the 1689

39:29

Second London Baptist Confession as our statement of faith, as an accurate summary of biblical doctrine of what the

39:35

Bible was teaching. And so that happened off the get -go, and we've been teaching it in our adult

39:44

Sunday school time for, well, over three years now. I think we're into chapter 21 or 22 right now on Christian Liberty.

39:52

I think that's chapter 21, actually. So we're slowly and methodically working through it.

39:59

Sunday school time is interactive, so we're not going fast. It's conversational. It's good.

40:05

People can marinate on it because we have people from all different backgrounds. So I'd say there's a receptive spirit.

40:12

Certainly there's a united spirit. There's a healthy spirit, but it is just a matter of slowly but surely marinating in this and helping our people to be familiar with this historic expression of faith.

40:26

Well, why don't you provide our listeners, especially for the sake of listeners who either are anti -confessional or they are indifferent about it or just totally unknowledgeable about it, what it even means.

40:42

Some people may be so unfamiliar with the concept that they may hear the word confessional and think, these people have— you go into a booth somewhere and confess your sins in the church to a priest?

40:58

Why do they call themselves confessional? But tell us about why this is so important that your church has adopted a confessional position.

41:10

Okay, so for us in particular, part of the reason that we felt it was important is because, again, coming from the context that we do, there is a strong history of sincere, genuine

41:25

Bible -believing Christianity in this part of the world, in Mennonite culture, most certainly.

41:32

But it's not—and it's by design, if you understand Anabaptist history— it's intentionally not very theological nor historical.

41:43

The Anabaptists were biblicists and to a large degree radicals, and so they were not so interested in identifying with the history of the church.

41:55

They were going in a new direction completely. And some of that, even though I wouldn't say my own background was particularly radical, many things were just left undefined.

42:06

There was not a great emphasis on the unity of the church through history and so forth.

42:13

And when contentious issues come up, as they did, if you kind of cut yourself off from the wider history of God's church and the way he's built it and the way he's done things through the centuries and even through the millennia, you're really stunting yourself.

42:31

And so we felt to—intentionally, this was a self -conscious decision, is that we are going to identify our church with historic

42:42

Christianity, that we're not starting something from scratch, we're not doing something new or novel, this isn't faddish, this isn't trendy.

42:50

We are self -consciously identifying with historical Christianity, and particularly one of the confessions that came out of the

42:58

Reformational era. And so that brings up your next question, what is confessionalism? Confessionalism is simply stating in an objective manner how we understand the

43:10

Bible to teach the Christian faith and the Christian life. It's not me and my

43:15

Bible, just me, you know, subjective, kind of individualistic, where instead of having one

43:22

Catholic pope, every Christian has their own pope. Confessionalism is a great balm for that because it says, here's how the church has, as a collective, you know, sat down, understood the faith, understood the

43:39

Christian life, committed it to Prince, so you can find the content of the Christian faith somewhere.

43:46

It's committed to a confession, and of course there's a number of different streams of church history have produced their own confessions, but typically when we talk about it, we're talking about in the

43:57

Reformational era, you know, the 16th and 17th century was kind of a highlight of that time of committing these things to print in all the churn and all the debate that was happening in the

44:12

Reformation, it was put into print to preserve and to undergird the system of doctrine and the system of living that is presented in the scriptures.

44:25

And so again, for us, it was a self -conscious decision to identify with not just other

44:32

Christians, you know, the unity that Christians enjoy isn't just across geography, it's also across history.

44:39

And so we wanted to identify that we are united to the church from the 17th century and from the 4th century and from the 2nd century and those early creeds that also were hammered out under, you know, sometimes intense persecution and difficulty.

44:57

So that was the mindset behind becoming confessional. We were not interested in creating something new.

45:04

We were rather interested in identifying with the history of God's people. And from what

45:10

I understand from church history, that that is a primary reason, not the only reason, but a primary reason,

45:22

Calvinistic or particular Baptists of the 17th century who already had the 1644

45:30

Baptist Confession of Faith, also known as the first London Baptist Confession of Faith.

45:36

They sought to adopt the second London Baptist Confession of Faith, partly to demonstrate an affinity with Presbyterians.

45:52

That is why the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith is nearly identical to the

46:00

Westminster Confession, and it also borrows from the Savoy Declaration. And it was a demonstration that, hey guys, we agree with you on a lot of stuff.

46:14

We only disagree with you primarily over the ordinance of baptism and ecclesiological issues.

46:22

And so we're not some weird cult or anything like that. We want to let you know that we agree with you on much, in spite of the fact that we passionately disagree with you on a minority of issues.

46:38

So I think that they wanted that connection with their brethren who were also heirs of the

46:46

Reformation. Yeah, absolutely. And you see, I've actually pulled up sometimes a tabular comparison that somebody has put the work into comparing the

46:57

Westminster Confession, the Savoy Declaration, and the London Baptist Confession side by side as you go through the chapters, and they are essentially identical.

47:08

And in the preface to the Baptist Confession, there's even a tacit acknowledgement that I think the wording is we don't want to clog religion with new words.

47:20

They had no desire also to be radical, to be schismatic whatsoever.

47:27

The Presbyterian brothers were brothers in their eyes. Yes, they did have a different understanding on baptism than the

47:34

Presbyterians did, but both sides understood themselves to be brothers with one another and largely cooperative.

47:42

And so I think the Baptists wisely adopted the Westminster Confession of Faith and adjusted those few paragraphs that they felt they needed to adjust for Baptist church life.

47:56

So I am wholeheartedly in favor of a brotherly relationship with other

48:04

Christians that differ on small points, certainly. Yes.

48:11

In fact, I don't know if this is too much for you, but yesterday, I don't know if you heard my program,

48:16

I had a Reformed Seventh -day Baptist on the program.

48:21

Yes, yes. And I had a real wonderful time, fascinating discussion with him.

48:31

And that is the only disagreement we have. His confessional standard is in agreement with everything that I believe, with the exception of the day of the week that they observe the

48:46

Sabbath. So I just found that refreshing. And let's see here.

48:55

We do have a...

49:00

We have Willie in Poughkeepsie, New York. Willie says, do you require agreement with the

49:12

London Baptist Confession for membership? And if so, how much agreement?

49:18

A very good question. It's in fact a question that I don't know if you and I would disagree with it or not.

49:29

Just to let you know what happened with me when I got saved. I was saved in a

49:36

Reformed Baptist church. And when I was being interviewed for baptism,

49:42

I said to my elders, I love you guys. I trust you to shepherd my soul.

49:51

I entrust the care of my soul in your hands. I want this to be my church.

50:00

But I'll tell you right now, I don't think I'm ever going to believe in this Calvinism stuff. And their response to me was, well, we don't insist that you're a

50:08

Calvinist to either baptize you or to welcome you into church membership. But we do, as far as the latter is concerned, welcoming you into church membership.

50:18

We insist that you never seek to undermine our teachings here, that you never badmouth these teachings, that you never badmouth sermons and try to stir up division in the church.

50:33

That's where we would draw the line on welcoming someone who is not a

50:39

Calvinist into our membership. But having said that, what would your view be? Yeah, I think essentially very much along the same lines.

50:49

So one of the benefits of being Reformed, being confessional, is the small -c

50:57

Catholicity that comes with it. When you understand the different streams of church history and the broadness of God's kingdom, it's right in our documents that anyone who is a true believer should be able to be a member of our church.

51:13

And I think by God's grace, we are practicing that. We have people from many different backgrounds.

51:20

And some, I think, are at different places along the journey. Some are very new

51:25

Christians that wouldn't even know what some of these terms mean. We've got a number of first -generation

51:31

Christians that are just on fire for the Lord, and they want Bible teaching, they want good fellowship, and so forth.

51:39

So our current practice is that we require full subscription for elders and deacons, which to me makes sense.

51:48

Of course. That those of us who are in leadership of the church do in fact work consistently with the church's mission.

51:56

But our practice on membership would be essentially, are you a true believer?

52:03

Have you trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation? And if so, do you agree to the fact that we're not going to hide our convictions?

52:15

Here's how we understand Scripture to teach. So this is the teaching that you will receive.

52:21

We'll be consistent with this. That doesn't mean you have to, you know, dot every

52:27

I or cross every T or agree with everything. In fact, we're explicit about that in our membership interviews.

52:34

If you have points of difference, if you have points of disagreement, let's talk about it. Not because we're going to try to strong -arm you, but we just don't want it to become contentious, right?

52:45

And so that is essentially a practice. If you are a genuine believer in the

52:52

Lord Jesus, we want to be accommodating. We want room for that in our church body.

53:01

But with the understanding that this is the way we teach, and because we're confessional, we're not, you know, we're not doing doctrine by democracy, so it's not like we're going to vote on whether we're going to become modalists or whether we're going to, you know, start including works into salvation next month or whatever.

53:20

So we're not doing doctrine by democracy. It's confessional. It's objective.

53:25

It's out there. But if you can live with that teaching, if you can work with that, then you are welcome here.

53:32

Great. We have to go to our midway break right now. And once again, if you have a question, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

53:41

Give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages.

53:47

Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the

53:55

Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key doctrines of the

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I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com

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I'm Dr.

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Hello, my name is Anthony Eugenio and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York and also the host of the reformrookie .com

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website. I want you to know that if you enjoy listening to the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio show like I do, you can now find it on the

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Truth is so hard to come by these days so don't waste your time with fluff or fake news. Subscribe to the

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And finally, if you're looking to worship in a Reformed church that holds to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, please join us at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham, New York.

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Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Avino and thanks for listening. Armored Republic exists to equip free men with tools of liberty to defend

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Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens Iron radio financially.

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Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture through the person and work of our

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It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.

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Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is

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Tell them Chris from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio sent you. Welcome back.

01:06:24

Before I return to my fascinating conversation on the importance of confessionalism, with our guest

01:06:34

Matt Plett, I have some important reminders for you. Please, folks, if you really love

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As many of you may have heard recently on my program, we have lost two of our largest advertisers which is putting us in a bit of a financial dilemma here.

01:08:05

As many of you have heard over the years, every day we have advertised a wonderful Christian business known as Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com.

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Today is their last day of business. They are locking their doors and they will no longer be a

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Christian bookstore here in Carlisle. And we have lost them as an advertiser and they were one of our largest advertisers.

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And we have also lost another very large advertiser. So we need your help more than ever, please.

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If you love the show, go to irontreppanzineradio .com. Click support, then click click to donate now.

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If you want us to continue to exist, go to irontreppanzineradio .com, click support, and then click click to donate now.

01:09:52

Last but not least, if you're not a member of a Christ -honoring, biblically faithful, doctrinally sound, theologically solid church, just like Trinity Fellowship of Manitoba, Canada, well,

01:10:05

I have lists of biblically faithful churches spanning the globe and I have helped many people in our audience all over the planet

01:10:12

Earth find churches that are biblically faithful, even sometimes just a couple of minutes from where they live.

01:10:19

And that may be you too. So no matter where you live in the world, if you are without a biblically faithful church home, please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:10:30

and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Matt Plett, pastor of Trinity Fellowship of Manitoba, Canada, on why his church chose to become a confessional church and that's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:10:53

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

01:11:00

And we have Carmela in River Edge, New Jersey.

01:11:07

Carmela asks, being a former Mennonite, was it at all a difficult hurdle for you to abandon baptism by effusion or pouring and accept baptism by immersion when you became a

01:11:22

Reformed Baptist? Oh, interesting question. No, that was not difficult for me.

01:11:30

The practice that many Mennonites, not all, but many Mennonites practice is baptism by pouring.

01:11:38

Now there's historical reasons for that because the Anabaptists were kind of a rogue entity in Europe, not accepted by the

01:11:46

Catholics or by the Protestants. Basically their baptism services became kind of underground and done in a house, and so immersion just simply was not practicable.

01:11:58

Did they actually recognize, though, immersion as the biblical mode? Some yes, some yes, some no.

01:12:09

Part of the challenge when you're discussing Anabaptism or Mennonites is because the belief system or a system of understanding the faith has never really been hammered out.

01:12:21

It's very difficult to make big generalizations about Mennonites beyond a few things like pacifism.

01:12:27

They've always been a very mixed group. Yes, and again, intentionally so, because their rejection of church history or doctrinal history is an intentional decision.

01:12:43

So it is hard to nail everything down. But my own tradition in the evangelical

01:12:51

Mennonites was basically baptism by pouring. But it's basically for historical reasons.

01:13:00

I've never heard actually anyone in those circles make a biblical defense for baptism by pouring, other than it's just historically it needed to be done, and there's baptism, and there's a confession of faith, and there's water, so it's adequate.

01:13:19

To me, I actually ended up going to seminary at a Puritan and Presbyterian seminary,

01:13:25

Woodfield Seminary in Florida. Oh, do you know my dear friend

01:13:32

William Webster, who also graduated from there? I can't say that name sounds familiar.

01:13:38

I don't know what years that would have been. He got his doctorate there and he may have done it long distance.

01:13:43

I don't know. I have no idea. I just know that's where he got his doctoral degree. Okay, yeah,

01:13:49

I did my master's at Woodfield and Presbyterian, so I was forced into those arguments.

01:13:55

But to me, the plain reading of Scripture, the practice, being at a river and so forth, it seems to be immersion.

01:14:05

The word baptizo means to submerse, to cover, right? A ship that has sunk is baptizo'd.

01:14:13

You put cucumbers in brine and they're baptizo'd. So it does seem to indicate going all the way in.

01:14:21

I've actually always understood it that way. I didn't have a big problem with pouring because of the history behind it.

01:14:29

And here, too, in terms of us trying to be accommodating and not schismatic, many of our members at Trinity would have been baptized by pouring in a

01:14:42

Mennonite background. And we have made the determination to accept those baptisms as—you maybe heard the expression— irregular but valid, right?

01:14:54

We're going to say this was a real baptism. It's not the way we practice baptism. Our current practice is immersion.

01:15:01

But we are willing to receive members who come from different backgrounds as well.

01:15:06

So this isn't something we're going to war over. Now, would you accept, though, those that had only received a paedo -baptism?

01:15:16

So on that front, what we do, we have received— okay, so just simply on the basis of paedo -baptism, no.

01:15:25

We do have some paedo -baptist members at Trinity that had also followed through and done profession of faith at their paedo -baptist church.

01:15:35

So they were full members, full Communicate members, in a Reformed or Presbyterian church.

01:15:42

And so we have accepted their membership, not on the basis of paedo -baptism as a standalone thing, but on the basis that another

01:15:51

Bible -believing, evangelical, gospel -believing church had received them as members, right?

01:15:58

So their profession of faith would be the rough equivalent to our baptism. And so on that basis, we have received conscientiously convinced paedo -baptists into our membership, on that basis.

01:16:11

Now, I'm assuming, maybe you're not aware, but that would be a minority view and practice amongst

01:16:17

Reformed Baptists, to accept those that had not been immersed upon their profession. Correct.

01:16:25

Yeah, and there is a variety of history on this matter, almost right from the beginning.

01:16:32

I found it interesting in Jim Renahan's book on Baptist Symbolics, on chapter 29, he talks there about the variance, even of the men who signed the 1689, the variance of practices in their own churches, where some were quite adamant that they would not receive members from other churches that practiced baptism differently.

01:16:54

Some did. There's a story in there, I think it was Nehemiah Cox, actually, and the

01:16:59

Pettifrance Church, when they received a new pastor— no, that was a different story.

01:17:06

They had received a woman from, I believe it was a Congregational Church, Pato Baptist Church, so she would have been baptized by quarrying, and the church received her membership, seemingly, and there's no record of rebaptism in the

01:17:21

Baptist Church. And, of course, men like Bunyan had latitude on this practice.

01:17:28

Spurgeon at least offered communion to Presbyterians. So, yes, but we are well aware that there is a variation of practice on that, even among Reformed Baptists through history.

01:17:44

The area where I am more vehement in my opposition regarding baptism is when our

01:17:55

Presbyterian and other Pato Baptist brethren, and they are in disagreement over this, but when they accept

01:18:02

Roman Catholic baptism, I am vehemently opposed to that, as was the great

01:18:13

Southern Presbyterian J .H. Thornwell, and he has a book— he's a 19th century

01:18:24

Presbyterian who openly rejected Roman Catholic baptism, even though he believed in infant baptism.

01:18:33

And there is a book out there that is an excerpt from a larger work he wrote, but it has been retitled in a modern version,

01:18:44

Sacramental Sorcery, the Invalidity of Roman Catholic Baptism by J .H.

01:18:50

Thornwell, and I urge everyone listening to get a hold of that book.

01:18:57

Now, I have to comment, and I don't mean to be mean -spirited about this, but I have a lot of disagreements with the publisher of this book on other matters.

01:19:12

J .H. Thornwell lived many, many decades before the Trinity Foundation came into existence, and even though they're

01:19:24

Calvinistic, I have many serious differences with them. But this book is excellent, and I just thought

01:19:30

I'd throw that out there because of the differences that churches have over that matter.

01:19:37

Yeah, and I don't know what the breakdown is. I know Presbyterians who receive Roman Catholic baptism on the basis that it's

01:19:44

Trinitarian, and I know others that do not receive it because of very clear differences over the gospel.

01:19:50

And I don't know what the proportion is. I guess kind of similar to us as Reformed Baptists, the posture towards people coming from a

01:19:59

Patero -Baptist background as well. There seems to be a variance in practice. I guess we've never had anyone apply, but our documents would state that it's a gospel -believing,

01:20:10

Bible -believing church. So I think for us to receive a Roman Catholic member would be a stretch.

01:20:16

I think that would be a different thing than receiving a gospel -believing Presbyterian, for example, or even an Anglican, or so forth.

01:20:23

Well, to give us some more of the reasons why you believe it is important to be a confessional

01:20:30

Baptist. So ironically, one of them is, and again,

01:20:37

I've had different interesting conversations about this with people who are not familiar with confessionalism, and they wonder, okay, so do you preach from the

01:20:46

Bible, or do you teach out of the confession, or what? And of course, one of the reasons,

01:20:53

I think one of the strongest reasons, actually, to receive a historic confession of faith is because it actually, and this will sound counterintuitive, maybe to some, what it actually ends up doing, it's the strongest way to protect sola scriptura, whereby

01:21:11

Scripture alone is our final authority. And that sounds odd, because what's the alternative to having a confession of faith?

01:21:18

Well, the alternative, in some people's mind, is to say, well, why do you need that? I just believe the Bible, right?

01:21:25

Which is a, that's a noble attitude to have. Of course, we all just want to believe the

01:21:31

Bible, right? I am a biblical absolutist. I am sola scriptura down to my ribs, absolutely.

01:21:40

But the challenge that comes, then, with saying, but we're not going to have any documents which summarize our understanding of what the

01:21:49

Bible teaches, is this. It makes, it confuses, or it blurs the line between what is my personal understanding of what the

01:22:00

Bible teaches, versus what does the Bible actually teach, right?

01:22:05

And so for myself as a pastor, if we were to abandon a historic confession, and our confession essentially became, we just believe what the

01:22:16

Bible says, really, the church, then, becomes my personal hobby horse.

01:22:24

Because really what we're saying is that we have an unwritten confession, which is what

01:22:29

Matt Plett feels like preaching from the text this morning. And of course, no faithful minister, no faithful church leader, wants to go down that path.

01:22:39

We're not all individual popes. The strength of a confession is that it protects us, it protects the members of the church, and it protects the leaders of the church, because you don't just have unlimited freedom to, you know, to turn

01:22:55

Scripture into a wax nose and do whatever you want with it, to bend it and shape it, right?

01:23:02

And the, you know, just the Bible, without doing the work of harmonizing different texts, is how you actually end up with the most severe errors, like Trinitarian errors, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or that kind of stuff.

01:23:18

Those are, those cults and those heretical movements are often based on, or they are appealed to, well, it's just the

01:23:28

Bible. I just say what the Bible teaches, right? And the work of harmonization, the work of understanding how has the church historically understood this, isn't done.

01:23:40

And so the Biblicist arguments in favor of heresy are often the most compelling ones. Whereas if you're in conversation with, okay, well, how did the church understand this historically?

01:23:51

How did the fathers, you know, before the Nicene Creed, how did they understand this issue?

01:23:57

How did the fathers after the Nicene Creed, how did they understand this issue? How did the medieval men understand this issue?

01:24:03

How did the Reformers and the Puritans understand this issue? And there's a lot of safeguards. Now it's not just me and my own private opinion that's wrestling through the text, but there's a whole, you know, 2000 years of church history serving as a guardrail and frankly protecting my congregation from my private opinions, right?

01:24:25

Not that a confession nails down absolutely every last issue, but it protects the minister because it keeps him inside the rails of what he has latitude to teach and preach within the biblical confines.

01:24:39

And it protects the congregation because they're not at the mercy of a bully pulpit, right?

01:24:47

And a pastor just sharing his opinions and doing that as though that is what the

01:24:52

Bible teaches, right? Because every church actually does have a confession of faith.

01:24:58

And if it's not written down, it's just what the preacher feels like preaching that morning that becomes the de facto confession of faith.

01:25:06

And that can go anywhere. Yes, my old friend, the late

01:25:12

John Thornberry, who went home to the Lord last year, he was a prolific writer and wrote my favorite biography of all time, a pastor in New York, The Life and Times of Spencer Cone.

01:25:28

Spencer Cone was a confessional particular Baptist in New York City and pastored in the 19th century, the

01:25:37

First Baptist Church of New York in Manhattan. But he, during a lecture at one of the

01:25:49

John Bunyan conferences that used to take place in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and then later in New Ringgold, Pennsylvania.

01:25:59

Now they're being held in Franklin, Tennessee. But I remember when

01:26:04

John Thornberry was advocating confessionalism, at the time, his church was a member of the

01:26:14

American Baptist Association, which is known to be a liberal denomination. He eventually got his church successfully to leave that denomination because of the liberalism.

01:26:28

But he wrote into their magazine, because there was a statement in there about the

01:26:36

American Baptist Church has no creed but Christ and no confession but the

01:26:43

Bible. And John challenged them and said, that is a creedal statement.

01:26:51

Yeah, that's a nice little creed you've got there. Right. Where does it say in the Bible, no creed but Christ? Right. And in fact, that is the statement that you will hear very often in Churches of Christ.

01:27:08

And I remember years ago, attending a Church of Christ Bible conference, because I was invited by a friend of mine who was a member there.

01:27:18

And the speaker was saying that that very thing, the

01:27:25

Churches of Christ have never had creeds or confessions. We have one creed but Christ and one confession, the

01:27:32

Holy Bible. So during a question and answer session, I raised my hand and I held up a church bulletin that I got from the narthex of the church.

01:27:45

And I began to read it. And I said, well, according to this church bulletin, the

01:27:53

Churches of Christ believe in the Bible alone as their statement of faith.

01:28:00

The Churches of Christ celebrate the Lord's Supper every Sunday. The Churches of Christ believe in baptism by immersion for remission of sins.

01:28:11

The Churches of Christ do not have a clergy. Our ministers do not wear robes.

01:28:17

They typically wear business suits and the kinds of apparel that your ordinary member would wear.

01:28:24

And it was going on and on and on. I said, do you realize this is your creed? Yeah. And they had no answer for that.

01:28:34

And I even had a fundamentalist Baptist friend of mine challenge me years ago.

01:28:42

He said, one of the things I don't like about you or Foreign Baptist is that you add to the

01:28:48

Bible. He said, we just have the Bible. You guys have that London Baptist confession.

01:28:54

And I said, well, you do know that the London Baptist confession of faith just has summaries of biblical teaching in it.

01:29:02

And there's always biblical references listing what we believe. And I said to this brother, you guys are a part of a radio program.

01:29:12

I actually worked for the BMCA radio in New York at the time. And their program was something

01:29:19

I helped them launch, the Fundamental Baptist Forum. I said, you guys have a manual on requirements for being participants and hosts of the

01:29:30

Fundamental Baptist Forum. It is about five times thicker than the 1689

01:29:36

London Baptist confession of faith, listing all the things that a pastor must believe in order to be a host of the

01:29:45

Fundamental Baptist Forum. I said, that's your confession of faith. They just can't get it through their head.

01:29:53

I'd like to know what it would be like to not be a dispensationalist and a King James onlyist there, but neither of those things are so self -evident in Scripture either, right?

01:30:03

And people who have that view, and I'll even risk offending some of my dear brethren in the

01:30:12

Reformed camp who are exclusive psalmists, but it has a similar attitude to those who believe in exclusive psalmody will only sing the psalms because they're the only

01:30:27

God -breathed hymnal that we have. Well, if that was true, that we were restricted only to that, and like the fundamentalist guy, we were restricted to only having the

01:30:39

Bible, then you should, as a preacher, get up to the pulpit, read the

01:30:46

Bible, a chapter or two, close it, and sit down. Because when they're preaching, they're using their own words.

01:30:57

That's right. That's right. And I think, too, again, in terms of a confession actually guarding sola scriptura, any good confession, so let's say the big

01:31:06

Reformational confession, so whether it's in three forms of unity or the Baptist confession or Westminster or Savoy, they'll start with acknowledging the supremacy of the

01:31:17

Bible as the final court of appeal and the source of all doctrine. So none of these confessions are trying to create doctrines out of whole cloth.

01:31:25

What they're trying to do is saying, you know what, we learn about certain doctrines in the Bible or certain aspects of the

01:31:32

Christian life, sometimes in Genesis, sometimes in Isaiah, and sometimes in Philippians. When we put that all together, what's a coherent picture?

01:31:40

And that's what it's attempting to do. It's not creating new doctrines that aren't found in the Bible. It's attempting to summarize the teaching of the whole

01:31:49

Bible so that we can be whole Bible Christians, but every good confession starts with an acknowledgement that this confession is not

01:31:57

Scripture, it's not on par with Scripture, it bends the knee to Scripture, it's subservient to Scripture, it starts with an admission of sola scriptura, but it puts out in an objective way its understanding of what the

01:32:12

Bible teaches, and of course you can debate and you can test things according to Scripture because it's actually written down, whereas the no creed but Christ guy, you can't ever do that.

01:32:23

You can't really ever verify because it's not objective, it's not accessible, and it is subject to change.

01:32:30

If a minister changes his mind on a particular issue from this month to that month, are we still going to say, well, it's just the

01:32:37

Bible? Or are we doing interpretive work and trying to harmonize, and if so, why don't we just be honest about that and objective about it and let

01:32:47

Scripture be Scripture and let man be man? Amen. Let's see here, we have

01:32:55

Tom in Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, and Tom says, I was wondering what your view on the

01:33:04

Pope being the Antichrist is because that was in the original 1689 London Baptist Confession, and if I'm not mistaken, all the

01:33:12

Reformed Confessions. Right, so yes, in the Reformation era, especially with Luther, but others as well, understood the

01:33:23

Pope to be the chief Antichrist. I would be more comfortable with language talking about that the

01:33:31

Pope is un -Antichrist. I don't personally understand historically or biblically that the

01:33:42

Antichrist is one particular man. Just to make sure— It's a series of men, it's an office, it's a category of men, and the

01:33:53

Bishop of Rome most certainly, and sometimes very, very clearly, fills that position.

01:34:00

Someone who's actively opposed to the gospel. And I just wanted to make sure that our listeners understood what you meant, because in your

01:34:08

Canadian accent, it sounded like you said, un -Antichrist, U -N, but you meant—

01:34:14

Oh, no. A -N. Antichrist is a category of men.

01:34:24

It's not a particular individual. It's a category of men, and the Popes have very often been identified as that category, which is actively opposed to the gospel.

01:34:36

Right. And some of our fundamentalist friends wrongly think that Baptists that don't follow that part of the 1689 that identifies the

01:34:52

Pope as Antichrist, they wrongly think that means that they have a soft view of the

01:35:00

Pope. That's not true at all. It's just an eschatological difference.

01:35:08

And also, because of the Scriptures themselves, in 1 John 2 .18,

01:35:14

it says, Little children, it is the last time, and as ye have heard, that Antichrist shall come, even now there are many

01:35:24

Antichrists whereby we know that it is the last time.

01:35:31

So therefore, you have 2 ,000 years ago, the saying, before a papacy ever existed, that there were many

01:35:39

Antichrists among us. That's right. And so that's why I would go back to say, you know,

01:35:44

I think I'm on good ground, historically and biblically, to say this is a category of men. An Antichrist is anyone who within the visible auspices of the

01:35:55

Church is opposing the work of the Gospel, i .e., the Popes. But not exclusively the

01:36:02

Popes. I would say, you know, the Church of England yesterday, or today,

01:36:10

I don't know what it was, selected their first ever female bishop and a transdeacon, and there's all kinds of ungodliness happening in the

01:36:18

Church of England, and I would say, you know, that is

01:36:23

Antichrist stuff as well. That's actively opposing the Christian faith inside the confines of what appears to be a

01:36:33

Church. Okay. We have Carl in Wyoming, Michigan.

01:36:41

Carl says, What have you made certain in your

01:36:47

Church documents like a statement of faith other than the 1689 that would preserve your confession being used in the future after those who are now living are in glory?

01:37:05

Is there any kind of a constitutional amendment that says that any time that the confession was being departed from, that the

01:37:18

Church would cease to exist as a Church? Well, I'm not 100 % sure

01:37:28

I'm understanding that properly, but in terms of documents outside of the

01:37:33

Baptist confession, yes, we do have a written constitution that lays out that our doctrinal commitments are summarized in the

01:37:44

Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. I'm not sure if the question is, do we have additional documents that we would hold to?

01:37:54

I think what, I mean, and Carl can write back if he wants, but it seems like he's saying, is there something that would ensure somehow,

01:38:05

I mean, nothing could be an absolute assurance that future generations aren't going to abandon your confessional standard, but is there anything in there in your other documents that would preserve the usage of the confession in future generations?

01:38:29

Like, for instance, look at all these confessional formally reformed denominations that have gone liberal.

01:38:38

And you had the Presbyterians with the Westminster Confession eventually becoming the

01:38:45

PCUSA being pro -homosexual. How does that happen? Yeah, and you have the

01:38:51

Anglican Church once having the 39 articles of religion, and now they have a strong leftist and apostate element.

01:39:01

And you have the Congregationalists who once stood strong in the Savoy Declaration, and now they are apostate and liberal.

01:39:10

I'm speaking of the mainstream United Church of Christ Congregationalists. So, obviously, there's nothing that human beings can do to absolutely preserve that kind of thing, the future continuation of a confession.

01:39:30

But at the same time, I'll give you an example. Here's an interesting example. A friend of mine was renting an old, historic

01:39:39

United Church of Christ building in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island. He had expressed to the denomination that he would like to purchase the building.

01:39:51

And when they went through their records and the deed and everything, there was a document that prohibited them from legally selling the building to anybody that was not a five -point

01:40:07

Calvinist, believe it or not, because at the time that that church was established, it was.

01:40:16

And even though the current congregation were leftist and apostate who owned the building, they could not sell it legally because of that document, if you follow what

01:40:27

I'm saying. Okay, I get that. So, I think probably in terms of documents, what we've got, and I think faithfulness, generational faithfulness, is a multi -pronged thing that needs to be looked at many different ways.

01:40:43

So, I am a believer in documents. And in our Constitution, I think probably the biggest safeguard that we have in terms of it written down is that all office holders at Trinity must fully subscribe to the confession.

01:40:58

So, if you're going to get from full subscription to lady preachers or accommodating same -sex unions or moving away from the doctrines of grace or something along those lines, someone's been dishonest.

01:41:17

And that's typically how liberalism works, is that words start to get slippery, right?

01:41:23

And people start to equivocate. And Machen uncovers this great in his

01:41:28

Christianity and Liberalism book, they'll use orthodox words, but they've redefined them to try to keep themselves inside the machinery of a church or an organization or a seminary.

01:41:39

But what they mean, the heart religion has moved on to something completely different and unrecognizable.

01:41:46

So, on the one hand, in terms of our Constitution, I think full subscription for all office holders is our greatest safeguard there.

01:41:57

But we also talk, one thing we do a lot, and this is not written down, at Trinity, we talk a lot about culture, right?

01:42:05

And you've maybe seen that as well. When a church is healthy, even poor documents and poor governance structures kind of get a pass because the church itself is healthy, right?

01:42:18

And when a church is unhealthy, no matter how good your documents are, it's unhealthy.

01:42:24

And documents become a living letter if people just determined to not care anymore.

01:42:30

So I'd say the bulk of our effort actually has to do with emphasizing culture building in the church and intergenerational transfer of faith.

01:42:43

You know, we're not big on program -centered ministry or demographic -based ministry, but more emphasizing intergenerational fellowship so that that transfer of the faith, of a vibrant living faith, can be handed off from one generation to the next so that you don't start to have multiple churches in a church.

01:43:06

And so I do believe working at culture, working at the health of the church, the spiritual health of the church, relationships is as important as I would actually probably argue more important than the documents because documents, it only takes one bad group of elders to just neglect the documents and just do what they want.

01:43:26

And if no one, if the members aren't going to hold them to account on that, it doesn't matter what the founders wrote.

01:43:33

Right? So can any group of founding elders absolutely guarantee that a church will not go apostate?

01:43:39

Well, I drive around Winnipeg and I see many beautiful Presbyterian churches that were built by faithful Scottish immigrants in the late 1800s that are absolutely apostate and unbelieving at this point.

01:43:51

That happened somehow. And I think a combination of being clear on your expectations in your documents, but then also being very intentional about the intergenerational handoff of a vibrant, biblical,

01:44:06

Orthodox faith is key. Because once you have nominalism, people just do whatever they want.

01:44:14

Okay. And when we return, we're going to have a question from Phil in Cheektowaga, New York.

01:44:24

And so hold tight, Phil. We'll have your question read and answered by my guest when we return.

01:44:30

If anybody else wants to join Phil with a question, I strongly urge you to submit it immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:44:40

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

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Puritan Reformed is a Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church. We are devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone.

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Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image -bearing prophets, priests, and kings.

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We teach families to worship together as families. Puritan is committed to teaching the whole counsel of God so that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

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We sing the Psalms, teach the law, proclaim the gospel, make disciples, maintain discipline, and exalt

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Christ. This is Pastor David Reis of Puritan Reformed in Phoenix, Arizona.

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Join us in the glorious cause of advancing Christ's crown and covenant over the kings of the earth.

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Puritan Reformed Church. Believe. Build. Fight. puritanphx .com

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And also I want to remind you folks that this program is paid for in part by the law firm of Buttafuoco &

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Associates, where my friend for many years, going back to the early 1990s,

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Daniel P. Buttafuoco is the senior law partner and founder of that firm.

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If you're the victim of a very serious personal injury or medical malpractice anywhere in the

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United States, please call my long -time dear friend, Daniel P. Buttafuoco at 1 -800 -NOWHURT 1 -800 -NOWHURT or visit his website 1 -800 -NOWHURT .com

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Please make sure you tell Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, that you heard about his law firm,

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Buttafuoco & Associates, from Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And we are now back with my guest today,

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Matt Plett, who is the pastor of Trinity Fellowship in Manitoba, Canada, a theologically reformed congregation that is also confessional.

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And we have Phil in Cheektowaga, New York.

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And Phil says, I have heard that locking yourself in to a confession of faith will prevent you and the members of a church from truly being

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Berean. How would you respond to that argument? I think

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I understand the concern. I would say that having a confession should not stop us from examining the

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Scripture or from testing doctrines by the Scripture. But what it should do is it should keep us humble enough to say that if I've discovered something in my private reading of Scripture that has not been found elsewhere,

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I should be very dubious on myself. I believe it was Charles Spurgeon who spoke of the enthusiasts who were kind of like the mystics kind of of his day, who didn't like Bible commentaries, they didn't like confessions and stuff like that, on the basis of the

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Holy Spirit was teaching them. Spurgeon's retort was, why do they think so highly of what the

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Spirit is teaching them and so poorly of what the Spirit has taught other gods and men through history? So I'd say we want to examine, but for the same reason that I don't go up and just start freestyling on a sermon, you do preparation, you think about it prayerfully, you examine the text, you work with the text.

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Confessions are helpful in that sense too, because they give us an insight onto how other godly faithful men have understood these things.

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And so again, I'm very wary of creating a billion personal popes, right?

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Debris in spirit is good, yes, but that too has to stay inside the apostolic bounds, right?

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So it's not unlimited possibilities. And also for those of you who have never even seen, let alone read, the 1689

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London Baptist Confession of Faith, it is not a massive tome that covers restrictions on every interpretation that you could possibly have of any text in the

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Scriptures. It's a very brief summary of the main things of Scripture that a church needs to believe to function as a true church of Jesus Christ.

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And they have biblical references for all of those things.

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When you get a copy of the 1689, it is a booklet. And keep in mind that the

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Apostle Paul did commend the Bereans for making sure that everything he taught was according to the

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Scriptures. But he also very emphatically taught that there were certain things that they could not believe that Christians could not believe and truly be saved.

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He spoke against the heresy of the Judaizers. He said that their gospel was no gospel at all and that they were to be accursed.

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And he said that if you deny the resurrection of the dead, that you can't have salvation.

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There are things that he taught where he was building a fence around certain teachings in the

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Word of God that had to be, that were required of believers to actually believe.

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Am I making sense here? Yeah, that's right. And I would agree. And I agree. The Confession deals with basic heads of doctrine, but within that, there's plenty of latitude, right?

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Like different millennial positions, different understandings about, you know, which music exactly should we sing in church?

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How exactly am I going to raise my kids? There's plenty of latitude. So this isn't like some, like you say, this isn't an eight -pound textbook dropping on your head.

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It's a little booklet. I just looked at my Confession in Modern English from Founders.

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It's a booklet with 60 pages with large font. And that's including all the scripture references.

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It's not overbearing. And the guardrail on the one hand is, of course, we always examine.

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On the flip side, scripture itself says, hold to the traditions as you are taught them, right?

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Don't start inventing things. Don't start creating doctrines out of whole cloth. Be in conversation with the history of God's people.

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Amen. There are amillennialists, postmillennialists, and historic premillennialists who are confessional

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Reformed Baptists holding to the same confession. Yep, that's right. Well, I want you, in about two minutes time, to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

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Well, what I would encourage everyone, we've seen, it's been a remarkable work of God, the appetite that people have had to see a church in our area here self -consciously pushing into the same direction of church history, robust doctrine, historical doctrine, no novelty, no tricks.

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The church has exploded and has been primarily with young families just looking for safety and peace.

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And I think in the world we live in, you hear about these converts to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy because people want permanent things.

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And I would say we actually find more permanence in the historic Protestant and evangelical faith.

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Because Roman and Orthodoxy have created their own things, which necessitated the Reformation.

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So I would encourage people who want to reacquaint themselves with the permanent things to find a church that will connect you with the permanent things.

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And for pastors and church leaders, I would say a robust confession is a wonderful way to show your people that they have unity with Christians, not just in other countries, but also in other timeframes.

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Amen. And by the way, our listeners might be interested to know that I am actually producing a movie on the life of my guest,

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Matt Plett. And starring in the role of Matt Plett in the movie will be, guess who?

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Who am I picking to star? Oh boy, somebody bald and bearded. Woody Harrelson.

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You know what? I've been told that before. I've been told Owen Wilson. And I've been told

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Woody Harrelson. Yeah, I mean, you look almost exactly. And it didn't even dawn on me until near the end of the show.

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And I want to remind our listeners of the website, trinityfellowship .ca, trinityfellowship .ca

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for Trinity Fellowship in Manitoba, Canada. Thank you so much for doing a superb job, brother.

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I want everybody to have a safe, God -glorifying, happy, healthy, joyful weekend and Christ -honoring

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Lord's Day. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater