Resources on the 1689 Confession of Faith

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Welcome to The Whole Council. I'm John Snyder, and this is a special edition of our podcast because we want to introduce you to two men who are at the heart of two ministries, and these ministries have published material that help us with two historical tools.

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Tools that the church has used in the past. Tools that have helped churches and families to be more careful with their understanding of the

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Scripture. It's one thing for us to very earnestly and honestly say, I believe the

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Bible, and that of course is essential for the Christian life, but it's another thing to be able to say,

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I believe the Bible teaches this about all of the major themes that we find there.

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Are we as clear as we could be? Are we increasing in the knowledge of God and in how

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He works? How that impacts every area of family or church or state?

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You know, how do we impact our culture? What are the truths that will refashion us completely?

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And these tools are the confession and the catechism.

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The first man we'll interview is Tom Askell. You may have heard of Tom. He's a pastor in Cape Coral, Florida, but he's better known as the president of Founders Ministries, and this ministry works within the

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Southern Baptist life to help the churches to revisit these great documents that we have from the past, the confession and the catechisms.

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And so he will be talking to us about how we use those in church, and just some practical guidelines that he's found helpful as he's implemented that in his church for over 40 years, and some resources that they make available.

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And we use their resources here in Little New Albany, Mississippi, and we found them very helpful, particularly what they provide for children and for catechism, which can be a bit of a daunting task.

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The audio, you will notice, is a little different. That's because we are on Zoom with Tom, and so sometimes our audio and video is a little spotty there.

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So I hope you enjoy the time with Tom. And this is actually the first time that I've been able to meet

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Tom. He is in Florida, Cape Coral, Florida? That's correct. And I've read books by him,

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I've listened to him on tapes back when there were tapes, and my family, my father, has been greatly influenced by his ministry.

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But today is the first time I met him. So Tom, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

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How the Lord brought you to himself and into the ministry? Yeah, well thanks,

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John, for having me on. I'm delighted to be here with you. And I'm the youngest of six kids that grew up under the influence of a godly mother in Beaumont, Texas.

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That's where I was born and raised. And my mom loved the

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Lord Jesus, one of the most phenomenal people I've ever met and known. She's with the Lord now. I had a hard marriage.

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We had what would be called a dysfunctional family today, as I look back on our upbringing.

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But all of my siblings and myself, God in his kindness saved us. And two of my siblings are already in heaven.

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The others are following Christ faithfully today. I've got a brother in Oklahoma, Owasso, Oklahoma, who's also a pastor.

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And I'm the youngest. So it was as a child that I came to faith in Christ. It was through my mom's influence, and she made sure we were in a

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Bible -believing church. And she prayed for me, prayed with me, taught me the Scriptures, and God kindly saved me when

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I was a kid. So from there, when I was a teenager, she called me to be a pastor.

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I began to pursue that to the best of my ability and wound up going to seminary and becoming a pastor.

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I've been out here in Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral for the last nearly 37 years now. So it's been an amazing thing.

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But early in my ministry, I was still a student at Southwestern Seminary.

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And there were seven of us, not all students. Some were pastors and commonettos who'd gone from Southwestern to Mid -American

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Seminary at that time, met outside of Dallas, Texas. That was about 40 years ago, a little over 40 years ago, and had a prayer meeting to decide, what should we do?

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We all believe the doctrines of grace, and we didn't know what to do about it as Baptists, Southern Baptists. We were all Southern Baptists.

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So we decided to have a conference. And from that conference, developed what today is known as Founders Ministries.

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So Founders has Bible conferences, pastors' conferences. We have pastor fraternals that we try to encourage guys to participate in.

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We publish books. We have a quarterly journal. We publish Bible studies. We do a weekly podcast, The Sword and the

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Trowel. And then most recently, over the last two years, we've been embarked upon the establishment of a seminary.

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So we are in our second year of the Institute of Public Theology, which is housed here in Cape Coral. Tom Nettles, Votie Balkan, and myself founded that.

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They are the founding faculty together with me. I'm the president of that. And Jim Renahan's actually here this week teaching for us on some of his books on Baptist confessions of faith.

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And it's been a great and wild endeavor to get this up and going, but I'm very delighted about it.

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So Founders exists for the recovery of the gospel and the Reformation of local churches. And the Institute exists to proclaim

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Christ as Lord above all earthly powers. And we see those things walking hand -in -hand and desperately needed to be reemphasized time and again throughout every generation, but especially at this time in our generation.

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With that in mind, let's talk about two of those tools. And it would just take one at a time.

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Confessions. I actually went to Mid -American Baptist Theological Seminary. My father went there when

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Tom was teaching there, Tom Nettles. And so he left before I got there.

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And I also went to a school that I found very beneficial, Reformed Theological Seminary.

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And so that's a Presbyterian school. And I was in a very small country, kind of family,

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Southern Baptist Church in South Mississippi. And I went to the deacons. I was probably 23 at the time.

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And I looked 15. And I said to these men who were all in their 70s that I would like to go to seminary.

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And they said, well, okay. And so they allowed me to do a couple of days a week traveling up to the seminary.

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Well, which seminary? And they gave me some options. And the options they offered me, I didn't feel I could take.

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And I said, well, there is one that's called Reformed Theological Seminary. And they said, well, do they believe the

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Bible? And the men weren't very savvy with theological terms. I said, well, yes, they believe the Bible. And they said, well, that's good with us.

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And later, when they found out as I preached through the Gospel of John that I believed in the sovereignty of God in a way that they did not, they said we, they were pretty upset with me.

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So they said, we like to contact your professors and tell them, you know, how crazy you are that you believe this.

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And I said, well, but my professors would agree. And they said, I thought you went to a Bible -believing church.

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I said, I told you it was Reformed Theological Seminary. And they looked at each other and they said, we thought that was for preachers that were trying to do better, you know, like Reformed School, Reformed Seminary.

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So that didn't end up getting any easier, the relationship between me and the deacons.

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But at that time in that school, of course, I was introduced to the Westminster Confession.

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And, you know, and everybody I was reading, every Puritan, every 18th century man, whether it was

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George Whitefield, you know, or later like a John Newton, even though they weren't Presbyterians, they greatly benefited from that.

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And it wasn't until years later that I heard about this 1689 Baptist Confession.

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And we now have that as a document of our church. We, our elders at Baptist Church, we recently read through a book that Rob Ventura edited, a new exposition on that.

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That is kind of the baseline for the spiritual leadership of the church, that we would be in agreement.

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You know, of course, it's not kind of a cookie cutter agreement, but we wanted to know that we were in agreement with the great truths of Scripture, that we could work together without any, you know, hardship in that area.

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And we were. So we found that very helpful. So what I want to ask you is, if you were speaking to churches or to pastors who, you know, especially in these last couple years, they might have been alarmed at perhaps the unbiblical responses to the crises that we faced as a nation, maybe the wavering nature of Western evangelicalism, the lack of a clear statement that, you know, thus says the

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Lord. And they want to know, well, what tools are there out there?

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We believe the Scripture, but are there aids to help us to be more careful in handling the

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Scripture? And they come across this thing, this confession, this 1689. How do you suggest a church uses that in a way that keeps the

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Scripture in its proper perspective and yet greatly aids them? Well, that's a great question.

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I think the first thing I would do is to encourage them to get a copy of the 1689 Confession in Modern English.

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This is something that Founders Press put out years ago. It's consistently our most popular item that we make available through our bookstore, which you can get at founders .org.

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And a good confession of faith will always affirm the centrality and final authority of Scripture, which this one does.

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The very first chapter is of the Holy Scriptures. And so you don't have to be afraid of a good confession of faith or catechism undermining the

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Word of God, because they will always affirm the full final authority of the

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Word of God. It's good to have a confession of faith, and it's good to have one that's accessible.

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That's why we did this in Modern English, to make more accessible to people who may not be familiar with the language and some of the historical setting out of which the confession came.

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But study it. Use it. It's valuable for a source of Bible study. So a pastor, any serious

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Christian, could take this confession and read through each paragraph in the 32 chapters, and then look at the footnotes, which are all

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Scriptures. Look those Scriptures up, and they would have a ready -made Bible study.

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A wonderful way to walk through Scripture systematically to see what the Bible teaches on vitally important subjects.

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Now, if you would like help on that, boy, there's help. I mean, we just had published this a couple of months ago by James Renahan, who's the living authority on Baptist catechisms, and this is his exposition of the 1689

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Confession of Faith. And so, again, it's only been out a couple of months. It's outstanding.

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I would encourage anyone who's serious and wants to learn more to go through the confession. That being said, when

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I came to the church I served, and I've been here nearly 37 years, this church did not have that Confession of Faith.

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It had about seven or eight statements that had been written out by some men, and saying, this is what our church believes.

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And for the most part, it was all good, fine things to believe. But it wasn't as robust as a good catechism or good

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Confession of Faith could be, and I would argue should be. So what I did is I took my time to introduce it, and whenever I could in terms of preaching, something would come up and would touch maybe on the doctrine of Christ, and if the confession said something about that,

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I might just quote it. You know, as this old Baptist confession from the 17th century says, and just quote it.

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And usually, those statements are just so succinct, and there's so much packed into it, the people recognize, oh, that's a good, simple statement.

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And they're just recommending it from time to time. I took a group of men through the 1689

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Confession. Years after I got here, then after that, I talked through it on Sunday nights, and it took probably a year or more.

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On Sunday nights, just preaching topically and using confession, making it available to everyone. So let's just let's just study through this.

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And you can do that and point out that it's not infallible, it's not out in the air, but it's a wonderful summary of what the

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Bible teaches about key doctrines, and of just kind of making people acquainted with the confession.

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And then over time, it took us probably three or four years, there was a recommendation that we adopt it.

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And it's largely from these men that had been given extra time and attention to work through it.

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And the church took several months to consider that, and we did adopt it.

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And so that's how we did it. It took probably four years, all told, for us to do it. I wasn't in any big hurry, and made it very clear, look, we don't have to adopt this to be a good church.

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We can be a healthy church without it. I think we'll be a better one with it, because a good confession of faith helps a church to nail its colors to the mast.

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What we're saying is we're not looking for truth in these areas. We believe we found truth, and that truth that we found is in the stream of what

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God's people have believed for hundreds of years. And we just stand on their shoulders, we stand with them.

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And so this is what you know you're going to get when you come to this church. That doesn't mean everybody has to dot all the

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I's and cross all the T's with us on it, but you can be assured that the teaching ministry of this church will be within these confessional parameters.

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And there's just a lot of help and a lot of encouragement to unity that comes from that.

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So it's served us well for decades now here in Grace Madness Church in Cape Coral.

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The other tool that we want to call people's attention to, and some materials that can help with that, is the use of catechism.

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And I grew up in Columbus, Ohio. Most of my family, my extended family, many of them were

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Roman Catholic. And so when I heard the word catechism as a young adult, I thought, we're not

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Roman Catholic, guys. We don't do those things. And you know, and I was quite shocked to find that when

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I'm reading Spurgeon, he mentions his catechism, that he has adjusted a former catechism, teaches catechism, and he's kind of maybe updated it for his own people.

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And then I find that many serious -minded ministers throughout the generations had done the same.

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And so as we planted a church here in North Mississippi, a few years into it, when it came to looking at, you know, are the children of the church getting a, you know, a good, wide, complete diet of the teaching of God?

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Or do we have these kind of large gaps? And we were seeing large gaps. So we thought, well, what can we do?

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And one of the ways that we have tried to fill that is, along with we do teach children Sunday school here, but we added a catechism class as well.

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And so our 4th through 11 -year -olds work through catechism all those years. And when we came to, you know, earnest, godly, particularly it was probably from, well, women and some men that were teaching these classes, and we said to them, we want you to teach catechism.

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And they just stared at us. And they said, well, what do you mean? And so we would hand them a

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Baptist catechism, and, you know, by Spurgeon or by Keech, you know, the updated. And they looked at it, and then they said, how in the world will

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I do this? And I thought, well, come on, you know, you're a teacher. You'll figure it out. And, you know, and so, you know, our teachers would kind of stare at us.

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And I thought, we need some helps, and we don't want just the bravest of the brave to volunteer for catechism.

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So we came across, a couple of years ago, some helps that your ministry is putting out.

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And this is just a little example of them. Booklets that walk the children through the catechism, very helpful.

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Our teachers really have appreciated it. So again, with a church that says, and maybe it's not a church, maybe it's a homeschool group, a

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Christian school, or a family, who says, well, we would like to benefit from the question -and -answer dynamic of catechism, and we just don't know where to start.

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Can you give some advice on kind of how you would guide a young church or a young family that wants to do that?

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Yeah, well, first of all, I would just commend them and say, yeah, you got to do it. Start now. Don't wait.

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And I would recommend those Truth and Grace Memory Books. We have three of them. You held up a couple of them just then.

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And those are designed to be user -friendly. And so they're laid out where you are.

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They're kind of scoped and sequenced based upon age, appropriations, appropriate level questions, and bio -memory as well, and then memorization of some songs, some hymns that go along with it.

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But you don't have to stay rigidly according to those suggestions. I mean, most kids, as you get them going, they'll exceed those guidelines.

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But they're good guidelines to at least get you started. And I have found that to be incredibly beneficial.

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One of the things that we were catechizing my two -year -old when we first moved to this church, and her

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Sunday school teachers would come to me and say, man, you know, Sarah's like a theologian, you know. We'll say, now, let's talk.

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Now, who is God or what is God like? And she'll answer these questions. How did she know that? Well, I mean, she'd been catechized.

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She memorized the answers. She didn't know all that they meant, but she knew, recognizing certain questions, how to give the answers she'd been coached to give.

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And that's a good thing. What I've done over the years, periodically do it now, is in the middle of a sermon where it's relevant,

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I can say, okay, kids, I want to ask you this question now. How many persons does one God exist? And they'll say in three persons.

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Who are they? And all the kids, Father, Son, the Holy Spirit. Well, parents that are not catechizing hear that.

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And they say, whoa, you know, that's amazing that kids can do that. Because a lot of children's workers and a lot of parents may not believe that their kids can actually do that much work.

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But when they see examples of it, it motivates them and they realize, okay, we can do this.

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Something that I've done for years as well is periodically after one of our morning or evening services,

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I'll invite the kids, the young kids to come into my study or somewhere in the church, and I'll give them all lollipops.

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But before I do, I say, I want to ask you some questions. We'll go through. We'll see a series of questions on the catechism.

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It's just another time for me to encourage them to consider these things, to answer these things.

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Parents can do it in the home. We have teachers in our Sunday school classes that also reinforce that.

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The books are easy. They're nice to look at. You can sign off whenever you hit certain levels.

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And it's just a good incentive for children. So I would encourage every parent, every church to instill this.

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I've spent a lot of years sitting in classrooms, and I can tell you that nothing has helped me more in terms of getting theological categories sorted out than catechizing my own children.

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By catechizing my children, I learned things. And that's what we've discovered for decades here is that whenever the parents teach the children, the parents get it.

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And it's wonderful. It's helpful. It just makes for better Christians and makes for a better understanding of what the

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Word of God does teach so that you can apply it more readily than you might otherwise be able to do.

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Yeah. I had heard of the candy bribes. It reminded me of Spurgeon.

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I think when he would visit the orphanage that his church was founded, he would come loaded with pockets full of candy for the kids and to ask them serious biblical questions.

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Yeah. Well, thank you, Tom. Thanks for that. And again, we can find this at founders .org.

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Founders .org. Yeah. Everything we have there, everything we talked about is available there. Yeah. And we'll have that in the show notes.

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So we appreciate Tom taking time to be with us. You wear a lot of hats. And so we appreciate that, giving us part of your day.

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And we hope that you guys have had your interest sparked. If you already are a church that has the 1689 as an official document, that's a great thing.

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But there are ways to really benefit more from that than just having that as kind of the fence of the church.

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How to get those truths down to us. And then the same thing with the catechism.

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If you have not done catechism or if you are doing catechism and you're finding it a little difficult, go to founders .org.

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And I think you'll find the children's material in particular a real benefit to you. Well, having been introduced to the 1689 confession and the

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Baptist catechism, we want to turn to Rob Ventura. And Rob is the pastor at Grace Community Baptist Church in North Providence, Rhode Island.

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I've been with Rob there and his co -pastor, Jack Buckley. Rob is just a really vivacious guy.

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He used to be a manager of a rap group in New York City. A very successful man before he was converted and the

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Lord turned him toward the ministry. And you can tell because Rob could just, you know, he could sell water in the ocean.

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You know, it's just, Rob is just so full of life. And when I meet Rob, I always feel like I'm half asleep and he's awake.

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Rob is going to talk to us about a book that he has been the general editor of and has just been published by Mentor Press, and it is a new exposition of the 1689 confession.

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Rob wrote one of the chapters explaining a chapter of the 1689 confession, but he's just one of them.

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There are many names that you might be familiar with. And Rob's going to talk to us about that book and how that can be applied in a church.

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And, you know, what other uses are there for a book that helps us to understand an ancient

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Baptist document? Well, we're here with Rob Ventura today for a special episode in which we get to hear about a number of ministries and ministers.

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And Rob is the pastor of the Grace Community Baptist Church in North Providence in Rhode Island.

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And, Rob, you and I met, I think, at one of the NCFIC conferences, right?

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That's correct. And then we've kept in touch somewhat since then.

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And Rob is one of those guys who's got a heart, you know, as big as the planet. So if you want to hide from Rob at a conference, it's hopeless.

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He's also six foot six, so he can see. And so he would always find me out and we would get a chance to talk.

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And then I was able to spend some time with you preaching in Providence when

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COVID was going and pretty strictly restricted. And you also pastor with Jack Buckley.

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I don't know what we call Jack. Like he's this sneaker pastor. Like he's, you know, he's such a quiet guy.

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And then he drives his Mustang up to church. It's like one time I asked him, I said, well, you know,

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Jack, do you build guitars too? And he shows me a picture. He said, yeah, actually I built this guitar. And that's

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Jack. What hasn't Jack done? So, well, we've got Rob here to tell us a little bit about the ministries he's involved with.

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But before we do that, Rob, I know that when we spent time together, you explained that you did not grow up in a

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Christian home and it wasn't until you were in your early twenties that the Lord really conquered you, changed you, changed your wife.

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And so that was quite a different world in New York City than what you're in now.

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So tell us just a little bit about that and how the Lord brought you to him. Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity,

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John. Just wonderful to see you, brother. And I do have fond memories when you were at our church preaching the word of God. What a wonderful time.

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So yeah, the Lord is very kind to me and converted me at 22 years old while living in New York City. And as you said,

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I was raised in a non -Christian home. I have a nominal Catholic mother, who I'm very thankful for, and a nominal

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Jewish father. So around Christmas time in my house, you had a Christmas tree on one side of the house and a menorah on the other.

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And neither one of them practiced their religion, which basically made me a functional pagan, as it were.

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No God, no truth, certainly no gospel. I moved to New York City from Long Island at 18 years old.

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And then at 22 years old, in God's providence, I met some Christians and they asked me, do you want to read the

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Bible? And I thought, sure, it's no problem. I've never read the Bible, don't know much about Jesus. I had actually never touched the

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Bible until I was 22 years old. John, I never heard John 3, 16 until I was 22 years old, just to kind of give you a sense for how lost

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I was and dead in my trespasses and sins. Well, in God's grace, 22 years old, I heard the gospel and God granted me repentance towards him and faith toward our

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Lord Jesus Christ, and he radically transformed my life. I'm so thankful. Before that,

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I was what you would call spiritual, but I didn't know that Jesus said, not necessarily that you've got to be spiritual, but you've got to be born of the

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Spirit. So there's a big difference there. So I was into all kinds of spirituality nonsense. But then when

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I started reading the New Testament and I saw that Jesus Christ was calling me to repent of my sins and to trust in his final sacrifice on the cross as my only ground of acceptance with God, again,

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God gave me a heart to do that, and he radically transformed me and saved my never -dying soul, for which

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I bless his name. Like you said, though, I was in the music industry, and we talked a little bit about it before we went online here.

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And yes, it's true, I used to manage a rap group professionally in New York City. I always ask people, so what kind of group do you think that I manage?

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And I get rock and I get jazz, but I don't typically get rap. But I did used to manage a rap group professionally.

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We were signed on an independent record label at first called Phat Wax Records. And then my group was picked up by Arista Records to be on a big compilation album.

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And Arista Records at that time was the biggest major record label in the world. That was actually

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Whitney Houston's record label. So I got signed and I was saved. And what

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I decided to do was finish out my contract for another couple years. And then when my contract came up,

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I walked away from Arista and went to Bible school in New York City, New York School of the

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Bible, my first year of getting some training. And while I was there in New York City, I met a guy who was going to a

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Reformed Baptist church in New Jersey. And that Reformed Baptist church that a gentleman was going to, who

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I met in New York City, that church is the church that Pastor Al Martin was pastoring for many decades.

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And so, basically, after being saved for a few years, kind of in a broad evangelical church setting, which was fine,

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I heard the gospel there, God started bringing me to Reformed theology. And that would put me on a path to eventually study at Reformed Baptist Seminary, which

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I did most of that study long distance. And then in 2007, I graduated from Reformed Baptist Seminary while I was a member at a

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Reformed Baptist church in Englewood, New Jersey. A church in Englewood, New Jersey is pastored by Jim Don, a

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Jim graduate from Al Martin's academy, so it's wonderful for me. And then, yeah, 2007,

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I was called here to North Providence, Rhode Island, and I've been here about 16 years, laboring with Pastor Jack.

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And it's been a delight to serve with him and to serve God's people in this wonderful part of the country.

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Yeah. Funny connection that we have that we didn't know we had is that we have a lady in the church here in North Mississippi, of all places,

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Peggy, who's a wonderful believer. And she grew up in that region, and her father planted and pastored the church that now you pastor.

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Isn't it amazing? Sherwood Becker, we thank God for him. He was the founding pastor of Grace Community Baptist Church now in North Providence, Rhode Island, and we're so thankful for him.

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Yeah, he was part of a broader Baptist church, and many, many years ago, 45 years ago, he became

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Reformed, and he brought that church out of that, again, broader evangelical setting. And yeah, our church has been

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Reformed Baptist now for all 42 years or so. We're very grateful for him. And yes,

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Sherwood had five wonderful daughters. You have one of them, and we have one of them as well. So grateful for our dear brother who's now been with the

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Lord for many years. Yeah. Well, we wanted you to give us just a summary of some of the books you've been a part of the publishing of them.

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I think probably the first one that I saw was the one with you and Jeremy Walker, where you walk through that Paul's portrait there at the end of Colossians, those wonderful verses where after that glowing description of Christ and the impact of the gospel, at the end of that chapter, we find these amazing statements about the life and the ministry of the apostle.

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And I read that, and we really benefited from that. But the one that's come out recently is this, the

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New Exposition of the London Baptist Confession of 1689, and this is published by Mentor Press.

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And so you are the general editor and a contributor, but there are quite a few men that have contributed to this.

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So tell us a little bit about the new book. Yeah. Let me just say a quick word about Jeremy Walker, my dear friend.

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Jeremy and I were on the phone this morning together. So I know you guys are good friends and he appreciates your ministry that I know you appreciate his as well.

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So yeah. So about 12 years ago, I was preaching in Colossians, and maybe it was even longer than that at this time.

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Man, oh man. But you know how time flies. So I was preaching in Colossians, and I just saw a section of Scripture, and I said, we have a wonderful portrait of Paul here in this section of Scripture.

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And I thought, a portrait of Paul? That's interesting. And what I liked about that pericope there in Colossians was that Paul is saying, look, here's my life as a minister, here's what

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I do. And I'm thinking, man, that's the kind of minister I want to be. I had all these books on pastoral theology, but I thought

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I never really had a guy saying to me, hey, look at me, imitate me, be like me.

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So that section of Scripture really just gripped my heart. And I thought, let's open this up and make it practical for people.

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And Jeremy was more than willing to be my co -author with that, and he did a wonderful job in that book.

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And yeah, then from there, there's been other books, a book on spiritual warfare with Brian Borgman. We had thought there hadn't been a modern treatment by Reformed guys on spiritual warfare.

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So we did that together, again, picked up by Reformation Heritage books, both of those books by Dr. Joel Beeky.

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In the midst of that, I did a book called Going Beyond the Five Points. And that I did as a self -print just to kind of help people who were embracing the doctrines of grace, also known as Calvinism, to move beyond just a soteriological understanding of Reformed theology, but to a fuller

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Reformed understanding of theology, which of course would lead us to what you're holding in your hand, an exposition of the

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London Baptist Confession of Faith. So as Baptists, we've always loved confessions of faith.

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It's not enough for us just to say, oh, we believe the Bible. Well, everyone says they believe the Bible. We want to know what do you believe about the

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Bible? Well, Baptists love to write, and if they're Reformed, they like to write more. And so instead of having a one -page document on our website saying we believe in God, Trinity, the

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Scriptures, et cetera, we have 33 chapters, or 32, I'd have to double -check, 33, 32,

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I'd have to double -check, just expounding everything we believe from God, and man, and providence, and predestination, and again, regulative worship, assurance, sanctification, et cetera.

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So back in 1689, the Baptists published this wonderful document of those things most surely believed among us.

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And that has been the standard for Baptist churches for centuries. Well, about 30 years ago, our dear friend,

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Dr. Sam Waldron, wrote a wonderful exposition of the 1689, just expounding it, et cetera, and was excellent.

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What happened with me is that about a year and a half ago, maybe two years now,

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I was writing a chapter for a book by Dr. Beecke called Growing in Grace. I wrote it on assurance of salvation.

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No, actually, it was adoption. I'm sorry, this is how it goes when you've been up very early. It's adoption.

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And as I was writing that chapter for Beecke on adoption, using the Westminster Confession of Faith, I saw that all of these

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Westminster guys, Pale Baptist guys, had a bunch of commentaries on their Confession of Faith, the

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Westminster. Then I turned to our Confession of Faith, and I saw we had one, only one by Sam Waldron. I thought, it's time to do a new exposition of our

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Confession of Faith. So I actually called up Dr. Waldron and said, hey, I'm writing this book, chapter rather, for Beecke.

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I see, again, he's got all these wonderful commentaries on their document that they use.

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What about us doing a new one on the 1689? He said, oh, I think it's a great idea. I said, great.

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Would you do three chapters for me in it? He said, absolutely. So I locked Sam in, and then was able to lock in around 20 other authors,

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Reformed Baptist guys I've known for a few decades, including Jeremy Walker and his dad, and then

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Mentor Books, which, oddly enough, is a Pale Baptist publisher, was willing to publish the new exposition of the 1689.

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My good friend, John Snyder, I think you know him, he endorsed it, which I was very grateful that you did that, brother.

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Yeah, great tool. How would you recommend the average church that, let's say, is moving toward maybe because of, in particular, in the last five years, because of recent events, maybe realizing that we need to be more careful.

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We're biblical, but we want to be more careful as we're biblical, and we want to advance in our understanding of God and the way that God works and how his people are to work together.

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So they look for a book like this. They're not people that are used to this, but they want to benefit from it.

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How would you suggest to a church like that that they implement that? It's a great question. So the nice thing about the 1689 is that it really is formulated like a systematic theology, and it was written not just for pastors, but also for people in the pew and also families.

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So actually, in the opening statements by the Reformed Baptists, they say, this is to be used in your home.

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And so I think every Christian can really enjoy and benefit from the confessions of faith.

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In fact, I remember when I was in, again, just a broader evangelical church, I started reading the

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Westminster and the 1689 and the Shorter Catechism. I was amazed at how easy these things were to read and how glorious those statements were.

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I mean, you thought you read your Bible, a new doctrine, but then you read these great statements and it's just unbelievable how clear and how plain it is.

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Now, with our exposition, the new one you're holding, and again, the new one you endorsed along with a bunch of other guys that I really respect, this is a supremely practical exposition of the 1689, and it's very pastoral.

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So it's not heady. It's not, no, I've got to have a PhD to read it. No, this is very practical for God's people.

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So I would say during Bible study hours, or what some people call Sunday school class, anyone can teach through it.

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I think families in their homes could teach through it and benefit. And then I've just got a lot of guys reading it privately, just laymen just saying,

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I'm really learning so much about the Bible through this exposition of the confession.

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Yeah. I mean, I think young couples getting married, well, just to set apart a little piece of each day.

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And as you mentioned, the confession is amazingly succinct yet deep.

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And that's a strange combination. It's rare to find it. And these chapters, what we did when we first got the book, actually, we got permission from you to use the manuscript.

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We were having new elders added, and we just sat down with them in and said, we think that we're in agreement, but sometimes you find out later you're not in agreement.

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And so let's work through this confession and let's work through this particular exposition of it.

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And let's really wrestle with these issues. And if there are some areas of disagreement, then that will help us to think through it.

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And we all found that it was just like you said, very practical and warm and pastoral.

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So worth the effort to do that. You also have a book that you're finishing up the final edits on.

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And so tell us about that. Yeah. Thanks for mentioning it. So the second book that I've got coming out on Mentor is entitled

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Expository Observations and Outlines on the Book of Romans. So it's my first commentary.

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I'm very thankful, again, that Mentor picked it up. And this is really a tool for preachers or teachers of the

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Word of God, or as Paul Washer said, really just, again, any layman, a mom at home, a dad at home could use it in family worship.

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And so as I was preaching through Romans, about three and a half years here at the church, and teaching it also at Bible School, Rhode Island School of the

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Bible, I was, just to my exposition of the Word of God, reading about 140 commentaries every week.

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Now that's a lot. But I did it because I wanted to be able to know what's out there for my students and to be able just to interact with some of the best scholars in the world.

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And that was a delight. But as I was going through all those wonderful commentaries, I noticed that not a lot of them had homiletical outlines for the preacher, really had accessible

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Greek done for them. And I don't think any other than maybe Matthew Henry and Matthew Cole had applications for the believer and for the non -believer based on every section of Romans.

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And so for 433 verses, which by the way is how many verses Romans has, just in case you were wondering,

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I gave a homiletical outline on every verse. I do all the

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Greek for someone who knows Greek at a higher level. And then someone who may not know Greek, I get the sense of the words.

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And then I apply every section of Scripture for the person reading it, whether they're saved or not saved.

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I kind of wrote the whole commentary to be a tract. So I'm going to give it out to my unsaved neighbors when it comes out in September and just say, read this.

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And really my goal is that they would be converted just by reading Romans. I mean, what better epistle to see the gospel right before you.

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So very thankful again for publishing it. It'll be out in September and the feedback seems to be really good on it.

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It's currently on Amazon as a pre -order so people can get it. And Steve Lawson did the forward.

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I'm very thankful for that. So that's what we have for now. Yeah. Well, great. Well, Rob, it's been great to visit with you.

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Great to see you. Hope to see you again face to face, maybe back in your neck of the woods.

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Yeah. And tell your wife I said hello. I will, brother. Same, and appreciate the opportunity.

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Yeah. Well, we appreciate Rob visiting with us. And again, if you have just tuned in, we have a new exposition of the

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London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 that Rob contributed to and is the general editor of.

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And look out for his book on Romans, and that's on Amazon now. But well, it's pre -order now, but will be available soon.

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Well, we really are grateful for Tom and Rob taking time to be with us, and I hope you found that beneficial. Anything you want to know about their ministries, you can find links for that in the description below and in our show notes.