We're going to start the lecture. I really wanted to be able to go a lot further last week and I would like to go a lot further tonight but we have a limited amount of time so we're going to be faithful to that because many of you have to be up early in the morning and some of you may want to sleep late and not have to think about this lecture so I don't want to go too long for that purpose either. So let's talk about the historical origins of this confession. The reason it is important that we talk about that is there is a huge pushback right now against older confessions. The churches are saying, hey, we need to revise them because they need to reflect our modern culture and language just like the old confessions did of their culture and language and so we need to revise them. That's their argument. But what they're forgetting is that the historic perspective that they were written in was normally to combat heresies or to establish long-held doctrine. Keep that in mind. There's a group called the Nine Marks. You may have heard of them. I actually enjoy reading 99.9% of everything that the Nine Marks Movement puts out. I don't know if you've read any of that stuff. It's pretty good stuff. They are hardcore local church. They're hardcore on so many good things. They really came out hard against churches using these older confessions and argued that they ought not. And their argument was because they don't reflect the modern culture, which is just kind of interesting because these same people would have argued that we still need to keep the Declaration of Independence. which wasn't even written for the idea of church. It was written for a nation that certainly has evolved tremendously since its birth. But the church is the one institution that should be holding the truth consistently throughout history, should it not? So a confession written in Ignatius' day and Ignatius' day ought to reflect the same things that we would hold today. If they don't, Who changed? That would be the question. So, for somebody to say, well, let's say the London Battle was what, 330 years ago? Is that right? 330 years ago? Is my math right on that? Okay, 330 years ago. But they can't accurately reflect what we believe as a church. Really? Well then the writings of Paul can't accurately reflect what we believe as a church. Because that's even older. So the argument to me is a very silly point and so I don't agree with that. I think that it's very safe to take these old confessions and the ones that are at least accurate and helpful, we need to hold to them and realize that all they are doing is stating truths that ought to be universal and continuing in time to be accurate. So that's me argument for that right there as people will tell you why do y'all have such an old fate. Now the 1689 confession and if there's something important that I think you need to know, I'll kind of do that, you know, with my foot like the horse trying to get your attention and let you know. But it was First drawn up in 1677 probably by a couple of pastors of a church in London. They think maybe a couple of fellows by the name of Nehemiah Cox and William Collins drew up the 1689 Confession in 1677. It became the standardized confession of Baptists for almost two centuries after its signing. In fact, it was adopted by the American Baptist in 1742 at the Philadelphia Confession of Faith. So they were holding to it as well. The confession was adopted in the first General Assembly of particular Baptists and there were a hundred and seven preachers or churches represented in that particular meeting to come together and say, yes, this is what we believe. And in England in that day, that was a big showing. That many churches. To give you an idea of how many Baptists of this particular faith was actually there at that time. The thing I want to focus on are at least four four things. I want to look at four particular things about the church, maybe five, we'll see what time allows. First would be the identity of where we got this information for the 1689, how it all came together. The second thing would be the character of the particular source documents. That would be important. And thirdly, how those source documents were used in the confession that we have. The confession wasn't something these two pastors just sat down, like me and Pastor Josh, and said, hey, let's write a confession of faith for our church. What do you think we ought to say? And we started coming up with house rules and stuff like that. If anybody uses the fellowship hall, they need to make sure they sweep them up. That would be our confession. It wasn't anything like that at all. They were taking the these long followed doctrinal truths, these apostolic truths, these biblical truths and they were basically giving them a very clear and concentrated treatment so that the church would know what to say concerning particular doctrinal issues that were brewing during that day and that had always been held to. Then the significance of those documents and why those documents were important. So the source documents that are pretty much agreed on. There's some argument that Chris loaned me a very helpful notebook with a lot of comparisons and things from different documents so you can look at these different documents and see where they differ and things of this nature. It's a really helpful book and I've already used it extensively and we'll talk about it as we move along in each one of the points. But the documents that were used that you'll want to be familiar with, or at least the sources, would be first the Westminster Confession of Faith. Westminster Confession of Faith. You don't know how many years as a grown man I call it the Westminster I did. I had no idea it was Minster. But it was the West Minister to me. The first time I heard that grandfather clock go ding, ding, ding, whatever it was. West Minister chimes. That's what I thought it was. I just did the alien movie thing. What was it called? Not today, but I need a fix right quick. The second one is the Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order, that document. Does anybody know, besides Chris don't answer this, does anybody else know why it's called the Savoy? Put your hand down. It's because it was, yeah, you know? This is the place where they wrote it. Right, exactly. That's what happened in Westminster. Same thing. This is where they were at. This was a palace in London. It actually was built in the 1300's I think. Of course it was like so many things. It was burned down a bunch of times and rebuilt and burned down and rebuilt. So you can say this thing traces all the way back to whenever. It was hanging over the fireplace at those folks' house and they said, this axe has gone through ten generations in our family. Now the handle's been changed eleven times and the head's been changed four times, but that's the axe my great-great-great-great-grandfather used. Kind of like this palace probably, but it was in the Savoy Palace in London. And that's where it was written. That's why it's called that. The first London Confession of Faith was also looked at. The first one, remember what year that was in, 1644, so they had that document also. And then it was put together by The framers, the ones who put that together, we believe it was those two pastors, Nehemiah Cox and who was the other dude? William Collins. Cox and Collins. Got to remember that. It's very easy to remember and I can't remember it. So those two guys had some influence in it. Now we're going to see they didn't have a whole lot of influence in it because you're going to see what they drew primarily from. So this was the identity of the places that this came from. Now the character of each of these is important because you would hope that something like this was drawn from important sources that would be reliable sources. So someone would say, why do you want a Baptist document that has anything to do with say a Church of England document or a Presbyterian document? Well the Westminster Confession of Faith It was prepared by these Puritan theologians and was published in 1646. While it reflected a very strong Presbyterian view of church government through a hierarchy of presbyteries and synods, infant baptism, and even the idea of a Presbyterian state church, there were still within that document very sound orthodox truths concerning the gospel and other things of this nature. Many, many American Presbyterian denominations as they adopted this statement, they removed this section on the state church. They didn't want to agree to that because in the United States, They didn't want to have an established state church and so these American Presbyterians said we're going to nix that. But remember the Westminster isn't the Bible. You can do that. You're welcome to take something out and put something in if you choose to. I remember one time we used to have a very good choir here at this church that sang beautifully and I remember the song leader wanting to not sing a particular verse and take it out of a song. And I remember one of the men there saying, Brother Troyce, we don't need to take him verses out. You know what the Bible says. And of course Brother Troyce, a very stoic man, you know, what? He said, don't add to it and don't take away. That's what it says. And he was serious. I was just like, really? You know that only refers to the scripture, don't you? Yeah, I know that. I'm like, okay. Just checking. The second thing, the Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order It was what some have termed a modest revision of the Westminster. A modest revision of the Westminster. They appended several paragraphs removing the state church portion as well as certain synods and presbyteries, giving each church autonomy. So they wanted each church to be able to choose their pastor. They wanted each church to be able to choose their liturgy. They wanted to be able, that if they wanted to get up and preach this week from Amos chapter 7, and the church down the road wanted to preach from Matthew chapter 4, and nobody would get mad at them and take their salaries away from them. because that could happen to you. Everybody in England was supposed to be on the same page in their liturgy each particular Sunday. And so they made this revision and Two guys that were very prominent were Thomas Goodwin and John Owen, both who I've read lots of their works and lots of excerpts of their works, I should say, really. They're very solid guys, but their revision really approached what we would call religious freedom, which was almost unheard of in England because there wasn't religious freedom in England. You say what you want to say, but it was very controlled and guarded by the state. But they were kind of inconsistent because while the Congregationalist in their document said that a personal profession of faith was necessary for church membership, they still included infant baptism. So they were confused. They believed that there needed to be infant baptism, but they said the only way to be a church member was personal profession of faith, so that they had a problem in their consistency. Which is typical among all man-made documents. There's going to be things that we're going to go, that doesn't exactly work, does it? Nope, it doesn't work at all. The next document was the First London Confession of Faith. There were only seven particular Baptist churches that got together to make the First London Confession of Faith. really a document, and they set forth 52 articles teaching the doctrines of grace, the Baptist view of baptism, and the church, and they were explicitly repudiating the distinctive tenets of the Anabaptists of the Netherlands and Germany. That's what they were wanting to distance themselves from because there were actually circulars which we would call flyers or newsletters being published in London that these Baptists who they called them Anabaptists were wanting to revolt against the King. And these Baptists were like, that's not us, we don't want to revolt against the King, we think he's a nice guy. And they just were trying to stay out of trouble. Also there seems to be a problem with the Trinity even amongst the Mennonites that I've seen. We're going to talk about the distinctions with the Anabaptists that separate them from us, really. They sound very much like us in almost everything that they talk about. Then they get into some things that they stood for that we would be like, nah, I don't think that'll work. So, yeah, we're going to actually look at that, maybe tonight. I'll quit sipping coffee and move along. So, Let's see. This was actually the title of the first London Baptist, and it says, it's a confession of faith of seven congregations or churches of Christ, which are commonly, parenthesis, but unjustly called Anabaptist. So they were making it a point. You know, hey, we're commonly called this, but it's not what we are. The confession explicitly renounced something known as the free will of Pelagianism. So it explicitly did that because that was common among Anabaptists. Anabaptists felt like man had a free will, they could choose, they could deny. Some of the branches of them didn't feel like that Adam and Eve's sin had a direct effect on the condition of their soul, that it was what man did after he was born because that's what happened with Adam and Eve. It was something they did after they were created and so the argument went that way. They were just basically denying Romans chapter 5. In the First London Baptist Confession, they were supporting the divine ordination of the civil government. They said, we believe that those that are in charge are God's ministers. We believe that. Even if they're jerks. They probably didn't say that in that confession, but that's what they meant. That's the first one. They were making sure they were emphasizing that because Anabaptists commonly, not all of them, and it's the same way with If you just throw the term Baptist out there, it's going to look like an aquarium at the zoo. It's full of a bunch of different fish, but they're all trying to breathe water and avoid getting eaten. The Anabaptists commonly denied that civil government was divinely instituted and regarded it as a necessary evil in some of their writings. And then the fourth and final thing we said we're going to talk about the people who were the framers of this and we said it was a couple of them. They were elders of the Petty France Church in London. So it was William Collins and Nehemiah Cox and Little France. Unimportant France. No, it didn't mean that. It meant little France. I was a petty officer in the Navy and of course the word petty means exactly what we use it for today. Petty. Little. Insignificant. I was a petty officer. So they were elders of the Petty France Church and they were responsible for bringing a lot of these things together and putting it into a coherent statement. And there are words, there are phrases, and sometimes entire lines, which are not derived from the three documents that we have mentioned here. And the only place they could have come from was either from those framers or from some of the people that were helping them, if they had anybody helping them, and they probably did. They may have gotten suggestions from people, things of that nature, and we're just not aware of it. There's a book, if you're like totally nerdily into this, you know, and you want to discover all that stuff, a guy named Alan Dunn in 1988 put together a paper. Now it's, I can't find it published anywhere I found a PDF that was a portion of it online, but I can't find it. Amazon doesn't have it. I wrote the Reformed Baptist out in California. They said, no, we refer to it in several documents, but we don't have a copy of it either. Well, how do you refer to it? So they refer to it just like the story of how John Calvin bowled on Sunday. You ever heard that story that John Calvin on the Lord's Day did yard bowling? That's prior to bowling in lanes. You'd go out in your yard and you'd roll balls and you would knock other balls. I think it's in Italy they call it bocce ball. So anyway, he was doing yard bowling on Sunday. That can't be found in a single extant document anywhere except one book. And what do you think that book is about? Why the Lord's Day Should Not Be Honored. And who do you think wrote that book? They probably would publish it, but it was the guy who owned the railway that said, we can't make money unless we run the train on Sunday. Because all trains were shut down. And so he wrote a book in defense of why commerce needed to happen with trains and things of that nature. And he said why even the staunchest know the story of John Calvin bowling on a Sunday. Well where did he get that? Well he didn't cite a source and nobody can find it. And so I don't want to make much out of these guys adding things to it. I have no idea where they got some of their sources, but the statements that they made are quite accurate and true to doctrine, so I don't have any problem with them, just because I can't track down where it came from. And that's kind of the way this Alan Dunn's The London Baptist Confession of 1689 with a key to its sources. Nobody seems to have a copy of it, and I'd like to see a copy. It would be neat to have in my library. So how are these things used? Well, like I said, the greatest mass of the material in our confession came from the Westminster Confession. The largest portion of it. And a lot of people say, well, that's the one that was the primary source document. Most scholars that have studied this out don't really think that is. They say, well actually we think the document that they probably had laying next to them was the Savoy. Because the Savoy document quoted most extensively from the Westminster. So, if you've got the Savoy, which is quoting from the Westminster, and you've got the London Baptist, which is quoting from the Savoy, it would look much like the London Baptist. Why wouldn't they have had the London Baptist sitting there? Well, I'm sure they did. Yeah, that's what I meant right there. But the point is there were so many things that were identical in the Savoy that they brought right over into the London Baptist Confession where there were church censures, synods and councils, Repentance, marriage, all of these things were nearly identical to the Savoy. So they feel like, well, they probably used that primarily. In fact, 14 out of 160 paragraphs in our confession are not derived from the Savoy. So 14 out of them. That means the majority of it was derived from the Savoy. And it says here, more importantly, the structure is that of the Savoy. The 32 chapter titles are consecutively and precisely those of the Savoy. The single exception is chapter 28, where substituted for the phrase of the sacraments, we find of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Put in the Baptist Confession. They changed it to of baptism and the Lord's Supper. However, there's a lot of little changes in there, so it's not necessarily a slavish dependent on the civil way. 160. Well, a lot of writers in that day used it because it was a simple way to say the baptism and the Lord's Supper. From what we understand, that was not the typical language of Baptists. They seem to steer away from calling them sacraments, that which is sacred, because they're putting those things there now as objects of veneration. Baptism itself being an object of veneration and the elements of the supper, for example. Now, what do we mean when we talk about an element? Elementally, we talk about it's got a primary use distinction and derivation and so you couldn't properly call bread and wine an element, but that was the common terminology because just like an element. There wasn't anything else like it in the world. It was the blood of Jesus and it was the body of Jesus according to the Catholics. So, there's a lot of language usage that flows over and if words have meaning, which they do, we ought to be as precise as we can when we speak. It helps us to be reminded sometimes. Now, the significance of all these things. Now, to me, all this is fascinating. To me, it's neat seeing where all this stuff came from. To the average historian, he'd be like, that's kind of cool. To the average Christian, though, it might not seem important, but I think there are several very practical lessons to be gained from this type of information on any document that we're going to use. If somebody hands you a rule book where you work and they say, hey, here's our Here's our rules and regulations for where we work. How many of you have actually read over the employee manual? Okay, Cassie did because she probably was partly in charge of writing it or something. And you were manager so okay, you did. I get it because you have to enforce it. But most people just throw it into the back seat with their smock and they forget about it and until they need family leave or until they got busted for clocking in 16 minutes after the hour three times in a row and got rowed up. Now they want the employee manual and they go to it. That's a sad way to really be a good employee. You ought to know the rules and regulations. Mine usually ended up in the back with my smock. I didn't read it. However, when it comes to something of this weight and importance, we ought to know it. It ought to be important to us to be aware of Well, where did you get your source information? Who wrote this thing? Where does it come from? Why does it have value today? Why would a church be interested in anything like that? Why can't you just kind of wing it and do whatever you want to do? Here's something. One of the ways that the Puritans Remember, the Puritans got their name because they were trying to purify the church. They were trying to get the church to be more biblical. They were trying to get rid of things that shouldn't belong and put in things that ought to be there. David Springer and I had a long discussion on this one time. We actually went and stayed in a cabin one night for a weekend and just laid out all sorts of things that we went over and we talked about and we drank a lot of coffee and we just chatted about Church government, why does the church do what it presently does? And I gave him a good example that we're consistently inconsistent with. Do you know how to be consistently inconsistent? Just do what you do every day. You're consistently inconsistent most of the time. We say we want to have our devotions and then we stumble through them. We say we want to be faithful prayer warriors and we stumble through it. We say we want to be evangelistic and we rarely talk about the Lord to anyone. We're consistently inconsistent Christians. We are. If we will just be honest and humble ourselves and say we need to repent. The thing I told him, I said, you know how you can tell something in the church that was not prescribed in scripture? In other words, what is the tell-tale sign of something happening in the church that probably wasn't part of the early church? How can you tell? Of course, he's like most of us, I don't know. Not in the Bible? I said, if you have to make up a rule in addition to the rules in the Bible to make sure this happens. If you have to make up a rule that's not in the Bible to take care of something you're wanting to have happen in the church. Now, you can get real nitpicky with that and get all right down to it, you know. I went to a church one time. All ushers had to wear gold coats. And they did. They wore golden coats. Every usher had a gold coat on. And in this church, there was probably 50 ushers. As a church rule. And when they took up the offering, it took all 50 ushers. And they would go down there in their gold coat. You had to wear a gold coat. If you didn't have a gold coat, you didn't get to be an usher. As a rule. Well, guess what? That's not in the Bible, is it? Because they had to make that rule up. So what else they made up? Ushers. They had to have rules for ushers because there were no ushers taking up money. So there were tons of things. And if we nitpick the church, we can see tons of stuff like that in the church. We say, okay, you know, make sure whatever our rule is. Taking up the offering, for example. The way we take up the offering, make sure there's offering plates. Well, where's that in the scriptures? We have to make up rules. when we take up the offering in the church and things of this nature and it is my grand goal to go to an offering box one day so we're not having to stop the services and have this moment that actually is not even prescribed but yet I've been in churches and here's the declaration from the pulpit let us worship the Lord with our tithes and offerings now you know and so this is actually a moment of worship right here and it's just not existed in churches really in the way we see it now until more recent times. So I was in a church one time that passed around Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets to take up the offering. I don't think that's in the Bible either, but boy you talk about collecting money. They got a lot in those Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets. So I guess the bigger the container, the more money is given. So we need bigger plates. That would be a good idea. Okay, I just added that to worship, didn't I? So that's a good way to test is what we're doing here actually in scripture. I don't know, did you have to make up a rule to run it? Or were you able to go to the Bible and say, the Bible says when we do this, here's how we do it. Like we do the Lord's Supper. Like we do baptism. Here's the instructions that we see in the Bible. And I think it's very interesting Ignatius even gave us some things. Hey, this isn't the way it's been practiced by the apostles. This is how we're supposed to do it and gave specific things. So those kind of things are extremely helpful. So that's why I think these confessions are very important because they have extremely practical lessons for us. Now what were they doing back there? I have a friend who's a Baptist historian Kind of self-proclaimed, but he studied it well enough that I wouldn't, you know, he's good at what he talks about here in the communities. And I've been a pastor for many, many years. And he was telling me one time, he said, you know, he said, us Baptists, we want to trace ourselves back. It's critically important that we can trace ourselves back to be Baptist. He said, but we get to a point and then we have to take this incredible leap of faith to stay Baptist because there's these gaps there that we can't seem to negotiate. And some of the Baptists that came over from England that we tie ourselves to, we find out were really Anabaptists. and denied the Trinity. In fact, the first Baptist church in America was where? Rhode Island. That dude didn't even believe in the Trinity. So you had the first Baptist church with a guy that was denying the Trinity. Well, I wouldn't call him a Baptist because according to the confession of faith, we do believe in the Trinity. He didn't hold a confession of faith. He held something else, a heresy. And so you've got situations like that, and so what brings us together? Not being able to check off a box. Okay, this church was attached to this church was attached to this church was attached to this church. Oops, we've got a gap here. Well, we'll just add in their faith and then go to this church. How about the things that were commonly held by the apostles? were taught and that we see consistent in the early church fathers. I mean, you can see all these things. They're so clear. And say, well, where they began to deviate from here, then they're wrong. So if the early church fathers began to deviate from what we have in the Word of God, then we know the early church fathers are not right. And they did. Many of them would begin to deviate in things. I'm sure we're going to see many of those things happen here. And sometimes their silence makes them guilty of things they're not guilty of. I think Pastor Josh pointed that out when he was talking about Ignatius when he didn't mention baptism primarily and talk about that all of a sudden. Oh, that's not a big deal. See, it wasn't a big deal in church. They didn't even do that. Well, now we're drawing conclusions we can't draw. And we don't want to fall into that. So here are my points that I believe are extremely practical lessons for us. Number one, Having this confession teaches that these fathers in the faiths placed no premium on originality. They didn't attempt to be original. They weren't saying, hey, we need to come up with some cool statement of faith for our own church. They didn't think, you know, we're smarter than the past generation. But what they were after was unity with previous orthodox believers. They wanted to show unity with them. In fact, in the preface of the Confession, when it was published in 1677, they said their purpose was to show hearty agreement with them, speaking of the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists, in that wholesome Protestant doctrine, which is so clear evidence in the Scriptures, as they have already asserted. So they were saying, we want to show that we don't disagree with the orthodox teachings that they hold to. And you kind of have to admire that in somebody that's not willing to try to be all original. You know, I'm going to teach a class on something here at college, but I'm coming up with everything on my own. And there's a guy by the name of Dake. And you may have a Dake study Bible at home. If you do, you've got a charismatic study Bible. But if you've got a Dake study Bible, he's a charismatic. And he also believed you could lose your salvation. But he got most of his information from the Spirit. This Bible became so popular among Baptists for about 10 or 15 years that almost every Christian I knew had a Dake study Bible. Have you seen that Dake study Bible? It's so practical. Well, it's practically useless when you start getting to foundational doctrines. You know, you have to kind of cast off this and cast off that. Well, what can I believe then? It said things in it that struck home on certain points. Yeah, that's good. I mean, he was like a stopped clock. He was right at least twice a day. And when he was right, he was right on. But when he was off, he was, that's right, buddy. Yes, sir. So one of the writers said the reason that they stuck so close to these documents was because they believed that novelty was just another word for heresy. I thought, I'm going to put that on a bumper sticker. I like that. Novelty is just another word for heresy. I've got some novel new idea. It's just another word for heresy. Just stay away from all this new idea stuff. I thought it was so funny as he was talking about Rob Bale saying, I'm not the first one in history to do this. I'm like, yeah, people have fallen off cliffs. They weren't the first ones to do it probably. That was some badge of honor that I'm not the first person to deny what Jesus expressed clearly. Okay, good for you. So, Reformed Christians have reacted by over-emphasizing sometimes their distinctives. They start picking out peculiarities and eccentric things in their doctrine and it can drive folks away instead of looking for useful commonality in orthodoxy. If we can't be friends with someone who's orthodox, But maybe they don't go to a Baptist church. We want to be very careful with that. The thing that scares us the most, I think, what we worry about is some young, immature believer getting mesmerized by some older, well-renowned speaker from a church that, okay, they're right most things, but then they start veering off. pretty badly. There's an old Presbyterian preacher in Georgia who has written lots of books and he's done lots of good commentaries and things of this nature and he's kind of become a standard in Baptist circles to preach. But he does not believe that the Lord's Day should be held holy. He does not regard baptism by immersion as even biblical. He denies it's even a biblical thing and all these different things. But the things he's right on, he's right on. And so it makes him very popular in some circles. In fact, you've heard his sermons on work. And they were great. I mean, man, he hits it right on because he has good work ethics and all this kind of stuff. And the problem is you get an immature believer hearing this and they go, man, I want to read everything by this guy. And the next thing you discover is that now they're being led away into errors that while we applaud his truth, it becomes dangerous and what we don't understand is that even his doctrine about the gospel is affected by his other views on things. So we want to be very careful. So we don't want to betray our convictions, but by the same token we don't want to kick everybody to the curb just because they might not hold to the London Baptist Confession. It's a difficult thing. So the first thing is that they didn't place a premium on originality. And the second thing is, is that this teaches us that the Reformed and Puritan origin of the Reformed Baptist movements is actually ancient. That our ideas are not novel ideas, they're orthodox teachings from the Bible. The first and the second London Baptist confessions were, the first one particularly, was set to distance them from Anabaptists, but it was still full of Orthodox doctrine. And the second one, of course, tried to let the church in England at the time know, we're not a bunch of weirdos, we do believe the basics like you, but we differ in some certain matters. So, it shows us that we have solid roots. Thirdly, It teaches the place for a proper independence of judgment on the basis of the Word of God. Now, some people have tried to, I think, undermine the weight of the confession. And they try to pick out things in the confession that may seem an oddity today to them because they have not heard it faithfully preached. And they argue that they were influenced by the day that they wrote in. And we know that any time you write, you're influenced by the day that you're in. But it doesn't do away with the truth of what was stated. And we have to be very careful. Suffice to say this, that the Second London Confession, if it's compared to the Westminster or it's compared to the Savoy Manifest, I think actually an independence or a freedom to revise those documents to match a much more biblical picture of church government, for example, or baptism, for example. They weren't slavish to those documents. Yeah, I guess that's just the best way to say that without just saying something rude. It's independent enough that it distinguishes us as Baptist, I guess you could say that. I hate to use a word to describe the words you're describing when it's the same word. It's a Baptist document because it describes Baptist. It doesn't really work real well. Anyway, number four, it teaches the true distinctives of the Reformed Baptist movement, the true ones. Now many in the Reformed tradition have been taught to regard all Baptists that are not Reformed as Arminians. But Arminianism is plainly not a Baptist distinction. Arminianism is not a Baptist distinction. And some modern Baptists would like to conclude that one Baptist distinction is what we might call disapproval of the Old Testament. The Old Testament is an important document. In fact, we have bought into some of the teachings of the Church of Christ in our area. We start calling ourselves New Testament churches. New Testament churches as distinguished from what? Old Testament churches? Make yourself clear. How about We are biblical churches, churches that hold to the entire Word of God. But New Testament church became a very common phrase to say we don't hold to the Old Testament or the Ten Commandments. But the London Baptist Confession, I think, eloquently defends the use of the Old Testament as well as the Ten Commandments being held up and obeyed. Baptist distinctives do not include Anabaptist views of civil authority. A Reformed Baptist would reject three things in particular. They would reject Arminianism, Antinomianism, and Anabaptism. Let me see somebody who's brave. Landon, can you get a book? Do you think you could kill that cockroach that's on the wall back there? It's killing me. Take your notebook. See if you can get him. He's probably going to go behind that shutter. If you see one, there's at least 10,000. That's what a Cook's pest control guy told me one time. Set a chair up and destroy that vile creature. I can't take it. By the way, this recording needs to be edited now. Right. You read his confession? Yeah, it reminds me of the Philadelphia confession. He takes those truths and he condenses them. Obviously he was not writing that per word, being paid per word. Because when you read his work on, what's that big book called? No, not that one. Anyway, he is not a short speech kind of guy. So I wonder if he didn't just write it as an abbreviation and left out the things that he thought was most controversial. I don't know, which is not typical of Gil either. Yeah, most don't like him because they feel like he's a hyper-Calvinist. I can't imagine that they could accuse him of being an antinomian if you ever read his commentary on the Ten Commandments. I mean, it's just so...anyway. Yeah, I don't know. I've always wondered about that too, but I wonder a lot about him. What kind of chocolate did he really eat? Was his hair really like that? Yeah, did he really have a bouffant hairdo? Or was it just a wig? Let me read you some notes here that I wrote down on Anabaptist. Anabaptist, the believer must not swear an oath or refer disputes between believers to law courts for resolution in accordance with 1 Corinthians 6, 1 to 11. I like that. That's nice. To some degree. The believer must never bear arms or offer forcible resistance to wrongdoers, nor to wield a sword. No Christian has the right of the sword. Well, I certainly disagree with that just by the clear teaching in scripture on defense of property and self-defense itself. The civil government belongs to the world, not to the church. The believer belongs to God's kingdom, so he must not under any circumstance feel or hold an office under any rank of government So again, I don't see that as something categorical for Christians. Sinners or unfaithful people are to be excommunicated and excluded from the sacraments and from intercourse with believers unless they repent. But no force is ever to be used towards them. I wouldn't disagree with that. So you hear those things like that and you go, well they must be okay. But then it goes on because not all of them hold to this, but many do. There's an obvious denial of the Trinity among some. There's an obvious denial of the perseverance of the Saints among some. And of course the list goes on and on and on of things that we would hold to. So there is a big difference in them. In particular, Baptists, or the Reformed Baptists, argue that all Baptists were Arminians, they were all Antinomians, and an Antinomian is somebody that's against the law, they don't like the law of God, and they were Anabaptists. But here are the distinctives of these particular Baptists. First, it was the independence of the local body from hierarchical ecclesiastical authority. In other words, there was no body over the local church. That's a distinctive of a particular Baptist. Secondly, they believed that the church was to be composed only of those credibly professing faith in Jesus Christ. Now, they actually held that distinctive in common with the Congregationalists who said that infants should be baptized, which that was confusing. Thirdly, was a distinctive, of course, of believers' baptism. You only were baptized if you professed belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. A fourth distinctive was the doctrine of religious freedom and a separation, basically, from church or state rule over the church. The mistaken phrase is often used, separation of church and state, but it's that a state rule over the church would not be there. And all of this implied a fifth distinctive, and that is they held to a view of divine covenants while affirming the unity of the divine covenants, which do not neglect the superiority of the new covenant, the diversity within these covenants. And we're going to talk in detail about that as we get into that. But these were the major issues that actually distinguished them. And we're at the outline. and it's time to stop. So we almost made it but we didn't. Anybody got any questions on anything that we talked about?