He said to me, he said, don't you think it's interesting, that's what he said to me one time, and he led my mind to thinking, he said, don't you think it's interesting that we have this confession, and when we talk about the Reformed confession, some of the older confessions are never mentioned. And it's only the newest, like Westminster Confession, like it's the only confession that ever existed. And then the London Baptist Confession, which is its godchild, you know. So what about all these other ones? He said, do you realize how great these Dutch confessions were that were really the... And yes, I know that. I know all of those things. Why break a good trend and bring up those old things when everybody else does it the way that I was going to do it? And so I sat down and started reading over them over the past few weeks. And I became so convinced that I know so little about the history of the Reformed Church that I have decided not to even teach this class. What did you do? And then I repented and said I'm going to study to know it better. I couldn't believe all of the stuff that I started coming up with and discovering and all this kind of stuff. So here's how this is going to go. My goal was to actually finish the whole London Baptist Confession in two semesters, but to be fair, I don't know that we'll ever finish it. Our goal in Bible college was to teach doctrine, and to teach it on a much more one-on-one level, digging into things, things that you would never have time to talk about in the pulpit, to field questions, and to look at various things. And the confession is such a summation of these things. And Pastor Josh was up here saying, man, you have Tertullian, he's out there, he's a firebrand, he knows a lot about the scriptures, and he comes up with a lot of good things that we're using today. And toward the end of his life, he kind of falls off the edge of the earth on some of his doctrines. What a shame. And I was thinking, what an advantage we have today that we are surrounded by a history of orthodox confessions. He didn't have that. He had nothing. All he had was the scriptures in front of him and a few good men. But his distance even between those men was so great that to see them either had to be a letter or a trip across the sea on a boat or a long arduous journey. And then you show up at Rome, the place where religion ought to be being right and everything. and you find the bishop there teaching heresy. I mean, can you imagine the letdown? So it's kind of like when Luther made his journey to Rome. He was so excited to go to Rome and he got there and he was like, this place is a cesspool. you know, priests buying prostitutes and people buying indulgences so that they could buy an indulgence, which was basically a little letter from a priest that would say, for this much money you have the right to go get drunk tonight. And so he had that indulgence and he put it in his pocket. If he died drunk that night, And they found the indulgence in his pocket. Oh, that's okay, he's in heaven. Or if he got in trouble for being drunk and somebody grabbed him and said, you're drunk and you're not supposed to be, he could pull his little letter out and say, look, I've already got this indulgence. Can you imagine that? That's what you need to petition your parents for. It's indulgences. You'd be mad at Landon. I want to smack him. Mom, can I get an indulgence? I just want to smack Landon. Landon's like, this is a bad idea. But I mean, do you see the ridiculousness of that? You know, Lord, forgive me for what I'm about to do. That's the mentality that we have. Well, I've got some news for you that in the way forgiveness and repentance works. And so, Tertullian didn't have a lot of the stuff we've got. And if there's anybody that shouldn't go off the deep end at the end of their life, it's Pastor Josh. It's myself. It's you. Because you are surrounded by a body of orthodox documents that can help guide us and direct us and hold us in place. Long before the London Baptist Confession, long before the Westminster Confession, there was the first Helvetic Confession. Which, by the way, was not the first confession. It was just one in a long line of fantastic confessions. It was in 1536. Let me tell you about it, because I just got so excited reading about these things. The word Helvetic comes from Helvetian, or what is known as the Swiss language. Now, our language isn't American, you understand. It has American colloquialisms in it, for sure, but our language is called the English language. Right, Landon? It's called the English language, right? And it comes from a land far away from us. It comes from a place called Great Britain, which is inhabited, ironically, by English-speaking people. So people in Britain speak English. And by virtue of that, we call those people the English. people. We call them by their name of the language that they speak. And so we are Americans who speak English. And the Swiss spoke Helvetic, which is the weirdest thing, because I had no idea what those folks spoke. Heinrich Bollinger, Martin Busser, and a few other men were the well-known names in the Reformation who drew up the first Helvetic Confession. Basel, it's called Basel here in the United States, actually it was pronounced Basel by people who actually speak the language and live there, it's located right where the Swiss, the French, and the German borders meet. It's like Florence, Alabama. That is right where Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi meet in the geographical landscape. So we have a lot of things that are tri-state. We call them tri-state trucking and tri-state fuels. There's just different companies that they work the three states because they're right around it. Well, here in this area, Basel is really While it's in Switzerland, it has suburbs in France and Germany. We lived in Florida one time and a family came to a vacation home that was right next to our home and they moved in over there and I heard them talking and they weren't speaking English so I went over to meet the foreigners. And I went over there and I said, hi, my name's Daniel. And they went, hello, how are you? And they had this great accent. And I was like, oh, I'm doing good. I'm speaking real good English. They understood everything I had to say. I said, so where are you folks from? And they said, in Basel. And I said, Basel, Basel, Basel. I don't know where they're from. I have no idea. I said, where's that at? And they said, Switzerland. And I said, oh, you're from Switzerland? And they said, yes. I said, that's awesome. And so I got to know them a little bit more, and they could speak fluent French, they could speak fluent German, and they spoke something else, which was a form of the Helvetic language. And they began to tell me that there's a different version of that language all over that region. that even French isn't French where they're from and German isn't German where they're from. And I got to thinking it's kind of like us. You know, you'll meet somebody from up north and you'll meet somebody from Louisiana, a Cajun country, and they have such this weird accent and they say things. You meet Jonathan Word. And you hear these accents and you're like, man, is this English? You know, it's so different. But this is the area they were in. It was literally a melting pot. It was just, what is it? What's that ice cream that's got the three different colors in one box? Neapolitan. So it was here, it was in this little town that in the 1400s a printing press was set up by the apprentices of Johann Gutenberg. Can somebody tell me who Johann Gutenberg was? Anybody know? Who was old Goody? Yeah, he invented the first movable type printing press, which you could do many pages in and you could change out things. It was just so much better. Beforehand, everything was just kind of like a stamp. But this, he could change letters and things of this nature. What an exciting invention. How many of you ever have heard of Schwab? Not a cotton Schwab. But Schwab, the investment company, well, this group of men set up the first publishing house in Basel. And it was by the Schwab family, who today are one of the largest investment corporations in the world. But this printing house is still in operation today. It is the oldest known printing house in the world. And it's the Schwab family, right here in Basel. What a fantastic place to have a confession printed up. Because then you have the resources now to get this confession all over the Christian, all over Christendom, everywhere that claimed Christianity. It was from here that the first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin was published. And it was published in March of 1536. When did I tell you the first Helvetic Confession was published? 1536, the same year that all of this was going on. It came actually one month after the first Helvetic Confession was drawn up. So they drew up the Confession in February and in March The first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion were released by John Calvin to publishers to be published. Now the Confession gave a lot of strength. to the Protestant churches and encouragement and it was also the direct parent of the second Helvetic Confession. Now the second Helvetic Confession came out in 1566. Many people refused to sign the second Helvetic confession. Mostly the leaders in the church refused to do it. The common man liked the second Helvetic confession, but the clergy refused to sign it, stating that they found no fault in the first one and they were going to stand by the first one and not have anything to do with it. Well, most Protestants felt like the first confession was simply too short, didn't have enough detail, and was way too Lutheran. Now, eventually, the Second Helvetic Confession was adopted by the Reformed Church, not only in Switzerland, but it was adopted in Scotland in 1566, Hungary in 1567, in France in 1571, and the dates are not necessarily important, it's just interesting that all these nations lined up with that Second Helvetic Confession, and Poland in 1578. And how many of you knew that Poland was a stronghold of the Reformation faith? I had no... Did you know that? I had no idea. Yeah, oh it is. As I've been doing the reading, and how many people died for the Protestant faith in Hungary and in Poland, it was absolutely amazing. Oh, I don't doubt it. I don't doubt it because when you abandon orthodoxy, you set yourself up. When it becomes unimportant, it's astounding. But we're going to talk about some of that stuff too. After the Westminster Confession, the second Helvetic is the most quoted and referred to confession that's in existence, followed by the Heidelberg Catechism and the Scots Confession. So the Westminster is at the top of the list when men talk about confessions of the faith, but the second Helvetic comes in. Even today, the Second Helvetic Confession still remains in the Presbyterian Church USA's Handbook of Accepted and Adopted Confessions. Then there was the French Confession which came out. It counts as an Orthodox Confession. Well, it's kind of like that church that had in their library that first Bay Psalm book, you know? Hey, we'll see it soon. Oh, this is the one we used to sing, but then Fanny Crosby showed up? Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's amazing. It's amazing how the church is so trendy. And that saying it lightly, what it really is, is so heretical. Then there was the French Confession of Faith that came out a little bit later, 1559. Now this confession had 35 articles. It was put together with the help of Theodore Biza, which you may be familiar with as one of Calvin's cronies, Vierre Perret. How many of you have ever read anything by Vierre Perret? He's an excellent writer. Calvin himself helped with the French Confession of Faith in his pupil de Chambu. I don't know how you say his name, but I just love that French thing where it falls off the southern tongue, so rich. It's like butter in my mouth. All of this was written in Geneva though. It was a French confession, but it was written in Geneva. When you say French confession, you're saying the French had this confession, or it was actually known as the French Confession. I've never heard of it. There was two things. There was the French Connection, which was a movie, and the French Confession. There were 35 articles in the French Confession. Another one has 39 articles in it. Has 35 articles, yeah. 15, 59, 35 articles. And so, 35 articles, they were put together and they were written in Geneva, but this was written to be the French Confession. Now there's a reason they didn't write it in France, and we're going to talk about that here in just a moment too. It was written under severe persecution, and Calvin knew that the French people, which were literally on the cusp of becoming Protestant, they were literally about to be Protestant, and the king died. And as a result of that, there was a 15-year-old boy appointed to be the king, who was one of the sons. At 15, you were considered a full-fledged adult. You could go into combat You could run for government office, you could drive a car, you could do anything that was necessary that an adult could do at 15 if you were a male. Sorry. But you had to be a male to do that. But at 15 you could do anything and be a king. You could be a monarch. And so he didn't have to lean to anybody. But he had an Uncle Guido. I mean, it just sounds like some Italian mafia story, doesn't it? But he had this uncle who he leaned upon, who was heavily Catholic, of course, and so they're writing this confession for the French people because they desperately needed it, but this 15-year-old Catholic-leaning king came into office with incredible national debt. And the French government was trying every way it could to just keep its head above water. Actually even stationing troops along its border that it hadn't paid because they didn't have the money to pay their troops but they wanted the surrounding nations to imagine that they had this strong army and they wouldn't be invaded because if they were the French troops would have just walked off and went back to their farms because they didn't have anything. It was a terrible time. There was constant local uprisings in various townships And the people that were in these uprisings were unemployed soldiers and farmers who had nobody to sell their stuff to. Because France was like, we're Catholic, we ain't going to sell nothing to nobody outside of our country. Trade was being squashed. It was a crazy time. So Calvin knew this is the turning point for the French people. We have got to do something. Well, in 1560, remember when the French Confession was written in 1559, in 1560 the king actually signed an edict granting general amnesty to Protestants. Now I want you to take into your mind just a moment, thinking about this. A confession was written It was submitted to the king very, very succinctly, you know, oh one who's been appointed by God, you are the king, you know, we recognize the fact that blah, blah, blah, here's a confession of our faith to let you know we're not, you know, we're not the enemy of God, you know, and so this confession was submitted to him. under counsel he signs an edict and he grants general amnesty. Now imagine in our day if we were scared to meet together in our church each Sunday. In fact we didn't have a church, we were having to meet in little clandestine locations. We would meet in someone's barn or we would meet in an open meadow or something of this nature so that we could have worship services. But we're meeting like that and then you hear that the king, the president, has signed a release saying that we had general amnesty to be Protestants. In other words, we would not be arrested for being Protestants. He didn't say that you'd be able to go shopping because Catholics wouldn't sell you any goods. He didn't say that your neighbor wouldn't persecute you, but the government has decided not to arrest any Protestants. You have general amnesty. But the truth is they didn't have enough money to arrest anybody. They were only able to arrest and house and round up real criminals, real rogues. But you hear that the king has granted general amnesty. And within one month of this proclamation, 1,200 Protestants were hanged from the highest pinnacles of each city. Because they were letting them know, you know, just because the government signs a document doesn't mean anything. A broke government making laws means nothing to the common man. And well, things began to cool down just a little bit after that and there was an actual reprieve for the Protestant people. The confession was accepted and it was a good confession. Then comes the Belgic confession. The Belgic confession came out in 1561. We all know about Belgium. Belgium being the center of orthodoxy today. I'm being very sarcastic because Belgium is one of the most liberal cities in Europe. It's unbelievable that a confession like the Belgian Confession could ever exist. But it's riding on the back of two really strong confessions. The Helvetic and the French, which were two really good confessions. Well, the Belgian confession, everybody figures they need one for their own countrymen, they need one for their own people, and right about this time there was a Spanish Inquisition going on that was actually affecting the southern portion of Belgium. Isn't that where Spain is down there, geographically speaking? Borders on the map were very important back then but they weren't necessarily regarded by troops. You weren't on main roads and there was a sign that said, welcome to Canada. you know, or welcome to Belgium, that wasn't there. But there was a Spanish Inquisition going on and they were rounding up all sorts of Protestants and things of this nature. So this was written here and really it was written as a plea for understanding and toleration from King Philip of Spain who was determined to root out all Protestants that were under his jurisdiction and within his financial reach. So this confession takes a lot of pains to point out the continuity. And if you really want to read a confession that helps you to understand what the early church fathers were thinking, which you should, the Belgic Confession does that. Because they take a lot of pains to point out the continuity of Reformed belief and what the ancient Christian creeds held to. But, yes sir. Yes, the Belgic, right, and we just skipped over the parts we didn't like. It was pretty simple. Y'all weren't here then, were you? Oh man, this is such an amazing creed when you read some of it. It's just the way that it's written. But the beauty of it was that they were trying to say, look at the continuity. We believe nothing different than what has been passed down through the ages. It's what we've always believed. So how can we be persecuted? But the Belgian Confession does very clearly differentiate from Catholic belief on the one hand. and the Anabaptist beliefs, on the other hand. Because the Anabaptists were the ones that were rising up, fighting against the government. They were the people saying, you know, we hate kings, and they shouldn't be in control, and things of this nature, and so they were saying, look, we're not Anabaptist, and we're not Catholic, but we are Orthodox. And so you can't kill us for being Orthodox. and of course King Philip disagreed, but that was the big part of the Belgic confession. Now he died along with the writer of it, Guido de Bres, died as a martyr in 1567, just six years after it was written, and along with a bunch of people that were trying to stand on this. He prepared this confession to be presented to the king and a copy was sent to King Philip with an address in which He said, we are ready, in this thing, listen to this, he said, we are ready to obey the government in all lawful things and we offer our back to stripes, we offer our tongues to knives, our mouths to gags, and our whole bodies to the fire if we have veered from orthodoxy. In other words, read the confession, King Philip, and tell us how we've sinned." And he read it and killed him. So that's the government for you. Yeah, we read the document. You're a goner. So anyway, thousands of people died as a result of that confession being presented to King Philip over the next five or six years. But in 1566, the year before he was killed, the text of his confession was revised at the Synod held in Antwerp. In the Netherlands, it was gladly received by the churches, it was adopted by the National Synods, and it lasted for 30 years. And the text and the content, the text were revised at the Synod of Dort in, what was it, was that 16... 1916, 1819, somewhere around there, was right after the King James Bible had been translated. Synod of Dort put out a confession and it became adopted as a doctrinal standard which all Reformed churches were required to subscribe to. So that's what was going with all these confessions. So, Chris, you set a fire to me when you said, when you said, um, what about all these old confessions? I can't imagine living in a day when I could write a document and know that writing a document is like me signing my death warrant. But we read the London Baptist Confession on Here's the document from the Belgian Confession that Pastor Josh read to them, and it's incredible. We have a lot of issues in the Church today, but nothing is really ever systematized, laid out, and people say, alright, this is what we believe, we'll stand by it. Well, listen to what the first Helvetic Confession says about the Scripture. This is what they said in 1536. The canonical Scripture being the Word of God, and delivered by the Holy Ghost, and published to the world by the prophets and apostles, being of all contain all piety and good ordering of life." That was it. But it was too short for some people. They didn't think it should be long. So the second Helvetic Confession said this, of the Holy Scripture being the true Word of God, And in this Holy Scripture, the universal Church of Christ has all things fully expounded which belong to the saving faith and also to the framing of a life acceptable to God. Everything to be saved and everything to live life. And we know where that comes from. Of course, Peter says that. And in this respect, it is expressly commanded of God that nothing be either put to or taken from the same. Don't add to it, don't take away from it. We judge, therefore, that from these scriptures are to be taken true wisdom and godliness, the reformation and government of churches, as also instruction in all duties of piety, and, to be short, the confirmation of doctrines and the computation of all errors." So, you're going to put together your doctrines based on this, and you're going to refute errors with it. You don't refute errors with confession. You refute errors with the scripture. In fact, the Confession reminds you, don't refute errors with the Confession. Refute errors with the Scripture. I had somebody say to me, all of that Confession, is that all God? No, it's a summation of what we believe. Our God is the Scripture, what guides us is the Scripture. With all expectations, according to that word of the Apostle, all Scripture is given thanks to the grace of God, the Apostle, the Apostle. These things write unto thee. says the Apostle to Timothy that thou must know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the eyes of God. And it goes on with two more paragraphs, much more lengthy than that. So they did expand the first Celtetic confession quite a bit. And of each of these, none of them divide, the Belgians, the French, none of them deny the sufficiency of Scripture, that it is sufficient. We believe that the words contained in these books came from one God, of whom alone, and not of men, the authority thereof depended. And seeing this as the sum of all truth, containing whatsoever is required for the worship of God and our salvation, we hold it not lawful for men, no, not for the angels themselves, to add or to try, Well, Belgic says the same thing, but in a much bigger and loftier way. So, all of these concessions agree that the Holy Scriptures are, in fact, the very words of God. And they're not to be tampered with. They're to be held to, and they're to be believed. And so, with the various translations throughout the year, you have these For example, you had the Great Bible, which is what, Matthew's Bible? The same thing? The Great Bible, Matthew's Bible, are they the same Bible? Do you remember? I think they were. And you have the Geneva Bible, and you have the King James Bible. You have all these Bibles coming out, and nobody was denying that these were not the Word of God. And to suppose that we didn't have the Word of God until the King James Bible came out would be an error. We must believe that we have the Word of God, or God was not true to His Word, which was that He would preserve it. And so we have it. And none of these men, in the 1500s all the way to when Westminster Standards wrote on this in the late 1600s, nobody had denied that anybody didn't have the Word of God. And so we want to be real careful in that and understanding it. Listen to the Westminster Standards concerning this. What rules has God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him? is the only rule to direct us on how we might glorify Him and enjoy Him. And what is the Word of God? The Holy Scriptures, the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God, the only rule of faith and obedience. So those are little summations of each of the confessions that were a big part of the Reformed Church. What were they called? Pardon? The Three Forms of Unity? That consisted of the Belgics, the Canons of Dort, and the Catechism. The Heidelberg Catechism, is that correct? The Canons of Dort, I know were part of it, but I'm thinking the Belgics, and the other ones were the two I was wondering about. I know the Canons of Dort were in it. I think the three forms of unity that the church held to were those three things, the can of the dork, the Belgian Convention, and the Heidelberg Pact. Are you looking at it, Josh? Are we correct? Yay! Okay. All of those forms the backbone for the confession that we enjoy today. And while much of our London Baptist confession was taken from the Westminster and the Savoy, those wrote on the back of each other's confessions. And to miss those confessions, to me, is a crime, because they're so helpful. And when you write a confession, you say, hey, we're writing a confession to show you that the things that Tappouli was right about, we agree. And those confessions are around today, in Michigan, all around. Oh yeah, absolutely. There are churches today that hold to these confessions. Like we would say, we hold the London Baptist there as firm as can be on that and don't feel there's any need to even correct it. Alright, so, if you've got your London Baptist confession in front of you, we're going to look at the outline of the portion on There are a few paragraphs on scripture, I think what ten, total ten paragraphs, and in these, paragraph number one, this is what you really want to be aware of probably, I would say. In paragraph number one, you will want to know the necessity two to three, you're going to want to know about its identity, what it is. So I'm going to try to make this easy as possible for you just so that you the part on the word, and I say the necessity, you'll understand I'm talking about paragraph 1. When I say to you the identity, you're going to know I'm talking about paragraphs 2 and 3, where we're talking about what is positively included and what is positively excluded. Because it tells us that. We'll see what those things are. Paragraphs 4 and 5 is the authority. is the authority. I've used this exactly before, when my wife said I was suffering, it was sufficient. By our modern reckoning, that would almost sound like an insult, wouldn't it? It was sufficient. You know, when you think about the beauty of your bride, by the way, well, she's sufficient. Really? That's all? No, I'm saying much more when I say sufficient. I'm saying there's no need for anything else to be added to it. It provides absolutely everything necessary for the purpose of its existence. And so, how will suffering? There's nothing that needs to be added to it. It provides everything necessary for its reason for existence. That is, it provides nutrition, pleasure, enjoyment, and a fulfilling feeling. So, now if I had described it that way, it would have been like, oh, there's nothing that needs to be added to it. Wow, you liked it! You see what happened to the word, what we've done to it today? We've destroyed that word. Paragraph 7, it's clarity that's described here. Are you cleaning your blanket out? Availability. And what I mean by this is the translation, the preservation of this thing. When I say availability, that ain't looking at me like a new goose. Am I? Am I? Is there a problem or am I driving you crazy? Paragraph 7 is clarity. And by that, Well, it's articulated. When we read the Bible, it's not lacking in its ability to be clear. And you know how people say, I can't understand the Bible. Well, it's really a document that's not lacking in the ability to understand it. We don't want a pigeonhole verse to take certain things out. Well, that don't make no sense. Well, then you have to read it in context. You have to understand the full volume of the document to get this. And then paragraphs 9 and 10 would go together under the summation of its finality, talking about the scripture. In other words, it ends the debate on religious discussions. The scriptures do that. Does that make sense, its finality? The final word. Did Chris ever say, the final word is piss in this household, folks, and y'all go, good sir. No? Okay. Well, anyway, sometimes that happens with that. And so that's the basic outline. Now, throughout this study, was forged in the fires of controversy. So when you read over it and you read something and you wonder, well that's not really that important, it's probably because today it's not. We've lost the reason for the importance. Or because it's something that is just a settled matter. Pastor Josh taught on the early church And he pointed out that every time a creed was written and every time a church council was held, it was held because of a controversy. They got together to settle something. There was a problem with the Trinity. There was a problem. And there would be a new creed that would come out and a church council would be held to rectify that problem. Well, you're going to read some things in here that you're going to go, I don't understand what the big deal about this one is, but it was probably forged in the fires of heated arguments and debate. And let me give you an example here. In chapter one, seven major assertions contradict, now pay attention to this, it's seven assertions contradict a corresponding Roman Catholic dogma. So when we read these things, they contradict directly what the Roman Catholics teach. And in paragraph 1 and paragraph 6 of this, a radical Anabaptist claim to direct revelation and still maintaining the gift of prophecy is denied. So they're denying In seven of the points, Roman Catholic dogma, and in two of the points, they're denying Anabaptist false teachings. The Anabaptists were teaching, of course, that they still received the revelation that you've got the Bible, but God still teaches it. Which, in essence, makes the Bible just a dead book. relate things from God to the church. That's what the Anabaptist tells you. And this document denies that. So when we talk about, I've heard people say, man, we've got an Anabaptist background. Well, we do have some things that the Anabaptists believe. But they were not an orthodox people in the majority of their beliefs. And while we hold a bunch of stuff together, That's how we decide the finality of it. The Scriptures. The Scriptures. That's how we decide the finality of those things. Always. And then the last thing I was going to tell you tonight, because next week we're going to get into each of these paragraphs and start looking at them, is the Confession reminds us that without the Scripture, this portion of the Confession reminds us that without the Scripture, we could not know salvation. That is so important and so clearly laid out in this portion that without the Scriptures, you cannot know salvation. In other words, we're not going to know it apart from the revealed Word that's important. And if you say, I don't know about that, well, we're going to see why, because the Scriptures say that. And it's very important that next week, week two, we have a judgment here. So that's what we're going to pick up next time we're together is going over the details. Because we'll be bouncing off other confessions throughout the way and looking at them and what they have to say. Any questions?