It's a critical mass. Thank you. We don't want to cheat our next speaker, Pastor Arden Hodgins from Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in La Mirada, California. He's going to be speaking to us on the defense of confessionalism. Brother? Yeah, but not after. My assignment today is entitled In Defense of Confessionalism. And at first glance, that might appear to you to be overambitious for one message, and it certainly is. And I'm frighteningly aware of the fact that no matter what I talk about today, there are probably many of you who could do a better job at this than myself. So I have had the knee-knocking syndrome for quite a while here. but I hope that it will be profitable. I thought I'd start out with telling you that I'm going to only be dealing with certain basics, kind of hitting the reset button as we do on our computer or our phones or any device, and we go back to the default situation that we once had. And I think that our association has already done that in some respects, especially in light of the controversy that we've had in the last couple of years with the doctrine of impassibility and other issues related. And so these are just simply going back to the basics of the core issues that seem to have surfaced during the last few years as a result of this recent controversy. I'm not going to be speaking on the controversy in particular or focusing on it, but it will come into play as I outline the things that we're going to look at. But let me start out with an introduction. I'm known probably notoriously as having too long of an introduction. And as some of you may know, Dick Lucas, the Proclamation Trust teacher, great teacher, just turned 90, I think he just turned 90 years old, he always talks about how He likes to, what is it, waggle at the first tee. And I don't know what that means, but what I figured it meant was that he likes to take time to introduce what he's going to say. So I'm going to do that today. I want to first tell you what I'm not going to be focusing on today, so that you'll understand that I'm not trying to ignore other issues about confessionalism. It's just that we don't have time for it, and I want to briefly mention what I'm not going to talk about, and yet I'm going to talk about them anyway a little bit, but not focus on it. First of all, I will not be focusing on the creation and use of confessions and creeds during the apostolic period. But I'd like to say something about it. I'm not gonna focus on it. But let me just say a few words about that. Confessions and creeds during the apostolic period, that is even during the time of the, when the New Testament was being formed. All of us should be aware, for example, that the words of Peter, You are the Christ, the son of the living God was a confession of faith. It was brief, but it was a confession nonetheless. The formula Jesus is Lord was a creed as opposed to Caesar is Lord. And many Christians were martyred for confessing that good confession as opposed to giving into the emperor worship of the day. We should also already be aware of the fact that we're told in the New Testament that if we confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus, or Jesus is Lord, and believe that God has raised him from the dead, we shall be saved. That's a confession. It's a confession with the mouth, but it became later on a confession written down by the church. We should also be familiar with the faithful sayings that Paul mentions. This is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptance. And he mentions that several times in the pastoral epistles. We find them there because they were already confessions and creeds verbal, at least, maybe written. that were circulating in the early church and probably being gathered together by various people into some sort of a document for the future. We should be familiar as well with some of the phrases used in the New Testament such as, quote, the form or pattern of sound words or contending earnestly for the faith or the deposit of the faith which was once for all time delivered to the saints. And then we find also in Hebrews 10.23, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering. Or the charge that Paul gives to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses." And then later on in that same chapter he says, "'O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you.'" The deposit of what? What is the deposit? It's the deposit of the form of sound words. The tradition, apostolic tradition, of the truth that Christ had communicated to the church through the apostles. We can also think of that statement, which is really underestimated, I think, today, where Paul talks about the church, and I believe he's referring to every local church, that they are the pillar and ground of the truth. The pillar and ground of the truth. Not that the church creates truth, or is the source of truth, but that the deposit of truth delivered to her as a stewardship is to be defended against all encroachments, heresies, or compromises that would lead to cracks and ultimately to collapse. So in that statement, the church is the pillar and ground of the truth, there is an implied imperative, even though it's an indicative, there is an implied imperative because we know that not every church is that way, but they should be. But also we find there is an implied injunction to have something to leave behind for the generations to follow, to give them an inheritance of the faith once for all delivered to the saints. We know how useful creeds and confessions have been over the years, especially since the Reformation, in training our children, in vetting new pastors, in forming denominations, or in our case, associations. We know how useful they have been. And also, I would mention one more. In Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 and following, where it says, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, and so on, that whole passage there, leading up to the exaltation of Christ, and that every knee shall bow, and so on, many scholars have almost but proven that that was a quotation by Paul of an early church hymn, which was a creed, which was a statement of faith, and was included in Philippians chapter two for us. So I don't think I need to defend confessionalism in terms of its biblical basis. It's very clear. Philip Schaff put it, in a certain sense it may be said that the Christian church has never been without a creed. Where there is faith, there is also profession of faith. As faith without works is dead, so it may be said also that faith without confession is dead. Now let me tell you something else I'm not going to focus on. I don't intend to outline all of the early churches or the post-apostolic or patristic period of time, I don't intend to outline all of the early church's creeds and confessions and catechisms either, but we could. We could talk about the Nicene Creed, the Constantinople Councils, we could talk about the Chalcedon Council, we could talk about the greasy heretic like Arius and others who redefined words. There's nothing new under the sun, by the way. But they were redefining the words that had already been understood as a certain way, but they defined it in a different way. And it wasn't until, by the way, at Nicaea, when they put everything in writing in a surgical way, in an explicit surgical way, having to use language that was extra biblical, like we do, like the word trinity and so on. They had to use those kinds of words that were super, super precise, put it on paper in order to finally get Arius and his followers to say, finally, they did not agree. So we can see the usefulness even then of creeds and confessions. We could also talk about our confession of faith, or even all of the other confessions that preceded ours in the time of the Reformation. There was a great prolific publication of creeds which are all very good in their own way, the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Canons of Dort, Helvetic Consensus, the Westminster Confession later on, the Savoy Declaration, and then of course our Confession, which takes into account pretty much most of the Westminster and Savoy, or some of the Savoy. And we could talk about that, but there are experts, and one particular expert, in our presence that I think would be better qualified to talk about that. I really don't want to focus on that in particular either. It's more confessionalism and we all agree that the 1689 is our confession. Now, let me see, what else is it that I don't want to focus on? I will not be directly speaking about the doctrine of impassibility. It'll be implied, and I'll make a few comments here and there, but I'm not going to talk about that doctrine today. Nor, and this is the last one, nor will I be speaking directly to the issue of full subscription, which is the position that ARBCA takes and ought to take and ought to maintain. It has huge implications. It will be implied. throughout the entire lecture that I have today. But I won't be talking about its definition and so on, just simply referring to it here and there. So what am I going to address? Well, I told you that there are several basic things that we need to hit the reset button on, go back to, and I don't think that I'm going to be saying anything new or fresh to you. I think all of you will receive these things as things you've already heard before, and I understand that, and that's been an intimidating thing in my mind as I prepared this lecture, but I think it's quite normal and natural and good for us to be put in remembrance of the basic things, because sometimes we lose perspective, we drift, we heard the lecture this morning of how It's very easy, even on the west side of England there was a drifting, and it wasn't until they came back to the core where they started from that they were able to amend their ways. And so that's what I'm going to focus on today. Four things that I'll explain what they mean as we go along. Our outline is just simply four points. Our confession is a hermeneutical document, and I'm going to begin there and I'll spend most of our time there. I have no subpoints, which is unusual for me, so it will be hopefully lucid and not just a stream of consciousness. I will do the best I can. It's a rather extended part, but very briefly I'll cover three other points. Our confession is a consensus document. Our confession, thirdly, is a historical document. And fourthly, our confession is a biblical document. And then I want to close with five very quick applications at the end based on those points. So let's begin with the first point. Our confession is a hermeneutical document. Creeds, confessions, and catechisms have always been hermeneutical, that is interpretive. And what I mean by that, at least in terms of our reform circles, is not that the confession is over the scriptures. as an authority, as though we're the Pope of Rome and we've been accused of that, as viewing our confession as a written down Pope. We don't mean that confessions take the place of the scriptures. or that it is even equal with the scriptures, but it is simply a distillation, confessions in general are a distillation of what a pastor or a person in general or a church or a denomination or in our case an association of churches believes the Bible to teach. And all of a sudden we're in the realm of hermeneutics and interpretation. In other words, as Spurgeon put it in his republication of the 1689, he said, this ancient document is the most excellent epitome of the things most surely believed among us. The word credo, from which we get creed, as you all know, means I believe. In that sense, everybody has a creed. Some actually are honest enough to write it down and not be a moving target. But I would submit to you that creeds and confessions and catechisms are more than simply saying, I believe the Bible to be true. That is not an adequate confession. It is a confession. It is a creed. I believe the Bible to be true. That's a confession. But as John Murray put it, why would you want to limit your confession to one article on scripture? Aren't there many other articles you could have in your confession where you would confess that you believe? We have to go farther than that. When a person says that they subscribe to a confession, they are saying, or people are saying, not only do we believe the scriptures to be true, but this is what we believe the scriptures to mean. And of course, we know that a confession, when you enter the realm of hermeneutics, which is what a confession really is, it's not just simply repeating what the Bible says, it's saying what you believe the Bible to mean by what it says. We know that it is not to be based on isolated exegesis, which it seems to me that some who objected to the confession statement on impassibility were doing, almost a kind of proof-text-ism. We would call it biblicism, I think, today. But our interpretation of scripture must be based on an entire contextual, canonical, and systematic understanding of the scripture, with the assumption that the scriptures do not contradict themselves because it is the infallible word of God. And it seems to me that the objections to the confessional view of impassibility were not only an undermining of the Bible or the biblical doctrine of God, but even underlying that, it was almost like basically an objection to systematic theology. And comparing scripture with scripture and interpretation, hermeneutics, was at the bottom of a lot of this. People willing to accept very readily the fact that the Bible uses anthropomorphisms, but not ready to accept that it uses anthropopathisms and analogical language. And so it was not just an issue of the doctrine of God that we were dealing with. We were dealing with an issue of hermeneutics as well. But there are some, and I think there are actually many, and I hope there's none here today, but there may be. I'm probably preaching to the choir, and I really hope I am. But I think there are many who say they hold to the 1689 Confession, but deep down within their heart, they still have a latent conflict against confessionalism in general. And as one person said, most people don't have a problem with a confession unless the confession has a problem with them. And that's when it comes out. See, that's when the hidden latent sense of, well, why can't we just have the Bible be our final authority? Why do we appeal to the confession as an association? Now, of course, as individuals, you must always have the Bible as your final, ultimate authority. But as an association, we have to come together and agree together on what we believe is the proper hermeneutic of what the Bible teaches. But one of the reasons why people are afraid to hold to confessionalism very strongly is because they do sense that there is an undermining of the absolute authority of scripture and they question its sufficiency, as if we're questioning its sufficiency. Isn't the Bible enough, they ask. Why is the confession appealed to when our appeal should be directly to the scriptures? And last year at RGA, I noticed that much of the appeal was being done toward the Bible itself. And of course, that sounds good because the Bible is our ultimate authority. But at the same time, in the arena of an association, There are probably a hundred things that we all would disagree about on certain issues that are in the Bible. And we've chosen to come around and fellowship together around these fundamental doctrines which are outlined for us in our confession. And we've adopted it as our arbiter for all controversies in the association. So we appeal to the confession. But I'll say more about that later. The Bible is, of course, the final authority. Pastor Tom Lyon sent me some notes of his, and he said very astutely, the Bible is the source of truth. The confession is a summary of faith. And we always need to keep that distinction in our minds. One is the product of inspiration. One is the product of illumination. And we need to always remember that. And so those who think that we're setting the confession up above the Bible need to realize that the confession wouldn't even exist apart from the Bible, because then there would be nothing to interpret. So of course the Bible is higher than the confession, because the confession is merely saying, I believe this about what the Bible says. Now, that doesn't mean some haven't elevated the confession above the Bible. In some denominations, I'm sure that's happened, but in our own confession, if you will, our confession is self-aware of the fact that it is subordinate to the scriptures. In chapter one, it's very clear, very opening lines tell us in our confession that that is not the case, that we do hold the Bible to be the final authority. But sola scriptura, which was only one of the watchwords of the Reformation, is what some people seem to want to be the sum total of their creed, their confession. I believe in the Bible. Well, the Jehovah's Witnesses believe in the Bible. And there are other groups, too, that base their heresies and they supposedly find them in the Bible. So how are we to distinguish ourselves from all of those other groups unless we have our own interpretive document which declares to us and to others and enables us to maintain doctrinal integrity, unless we have our own confession of faith. And that is not a challenge to the authority of scripture, it's an acknowledgment of its authority and our duty to interpret it properly and confess it before men. Now, I want to do something before we move on to the second, third, and fourth points. This is longer. I'm taking longer on this one. But Samuel Miller's book, some of you may be familiar with it. What is it called again? I don't see it in my notes. But I read the whole thing and it's not very long. But it's very wonderful reading. It's concerning the legitimacy and usage of confessions. And he wrote it in 1824, which is almost 200 years ago. And when you read it, it sounds eerily, eerily modern, like present day. Same objections, same kind of people, and same kind of issues being raised. This argument about no creed but the Bible, which people in our circles would not say, nobody in our circles, nobody that has left Arbca, I can guarantee you no one that has left Arbca, our dear brethren who've left, that none of them would say no creed but the Bible. They would never say that. But like I said, there were hints that that was in their heart, in a sense. by what was said, by things that were said to me personally, things I overheard, things I read on blogs. So though they may not actually come out and admit it, there is a latent sense of no creed but the Bible. The 1689 confession in their mind was not held up as any sort of an authority at all, even in the association. And Samuel Miller faced the same issue, and he argued what we would call an argument of absurdity by showing the logical end of their reasoning. Now, if the confession of faith is an interpretive or a hermeneutical document, if it is just simply saying, this is what I believe the scriptures to teach on this issue, this issue, and that issue, And if the very existence of a confession is a challenge to the ultimate authority of scripture, then preaching would be off the table. Because preaching itself is the very same thing. It's a hermeneutical device. to interpret scripture to the people of God. And Samuel Miller goes on to say that not only that, but the only thing that a preacher would be able to do if this was followed out consistently would be to preach, not preach at all, but just to simply read the scriptures. And then he said, but you can't read a translation. Because every translation, no matter how formally they try to translate it, There's still interpretive choices that come through. So you would have to read it in the original languages. So the people of God who don't know the original languages, many of them, would come and would only hear something in a foreign language. And we would be right back in the Middle Ages again, where things weren't being taught in a known language. And of course, we know that the Apostle Paul speaks out against that. So, he uses the deductio ad absurdum argument to show that this just simply can't be the case. We'd be left, if it's no creed but the Bible, we would be left with no Bible. Nobody would learn anything about the Bible. It's a great book, you gotta read it. It's online and it's free. Now, I wanna read this quote before we move on to the second point by Richard Muller. Richard Moeller said, they, that is confessions, stand below but also with scripture. They also stand above the potentially idiosyncratic individual and prevent him from becoming his own norm of doctrine. The non-credal, anti-confessional tendency understands the sola scriptura of the Reformation in a manner that the Reformers themselves never did, and surely would have repudiated. The Reformers would most probably associate much conservative American religion with the biblicism of Servetus and the Silcinians. If you get nothing else out of this, just enjoy the quotes. All right. That's the first point, and now the next ones won't be as long. Our confession is a hermeneutical document. Now, secondly, our confession is a consensus document. That is, that it is not a document that was put together by one person. If you trace it back to the sources, You could find that our confession subsumes the truths that were clarified in the ecumenical councils of the patristic period and sometimes even uses the same language. And you'll also find, of course, that the Westminster Confession of Faith did the same thing and we borrowed from them and also from the Savoy Declaration. And maybe even from the articles of the Church of England, there were some influence there. But we did not, this confession was not created by one or two people. It was not some novel thing. It was not some person with their own ideas trying to spread their agenda. It was something that was agreed upon and has been tried and proven throughout the ages as being true to the scriptures. So it's a consensus document in that sense, but we also need to remember that it is a document, our confession anyway, is a document that perhaps is a little different than the creeds of the past. The creeds of the past, the early church, were really meant primarily to exclude heresy, to keep it out, And our confession not only excludes that, but was also an attempt to unite, to unite with those who substantially agreed with us in the Reformed faith and to show and prove that we weren't Anabaptists or Quakers and so on. And it was meant to unite ourselves in a biblical catholicity with those who we could fellowship with to a certain extent and to prove that we weren't heretics ourselves. And so it was exclusive. The goal behind our confession was not to be so exclusive as to become sectarian isolationists and lose all Catholicity, but neither was it to be so inclusive as to allow fundamental doctrines to be compromised and the proverbial camel's nose into the tent. But it is a consensus document. And so we need to remember that when we join ARBCA as a church and our delegates represent our churches, when we join ARBCA or we've become members in ARBCA and we can look back to when we joined, we need to remember that nobody held a gun to our head. We looked at the documents, we should have, and considered what the confession meant and what it was. And we had a solemn obligation to do that. And every year afterwards, we're to sign with an oath in a sense that we still hold full, we fully subscribe to the confession of faith. And that if we have deviated in any way, we should let that deviation be known to the AC. And then it goes from there. There's a process for it. But we need to remember that this is not an involuntary association. It's voluntary. and everything is spelled up front so that we come together under a certain set of terms. The confession acts as a set of boundary markers. If we had to agree on everything, we would have no association. The Bible teaches so much more than what our confession actually says. at least in tertiary issues. But we can't do that and cooperate, because if we make everything an issue, like the singing issue that Dr. Ranahan brought up, which was already in the confession, I don't know how that could have even been an issue. It was obvious they must not have been using their confession as their consensus document at that point. because the appeal should have been made to the confession, not to the Bible, even though it could be made to the Bible. But when we enter this fellowship, this association, we enter with our eyes wide open, and we realize that we're coming together under the authority ultimately of scripture, but under the authority, the lesser authority, of the confession which we have already confessed is what the Bible teaches. So it is a consensus document and we may differ on a lot of different things and we do and I've talked to many of you and usually somehow or other gets back to the Civil War or the Revolutionary War and Romans 13 and all of that and I mean, we differ on a lot of things, but those aren't the things that unite us. Our confession allows room for superlapsarians and infralapsarians. It allows room for historical premillennialists, amillennialists, and postmillennialists. I don't need to tell you what I prefer on either of those issues. If there are those brethren here that differ on those things, the confession has latitude, but it also has limits. And our association has determined to come together under that document in order to maintain unity around truth and yet have a certain degree of liberty as well. We don't have liberty to cross the lines of the confession. unless we're willing to leave the association. All right, thirdly, our confession is a historical document. It's historical, and you might say, well, you already said that. You already talked about that in your lengthy introduction. Well, what I mean by this is, very simply, that words mean something. And the words of our confession, strung together as they are, actually mean something, and more importantly, they meant something historically. They meant something. And I can guarantee you that they meant something exceedingly precise. Something, of course, that our postmodern age not only does not have precision, but it deplores. And I think that's what a lot of this latent anti-confessionalism that is even within those who say they hold to the 1689 is from. It's from the inroads of the culture of postmodernism. Not wanting to be precise and wanting to be hyper-individualistic, wanting to be open, never wanting to say that this issue is closed, this is truth, this is determined, I'm going to stand here and I'm not going to move from here. They want to always be moving around and discovering because if you have any convictions at all, the postmodernist will say you're proud. You think you know everything. you should be more humble like me, ever learning but never coming to the truth. That's postmodernism. Dr. Jim Renahan and his comments on those who hold to New Covenant theology, they have a view of the First Baptist Confession of Faith of 1644 that says that that confession basically denies or just by its silence, supposed silence on the law as a rule of life for believers, he says this about that view. He says, like good postmodernists, they read into the confession the type of theology that they hope to find there without any serious investigation into the theological thinking of the men who wrote the confessions. And this is why it's so important that when we approach our confession of faith, we realize it's a historical document, that the words meant something. Those of you, some of you might like the King James Version. I was raised on the King James Version. And I use the ESV now, but I was raised on the King James, and I find myself thinking in those terms. I love to read Shakespeare, and I actually can understand it, most of it, not all of it. But some people don't, and they read the King James Version and they look at the words, but surely you must realize that words have changed since 1611 to mean different things. In some cases, they mean completely opposite things. And in fact, I can even see in pop culture the degradation of language, or if you want to say it a little bit nicer, the mutation of language. I've seen words like the word bad, or being used now as a good thing. He's bad. That's so bad. Well, what do you mean? I mean it's good. God's impassable, but he's passable. What? Well, this is what happens to language. That's the spirit of our day, revisionist history, deconstructive efforts even at language, anachronistic thinking, where we read back into the words of the confession theology we want to find. Or we maybe unwittingly, not with any devious intentions, we may go back to the confession, look at the words, and use a 21st century definition for words that were not written in the 21st century. And I'm saying all of this because we need to continue to be students of the language of our confession as it was meant by its original authors. Because if we aren't doing that, then we are liable to find all kinds of things in the confession that aren't there, or we may find problems with the confession that we ought not to have, simply because we don't understand the language. There's no excuse, brethren. We have resources. We have the Symbolics class offered just about every year. We hopefully will be able to have installments, perhaps. hint, hint, of those classes in our own general assemblies. And there are other many resources we can use to come to a better understanding of the words we need to do our homework. And I think some people haven't done their homework. I think some may be here, but others who have left didn't do their homework because they might have been afraid. that having done their homework, they would discover that their pet progressive deviation would be refuted. I'm sorry if I'm being blunt. Haven't you been there though, pastors? I've been there. I have opened up the Bible thinking I was going to find some wonderful passage that would just strike me for a sermon. And I found a passage, and I've read it, and I looked at it, and I thought, an outline just, boom, right in my head. This is great preaching. And then when I study the words, the Greek, the syntax, I go to the commentaries, I find out, oh, it doesn't mean anything what I thought it meant. Now, you have a choice at that point. You can preach your own outline and your own points, but that is what James White would call a pulpit crime. Or you can back down and say, I'll preach on something else. I have been there many times. I have a folder, a tickler file as Jay Adams calls it, that has little outlines that I've written in there, and so many of them have had to be crumpled up and put in the round file because they weren't according to what the words actually meant. Got to do your homework. Okay, fourthly, our confession is a biblical document. Now, what I mean by this is not merely what I've already said, that it is according to scriptures, but what I mean is that when we become members of ARBCA, There really is a differentiation between two ways of looking at calling the confession biblical. And I think there's been a division, obviously, in our ranks over how to view the confession as the basis for our unity as an association. Let me suggest these two things. One person would say, I embrace our confession insofar as it is biblical. That's one way of saying it or thinking it. Now they wouldn't say, they would say, I embrace our confession, but the hidden words that aren't spoken are insofar as it is biblical. But then there's other people who rightly say I embrace our confession because it is biblical they may not say that but they may say I embrace our confession but inside they know it's because it is biblical that's why embrace it now the difference between these two statements is huge Because the first statement is basically saying, I embrace our confession insofar as it is biblical. It's actually saying, I embrace it insofar as I agree with its interpretation. And so right away, you have people entering into the membership of ARBCO or some who have been members for many years who have this view. They don't understand full subscription from the outset. because they are only agreeing with the confession as long as it agrees with them. That won't work. Whereas the other view says, I embrace the confession because it is biblical. What they're saying is, I embrace it precisely because I agree that its interpretation of scripture is correct, and I believe in that interpretation. So those two statements are very different from one another, but I think the membership committee, and I think all of us, need to be reminded of the difference between those two things. Because many people loosely hold to the 1689 Confession, but they If you ask the right questions, you find out that it's not because it is biblical, it's just because there's a lot of good things in it that I like. If you've thrown your lot in with ARBCA in order to steer it in a different course, which some have, and that's deplorable, that's deception. There are others who are unwittingly coming in or have come in into the ranks of ARBCA who have said, I hold to the confession. But you find out later that all along there were deviations that they never reported to the AC. They never let anyone know. And then they come to the surface. They find out other people have the same opinions. And then all of a sudden you have something of a coup d'etat going on. against our original default setting from the inception of our association. So I would say we need a TSA in our system that asks the right questions and does the right pat-downs. Alright, I'm probably over my time, but let me Let me close with five applications. The first one is study the confession. Study it not just with your own brains. Study it with dead man's brains. I'm not referring to Dr. Renahan. Study it with his brains as well. But study the confession. and grow and improve in your understanding of the words of the confession. And none of us should say we've arrived. We're still growing. But at least we need to acknowledge the fact that we may not be right in our understanding of a certain word. And if others who have studied tell us that we're not right, we should ask them, how do you know that? And figure it out. And if we deviate and disagree, then we need to make that known. But that leads me to the second point. Be honest. If in the study of the confession you come across something that you really do not agree with, you dogmatically don't agree with, that you conscientiously don't agree with, and you do not believe is in accordance with scripture, let it be known. There's no shame in that. I appreciated our brother yesterday. He said that he could not subscribe to impassibility, according to the theology paper, in good conscience. And we wouldn't fault him for going against, or for leaving, because going against conscience is neither right nor safe. And there's no, we don't cut him off from our lives, but at least he was honest. It took a lot of courage even to be here. Some people say that having a confession of faith is a shackling of free and open discussion, that we should always be open to progressive or evolutionary ideas in theology. But our association doesn't do that. There's no oppression here of free thinking. But if you do have something that goes outside the boundaries of the confession, you need to admit it if you disagree, and then you have to let people know, the AC should know, and then there is a process for that. And if you're found to be outside the boundaries of the confession, well, fine. Don't take it personally. It's not a personal issue. Now, I'm going to read something from Shedd. He uses the word heresy. I am in no way trying to imply that those who've left ARBCA are heretics in a damning sense. They've deviated from a certain point in our confession, and certainly that deviation could lead to further deviations, which would be definitely damning heresy, but I'm I don't think of that of any of them at this point. But he says, heresy is not so great a sin as dishonesty. There may be honest heresy, but not honest dishonesty. A heretic who acknowledges that he is such is a better man than he who pretends to be orthodox while subscribing to a creed which he dislikes and who which he acts under pretense of improving it and adapting it to the times. The honest heretic leaves the church with which he no longer agrees, but the insincere subscriber remains within it in order to carry out his plan of demoralization. Yes, we've seen that as well. Thirdly, be humble. Study the confession, be honest, but be humble. You know, when I was a kid, I'd go to a store to get a Slurpee or whatever, and I would see a sign that said, no shoes, no shirt, no service. I don't know if you see that anymore. Anything goes anymore now, especially in Times Square. But if you go to a store now, you don't see that sign. But I did, and I could read, and I saw the sign, and I knew exactly what it meant. And so imagine if I went into that store without shoes or without a shirt or went into the store and decided to take my shirt off in the store. If the employees of that store took me by both arms and escorted me out of the store, would it be right for me to say that I had been abused? No. I need to be humble enough to recognize that there were a set of rules. I saw them coming in. I need to be humble enough to say, okay, I'm in the wrong and I need to leave. And there are people also that come into the ship that we call Arbka, and some of them do have a hidden agenda. They have a difference of view of the confession, either wanting to add to it, subtract from it, deviate from it. And they want to come in onto the ship, and they want to change the rules. They want to redirect the ship. They use the code word Semper a Reformanda. always reforming. Pastor Stephan Lindblad gave me this true definition of Semper Reformanda. It means, it doesn't mean a moving target. It is changing doctrine. It does not mean changing doctrine, but it means applying the doctrine to our lives. It is a clarion call to a vital experiential understanding of the truth in the lives of Christ's sheep. So it's not changing our doctrine, but applying the doctrine that we already know to be biblical. So be humble. Don't come in with some agenda. Don't develop an agenda. Don't think that you're God's gift to the theological world and that you have something new to share. Because as Spurgeon said, anything new in theology is false. And we must be careful that we don't try to imitate what many others have done today and find our own truth, find our own mantra, find our own secret thing that no one's discovered before, and then make that the issue, get followers, and try to redirect the ship in a different direction. The fourth application is be willing to see the proper role of the confession in the association. Be willing to see the proper role of the confession in the association. It's a consensus document. Therefore, it may not be the final ultimate authority. Of course it's not. There would be no confession without the Bible. The Bible came first. It has authority and priority. in the association, the confession is authoritative. But how can it be? Why would anyone challenge that? Why would they say, no, it's not an authority? Why? Well, because they came into ARBCA with the conception that they hold to the 1689 insofar as they believe it to be biblical. But the others who came in knowing that the confession is biblical, and that's precisely why they came into Arbka, they're the ones that see that what the confession teaches is an accurate interpretation of the scriptures, and therefore it is an authority. It's a lower authority. but it's still an authority. And we have already agreed that it should be the uniting consensus document of our association. And so, therefore, when there's controversies in our association, what should be appealed to? The confession. If that's what unites us, that's also what would disunite us in terms of the doctrine that is being disputed. Full subscription means more than a church's agreement with the document. It is their agreement to let the confession be the basis of our unity. So brethren, much of what I heard last year was an appeal to scripture, which sounds spiritual, and that is in any other context fine. Surely, for yourself, for your church, but in this association, we've already determined that we can't appeal to every verse in the Bible because we would fracture and have no association at all on every little thing. So we have to use our confession as the standard for our unity, precisely because it is biblical. Now, was that number four? Number five, and lastly, if you cannot fully subscribe as defined in our ARPA documents, do not play the victim. Don't play the victim. You knew coming in what the rules were. If you didn't read the rules, why would you not read the rules? Now, of course, I do a lot of things where I don't read the fine print. I sign things where I haven't read the fine print. But if you're coming into an association, you and your church, there are rules. There is a confession, and there's a policy manual, and there's a constitution. And if you violate those things, or go outside of those things, or disagree with those things, and the General Assembly decides that you can no longer be part of us because those are our standards, then don't go away saying, they kicked me out. We didn't kick you out. You kicked yourself out. If I were to go on a boat, I was on a boat about a year ago, a fishing boat, with some of my pastor friends. And if I had got on that boat and gathered people around and said, hey, listen, this guy doesn't know anything. we need to take over this boat. And I know where to steer this boat. I know where the fish are. And then we had a mutiny. And then, of course, the security guards would throw me overboard into the water and say, you know, you don't belong on our boat. Should I say, you kicked me off your ship? No, I kicked myself off the ship. The only difference in that analogy is the fact that when people leave Arbca, if they're honest about what their disagreements are, it's nothing personal, and in fact, brotherly love can continue. And it does, and it should. It's not a personal attack. Pastor Sam Renahan in his paper on full subscription in light of last year's controversy, He called it associational growing pains. He said, holding others to that standard is not a personal attack. It is simply an implementation of rules upon which we all agreed and from which we have no right to deviate. If we are unwilling to follow through with our own rules of self-regulation, what purpose do they serve? So, I would also say the victim usually oftentimes anyway, says that association and that confession, tyrants, tyrants all. Who's the real tyrant? The association that has standards that you knew about when you entered? Or you who had an agenda and wanted to steer the entire ship and mutinize the association? and take it in a different direction. That's tyranny. So please, if you have a disagreement with the confession or anything with our standards, then bring it to our attention and be honest about it and don't try to come and fix us. ARBCA is, we are established. We already wrote down where we're going and who we are. We're not in an identity crisis. And some people come in and they think that, oh, this is a backward folk. We need to get them to be more progressive. We need to get them to be different. We're different enough. And guess what? I think the word progressive, you should be afraid of that word and be afraid of being labeled that. We want to stick to the old paths. That's what we need today is faithful men, not newfangled ideas. And so we stick to our confession, and those who leave over disagreements should leave understanding that those were the conditions in the first place, not as victims. And brethren, what happened just this last year may seem to have been maybe the greatest upheaval we've had since our inception in 1997, but it'll happen again. If not in our generation, in the next, it'll happen again. And we need to be ready, and I think this was a good test. We have to draw the line in the sand, or else we will end up with no association at all, just like the London Association in four short years was gone. Okay, well, I know there's Q&A, but I don't even know how long I was supposed to go, how long I went. That's that how much? Okay.