All right, we'll begin after lunch, right? So there should be one last handout if you had access to either digitally. or I'm not sure on the back, or so on. That one is, what we have is looking at New Covenant and what I call progressive covenantalism. So with that in mind, Trey wanted me to put another plug for a book. So it's hard to sort of put your plugs for your books, but this here, It was 2015, I think it was. So 2012, Peter Gentry and I put out Kingdom Through Covenant, and then now it's got a second edition, 2018. So what we tried to do in this one was just to give a summary. So we dropped sort of all the debate with covenant, dispensational, and all those areas. just kept it to a shorter version and summarized our overall view. So this is the kind of shortened version of it. So that's God's Kingdom through God's Covenant. So they gave it a different name. They didn't want to use the same name. So I think it's pretty much As you work through these issues, you always are tweaking things, right? So it's got a few differences from 12, maybe the 2018 version maybe has a few more clarifications, but overall, it's pretty close. But anyway, so glad you're back this afternoon. So we'll have a session here for Let's see, 45, 50 minutes or so, and then there's Q&A. Looking forward to your questions being put on the spot. It's fine to just talk, but then if I have to speak back to your questions, then you have to address them specifically. All right, so what we're looking at now is sort of the mediating positions. Now, let me just speak to the issue of mediating positions. So in 2012, when we put out Kingdom Through Covenant, we just thought we were being clever and said, we're gonna give a position that is in between Covenant theology and dispensational theology, so it's just a way of sort of marketing it and showing the differences. And then I use the phrase via media. So via media is just simply a third way or middle way type of way. Well, that has baggage in theology and so on. So monergism, if you ever go to the monergism website, they ban the book. So one of the things they said was your via media is Catholic or something like that. It was the most bizarre argument. So middle positions aren't always good in every area. So some people try to sit in the middle and eventually they take no stand on anything. So when I say we have a sort of mediating position, it's just simply saying the viewpoints of dispensational, the viewpoints of covenant, don't think fit completely with what scripture is saying. So we're trying to make sure that our understanding of the whole counsel of God is consistent with the way the Bible presents itself and lays out these truths from creation to new creation. So that's all we mean. So we're saying, and even modern Judaism is saying, well, if you think anything's good about dispensationalism, then we're not putting you on here. Well, everyone, you know, there's some insights that everyone has and the question is, you know, how can you incorporate them and try to say, I think that's correct, but no, I don't think that's quite correct, right? So that's what we're trying to do here. In some sense, new covenant theology and what we're calling progressive covenantalism is doing that. It's not dispensational. So if someone says, this is dispensational, which people say, they don't get it. Or if they say, oh, this is just on the dispensational side, covenant theology. Well, they don't get it. So it's trying to say something that is not totally different. No one is ever trying to say we're coming up with something brand new. If you do that, usually you're in trouble. All right, so how can we best understand God's unfolding plan centered in Christ and the nature of the New Covenant? So that's where progressive covenantalism and New Covenant theology come in. So just in terms of introducing overall view, so I'll be laying out how I think things fit together, so inevitably I have to do that, because they're my convictions. I will then discuss some parts of New Covenant theology, and some of the reasons why we've been careful with the label, and then mention another Baptist theology, which is called Reform or 1689 Federalism, where they are slightly different, and then try to say, well, this is why I think this is a better way to put it all together, right, type of thing. So as we said this morning, right, we said within evangelical theology there's different ways that people understand how the whole Bible fits, right? So we've looked at two dominant ways, right? So each is trying to say this is how the parts fit with the whole, right? Everyone's trying to discern the unity of Scripture and its Christological fulfillment and how all, you know, say a Second Timothy applies to us, right? All Scripture in that context of the Old Testament applies to us. Well, how does it apply to us? now in light of Christ's coming, right? But there are differences among us, so we then have to lay out the differences and discuss who's got it right, right? Not everybody can be right. Somebody's wrong, somebody's right, right? You can't have both believer baptism and infant baptism at the same time, it just doesn't work, right? So you've gotta say who's got the arguments and who understands the flow of scripture, right? So now, I have here the overall view of PC, and that doesn't mean politically correct. It's a problem with acronyms. My name is Stephen Wellam, but my middle name is Joel, and I used to always sign everything by my initials. I didn't like signing to students, Doctor. Something just doesn't sit well with me, so I always said, I don't want to put Steve or something, because I'm doing a student, so I'll just put my initials. SJW. Well, I can't do that anymore. So labels, PC, just simply means progressive covenantalism, and then we'll relate this to NCT, New Covenant, and 1689. What I'm trying to argue, and I think many New Covenant people would do this as well, and in fact, what we'll see is the 1689 Federalist view says things very similar too, except there's going to be a few differences here and there. I'm trying to argue, and again, this would fit with many in these other movements as well, is that there's a plurality of covenants. Everyone acknowledges that, but we're getting away from this notion of one overarching covenant. So, in covenant theology of covenant works, the covenant of grace. You have to distinguish theological uses of ideas from biblical uses of ideas. So really, in my thinking of this and many others, the covenant of grace is a theological concept. The trinity is a theological word. It's true to the Bible, God is father, son, and spirit, shares one divine nature, he's a triune God. And so we have theological terms. We wanna make sure our theological terms fit with the data. Because you can have a theological terms that skews the data. So my conviction is the term the covenant of grace is not helpful. Now the concept behind it, and you have to say this carefully because I was charged with denying the covenant of grace and all this kind of thing. I'm not denying, I'm just saying what do you mean by it? So if you mean, and I think most of it would say the covenant of grace is ultimately the unfolding of God's plan. God's plan that's from eternity, that shows itself in light of the fall, that's centered in Christ. Well if we all agree on that, there's one eternal divine plan that shows itself in history. But should I call it the covenant? Especially when scripture gives us covenants. So Ephesians 2, 12, speaks about Israel having the covenants of promise. And we don't have time to look at it, but as you look at even Paul's arguments in Galatians 3 and 4, he's working there with the relationship between Abrahamic and old, and he's not just saying, well, let's just sort of treat them as all one. I mean, they're all one plan, but he's speaking about those elements of the Abrahamic, and there's a promise, and it proceeds, and there's the old covenant that comes after, and you have to read the Mosaic covenant in light of the Abrahamic covenant, and if you don't do that, you're gonna make mistakes, which the Judaizers did. So that's why we say here, there's a plurality of covenants, and that's obvious, everyone has to admit that, but these plurality of covenants are important, and it's important to let the covenants speak on their own. They are progressively revealed, so in some sense, that's what progressive dispensationalism is. I mean, everyone acknowledges the unfolding of God's plan across time, right? So that unfolding, though, is important, right? Scripture did not come to us all at once. It came to us, it didn't have to, God could have done it other ways, but he's chosen to reveal himself step by step by step. And later revelation builds on earlier revelation. Sounds awfully basic, but it's very, very important. You couldn't read the New Testament without the Old Testament. Again, that sounds very basic, but people try. Or they try to read the Old Testament and they forget the New Testament. any Old Testament scholars' tendency. So you have to then say, I've got to read a whole Bible and I have to let the Bible unfold, right? So when I'm reading Isaiah, Isaiah, I have to say, well, what did Isaiah know? He knew what everything preceded him. So that's an idea of the progress of revelation. So there's the triune God's one redemptive plan. So I would tie that all the way back to eternity. We could have debates of whether we call it the covenant of redemption or not. I don't really quibble much over that, because there's one eternal plan. Father, Son, and Spirit. Creation to redemption, to providence, to judgment, to all things centered in Christ. But it comes through a plurality of covenants that, reach their, biblical language is fulfillment, and fulfillment is a prophetic term. The old is looking forward, it reaches its end point or its culmination, it's fulfilled in, and you also then have the notion of, say, Romans 10, the law, for instance, is a telos, it has an end or a goal. So all of God's plan is moving somewhere, right? It's a linear view of history, and it's moving to the new covenant, right? That's why it's a new covenant. Everything gets bound up in the new covenant. I mean, just read the Old Testament, right? I mean, all of Old Testament history and all the unfolding of the covenants is leading to the culmination of the new covenant, the new covenant that Christ brings. So there is already, even in this formulation, there's something greater about the new covenant. I mean, all of these previous covenants are anticipating it, are leading to it, are funneling into it in that sense, right? So automatically, just to simply say, well, there's the covenant of grace and the new covenant's just a renewal of this. That's not how the Bible flows. That's not how it works at all. So that's what we're arguing, plurality of covenants unfolding one plan, one people. There's not two peoples of God. There's only one elect people of God. And it now reaches its terminus, and terminus is important because he's the one, Christ is the one who brings these covenants to pass, right? Is there a Davidic covenant still outstanding? No, Christ is a bit of king, right? Is the Mosaic covenant still outstanding? No, it's ended. Abrahamic, the Abrahamic promise, right? I mean, it's centered in Christ, right? And we now live as the recipients of that. So that there is a terminus to these things. The only exception in scripture in this inter-advental age is Noahic. In a way, it continues until the end of the age, but that's because of creation order tied into the breaking in of God's age in Christ into this world, that the whole created order continues until the second coming. It allows for first and second coming. But Christ is the one who brings the new creation, right? So here's where this idea of terminus is found. So from all eternity, God has planned, he's foreordained all that comes to pass. That's crucial, right? We'll get into Arminian theology and those. I mean, they can't hold to this, right? And in covenant theology, God's eternal plan, right, is tied to covenant redemption. That's helpful, but it's through covenants, right? And I argue here, I mean, progressive covenantalism has the notion of kingdom through covenant, right, to combine a couple of crucial biblical concepts. God's rule comes through covenants. I think that fits. A lot of people will pick up kingdom and forget covenants. Some will pick up covenants and forget kingdom. The two are inseparable. Adam is king in a covenant relationship. All bringing of God's rule to the world is through, especially a saving rule, is through covenants, and ultimately through Christ. Now, I give you the primary covenants there. I mean, there's other covenants, but I mean, I think we have creation, Adam, Noah. Noah's clearly a covenant. I mean, the word's used, Abraham. mosaic, old Israel, and all different names for it, law, Torah, and you have a Davidic covenant, a new covenant. And those covenants then, and then the next point is very, very important, where each biblical covenant contributes to the overall plan. Again, some of these things seem very obvious, but it's where we differ. So what I'm contending for here is the covenants are revealing They're showing. In the end, all of the covenants are, we could say, prophetic. Now, they're more than that. They make demands, they legislate, they do all kinds of things, but in the end, the law and the prophets prophesy. They reveal. And we need to see how each of the covenants reveals something. Now, they do different things in terms of the revelation of God, and all of that revelation is leading us to Christ. And I would then say it's leading us to Christ and his people. Now, you have Old Testament people of God, but the people, when I identify with Christ in the New Covenant, is the church. The church is the end of the road. Now, there's the church, you can say, in the Old Testament in the sense of saints. But the church, right, Christ has come to build his church. The church isn't just, a parenthesis, It's not just, okay, God has started one program, he's now going to the church, and he's now bringing a new program back. The church is where it's all going, right? The church is Christ's people. It's the people of the new covenant. It's the new creation. It's the new man. It's the bride. It's the temple. It's all of these things, and it lasts forever. The only people that last into the new heavens and new earth is the church, right? It's not this country. It's coming and going, as all nations come and go. It's ultimately God's people that lasts forever. And then in the church, Israel, ethnicity of Israel, Jew, Gentile are brought together. But the church is the nation, 1 Peter 2. We don't have nations, the church is ultimately the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise, the mighty nation that culminates in the church. That's why we can then say, And ultimately, the church is the, in some sense, the eschatological Israel. Israel functions to ultimately point forward to a greater people. They aren't that themselves, but it points forward to the church through Christ. So each biblical covenant contributes to this, and through the progression of the covenants, we then know how the plan has unfolded. And it's crucial to let each covenant stand on its own. Now, not stand on its own that it's independent, but how does it contribute to revelation? How does it unpack the plan of God? How does it lead us more and more to understand who is coming and who Jesus is and his work and so on, right? So in emphasizing the covenants, they're not just a unifying theme. Okay, we got all kinds of themes across the Bible. You can think of, you know, temple is a theme, land is a theme. But we're arguing here is none of those themes you can track apart from ultimately taking them through the covenants. You can try, give me some examples of it, I'd like to try. But eventually, all of the, and eventually this ties to typological structures. All the typological structures are tied to the covenants. They start in creation, and they get unfolded. They're sort of their proto, or very early in creation. They're not all there. But you know, what do you have in creation? You've got rest, you've got Eden, you've got temple, you've got prophet, priest, king, you've got marriage, you've got all kinds of things that eventually get unpacked and tracked out through the covenants that all then reach their fulfillment in Christ. So the covenants aren't just a theme, they are the means by which, right, we relate to God and he unfolds his plan. We don't divide the covenants into two categories. The covenant of works, the covenant of grace. Rather one plan. So what really is going on with the covenant of works, the covenant of grace, is you step back theologically. What's really going on is a theological concept. The theological concept is true. It's whether you get that theological concept the way they try to do it. Now, what's the theological concept? It's law gospel, right? Law gospel's a very, very, very, very important theological concept. If you lose it, you lose the gospel. What's law first, broadly, theologically? God is creator and Lord, you're his creature, image bare, significant, but he demands obedience. What else would you expect? He says, love me with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, right? He doesn't say do it half-heartedly. He says do it fully, right? So there's the notion of demand, law, and so on. That's really what this notion of works is trying to get at, right? In the sense that we owe God everything. We're creatures. And when we sin against God, we disobey judgment. What's gospel? Oh, it's God and his grace saving us. Now, what these structures are trying to do is they're trying to, in covenant theology, have demand, covenant of works, solely, sort of in the garden, and that's it. Say it's all it is is works and nothing else, and then you have grace, and that's now God's provision, and then they try to figure out how to get grace and works and everything into, so we've got theological categories that are true, But then you have to say, how does the Bible give us those theological categories? So the Bible gives us law ultimately through the creator-creature distinction and through creation and what we are as image bearers to relate before God. That's how you get the demand. Absolute demand comes from God. So it's your doctrine of God tied to human beings and what we are. Grace is also your doctrine of God. You can't save yourself. Only God initiates, only God can save, only God provides, and that runs through the entire Bible, and you get that message from Genesis 1 all the way through the covenants, culminated in Christ. So we're not dividing the categories of covenants into just works, grace, and then trying to figure out how all that fits, and we're also starting with creation right now. This would be very similar to covenant theology. I'm not happy with the term covenant of works, even though I know what they're getting at, and I'm not opposed to that, I think it's just richer. So God is creator and Lord, he's made Adam, Adam himself is already, the very language of image and likeness is already speaking of some kind of covenant relationship. To be God's image is to be those who he has made to rule over. To be like Him, very similar concepts, but to be like Him is to be in relation to God. What you have in creation with image and likeness is ultimately the great commandment. Why are you to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind? Because you are made like Him to honor Him. You are made in His image. Why are you to love your neighbor as yourself? Because you're supposed to be in relation to people. It shows itself in marriage first. And then in community, and then in society, and then in structures, right? The great commandment just doesn't show up in the Old Testament law, or don't show up in the New Testament. It's already built in the way God has made us for relationships. So creation is so important. It starts with Adam. Adam is a head of the human race. He now brings sin into the world, and all of the covenants, you have to distinguish pre-fall, post-fall, obviously, You have to have a post-fall promise of redemption. God doesn't have to save us, but he chooses to save us. But Adam is that which runs through all those people. How do you get Adam reversed? So eventually, the big structures of scripture move you from Adam to Christ. Jesus, how is he presented? He's presented in a number of ways as you work through the covenants, but he's first presented as last Adam. What is that? That's the biggest way you can put the Bible together, isn't it? Adam to last Adam. Why is he the last Adam? Because he's the seed of the woman that is the only one who can reverse Adam's sin. And what does he do in reversing Adam's sin? Well, what was the purpose of our creation? The purpose of our creation was to rule the world. What does he do? He brings a new creation. He brings us back to the very purpose of why he made us. Hebrews 2. Why is Hebrews 2, quote, in the incarnation of the Lord Jesus, Psalm 8? Because Psalm 8 is a creation psalm. And Christ has come to pay for our sin, to make us right with God and to restore us to the very purpose of why we were created in the first place. So this is how you move from Adam to Christ, first Adam to last Adam, old creation to new creation and so on. Now as you track out the covenants, then you come to the Israel church relationship. And this is where I think the traditional views have to be tweaked. In the sense, I just don't think they account for the material. So first, God is one people. So dispensationalism eventually has come to that conclusion. But they still want to have some distinction between Israel and church, which I think is false. But there's one people of God, yet Israel and church aren't exactly the same. Now there's true saints from Israel, there's the church, there's a continuity of one people of God through the ages, but you have to do justice to Israel under her covenant. So Israel under her covenant, you may have saints within Israel, but you don't have the whole people of God the saints. So you, where do you get that? Let's see, that's the nature of that covenant in its place in God's plan. So that there's one people, yet there's a distinction between Israel and church. So when we speak of the church, you can speak about biblical language, right? So church language simply means assembly. Well, Old Testament Hebrew has words for assembly, too. So Israel's an assembly, the church is an assembly. You say, oh, they're the same. Well, not so fast. You just have to say, you still have to place them under their respective covenants. So that we would then say the church, I would say, is new. I think dispensationalism has sort of seen, yeah, the church is something new here, it's tied to the new covenant, but not new the way they think it's new. They think it's new because Israel church is total separate from one another. Even though there's one people, they have different prerogatives, different privileges, different this. You can almost say that they're in their being or their ontology new. No, or different. No, I would say the church, Israel and church is covenantally different. It's what we say in history different, or we use the term redemptive history. In redemptive history, the church is not the same as Israel. Israel and its place in the plan, under their covenant, is not exactly the same as the church, even though there's Old Testament saints, and us and the people of God are all one people. So that's where we're having to preserve one people, yet they're new, but not in the dispensational sense of new. And then the secondary is, is that we have to think of Israel Church, this sounds simple, but we differ, right? And I'm not trying to pull the Jesus card. You can do that. But I'm saying we have to think of Israel Church Christologically, right, in terms of Christ. So how do we do that, right? Well, I think covenant theology goes from Israel to church too fast. So they just say one covenant of grace, Israel church, and they bring them together. That's not how the covenants work. The covenants work from Adam, through Noah, through Abraham, and so on. They anticipate the coming of the Redeemer. Christ is the one who fulfills all of those covenants. He is David's greater son. He is true Israel. He is Abraham's seed. He is last Adam, right? And Noah picks up an Adam, theme of creation, right? So you say he's Noah, but he's last Adam. Noah's just a subset of Adam. so that he's all of those things, so that in terms of Christology, you don't just move from church or from Israel to church, you have to go from Israel in its place, in its role in the plan, and there's where typology comes in. Israel now functions as a kind of corporate atom that points to a greater son to come. Now, the individualizing of the son, so Israel's corporate, Jesus is individual. How do you move from corporate son to individual son? Davidic covenant, right? Davidic covenant, right? The Davidic covenant, the king is the son of God. 2 Samuel 7, right? So the king takes on the very same language as Israel, right? God says about Israel, you let Pharaoh, my firstborn son, go. Israel's called the son of God. Or Hosea 11 says, out of Egypt, I called my son. But as you work through the covenants, the Davidic covenant administrates ultimately the Mosaic, right? And it gets picked up in an individual. Who is the Davidic king? He is Israel, right? Now, anybody with royalty, you know, royal backgrounds knows this, right? The Queen of England, as weak and anemic as she is in terms of the ruling, she represents England, right? The king or queen can say, I am England, right? Or something like that. Well, it's the same thing with the Davidic King. The Davidic King represents the whole. And it then picks up all the way back to Adam. So when Jesus comes as true Israel, as the Davidic King, He now, you just don't say, well, Israel goes to church. It always goes through him. The point of Israel, through the king, through David, is to lead you to Christ. He's the one who fulfills Israel's role. He's the one who fulfills David's role. He's the one who fulfills Abraham's, the promise. He's the one who brings blessing to the nations and so on and so on and so on, right? So that now, right, all of these covenants come in him. And he then constitutes a people. So you're always going from Old Testament to Christ to church. And when you do that, you now have a different answer than both dispensational and covenant theology. Because if you say Jesus is true Israel, true Davidic king, last Adam, when you come to Jeremiah 31, it's not difficult. to see when God says to Jeremiah, I'm gonna make a covenant with the house of Israel, with the house of Judah, right? And you then are dispensationally, you have to say, well, that must mean just national Israel. Well, in the New Testament, it gets applied to the church, but how? through the true Israel, right? Who's that? That's Jesus, right? He's the one who brings Israel's role to pass. The New Covenant's bound up with a Redeemer, a great prophet, priest, and king. And you combine all the New Covenant passages so that Israel's role as a nation and its failure as a nation ultimately typifies a greater people through the mediation of the king, right? so that that is why dispensationalism separates these two. That's an illegitimate. Covenant theology then just sort of flips them over without realizing there's transformation that's going on here. When you get to the new covenant, which is bound up with the coming of the king and the suffering servant and the great high priest and so on, he now is not like Moses. And he's not like even David of old, and he's not like Israel, and he's not like, you know, Adam and that. He is far greater and he now creates a people that is not just like the people under the previous covenants. So his people, and this is borne out in all these passages in terms of the New Testament, in terms of the New Covenant, He has a people that is born of the spirit, who has the law written on the hearts, who knows him and so on, has the full forgiveness of sins. That speaks of a regenerate community. That's not future to us, it's here now, even though we await the fullness of our salvation, right? So that's why there's this idea we have to think Christologically, so that the church is, as you work through the, the church is the people of the new covenant. The new covenant is the end of where all the covenants are going. So that's why I say the church then is covenantally significant. It's not just a present illustration of a future nation. It itself is where the entire story is moving through Christ. It's moving to him, but it's moving then to his people. The relationship between Christ and his people is inseparable in the New Testament. Think of it in terms of 1 Corinthians 15 where Jesus is raised from the dead and the Corinthians are thinking, well, we don't need to be raised. And the apostle Paul says, you don't get it. If you're united to Christ, if he's raised, you must be raised. If you're not raised, you might as well say he's not raised. There's an inseparable relation. What happens to him happens to you. So this is how we should then understand the relation of Israel and the church. And so this provides differences so that if the church then is covenantally new, you can't just flip the sign of the Abrahamic covenant that shows through the old covenant, shows even with David, right? Those are all tied to Abraham and the old covenant. You can't just take circumcision and flip it over to the sign of the new covenant. They don't work, right? You could do that if it's the same, but it's not the same. And of course, if you track through scripture, the point of circumcision is multiple, but at its heart, its point is to show the need for new hearts. And in fact, all of the Old Testament covenants show you that. And if you wanna know which covenant shows you the most, it's the Mosaic. I even, I argue that the Mosaic Covenant, right, is undergirded by God's promises, it's tied back to the Abrahamic, it's tied back to Genesis 3.15. But for the most part, the Mosaic Law, you know, is what we would say bilateral, right? It makes demands, I mean, it demands absolute obedience and it doesn't bring anything. Now, in the big scheme of things, God never intended it to bring ultimate salvation, right? This is why it's prophetic. but it brought into Israel's experience absolute death, right? And if you want to know how bad sin is, look at Israel, right? Because they have all the privileges and that brought, even though it's God's law and demands and so on, it brought nothing but death to them. Not every Jew, not every Old Testament saint, but for the most of them, it brought nothing but curse. Now, in, again, the big purposes of God, you must not just think of the Old Covenant as just that, right? Because the Old Covenant also has a lot of features that point forward, right? It's anticipating the full salvation to come. Think of, you know, those who are at the church here studying Hebrews, Hebrews 9.8. He's discussing the entire sacrificial system. And what does he say? The Holy Spirit was showing you. You're supposed to learn from the old covenant of what you need and don't have. So you can offer your sacrifice over and over and over again. And what you were supposed to learn from that was, I'm in big trouble. I need God to provide more, right? So it was always to move you forward. True saving faith in the Old Testament saw the covenant and said, God's got to do something more, right? So it has a huge revelatory function. But in Israel's experience, it brought death, right? Just as the command brought death to Adam. Those two are pretty parallel. And so that's why you have all the negative treatments of the law, even though that's not all that could be said. The Judaizers, right, they were trying to make the Old Covenant eternal. They were trying to say, this is all you need, just add Jesus to it. And Paul is absolutely horrified. because you fundamentally don't understand anything of the role of the Mosaic Law in the plan of God, how it functions, what it did, what its purpose was, and so on and so on and so on, right? So this is where we have to then really, really think carefully about how these covenants work, what Israel is, what the church is, and so on. Now, that leads to then just a discussion of New Covenant and 1689 and so on, and we'll open up for some questions, right? New covenant theology. So, my good friend Blake here on the front row, we've had conversations like this, right? And I've really wrestled with what terminology to use. And let me just give a reason why I wrestle with this, is because of my heritage. Raised in Canada. One of my very good friends, family friend, the one who performed my marriage back in 1985, who gave me marriage counseling to my wife and I, but we only talked theology and no marriage counseling, my wife always laughs at that, was John Riesinger. And John Riesinger was very well known for New Covenant theology. He was a mentor, a friend. I can't speak enough about him, and so I appreciated what he was doing and embraced that. He sent me away from Westminster Theological Seminary to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and I'm eternally thankful, right? I received great education there and helped so much, right? So here's a guy using the New Covenant label, and that's pretty much what we used. The problem that we ran into was that there were so many people using the label. that miscommunicated a whole bunch of things. And so we said, okay, what do we do? And every time we used it, people just lumped us into all kinds of categories and said, well, we don't really hold to some of those things. So that's why we came up with the progressive covenantalism label. But there's many, many under the new covenant theology label that would be in basic agreement and so on. So it's not as if we're pitting one versus the other. But this is what I have if you have some of the notes. There's some. Some that use the new covenant label, that makes me nervous. So I'll say some, not all. And John wasn't this way, or Blake's not this way, or Gary Long and other people like this. But some, and this is a bit more controversial issue. Some say there's no need for a creation covenant or so. And that's been a debate, that's not as, you know, that's something that, you know, it needs to be discussed and so on. To me, it's very, very important and significant. But then they go further and will say, well, there's really no demand for Adam's obedience or perfect obedience. Now, this ties into a whole lot of other areas in theology as well. new perspective on Paul and N.T. Wright, and a whole bunch of things. And I think that is a huge mistake, right? I think fundamentally it denies the creator-creature distinction, it denies who God is. So I'm approaching it theologically, not just in terms of the text. So they ultimately argue there's no need for perfect obedience or total loyalty, total love. The great commandment in some sense isn't there in creation, so that what this eventually leads to in our justification We don't need obedience. We don't need a righteousness outside ourselves. So there's the denial of active obedience of Christ, the imputation of his righteousness. Some do this. And that, I want to say, no, no, no, we're avoiding that like the plague. Because if we do not have Christ's righteousness to stand before God, you've got no hope. You don't understand your sin and you don't understand God's holiness. We need a righteous standing before God. We need not only that, plus the forgiveness of our sins. Justification always involves a right standing before God, the imputation of righteousness, and the full payment of our sin. Both must go hand to hand, right? And you move away from that, eventually you misunderstand justification, it starts getting blended with sanctification, the gospel is lost. So our concern was to not identify with some moving in that kind of direction. Also some within the New Covenant tended, and I have number two and three here, tended to talk about everything in terms of just law gospel. And then that morphed into pretty much Old Covenant versus New Covenant and that's it. As we began to say, no, I mean, there's covenants, not just two. There's the whole storyline of scripture, right? So we were taking insights from biblical theologians and saying we have to do justice to all the canon, the Davidic covenant, the Noahic covenant, creation covenant, and so on. You can't just talk about narrowly old and new and then just sort of say, well, old's done, now we got new, and we're not under the law, we're under grace, and that's it. It's more complicated than that. so that some of that was being missed. There was not the full sense of the progression of the covenants, all of the covenants, moving from creation to new creation. So as I began to work in these areas in terms of theology, I said, we got to have a whole Bible here. We can't just do parts and then just pick, pot shot certain things. And then of course, the law was viewed much more solely in terms of the Decalogue. Now, that is one way of viewing the law, but the law concepts in scripture are very complicated. First law is God's very moral character. What's the eternal law of the universe? It's God. And then you start thinking of what he makes demands. Well, he makes demands from the very, very beginning. I would say the great commandment is basically there in creation. And then he gives specific commands under the covenants. It's still law. He says, don't eat pork to the Jews. That's a demand, right? That's part of law, right? Yet, that doesn't apply to us today, right? So if you make not careful distinctions of law, and then law can mean covenant. Mosaic, for the most part, when Paul's speaking about the law, he's speaking about the Mosaic covenant, right? Namas, covenant. And then you can have law referring to scripture, right? So there's nothing more that needs careful definition when you say we are not under the law. What does that mean? Well, first and foremost, it means you're not under the old covenant. That doesn't mean God is creator and Lord and your redeemer doesn't make demands of you, right? Love him with all your heart, soul, mind, love your neighbor as yourself, and then that gets fleshed out across the entire canon, particularly in the new covenant, right? So this is where some in the new covenant were almost sounding what is then charged of antinomian. Bible as it moves from old to new doesn't give you less incentive to obey, it gives you more, right? It's greater, right? We have not only a greater knowledge, but we have a greater work of the spirit, a greater ability, a greater all of these things, so that our love is increased, right? So Hebrews 11 with the chapter of faith, those people stand as people of faith for us, but you're supposed to have greater faith. You're supposed to have greater obedience, greater love, right? The dawning of the new age has come. So if you communicate to them, well, we can just, sort of live apart from any kind of moral demand. That's not correct either, right? So those were some of New Covenant that we were concerned that, okay, how do we use this label? It's too broad, it's too elastic, it's too number of things. And also in New Covenant, now we agree with this, but New Covenant is non-sabbatarian, right? Because they would see that the covenants are fulfilled and the old covenants fulfilled. But how they argued that always wasn't the same. So we wanted to argue a real strong case that we're not under that old covenant, but you still have to take it as a unit, you don't just fragment it, moral, civil, ceremonial, a whole number of arguments that played all the way back to creation and so on. Now, there's where we were hesitant to use the label, even though if new covenant theology is properly defined, it I think fits with what we're trying to say in progressive covenantalism, we were just trying to provide a broader sort of discussion, trying to take more of the canon, more of the, of the biblical material. Now, 1689 Federalism, this is a whole view that's tied to Reformed Baptist. In Reformed Baptist circles, which I come from, you had John Riesinger that was Reformed in the sense of New Covenant direction. They were Calvinists, soteriologically and everything else, they're Baptists, they're Reformed, Reform doesn't just mean, you know, a narrow sense of it. It comes out of the Reformation. We're all inheritors of the Reformation, right? So sometimes they use reform theology too narrow and they say Baptists can't be reformed. Well, okay. We're heirs of the church, right? In some areas of Reformed Baptist, they basically followed the Covenant of Works, Covenant of Grace, and they just made allowances for the church. So that was the Walt Chantry, Al Martin group. Then the 1689 guys said that, oh no, if you look at Nehemiah Cox and Baptist theologians, Benjamin Keech and others, is that they were making a different kind of argument. They're probably right on this, right? So Pascal Denault and Sam Renahan and Richard Barcellas and so on now have formed this 1689 federalism, right? So here is a sort of the summary of it I give you just on notes, is they work with covenant of redemption, so the eternal plan of God. They maintain a strong view of covenant of work, so it's exactly the same as what you would have in reformed covenant theology. I'm basically sympathetic with that, but I think there's a bit more robustness to it. And then they work with the notion of the covenant of grace. You say, well, that sounds just like covenant theology. But this is the move they make, which is different. They will then say that the covenant of grace is only the new covenant. So in some sense, you say, they sound New Covenant. Now they would be very upset if you told them that. But the covenant of grace is solely the New Covenant. You say, well, what about the other covenants? So historically in covenant theology, all of the Old Testament covenants are under the covenant of grace, but they only put the New Covenant under the covenant of grace. Now there's a real vantage to that, because now everything's moving to the New Covenant. So what they do with the previous covenants, right, is that they don't, so they reject this whole idea of the administration of the covenant of grace. So the new covenant is the covenant of grace, totally. The other covenants are simply anticipatory of, prophetic of, revealing of, right? So this is somewhat similar to what I've been describing in the sense of the progress of the covenants leading us to the new covenant. Now, I think they're at this point pretty close to what I'm trying to say in terms of progressive covenantalism and so on, right? Yet, they still want to retain This covenant of grace language, they're fine to do so, I just see no need to do so. It's theological language, they're taking it from the confession, that's fine, but I don't see anywhere that that's sacrosanct and one has to do that. I still wanna speak about the plan of God and so on tied to the new covenant, right? So they have something similar, yet they still have the Mosaic covenant as a republication of the covenant of works, so they pick that up. They still want to view the Mosaic Covenant in terms of threefold division, moral law, Ten Commandments, civil law, Israel, ceremonial to the Levitical system, and so on. And they tend to, by doing that, fragment this conditional-unconditional a lot. So the Mosaic is totally conditional, it's a republication, and then what carries over to us now is the moral law, and so on. I think they're not sufficiently putting the Mosaic Covenant in its place in redemptive history, see how it's tied to the other covenants and unfolding. They do that, but they are still hanging on to the old covenant theology at this point, which leads them to, of course, the main point of contention with new covenant theology and progressive covenantalism is if you take the Ten Commandments and just bring them over without any sense of fulfillment or how they are brought into the New Covenant or in the sense of the whole Bible, you automatically are Sabbatarian. And if you talk to 1689 Federalists, what motivates them the most is the Ten Commandments, even though they talk about grace, it seems that they talk about law an awful lot, and they talk about the Sabbath, right? And if you push their button on the Sabbath, steam comes out, right? So that's really what is driving the system, and I think they don't need to do that, but they are the ones who are following that quite strenuously and then bringing all of that over type of thing. So that's the 1689, but they've made a move here, which I think is good. They're seeing all of God's plan is culminating in the New Covenant. They're seeing that these previous covenants have to be understood in terms of the God's plan. You can't just sort of flatten them all into the covenant of grace. And they're seeing then, obviously, the newness of the New Covenant. All of that, I agree with, the New Covenant theology agrees with, and so on. It's they're still hanging on to some of the sort of works, notion, conditional, unconditional, some of those areas that I think need a slight tweak, right? So that we've argued here that in the covenants, and the unconditional conditional language is tricky. But what we're meaning by this, what I mean by this, all the way from creation, all the way through, right? Everything is because God is the God of sovereign grace. He's the Creator, He's the Lord. Creation is an act of His free choice. And you can say it's not gracious until sin shows up, but I'm not playing that. He didn't have to do any creation. He chose to share His eternal life, eternal being of Father, Son, and Spirit, the fullness of relation, the fullness of self-sufficiency in Himself to share it with us. It's an amazing thing, right? And so His creation is a free act. It's a gracious act. It's a sovereign act, right? Everything He does is by sovereign grace, initiation, everything through, right? You lose that, you lose the God of the Bible. Now when you start then having him create us, he creates us for relationship with him to rule over the world. That's an amazing thing. We're not made angels. We're not made other kinds of creatures. We're made image bearers to rule over the world. That's a high, high calling that he's made us to know him, to love one another, to rule the world. But in the fall, right, he demands absolute obedience. What else would he demand? He's God, right? He is the moral standard of the universe, right? So he, Genesis 3, 15, right? What does he do? He says, I will put enmity. He will take the initiative to save. Salvation does not come from the human race, right? We don't generate salvation, regardless of our political structures that try to save everybody, right? They can't save anybody, right? So God saves. And what's he do? I will take the initiative. I will put enmity between and then he will provide. He provides another Adam. Now, as that gets worked out through the scripture, God still makes demands. You see the demand in every covenant, but you uniquely see it in the Mosaic. I mean, you clearly see it in the Mosaic. It's nothing but judgment upon that nation. The law is given, the covenant is given, and all it does is just exacerbates and increases sin. But even under that, God is keeping his promise, and his promise is to provide a Redeemer. And that then gets fleshed out covenant after covenant after covenant. So by the time you get to the end of the prophets, you got a pretty good idea of who this Redeemer is going to be. He's coming from the human race, that's the broadest. He's coming from Abraham. He's coming from Judah. He's coming from David's line. He's gonna be a prophet, priest, king, suffering servant, the kind of work he's gonna do. I mean, we obviously see that in hindsight, but all of that's laid out for us as you work through, and that's how fulfillment comes now in Christ. So that's how unconditional conditional works, right? And in the new covenant, the new covenant, I would not say is breakable. He, the Lord Jesus, kept the covenant. Now, for us, we're still to repent, believe, and so on, but that's not, if the covenant is bound up with the elect, they don't break it. You'd have no loss of salvation. Now you have to have true salvation and so on, I realize that. But the new covenant, even covenant theology wants to say it's somehow breakable. No. Christ has secured the conditions of the covenant. We are the beneficiaries of that. Salvation doesn't mean that there's no obedience from us. That's a fruit of faith. It's a result of the work of the Spirit. It's tied to our union with Christ, but the new covenant is unbreakable. so that he keeps the conditions. But if you keep that running through, you then have the whole storyline of the need for a redeemer. And the message of the Old Testament is nobody in the Old Testament can save you. Even the greatest of the Old Testament figures are useless. Isn't that what Hebrew says about the Levites and the law? They're weak and useless. And that's true of everyone in the whole nation of Israel is a prime example of that. But all of that leads you to Christ who is not useless, right? He is the one who keeps, who obeys the eternal son, the divine son who brings now all of God's promises to pass and he pours out all of his blessings to us amazingly, right? So the church now is the people of Christ, the people of the new covenant and so on, right? So that's how these things are working. So just to simply divide up law gospel, this kind of thing, law gospel's true theologically. You've got to make sure your theology is coming from how the Bible itself is unpacking it, right? And that's my contention is that biblical theology must undergird systematics, right? So our systematic conclusions don't just come from anywhere. Even the confessions as good as they are, right? I'm all for the confessions, but the confessions still have to be true to the Bible. All right, so this is where progressive covenantalism, new covenant, and so on, 1689, this is where some of the others. Now, we could go on and talk about why is it better? Well, we've got these books here, right, and so on, right? I mean, I think this better accounts. Eventually, in the end, how do you decide between dispensational covenant theology, other forms? It's eventually, it's text upon text and whole Bible. What fits in terms of the whole Bible? What fits in terms of how the covenants work? What fits in terms of how the metanarrative works? My problem with dispensationalism in the end is it's not Israel Church, it's the way the Bible's structured. That's not how the Bible's metanarrative and storyline works, right? And even with covenant theology, it's not there. Metanarrative isn't exactly how these covenants work and find their fulfillment in Christ. So that there's where you then have to push back and say, this is a better way of understanding. So it's not totally different, right? It's saying something very similar. It's not like a whole different theology, but it's giving you, I think, what the scripture is saying, how the scripture works, how all the law and the prophets are fulfilled in Christ. how all the covenants are leading to him, and it's exactly what the New Testament is saying, right? The New Testament, everywhere in the New Testament, he fulfills every single covenant. To say that he's not ruling now as Davidic king is impossible, right? To say that he's not the one who has brought the new creation now in himself is impossible, right? To say that he hasn't brought now a transformed people is impossible. So that's how we would argue the case and lay out some of these differences. But it's not just a text here and there. It's text after text tied to entire arguments. And that's why there's differences. And that's why when we have differences with one another, you have to have a lot of cups of coffee to talk about these things. So with that in mind, we can open up for your questions on some of these areas. Five minutes, drop your cards in. Checkity, check, check. Check, check, one, two, three. Check, one, two. Are those just? No. All right, we're going to be starting the Q&A session with Dr. Stephen Willem, Differences Between Dispensational Covenant, oh, I dropped my cards, and New Covenant Theology. There's lots of questions here, and there were only four before the break, so you guys did good. You turned them all in, so we'll see how we do with time and see how we can work through all these. I'll try to quickly pick some of the most pertinent ones to the subject matter, and if we have time, we'll move on to some of the other ones. So question number one, Dr. Willem. Let's make sure his mic is working. You're on? Okay. How closely do John Piper's views on covenant align with yours? It's a two-part question. What do you think of his recent statements about final salvation or final justification by works? Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I've never seen anywhere where he's laid out all the covenant structures, so he could have, I'm not aware of it. His views of final, I'd have to even see what he's saying on that. If he means that final justification is shown by our life because of our union with Christ and what the Spirit has done, that's a legitimate concept. It's just basically the fruit of faith, right? If it's anything more than that, which I don't think it is, then it would be going too far, right? So that works are actually contributing. So in, I think, scripture and in Reformation thought, the works aren't contributing to your justification, they're the evidence of the fruit of, and I still think that's the best formulation, so that our works demonstrate the work of the spirit in us, it's not meritorious, it's simply the result of regeneration, new life, and in some sense, breathing, right? I mean, if we have new life, we breathe, we live, we act, and that's what's being emphasized. I guess so, I mean, I haven't looked at, you know, he changes his mind on a lot of things, so I don't want to commit myself to everything he says. All right, next question. What would DT, dispensational theology, and CT, covenantal theology, say are weaknesses with NCT or progressive covenantalism? I mean, yeah, we've interacted with them and others. They usually appeal to their system, so dispensationalism will say, you've eclipsed Israel. That's just the standard argument. You have not accounted for the literal nature of Israel. 40 through 48, the temple, specifics like that, Romans 9 to 11. But again, that begs the question as to whether they've understood those passages correctly. So that would be the DT side. CT side would just, they just often say, you don't understand historical theology or you don't... they will usually again revert to their system and try to respond back to us that you've forgotten this or you've forgotten that, or a caricature of the view, so that if we say the Church, the promise of the New Covenant, Jeremiah 31, is now realized in the church in the sense it's not consummated, right? There's more to come, there's more knowledge of God, there's more work of sanctification leading to glorification, but we are a regenerate people. Then they'll say things like that's over-realized eschatology, or they'll say that means there's no more teachers in the church, because if we're all teachers and this type of thing, and all that does not follow. So sometimes it's a caricature of the position and a misunderstanding of it. particularly the Reformed Theological Seminary, the Covenant Theology book edited by Reformed Theological Seminary faculty. The chapter on New Covenant Theologies by Scott Swain is an attempt to try to understand my position, New Covenant Theology position, and it's not done well. No. All the time. I sent him pages and pages of response before it got published and he changed nothing. Frustrating. He liked the straw man better. Next question. Why does CT divide the law into the tripartite division? I think it's got a historical pedigree to it. Some trace it all the way back into the Middle Ages and even earlier. So it has a long history to it. It's very helpful, right? I mean, you've got Levitical system and the priestly system. You've got laws tied to the nation of Israel. You've got moral demand. It's helpful. It's a good device. The question is, is that how? we should understand bringing over Old Testament laws to us today, right? So I have no problem, you can divide threefold, you can divide fourfold, you can divide fivefold, it doesn't matter. I mean, you can divide the covenant up into all kinds of things. The problem is, is that that's not how the Bible in the New Testament brings the law over or sees the fulfillment. It treats the whole covenant as a whole unit. So, I mean, in Hebrews 7, as you've worked through there, right? I mean, look at how the author of Hebrews in Hebrews 7, 11, and 12 sees that the entire law covenant is bound up with the Levitical priesthood. When the Levitical priesthood changes, the entire covenant changes. Well, that doesn't fit well with a tripartite division of the law, right? Because he's treating this as a whole package unit. in redemptive history. So I think they do it because it's helpful, and there's a lot of, you know, you could say, well, that's really helpful in understanding it, but it's not the means by which or the way by which the New Testament says this is what is brought over to fulfillment. It's more complicated than that. No, and then, you know, the scripture will speak of, you know, bang the whole of the law, and it doesn't divide it up into parts and so on. All right, and some of these are pertinent to the subject, some are a little bit different, but this is seemingly close enough. How were Old Testament saints saved? by grace through faith and the promises of God centered in the Lord Jesus Christ, right? So there's only one Redeemer, Christ, and we are justified by grace through faith. So Abraham, 15 and six, right, believes the promises of God, is declared righteous. What are those promises in? That's not just generic faith. It's saving faith that's centered in the covenant promises centered in Christ. So it's the same way of salvation, except we now know, right, who this one is that's now come, so we have obviously more knowledge, but it's still by grace through faith and the promises of God, centered in the covenant promises, centered in Christ. So Genesis 3.15, how is Adam saved? He believes the promise. Alright, how does CT and Federalist change the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday? Well, usually the argument is tied to the resurrection, right? So, there's a transfer from the resurrection Sunday, the Lord's Day, so that now comes over and you have the Lord's Day in the New Testament. They're meeting on the first day of the week, tied to the resurrection. So, that's the justification for it. But you still have to wrestle with, you know, is there a day? You have the Lord's Day, but is that viewed as the Christian Sabbath? And you then have to then say, I say to solve the Sabbath issue, you have to treat the Sabbath under the old covenant. What's it doing there? How is it functioning as tied to the entire covenant? What's it looking back to? It's looking back to both creation in Exodus and redemption in Deuteronomy, so it's becoming a typological, it's a command, but it's a type that looks back to what was done in the rest of creation, the redemption that comes, so the rest becomes a salvation theme, and it looks forward to the salvation, the rest that comes in Christ, right? And Hebrews 3 and 4, I think, is definitive, and you do not have any kind of Sabbath transfer in the New Testament. So, and elaborate on that, no Sabbath transfer? Well, I mean, you have Colossians 2, which says, you know, in terms of certain days, but Paul's dismissing those days, and it has to be a reference to the Sabbath, right? So where you see in the New Testament the practice of the Sabbath, right? You also, I mean, they make a whole creation argument on Genesis 2 in terms of the rest, but there's no evidence that we have any Sabbath practice up until the Old Covenant. I mean, where is it in the patriarchs? Where is it? So if it's a creation order, you'd expect to see Sabbath everywhere, just as you see temple building everywhere and so on, but you don't see it. So I think their understanding of creation is not correct. It's not a set day. It's ultimately God entering rest that becomes a pattern for us, and it's tied to then our enjoyment of him that gets lost in the fall, and you then work through the covenants that brings the restoration of rest. Kind of a side note, are you familiar with some of the Reformers' views on the Sabbath, like Luther or Calvin? Well, Calvin, I mean, spoke depending on which context. Sometimes he sounds Sabbatarian and other times he doesn't. So the Sabbath as a day and setting it apart and then societal application of it really takes place in the post-Reformation era. And it takes place among the Puritans. So that's really where it develops fully. It's not even in the Reformers in the full sense. All right, and on that note, let's see. So post-Reformation, we have the CT developing. Mid-1800s, we have dispensationalism developing with John Darby. And New Covenant, what year would we put on that with this development? Well, it would be Apostle Paul. So we all do that. You won. So if the 1689 Federalist guys are right, which they seem to be, the Baptists were already, in light of the Reformation, modifying covenant theology. So that's already going on. They may not have formulated exactly how it's being formulated today, but there's obviously some similarities there, right? So you could say the same period of time that covenant theology is developing, so the Baptists are also developing a covenant view that is not the same, right? So the same period. And then, of course, there's roots of these kind of views all the way back to Iridaeus in the early church. And even in the Reformation, you can see elements of it. So it's got a whole history to it, but it's not developed in terms of a whole view, just as the doctrine of justification wasn't developed fully until the Reformation, just as Baptist theology wasn't developed fully until a certain time. So I would say it's going on during the post-Reformation era side by side with Westminster Confession and others. 1689 London Baptist Confession is modifying things. Alright, would you say that covenant theology is downplaying the New Covenant and playing up the Old Covenant too much? Well, I think, I mean, you usually could draw that conclusion. I mean, what they're emphasizing is the one covenant of grace, and viewing all the covenants under that umbrella, right? So it looks like the new covenant is being de-emphasized, because I think in Scripture, everything is moving to the new covenant, and the new covenant brings change and transformation. They would say, simply, they're just simply speaking of the one covenant. So, they would never say that they're downplaying, but in the end, I think as we look at how the covenants work, they are accounting for the newness of the new covenant and how all the covenants are leading to it. Did the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery in the 20th century make any distinct changes to dispensational or covenant theology? I'm not aware of anything, I mean, other than dispensational thought, I wouldn't, I don't think there's anything there. Covenant, I mean, there is the debate, not so much within covenant theology, but the larger circles about what first century Judaism was in terms of covenants, grace, obedience, that eventually shows up in a new perspective. So there was debates that came out of the discovery going back to that period of time of what the Jewish people actually held to. So that's happened, but I don't see a whole lot of modification. There has been, in terms of the study of ancient Near East literature, a way of categorizing the covenants that became more dominant. So promise covenants, royal grant in terms of unconditional covenants, suzerain vassal in terms of bilateral covenants. that discussion of ancient Near East covenants came into, okay, what is the Bible doing, right? So the old covenant was viewed as a bilateral suzerain vassal, so Meredith Klein was big on this, and that affected covenant theology and affected all the discussion of covenants. Okay, and you're going to add some background on this one, but can you respond to Sam, I believe the last name is, Renahan's review and critique of kingdom through covenant, second part of the question, particularly to how PC's covenant of creation is similar to covenant of works in their view of typology? Yeah, Sam Renahan, over the years, and the 1689 guy, so in 2012, when Kingdom Through Covenant came out, they then started responding, I can't remember, a year or two later. Their understanding was poor. And then it's gotten better, because I think they've had some pushback, and they've read it, and this type of thing, right? So I think what Sam, in his latest book on Christ, and he's a small little kind of looking through the covenants and so on, I mean, his view of typology would be very similar to what I would hold to, that it's God-given, it's prophetic, that it, I haven't seen him develop it in terms of all fulfilled in Christ, or brought to fulfillment in Christ to the church, but I think he would agree with that. So I think there's very similar points there. I think on the covenant of works and so on, again, the basic point of Adam is called to perfect obedience, he's given to give total devotion to God, he disobeys, he represents the human race as covenant head type of thing, all similar. So I think the only difference would be we would maybe speak of the covenant of works in more full terms, but even he's doing that now. So a lot of people have modified just simply saying covenant of works is simply obedience, merit, so on. A lot of people are getting away from that. So there'll be a lot of similarities. Okay, how do the Ten Commandments apply to Gentiles? You are to obey the Ten Commandments. Now, let me add, you are to obey the Ten Commandments as you are to obey all of Scripture. How do you obey all of Scripture? Well, you take the Ten Commandments and you say, where are we in the Bible? Ultimately, what covenant are we under? How do we understand their functioning in that covenant? How is it tied then to the Old Testament and how is it brought to fulfillment? So we obey the Ten Commandments as we do all of Scripture in and through its fulfillment in Christ. So as it works out. No, but as it works out, you would say, so think of the preamble of the Ten Commandments. I'm the Lord your God who took you out of Egypt. How does that come over to us now, right? Well, the exodus, right, the exodus was a real event that took them out of Egypt, but it becomes an entire typological pattern, doesn't it? That exodus ultimately culminates in Christ and his redemptive work on the cross, which we are then redeemed. So in light of the coming of the new covenant, we read about the exodus that took place. We're not under that old covenant as covenant. but we are under it as scripture, and in some ways we would say we have no other God before us, we love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we do not take his name in vain in a far greater way, in light of the coming of Christ, right? But we do so in and through the lens of the New Covenant. We would even then say that, and I think most of the Ten Commandments are simply reflecting love of God and neighbor. I mean, the first four, the last six, first four are love of God, the last six are love of neighbor. The issues of the Sabbath is where it gets the tricky issue. But all of that is just love of God and neighbor, and then it gets fleshed out in the Old Covenant in the specifics of that Old Covenant. Well, we're not under the specifics of that Old Covenant, but we still have to see how the whole Bible through Christ is saying love God and neighbor. So all of that still comes over, and in some sense, the Sermon on the Mount is doing that, right? So it's not, under the Old Covenant, it wasn't just that everything was external. Some people try to say that. No, there was an internal demand. So think of murder, right? So even if you have anger, you're not to have that. Well, that was somewhat found in the Old Testament as well. I mean, that's not just Jesus saying that. Yet, the expectation is with the dawning of the kingdom, and the dawning of the new age, there's such transformation that even now, what's true of the new heavens and earth has begun to be worked out in you, right? So there's a sense in which there's a greater demand. And of course, that's why you want to avoid any notion of sort of antinomianism. It's not putting yourself under the law, it's you're seeing the very fulfillment of that law, right? And what it ultimately has led to. All right, is the promise in Genesis 315 also progressive? See 2 Corinthians 1.20. 2 Corinthians 1.20 reads, for all the promises of God find their yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our amen to God for his glory. Yes, yes. I mean, I do think, which is not new to me, I mean, the early church called it the first gospel promise, right? Genesis 315, it's not much. Right, so you need more detail. Seat of the woman, that's pretty broad. So there's even, some will say in Genesis 4.1 that Eve, she brings forth Cain, and there's even an expression there in the Hebrew that she may be thinking, is this the one? Obviously it's not. So there's the progression of who is the seat of the woman? Well, as you work through the covenants, you have definition. It's with Noah, clearly it's going to come from Noah, because that's all the family left, but then it's then tied to Shem, and then it's tied through Abraham, it's tied through Isaac, and then it just gets defined so that we then have definition, so it's a progress of revelation. All right, how do covenant theologians view Deuteronomy 28, second part of the question, a new, a new, I'm looking for the word, a new one perhaps, a new covenant, or reaffirmation of Mosaic covenant? Do they reinvent, do they view it as unconditional still? Did you get that? Well, you're dealing at the end of Deuteronomy, the reaffirmation. You've got the blessing, the curses you have, and then eventually in Deuteronomy 30, right? So Moses is sort of laying out for Israel. their future. When you put the whole Pentateuch together, the first five books, Moses knows a lot, doesn't he? He's already thinking at the end of the Pentateuch, or not thinking, he's saying, you guys are useless. You're not going to obey anything. And what has to happen is God has got to circumcise your heart. And of course that is the anticipation of where the whole prophets go, right? That's the anticipation of the new covenant. So covenant theology will take that, but it still puts it under its rubric of the covenant of grace and so on. I would take that as to say, That old covenant, as it comes into the life of Israel, has many purposes. One of the crucial is prophetic, it points forward, it does that, but it also primarily brings condemnation. And in Israel's experience, it showed the height of human sin to drive them. I mean, the true, the Old Testament saint, I mean, we don't know what they were all thinking, right? We have sort of a list of them in Hebrews 11 and so on, but they would have known that they would have been saved by grace through faith and the promises of God, they would have obeyed God and the covenantal structures, but they would have always looked beyond. They would have looked to what was to come, right? Most of the Jews never did. They just sat there and thought that they were fine in themselves. And so that's what Moses is laying out, and really, by the time you get out of the Pentateuch, all of the whole Old Testament covenants are in some shape or form mentioned. Because in Deuteronomy 17, you have the anticipation of the king, which is Davidic, right? So even by the time you get out of the Pentateuch, even before they get into the promised land, in some sense, you have all of Old Testament history laid out for you. All right, and so a new covenant or reaffirmation in Deuteronomy 28? Well, in terms of the second generation going in, it's a reaffirmation of the previous covenant to a new generation. And it's also, in Deuteronomy, when you compare it to Exodus, it's dealing with now life in the land, right? So there's elements there that are new, but it's a reaffirmation of what was already there at Sinai with the new generation. Okay, would you say that there is a distinction between the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament saints and the indwelling and gift of the Holy Spirit in New Covenant believers? If not, would you please expound a little? John 16, 7, 8 comes to mind on this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do think the best way to say is regeneration would have to be everything since the fall. So regeneration now, In theology, regeneration has been defined in different ways. So in the Reformation, when you read the Reformers, they mean regeneration, which includes sanctification as well. So you have to be very careful when you read what are they actually meaning. I'm using regeneration in the sense of God by His Spirit. So in the Old Testament, it's Yahweh, but obviously, it's the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God brings life from death, so new life, so what we typically tie to the doctrine of regeneration. Old Testament saints would have to be, in my mind, regenerated, right? So there would have to be the work of God in them. So whether it's Noah, whether it's Adam, whether it's Abraham, Abraham's a pagan, but he is saved by grace, right? He's chosen and so on, so he's a work of regeneration. Indwelling, I do think, is a new covenant phenomena. Now, the presence of God is really difficult, right? Because God is all present, right? So it's not as if he's geographically distant from us. Yet, covenantally, right, to the unbeliever, we're far from Him. That's not geographical, that's in relationship, we're under judgment, right? So everything of the Old Testament, though, of the covenantal presence of God, right? So you have His omnipresence, but you also have a unique presence of God with His people and so on, is always done through structures. You go to the tabernacle, to the temple, holy of holies, only the high priest can get in. All of that has been fulfilled. So that Christ is the true temple, he makes us temples, the Spirit of God dwells with us. So it's not that he's in us in the sense of part of us, we are now in relation with him and there's an actual unique work of the Spirit that would be different than the Old Testament saint. you do see anticipation of the kind of empowering work of the Spirit on prophets, priests, and kings. That wasn't universal to the whole people. So in the New Covenant, you would have both all of the people empowered by the Spirit, that's Acts 2, and you would have all of the people indwelled by the Spirit. All right, to sum it up, you would say regeneration remains the same. I think regeneration makes the same, but the indwelling is a New Covenant phenomenon. Quantitative or qualitative? I'd say qualitative. Qualitative difference. Yeah, I don't think it's just quantity. Okay. There's something the new covenant brings. greater, it's not a different salvation, but the experience, right? Think we can have access to God, the holy of holies, we're, you don't go to a place, right? John 4, to the Samaritan woman, you know, it's not going to Mount Gerizim or here, I mean, it's, yeah, and then, of course, the presence of God with the people of God in the church, right? There is a unique presence that, obviously, God's present with Israel, But it's always done through structures. Those structures are now gone in the New Covenant. Okay, let's see. Apart from eschatology, what are the differences you would see fleshed out in daily living between these three different theological systems in a practical way, not in just academic? Yeah, I mean, I think in the most, there's the same basic view of the gospel, same view of salvation and so on, but I do think in Progressive Covenant or New Covenant, there is a sense, I have to be very careful what I say here. I do think practically, I mean, there's a sense of glory and grace. The glorying in Christ, not that the other ones don't do that, but that's the focus, that's the emphasis. So even when I talk to some Reformed Baptists, I mean, when I talk to them, it's all law, law, law, law. And so it's like, well, what are you talking about? So it's almost as if that's the focus, right? Or keeping this or keeping that. I just sense a difference with what we're trying to say is that there's a real rejoicing in sovereign grace, appreciation for Christ, appreciation for His work. Now again, they are doing that as well, so I don't want to say that's not the case, but I do think that makes a practical difference. A practical difference in how one preaches, how one approaches the Bible, how one sees the entire message of the gospel, and so on. All right, interesting question, a little bit of a twist. In the context of a dating relationship, would it be a sin to date a dispensationalist? No, just kidding. It's a little bit different than that. Would it be a deal breaker to date someone who is a dispensationalist when you hold to covenant theology, specifically if you are a woman who will need to submit to the spiritual leadership of your husband? Well, I could get into some trouble here, but in my view, submission to spiritual leadership is first submission to scripture. So, it's not that you're in a constant fight with your husband, but I mean, if you actually disagree with scripture, and there has to be a resolution to that. So even then, there's always the word of God that trumps anybody, right? I don't care who you are, God is the Lord, and you have to put everybody under scripture. So obviously there's a husband and wife relationship that has to be worked out, right? So I don't see it as a deal breaker. I mean, I think where you get into issues is more practical issues. If you were to put somebody that's convinced of a believer's baptism with infant baptism, what do you do with your children? you have to make a decision, right? So what are you gonna do? So on those areas that cause practical difference, I mean, you're gonna have to resolve some of that, and it would be helpful to do it before you get married. Now, dispensationalism, I mean, you just have a different view of Israel church, and you can have healthy conversations, but I think on the more covenant side, you have the practical issues of raising children. All right, and scripture points to law on their hearts, Yeah, I mean, well, and also, you know, Jeremiah 31 first. Okay. As you mentioned, if this is not referring to the Decalogue, what do these scriptures point to? Oh, so the law written on the heart. So yeah, Jeremiah 31 is going to write the law on the heart. Ultimately, I would think the law on the heart is tied to the Decalogue in that sense. And what's the Decalogue? At its heart, unless you're going to make the Decalogue the entire Sabbath, the Decalogue is love of God and neighbor. It's written on the heart. And that's from creation, right? I mean, we all know, as we were talking last night about Romans 1, right? What's Romans 1 to the Gentile? Romans 1 is a violation of God and neighbor. Right? It's the turning over of created order, right? Is that we make the creator, right? We make him the creature. We become idolaters. And in all that he's made, we turn the entire order upside down. We are disobedient to parents, which is tied to creation. We yell and scream at one another. We sexual immorality. I mean, all of that is the outworking of denial of God and the way I'm supposed to be as male and female and as a creature. That's what's written on the heart. Okay, so not the Ten Commandments. Well, I mean, the Ten Commandments are just reflecting the Great Commandment. I mean, like, too much has been made of the Ten Commandments in the sense that they reflect our responsibilities before God and for one another, right? And then they're fleshed out specifically. But those kind of laws would be written on a Gentile heart to a certain point. Is he not supposed to murder somebody? Is he not supposed to steal? Is there supposed to be an honoring of parents? Of course there is. In most societies, moral societies, you see that, where there's common grace and people haven't seared their conscience. What is at stake for each system? For example, what do dispensationalists have to lose from being wrong? Well, certainly not salvation or anything, but just a different way of understanding how the scriptures fit together, and I think it will have some practical effects on seeing how Christ is the fulfillment, how the promises are brought to pass, and it orients their thinking in different directions. If you talk with a lot of dispensationalists, they can tend to focus on areas that move them in a different way. All right, let's see, Acts 239, this might involve looking up. Would you agree that the phrase at the end of Acts 239, even as many as the Lord our God shall call, qualifies the preceding two phrases? In other words, when it says, to your children Yeah, I mean, you're dealing with a crucial text for covenant theology and defense of infant baptism, right? So Peter will say on Pentecost, you know, this gospel message is to you and your children and those who are far off who are called and so on, right? So usually what happens, in my view, is that we have, first of all, no example of infant baptism in the entire New Testament. That doesn't matter to that because it's built off of the argument from the old that just automatically carries through unless it's explicitly abrogated. So you have all of that carry through. We have no specific example, so you have to find texts to try to then say, well, here's how it's old, that must be children. Here's Acts 2.39. Here's, you know, your children are holy and so on. So these become texts to try to buttress. The problem is circumcision does not move to baptism. You can try all you want, it just doesn't do it. So that's the problem, right? So this text now, I would say, in terms of the question, yes, those other points are qualifying it, but it's still begging the question. I still wouldn't even let them off the hook there. So I wouldn't say, oh, I just have the end of those verses and that'll solve the issue. They have to show that as you walk through the covenants and the reality of the new covenant, this promise is for you and your children and that assumes the entire genealogical principle that already has been transformed in the prophets, that the new covenant promises already said, We're looking for a regenerate community. I mean, you have to assume your entire system to make that passage work, which is that dispute. So I do think at the end it qualifies it, but you need much more than just that to defend the view of infant baptism from that. And at the heart, I mean, what's going on here is Peter is saying, this gospel message, he's speaking in the Jewish context, the gospel's now gone to Jerusalem, it's now moving to Judea, Samaria, and ultimately to the Gentiles. So it's this expanse of the kingdom, and he's saying, this new covenant message is for you, your children, those who are far off. Well, what else is he going to say? It's for you. Believe. And so on. And he's calling them to faith and repentance. He's not calling them to faith and repentance and then go, evidence of go then take your children and baptize them or something like that. He's calling them to believe. He's calling them to repent and to respond to Christ. All right. Let's see. A couple of questions came in online here. After the consummation of all things, Revelation 21, 23 through 26 says, and the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. Who are these nations in verse 24 and verse 26? Are these separate from the church? Oh, wait, let me, sorry, he revised that question at the end here. So the actual question is this, who are these nations and kings of the earth who exist outside of hell after the consummation who are able to approach Christ? Is this the church? If so, is not the church one nation under one king? This is a crucial dispensational text. They're trying to go to the end of the Bible and say, here's the reality of nations in the new heavens and new earth. That's possible. You've got the nations being discussed. Now, there's other factors, too. So that, first of all, what's going on is they're picking up Old Testament language, right? So the Book of Revelation is taking Old Testament language of people streaming to the mountain of God and so on from other nations and so on, and that nation's genesis to the kings bowing down and these kind of things. So it's now picking up the triumph of Christ's work, the people of God from all these groups and nations and so on. That doesn't entail, first of all, that now suddenly these are Israel nation, Gentile nations, all kind of separate, distinct, different privileges. You're going to have to argue that on other grounds. It's simply in the new heavens and earth we have people from every tribe, nation, people, tongue, there's kings, there's this and that, and they're all coming to worship. In chapter 21, as well, right, who's, you know, so you have a constellation of images. I see a new heavens and new earth. I take the phrase, then as he looks, he sees the heavenly Jerusalem coming down. That's not, now, you could say that's a city within the new heavens and new earth, but it's another image based upon the Old Testament that the entire new heavens and new earth is the city. So it's another way of saying, and then of course there's no temple there tied to Jerusalem. The whole place is the Holy of Holies, the whole new heavens and earth. So it's now Eden expanded. But who also now is the new Jerusalem? It's the bride. The only bride you have in the Revelation of the New Testament is the church. So a dispensational thought, even if you appeal to those texts later on, the church for them is not, it's morphed into nations, but that's not how, the New Jerusalem is described as the bride and so on and so on. So you have to then take the entire section, how the covenants work, and there's no evidence that those nations now are separate nations. Israel, Gentiles, distinct privileges, and even taking the New Jerusalem as just simply a part of the entire creation. It's coextensive with it. So I think they're getting the vision of Revelation based on the Old Testament incorrect. So just a couple more here. Your view of theonomy. I guess I could be multifaceted, but you could give a, sum it up kind of quickly. Well, it all depends what you mean by the term, right? So generally, when people ask theonomy, right, they're thinking of a specific subset of covenant theology within Reformed Paedo-Baptist covenant theology that believes in the threefold division of the law, that follows the hermeneutic, that unless it's specifically abrogated, it carries through. So the ceremonial system has been specifically abrogated. The moral law has not, so there's that carrying over. And also the rules for Israel's theocracy would then come over to the state. So that's generally how theonomy is understood. So my point of that is, It's a misunderstanding of the covenant as a covenant. It is failing to distinguish properly the nations, right? And what Israel was as a theocracy that shows itself ultimately in the church, right? So not that we go to Israel to church, but it shows itself through Christ to the church. We are the eschatological Israel. We are the true Israel. We are the Israel of God and so on. So you can't just go from, so the church is a theocracy, but even then there's transformation. So we don't just bring over Old Testament laws, you know, just directly to the church. We have to see how it comes in the New Covenant. So every time we do church discipline in its worst-case scenario, we're doing far more than stoning of adulterers or something like that. in the old, because we're actually casting them out of the kingdom with hopes that they repent. So that's a part of how this comes over to the church. But you can't then just flip it over to the state without asking what rules apply to the state, so there has to be a proper church-state distinction and so on. So the fundamental problem is, I think, It's a misunderstanding of how the covenants work, how fulfillment is brought. You can't just move from theocracy of Israel to then the role of the state. Now, theonomy, if you mean we are governed by God's law, well, everyone believes that. It's the adding the specificity to what actually the law is, what domain it functions in, so what's the role of the state, what's the role of the church, what applies to us, so you have to have a conversation. Normally, theonomy is, is the trying to apply Old Testament law to Israel to the state. And I would say that's not working with a proper covenantal distinction. Alright, does anyone have another question they would like to ask that I did not ask or you didn't get a card filled out? Over there. Young man in the red hat. With a beautiful beard. What do you put in that beard, by the way? that a lot of the curses of the law of the prophet are applicable to nations like America, founded on biblical principles, but are now, obviously, we're slaughtering 2 million since Roe versus Wade, all kinds of things that are going on, debauchery, everything. So is it consistent to say that God still applies those curses Well, I mean, certainly the applying of judgment, which would be curses, to any nation that stands against what God has demanded in moral law and so on is true. Whether I would say that the actual curses of Deuteronomy come one for one over, I would be very hesitant to do that, right? So I would argue it on other grounds, right? I wouldn't say... The curses of Deuteronomy now apply right to the United States. You have to say, no, that's here under the nation of Israel, and the nation of Israel is not the United States. We are now the church, the state, there's a church-state distinction. Yet, we are under judgment. How do we know that? Well, any... Well, I mean, Sodom and Gomorrah was under judgment, right? I mean, other places. Whenever we say and turn against what I would argue, first and foremost, would be what people know from creation order, natural revelation, and so on, which would be minimally sanctity of human life, male, female, proper sexuality, family, private property, I mean, all that, once that's all violated, you're under the judgment of God. And Romans 1 makes that very, very clear. So I don't think you have to go explicitly from the curses over to the nation of America, to the United States type of thing. Yet there is, there's obviously judgment that comes, and so I would go to the prophets and see what does God condemn Assyria, Nineveh, these places for, and what you'll normally see there is it's violation of human dignity and proper sexuality and a whole set of things. And that's what, even in the Levitical code, God is saying, don't you do this, like the nations, right? They should know better, and don't you dare, otherwise you'll come under judgment. So judgment is true, and Romans 1 is the more you see these things in the society, the more that you know you're under judgment, right? to answer your question, Kyle? And kind of a part B to that question, you're under judgment. When you say you're under judgment, you're talking about the nation or that person individually? How do you differentiate these? Yeah, I mean, the wrath of God is against ungodliness, righteousness of men, which includes both individuals and nations. It's not just the individual in it. Of course, then you're saying individual within it. you can be exempt from it. Daniel, you know, was under judgment with Israel, but he's living in, is in exile, and so on. That's Israel. But, you know, individual believers and so on still have to pay the consequences of leadership that is absolutely, totally incompetent, right? I mean, we pay the taxes. We live with the violence in the streets. We live, you know, when they defund the police, well, you're going to pay the price for it, aren't you? So, I mean, there's where the individual and corporate, but it's not as if we're attributing corporate guilt to always the individual. That has to be, the balance between corporate and individual has to be carefully weighed, but there still are corporate structures that people are accountable for. And you'd have to add with this country, the principle you'd have to add is, you know, it's one thing to have Gentile nations that have never heard and never had the gospel and never had the Bible, Let me tell you, if you had the Bible and you now turn from it, there will be swifter judgment. And of course, there I think there's an application from Israel. Even though we are not Israel, in Romans 1, 2, and 3, Gentiles are under judgment, but the Jew is under greater judgment. So we're not the chosen nation, but we've had privilege upon privilege upon privilege, and we have turned everything on its head. All right, any other questions? Anyone? One more question, anybody? Right there. As far as the covenant theology saying that whatever is abrogated in the New Testament It's a crucial principle, so if it's clearly abrogated, it's no longer enforced. Yeah, just in terms of the imperatives that we draw from the whole Bible. I mean, there's two hermeneutics at work often, and I think we need a combination of both. So clearly, if the New Testament abrogates something, it's abrogated. I mean, the circumcision is done. Food laws are done, right? I mean, that's really, really helpful to know what's done. We also know that we're not under those covenants as well, so we expect that is probably the case, right? Because now we're living under the new covenant. Another hermeneutic is unless it is explicitly picked up type of thing, then we don't have to obey anything. And of course, the test case on this and it's not a pleasant conversation, but the test case on this is bestiality. Because theonomists love to appeal to this, because they'll say, look, where in the New Testament do you ever have a prohibition against bestiality? Well, you don't. So they'll say, see, you need the law to tell you it's wrong. I say no, right? Is that the law certainly is helpful in telling you it's wrong, but we know bestiality is wrong from creation. And all the law is doing is reflecting Genesis 2 and Genesis 1. Male, female, marriage, one flesh union, anything outside of that is sin. So it's just simply going back to that standard and order. So what we need then is a careful hermeneutic that puts the whole Bible together. So first, we are under the new covenant, we're not under the previous covenants. So this is where, you know, the phrase I take from Brian Rosner, we're not under them as covenants, we're under them as scripture. And that's very important because all of scripture is for us. We have to see the scripture now brought to fulfillment in terms of Christ, but we also have to think through the Bible's entire structures. Creation, fall, redemption, new creation is very, very helpful, right? There's a creation order, that is the norm. There's a fall that distorts that order, and then through redemptive history, culminating in the New Covenant, there's a restoration of that order. Now there's some changes, because in the new heavens and new earth, there's no giving in marriage, so you can't just sort of bring marriage back forever type of thing. So you need the whole Bible to put that together. But we now in the New Covenant have, in some sense, creation order brought. So why? You know, this polygamy, you know, it's not, it's wrong, it's sometimes never spoken against directly, it's allowed, it's not allowed in the New Covenant. Why? Because creation order is restored, right? So you need larger structures, right? You need to say, yes, if it's explicitly abrogated, I clearly know this, but I also need a whole Bible to know how these covenants are functioning, what's brought to fulfillment, What is constant through redemptive history? So, you know, a lot of times people are referring to the law. The law is very, very helpful, but a lot of it's just picking up order that is tied to creation and so on and so on, right? So you have to put the whole Bible as a whole canon together. So that's how I would say that's how you do ethics, right? And so it looks, you know, it looks a lot like the Ten Commandments in some sense, doesn't it? Because Ten Commandments are reflecting moral norms, right? I mean, they're reflecting who God is and who you are and what he made you for and everything else. But you don't just have to sort of isolate it and say, well, we're gonna have to threefold, that's just not how the New Testament draws these conclusions. All right, well that does wrap it up. Dr. Willem will be preaching here tomorrow morning. If you're from the area, feel free to stay with us and he'll be preaching at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. Lots of books still available back at the back that Dr. Willem has contributed or written as well. Make sure you get one of those as well to take home with you. And any final questions? You guys all good? all right well he'll hang around great to talk to and I appreciate you coming in and talking to us appreciate the conference for preaching tomorrow and just being just a general wonderful guy to talk to if you hadn't had a chance to get to definitely come say hi to him let's pray we'll be dismissed Heavenly Father we worship you we praise your holy name. We thank you God for giving us clarity this weekend for this conference We thank you for dr Willem and all that you've done to bring him to us today and all those who have contributed to him and we continue to pray for his work as he's raising up the next pastors the next Missionaries then the next the next people who will be be leading churches Lord and pray that he would equip them with your word and a good understanding of your word so they can go forth and equip others Lord and We pray for his role in the Southern Seminary and for his future there and wherever he goes from there Continuing to to teach students Lord and to raise them up and just just thank you for him God thank you for our time today to look over these things and Letting us think deeply about your word and I just pray that indeed we would submit to your word and see that it is breathed out By you and help us to be people of your word in Jesus name. We pray. Amen Thanks for coming guys