Big Beautiful Babtists

It’s the penultimate episode of season 3, and the Book War is heating up. Pastor Dave has a chance to clinch the title, but can Pastor Bob mount a late-season comeback? Before the big reveal, the pastors turn their attention to a heartbreaking national tragedy: the deadly Texas flood that devastated Camp Mystic. With personal ties to the story, Dave and Bob reflect on grief, loss, and the quiet power of faith amid chaos, including the incredible account of a Jersey-born Coast Guard hero who saved over 160 lives.

From sorrow to ecclesiology, the conversation shifts to the distinctives that define the Baptist tradition. Pastor Dave takes listeners on a theologically rich (and occasionally hilarious) tour through Baptist history—covering everything from autonomous church governance to why Baptists don’t baptize babies, with a few purple book covers and goat cheese tangents along the way.

Also in this episode: a listener question on Jeremiah 31 and the New Covenant, a theology sprint on sinning in your dreams, and a friendly debate on baptism, membership, and church polity. Throw in a few summer wildlife encounters, a salad that may or may not be overrated, and a preview of next week’s finale, and you’ve got another classic Behind the Pulpit blend of heart, humor, and deep biblical insight.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:04 In The News
11:37 The Great Book War
20:00 Sermon Recap
22:39 Audience Question
27:47 Baptist Breakdown
54:47 Chart Sightings
1:01:15 Theology Sprint
1:06:40 Church Body Life

Episode Transcript

Bob (00:00):
Hello, everybody.
Welcome to Behind the Pulpit.
We have one big, beautiful showtoday.
We're so glad that you'rejoining us for July the 7th.
We are now into the seventhmonth of the year on July 7th at
7-7-2025.
And I'm joined here by Waldo tomy left.
Here I am.
That's the striped shirt.
We

Dave (00:20):
found him.
We found him, folks.
Thank you.
This is my Blue's Clues shirt,not Waldo.
Oh, that's true.
Good to see you, man.
Blue's Clues.
One big beautiful show.
I see what you did there, man.
I did.

Bob (00:38):
I did.
Although we're not going totalk about the one big beautiful
bill.
It passed today, Bob.
I'm doing good.
I'm doing good.
I'm hanging in here.
It was a little cooler downhere than it was outside.
And so I think we're going tohave an action-packed show
today.
By the way, I was told in thelobby yesterday that people were
tuning in just to hear melaugh.
So I'm counting on you to makesome jokes today.

(01:00):
I will do that.
Okay.
There we go.
All right.
So we got a good show for youtoday, and as usual, why don't
we kick it off with our In theNews segment.
Alright, as always, so much totalk about in the news.
Where to begin?
Where to begin, Pastor Dave?
But, we did discuss this, andwe're going to focus in on the

(01:24):
tragic story that happened downin Texas this last week with
this flooding, and many, manypeople have lost their lives.
It's a sad, sad tragedy,especially at this Mystic Camp.
Headline I'm looking at rightnow includes 27 girls and
counselors from the camp, 82killed.
It's pretty horrific.

(01:45):
And, you know, I didn't grow upin Texas, but you were telling
me that the river can get prettyhigh pretty quick.
I think they told me it wentup, if you read the news story,
it went up by a bunch of feet inlike Yeah,

Dave (02:03):
there's a lot of fake news out there, but it does surge.
Back in 1987, it did the samething.
My summers were oftentimesspent in the Texas area, and the
Guadalupe River is kind of likehow we tube down the Delaware
in Jersey.
That's the place to go to tubedown in Texas.

(02:24):
And so I've done a lot oftubing down the Guadalupe, many,
many summers.
It's usually pretty slow,pretty uneventful in the month
of July, not much going on.
on.
In fact, you have to paddle toget down that river.
But this weekend, it wasobviously devastatingly raging.
I also did a lot of travelingand speaking in the West San

(02:45):
Antonio area.
So I'm very familiar with thehill country.
It's a beautiful place.
It's some of the only mountainsthere in Texas.
But because of that, there's alot of limestone.
And when the rain comes,there's really nowhere for it to
saturate into any of the groundthere.
So it just starts to pile up inthe river bed and then it goes

(03:05):
whooshing down in a ragingfashion.
And when I woke up Saturdaymorning, this story really
rocked my world.
I, you know, just to thinkabout, you know, I've sent my
daughters to camp to sleep awaycamp.
And just to think about yoursecond grade, uh, little girl
having a tragedy like that fourin the morning, I think they got

(03:26):
like a year's worth of rain inlike four hours.
And, uh, just how, uh, Howterrifying it must have been for
those campers and for anyone inthe nearby area to have that
tragedy occur.
We're certainly praying forthose who have lost family
members and praying for a quickrecovery of that area.

(03:46):
But a devastating story thatjust kind of took my heart out
of my chest.
Having little girls myself andremembering...
Those kinds of fun memorieswith, you know, Christian summer
camps, just obviously sort offamilies living in an absolute
nightmare right now.
So the current

Bob (04:08):
death toll, it stands at 82.
Most of those in Kerr County,at least 68 people have died,
including 28 children, as youmentioned, girls in that age
range, which my daughter is, myoldest daughter is right now.
So it's, you know, prettyterrifying to think about that.
10 girls from the camp arestill missing.
On

Dave (04:27):
the plus side...
Camp Mystic.
I understand the director wasalso someone who was trying to
rescue his campers and passedaway in his efforts to try to
save as many lives as he couldas well.
I actually have a personalconnection with somebody who
died.
So my daughter Alex went to lawschool with...

(04:50):
A student that just, herparents live in the West Texas
area, and she was there forFourth of July weekend.
So she went to law school withAlex, went to Emory, and then
she also got hired at the samefirm in Atlanta that Alex is
working at.
And she was...
She was killed this weekendbecause of this raging river.

(05:14):
It was her and her dad and hermom.
And the dad, somehow, I thinkthe story is he found a tree to
hold on, and he was trying tohold on to his wife and
daughter, and they slipped offof his hands.
And the dad was...
He had to watch his own...
Wife and daughter go sweepingaway in the river.

(05:37):
So my daughter's somewhattraumatized by this story as
well.
Just a terrible, terribledisaster.
So certainly be praying forthose who have been affected by
this.
It's really a heart-wrenchingstory.
Last night, there were somepeople that were posting videos
of these girls on a bus goingback home, and they were singing

(06:01):
these Christian camp songs ontheir way back.
And I was like, wow, this isjust such a powerful moment as
these girls have have justexperienced the biggest crisis
of their lives.
And now here they are findingsome solace and comfort in God's
grace and singing thosetraditional camp songs that you
might sing at those places.

(06:22):
You can't even hear the detailsof the story without...
Tears come to your eyes.
This morning, I was struck bythe heroism of a guy from New
Jersey.
So there's this dude, ScottRuskin, who grew up not that far
from here, in the western partof Jersey.
I can't remember the town, buthe's in the Coast Guard.

(06:42):
He's an awesome swimmer.
He saved 165 people at CampMystic.
Wow.
This dude is a rock star, man.
He was using a helicopter, andso...
um he was lifting these girlsto safety one after the other
after the other sometimes hewould have two girls in one arm

(07:03):
and um one of the girls asked ifshe could bring her stuffed
animal he's like of course andhe's just like the hero of this
story um you know fred rogers umhas that famous saying that
when you hear this tragedy onthe news um look for the
helpers, try to find somecomfort in seeing who are the

(07:25):
people that are sacrificing andhelping.
And there is some beauty therewhen you see what people are
willing to do to lend a hand andput their own lives in danger
in order to help.
So that was a wonderful storyto read about, but obviously a
devastating news story, keepingthat whole area in prayer.

Bob (07:45):
So I think from a From a Christian worldview perspective,
this is a natural tragedy.
It wasn't necessarily anybody'sfault that this happened.
And yet, devastation anddestruction did happen.
Death happened.
And I think your illustrationabout those girls still choosing

(08:06):
to turn to the Lord, even inthe midst of that, is what we
see.
need to do.
It's to recognize that God isstill in control despite the
tragedies that happen in life.
And you have a choice either toturn to him or turn away from
him.
I'd rather turn to him and findhis grace even in these moments
of tragedy.

(08:26):
So certainly we should pray forthe families involved, continue
to pray for the rescue efforts,those that are still missing,
and just ask that God wouldintervene in that situation.

Dave (08:38):
Yeah, a good reminder that life is short.
Yes.
Yes.
Life is very fragile as well.
I will say I'm a littleannoyed.
Okay.
I feel like every single newsstory has to become somehow a
political pawn.
It has to be politicallycharged, no matter what it is.
Oh.
It used to be the case that asa nation, if there was a tragedy

(09:00):
or if there was a war orsomething like that,
partisanship would just get putaside and we would come together
and, you know, be Americans.
But no matter what happens, itseems like we're going to spin
this.
And, you

Bob (09:14):
know, it's somehow Trump's fault.

Dave (09:15):
Somehow there's, you know, there's the left and the right
are taking their before there'sany real data.
You know, they're talkingabout, oh, this must be climate
change.
And, oh, Trump made all thesecuts.
And so they didn't have theweather service people that they
need.
to have and there wasn'tadequate warning and you know
there's really no verifiableproof for any of that yet but

(09:37):
like right from the jump peopleare starting to raise their
voices in favor of politics andyou know I think you shouldn't
exploit a tragedy for your ownpolitical purpose.
Just imagine if that was yourchild.
I don't think that you wouldwant people grandstanding and
putting your child and theirstory in the forefront so that

(09:59):
they could use this as sort of aprop for their own political
purposes.
I just think we're better thanthat.
We don't have to go there andThat, to me, is sad, where we
are as a country.
So I wish we could have alittle bit more unity in that
way.
Devastating story.
Definitely a top news story ofthe weekend.
That was all over the news.

(10:19):
What else is going on?

Bob (10:23):
Well, that's all I had, unless you have something else
you want to put in there.
You guys have some other newsstories you want to bring up for

Dave (10:30):
Fodder today?
We'll just do one today.
That's fine.

Bob (10:31):
We can do one.
We can do one.
It was a holiday weekend.
We had our 249th anniversary,and we kicked off the 250th
year.
Yeah, man.
Did

Dave (10:39):
you see some fireworks or anything?

Bob (10:41):
I had fireworks in my driveway.

Dave (10:43):
Oh.

Bob (10:44):
In New Jersey, you can do that now.
I forgot.
Well, the little ones on theground that just kind of shoot
up and stuff.
All right.
Not going up in the air.
There you go.

Dave (10:52):
I went over to see a Somerset Patriots game with my
family.
They always have a goodfireworks display there.
The Patriots had a walk-offvictory in the 10th inning.
Did they?
So the home team won, and wegot to see some nice fireworks,
and I had a very overpricedcheesesteak.
No hot dogs.
No hot dogs.
Okay.
No.
Although we did have hot dogs,I think, for the first time ever

(11:12):
at Summer Connectionsyesterday.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
We did.
I don't think that's ever beenon the buffet before.

Bob (11:17):
We did.
I heard, was it Linda that wasworking really hard despite...
They were good.

Dave (11:22):
Thank you,

Bob (11:23):
Linda.
Yeah.
So thank you.
Those are some good dogs.
Yeah.
Very good.
Summer Connections is in thehouse.
It is.
It is.
We'll cover that a little bitlater.
Yes, we will.
All right.
So I heard we had an audiencequestion for us today.
We haven't had one of those ina while.
By the way, you can write inand ask us questions, and we
would love to answer them asbest we can.

(11:43):
The audience question isconnected to the sermon.
So do we want to do it now, ordo we want to do it a little bit
later?
All right, let's do a littlebit later.
I guess we can do the book warnow, right?
Shall we do the book war?
Let's do the book war.
By the way, so this is thepenultimate episode of the
season.
We're going to be taking abreak after next week, and then
we're going to be picking upwith our Isaiah series in

(12:05):
September.
I feel like every time you usethat word, we have to define it
again.
Penultimate is thesecond-to-last episode of the
season.
There we go.
So there you go.

Dave (12:16):
So for a little bit of background, last week we– We saw
Pastor Dave take a 16 to 13point lead in the book war.
And this week was a three pointvoting week.
So if Pastor Dave won thisweek, that means he would clinch
the book war title for theseason.

(12:36):
If not, we have a winner takeall book war match for this
week.
And the winner of the book warfor this week was not the
magazine.
It was the Baptist Confessionof Faith.
The Baptist Confession and theCatechism.
That's two books in one.
Here's the breakdown of thevotes.

(12:56):
We had six responses.
All right, all right, allright.
Bob got some love.
So the final score of the bookwar is...
is 13 to 19 Pastor Dave, whichmeans Pastor Dave is your book
war champion for season three.
I'd like to thank the Academy.
I'd like to thank all of thosepeople out there who watch and
made this possible.

(13:17):
I couldn't do it without you.
You are my people.
You are just showing you lotsof love right now.
Thank you so much.
We love you guys.
Right here.
That's where we get your goodbooks.
So, Pastor Bob, we have todiscuss with the unlucky loser.
Comments on the season, andwhat will you be doing next
season to ensure that you takethe title for season four?

(13:40):
Well, I'm

Bob (13:40):
not sure the voting was fair, because we started off
part of the year with you guys,and now we have some folks out
there, so it's been hard tounderstand what the people out
there like.
I guess they like what Dave hasto offer, so...
Anyway, I feel like we're

Dave (13:55):
not done, though.
Don't we have books today?
Yeah, you can recommend books,but I'm saying the war is over.
The war is over.
So this is like a peacetimebook recommendation?
I guess it is.
Just like the old

Bob (14:04):
days.
We'll see.
Maybe we can come together nextseason and we'll agree upon a
book to recommend.

Dave (14:11):
What if we did Noah and Tim's book versus Pastor Bob and
Pastor Dave's book?

Bob (14:16):
I thought you guys recommend that.
Oh, actually, that would beinteresting.

Dave (14:18):
Noah, have you read enough books to cover a season of...
40 something episodes yeah

Bob (14:22):
that's what you got you guys should have us vote on
books that you recommend thatwill be interesting and then
we'll decide is this worthy ofbeing included in the we can
have we can have a like a finalfour bracket with the books
that'd be fun we'll have a timeup with

Dave (14:38):
March Madness maybe we could do that we could find all
we could we put we can puttogether all the book
recommendations and come up witha bracket And March Madness
time next year.
Okay.

Bob (14:48):
There you go.
We'll see what goes.
All right.
So the book I was going torecommend today was just a book
called Christian Worldview byHerman Bovink.
And I'm recommending thisbecause our Colson Fellows
program is beginning next month.
By the way, if you are stillinterested, you can sign up by
August 1st.
So we have a couple more weeksfor that.

(15:08):
Bavink was a Dutch Reformedtheologian in the latter half of
the 1800s, beginning of the1900s.
He's written, probably hisbiggest book is the book
Reformed Dogmatics.
That's also been put in asmaller form.
And this is a compilationTranscription by CastingWords

(15:44):
This is the book for you, and Iwill just say it also looks
quite old, and maybe that iswhat people out there want.
So here you go,

Dave (15:52):
Christian Worldview.
I was going to say the one Ihave in my Amazon cart for the
Colson Fellows program does notlook like that.
I'm going to have to look back.

Bob (15:58):
Well, this book is not on the reading list.
Oh, it's not?
There's others, yeah.

Dave (16:02):
It's a different Bavinck.

Bob (16:03):
Although there are several Bavincks.
I don't think this book is onthe list.
We'll go back and look.
All right, what were you goingto recommend today?
You've got a stack of booksover there.
Yep, I do.
You were going to pick onebased on the one that I
recommended.
Okay.
Here's

Dave (16:22):
where I'm going today.
So this is a classic.
This is probably the second orthird revision.
It's by Bush and Nettles.
It's called Baptist and theBible.
Tom Nettles?
Yep.
And then it's been revised andexpanded.
There's something called theconservative, there's a
conservative resurgence insideof the Southern Baptist
Convention that occurred in likethe early 80s where they

(16:42):
started to take back sort oftheir key cardinal doctrines
because there was sort of aliberal theological slide in the
60s and 70s and this bookdocuments the complete history
of the Baptist view of scripturefrom going back all the way
back to like the early 1600s.
I love the creativity of theway this dude organized, these

(17:03):
two dudes organized the book.
What he does is he takesbiblical phrases from Genesis,
and part one's called In theBeginning God, chapter one's
called The Spirit of God MovedUpon the Face of the Waters, and
that's his...
sort of symbolic way ofcapturing the beginning of the
Baptist movement right and thenchapter two is like and God

(17:25):
divided the waters and that'sabout how there was this
division between the generalBaptist and the particular
Baptist and then it's like Godsaw that it was good and that's
all about the second LondonBaptist confession and how that
came to be and then it says thewaters brought forth abundantly
and then it starts talking aboutall these new Baptist leaders
that started coming on like youknow Bunyan and Benjamin Keech
and stuff like that.
Be fruitful and multiply.

(17:47):
He's talking about how thesenew Baptist leaders came on the
scene.
Unto a land I will show youthat talks about the missionary
movement.
It's just a really creative wayto organize history.
And so I really love this book.
If you really want to know fromsoup to nuts what the Baptists

(18:07):
do with the Bible throughouttheir history, this is where you
would go.
It's a classic.
It's so interesting.
And it's like all in one place.
And it's purple.
Yeah.
This covers kind of, I mean,this publication date on this
one is 99.
So this is what they were doingin the 90s.
The content of the book isexcellent.

(18:28):
Not good.
I don't know about the looks ofit, but fantastic.
I don't know.
The purple is the royal colorright there.
The Baptist and the Bible, man.
So it was first published in1980.
And it's become like the mostcomplete and...
often quoted sources for thisparticular topic.

Bob (18:47):
Some people were saying they need a new conservative
resurgence in the SouthernBaptist Convention.
Well, there's

Dave (18:52):
different issues now with the whole like the woke stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But back then it was moremostly dealing with inerrancy.
So that's when like the ChicagoStatement came out.
Right.
Sure.

Bob (19:03):
All right.
So those are the offeringstoday.
I guess they're not reallyworth.
How about you guys?
How about you guys vote?
Okay.
We'll see who's going to wintoday.
Oh, uh, Okay.
How do we do this

Tim (19:16):
again?
We haven't done it in a while.
Do we want to...
Well,

Bob (19:20):
actually, I think what you did was somebody recommended one
of you.
We had to...

Tim (19:26):
Oh, yeah.
That's right.
How about this?
Do you have one that you wouldpick?
I think so, yeah.
I have one that I would pick.
So we'll do this.
We'll do three, two,

Dave (19:38):
one.
And then after one, one wouldsay go.
Instead, we'll say Bob or Dave.
Okay.
Okay.
Three, two, one.
Dave.
Bob.
Uh-oh.
Oh.
It's a tie.
Split tie.
So we end with a tie.
There we go.
We end with a tie.
Everybody wins.
That seems appropriate.
This is interesting, though.

Bob (19:57):
All right.
Good book war.
There we go.
All right.
Audience question leading intothe...
Yeah, let's do it.
Or should I have him summarizea sermon and then we do the
audience question?

Dave (20:06):
Um...
Yeah, let's do that.
Why don't we summarize thesermon, we'll jump in with the
audience question, and then wecan get in the weeds.
There's a few charts here and30-something slides that we can
go through, so I'm looking

Bob (20:18):
forward to that.
Okay.
All right, so you covered thedistinctives of the Baptist
faith yesterday with youracronym of Baptists.
So why don't you give us alittle bit of a...
flyover of what, well actuallypick, what's your favorite
distinctive?
Maybe we should do that.

Dave (20:41):
If you had to pick one distinctive, which one do you
like?
You know, I guess probablyautonomous congregationalism.
So actually we were talkingabout, let's do this series
about the blueprint for ahealthy church and let's try to
cover topics that we don'tnormally cover about like why we
do church the way we do church.
And then somewhere in themiddle of the series, you and I
were having a conversation like,is there anything that we
haven't really covered in FirstTimothy that's like not in First
Timothy, but we should probablytalk about it because the

(21:03):
series is about how we dochurch.
And we decided, why don't wejust do a one-off week on the
Baptist distinctives?
And I don't think we knew whichone of us was going to do that,
but it just kind of landed onmy week, I guess.
And so, okay, let's do that.
So this was a week about...
why do Baptists do church theway Baptists do church?
And I organized them in atypical Baptist way with an

(21:26):
acronym, which is very Baptistof me, right, to write an
outline like that.
It is, although that

Bob (21:30):
didn't make it in your chart.
No, it didn't.
But Noah actually just posted ameme.
And it was more than threepoints, which was very
un-Baptist of you.

Dave (21:37):
Yeah.
But he didn't dance at all,which was very Baptist of you.
That's true.
I did make a joke aboutdancing.
So, you know, we talked aboutthe distinctives.
Noah, man, nice job on thegraphic.
We talked about that.
The name Baptist is beingspelled out there.
B-A-P-T-I-S-T-S.
Not to be confused with the waymy pastor in Dallas used to say

(22:00):
that word.

Bob (22:00):
B-A-P-T-I-S-T-S.
It's got a ring to it.
Yeah, there you go.

Dave (22:05):
It's borderline a chart there,

Bob (22:07):
isn't it?
That's kind of close.
Visual representation of data.
Nicely done.

Dave (22:10):
Isn't the I-S-T-S like stand for something?
I don't know.
I don't know.
So my senior pastor in Dallasused to call it the Baptists.
B-A-B-D-I-S-T-S.
Baptists.
So that's what we talked about.
It was informative.
It kind of felt a little bitlike a lecture, but I tried to

(22:32):
make it into a sermon the best Icould.
But it was all about why we dothings the way we do things.
That's what it was about.

Bob (22:39):
All right.
Well, good.
So let's start with theaudience's question, and then we
can dialogue about a few ofthese topics.
these uh these distinctives allright what's the audience
question

Dave (22:50):
so the audience question i believe was submitted right
after the second serviceyesterday

Tim (22:55):
all

Dave (22:55):
right don't know from whom but that's okay uh so here's
the question pastor dave quotedjeremiah 31 can you explain this
more specifically in verse 34where it says and no longer
shall each one teach hisneighbor and each his brother
saying know the lord for theyshall all know me for the least
of them From the least of themto the greatest, declares the
Lord.
For I will forgive theiriniquity, and I will remember

(23:18):
their sin no more.
Why does it say we no longerteach his neighbor?
Thank you.
It's a good question.
The old covenant that Moses hadinstituted was a failure.
One of the famous New Covenanttheologians used to say, the old
covenant should have said,batteries not included.

(23:40):
Okay.
It gave us God's law, but itdidn't give us the power of the
spirit that we needed toactually fulfill the law, and so
a new covenant was needed.
That's really what the book ofHebrews is all about.
There's a lot of differentphrases in the new covenant that
require interpretation, andthere are different
interpretations of thosephrases, so I'll give you four.

(24:01):
Covenant theologians see thenew covenant as related to
believers and their children.
Baptists typically see the NewCovenant just as related to
believers.
Dispensationalists actually seethe New Covenant in a very
interesting way.
In fact, the president ofDallas Seminary challenged the

(24:22):
student body in his day, Dr.
Chafer, the founder of DTS,said he will give any one of his
students an honorary doctorateif they can write a dissertation
and figure out the NewCovenant.
So dispensationalists strugglewith the new covenant because
actually Jeremiah says, I'llmake this covenant with the
house of Israel and the house ofJudah.
So dispensationalists see thisnew covenant as something that's

(24:43):
really related to the people ofIsrael, the nation of Israel in
the future.
But yet it's clear that Hebrewschapter 8 says, like, this
applies to us.
So that makesdispensationalists nervous to
apply the new covenant to thechurch in that way because they
want to keep Israel and thechurch very distinct.
But yet clearly...
The New Testament says that weare under the new covenant.

(25:03):
A second Corinthians says thatwe are ministers of a new
covenant.
Jesus in the upper room said,this cup is the new covenant in
my blood.
It's really hard to say that wedon't participate in the new
covenant in any way whatsoever.
So somehow the church gets toparticipate in the benefits of
the new covenant.
But dispensationalists will saythere's a future fulfillment

(25:25):
for the nation of Israel that'sstill yet to come.
Progressive covenantalists willsay the new covenant is for
believers only.
It's for today.
So what does it mean that wewon't teach our neighbor saying,
know the Lord?
Well, it means that the newcovenant will have a completely
regenerate community, that thenew covenant will be made up of

(25:47):
only believers, unlike the oldcovenant, which was made up of
believers and their children.
The promise was to you and toyour seed, to you and your
offspring.
The new covenant, we believe,is made up to believers because
the book of Galatians says, no,the promise wasn't to you and
your seeds.
It was to you and your seed,singular, and that seed was

(26:10):
Christ.
And the only way we get toparticipate in the new covenant
is we get to actually be graftedin by faith.
Galatians is really clear aboutthat.
So it's not actually...
promise to me and my kids, likemy three kids.
The new covenant is not for meand my children.
The new covenant is for theseed of Christ and his
offspring.
And the only way you can beChrist's offspring is by faith.

(26:33):
And so those who have faith arepart of the new covenant.
And unlike the old covenant,where you would have to sit down
and teach your children, youknow, like it says in
Deuteronomy 6, when you'rewalking on the road and when you
lie down and when you get up,in the new covenant, There would
only be believers in the NewCovenant.
And so when it says there willno longer be anyone saying,

(26:54):
teaching their neighbor saying,know the Lord, for they will all
know me.
The idea there is not that wedon't have teaching.
The idea there is that we areno longer teaching people to
know the Lord.
Because they actually alreadyknow the Lord, because they've
been regenerated by the HolySpirit, because they're part of
the new covenant, because theSpirit has made them new.
Our hearts are circumcised, andwe are now partakers of this

(27:18):
wonderful blessing of the newcovenant.
So that's my interpretation ofit.
I don't know if you feel anydifferently about that, Bob, or
if you would spin it in aslightly shaded way, but that's
how I would go with thatquestion.
What do you think?

Bob (27:31):
No, I would agree with that.
So I thought you articulatedthat pretty well.

Dave (27:36):
Nice question.
Whoever that was, like, you'rereally reading the text.
You were really like, you werecarefully looking at that
scripture and going, hey, whatpart is, what does this part
mean?
So I appreciate that.
Good job.
So where else are we going withthe sermon?

Bob (27:50):
Well, so you had a few that I think other denominations
would agree with.
There's other denominationsthat would agree with biblical
authority.
They would agree with thepriest of all believers and
things like that.
There's a few that are verymuch distinctly Baptistic that

(28:12):
are not shared by, let's say, aPresbyterian.
So why don't we talk a littlebit about the autonomous
congregationalism?
Okay.
And what are the implicationsof that?
So if you're coming to ourchurch and you're joining our
church, how does that playitself

Dave (28:29):
out?
Mm-hmm.
You know, Presbyterianism is agreat system.
The word that they use todescribe themselves is
connectionalist.
So they value the relationshipbetween themselves and other
congregations, and they areconnected together.
So in the Presbyterian church,you have a board that oversees

(28:50):
that church called a session.
And then that session is electsmembers of that session to be
part of the local presbyterythat's made up of a few
different Presbyterian churches.
And that local presbyteryactually sends delegates or
representatives over to the...
Assembly.
To the General Assembly, whichis the largest gathering in your

(29:14):
state.
So it's like there's theGeneral Assembly, and then
there's the presbyteries, andthen there's the session.
And there's only one little...
work in here called like synodsso in between the general
assembly and the presbyteriesthere's like offshoots of synods
and what they do is likeprojects like write curriculum
and they do papers and they havelike committee work but

(29:36):
generally that's the structureand the authority of the
presbyterian church is found inthe general assembly which is a
group of representatives like soIn that model, it is the elders
who actually have theauthority, who have the keys to
the kingdom, if you will, whichis different from an autonomous

(29:58):
congregational church.
So we actually don't believethat anyone from outside of the
church, not a presbytery, notanother group, can tell somebody
inside the church what weshould be doing.
We believe that that localchurch is individual.
It's...
It is independent is the right

Bob (30:16):
word.
Is this partly why Baptists geta reputation for being kind of
rowdy because you have morecongregational members that are
asserting authority within thelocal church and questioning
things?

Dave (30:31):
Yeah.
To that extent.
It is.
And that can sometimes be oneof the drawbacks of this
particular model.
It empowers everyone, no mattertheir level of spiritual
maturity, to have a voice and avote on church matters.
And sometimes that can be anopportunity for the flesh to be
manifested.
I will say this.

(30:52):
So here's a tricky littleconcept.
Inside of an autonomouscongregational church, you can
have it functioning not as acongregational church on
accident.
So sometimes the pastoractually functions as the de
facto decision maker inside of aBaptist church.
Sometimes this happens, like anSBC church usually has one
pastor and that's the elder, andthen they have a deacon board

(31:15):
under them.
That's a lot of times how SBCchurches are set up.
There's only one elder.
There's not a plurality ofelders.
And that pastor really has alot more authority than, let's
say, a pastor at our churchwould have.
Mm-hmm.
And that's actually like alittle miniature episcopacy.

Bob (31:32):
We actually probably have less authority than people think
we do.

Dave (31:35):
Yeah, we really don't have much at all.
We don't even have a vote atthe elder board level.
So that can be like onedistortion of an independent
church.
There's another distortion likeinside of an independent
Baptist church, you can have theelder board empowered to make
all of the decisions as well asa plurality of elders.
And that's like a minipresbytery inside of the church

(31:57):
functioning that way.
That's not congregationaleither.
Congregational is when It'sactually giving the keys to the
kingdom and the authority to thecongregation.
So that's what's unique, Ithink, about the Baptist
government.

Bob (32:09):
So there also is a segment of churches called the
Congregationalist churches.
Will we consider them Baptist,or are they totally different?
Are you familiar with themenough to speak about that?

Dave (32:20):
They're similar in the model of government.
A lot of times they practiceinfant baptism, though.
So there's some differencesthere.
A lot of the early...
churches in the United Statesof America were congregational,
and they were actually quiteupset with the Baptists for
their believer's baptism stance.
Ah, there we go.
Always comes back to thebaptism.
I would have to do a little bitmore research to speak

(32:41):
intelligently aboutcongregational churches.
I'm not remembering.

Bob (32:45):
Okay.
Well, let's stick withPresbyterians for a second,
because the other thing that youtalked about in Other
Distinctive, the S is the savedchurch membership, or what a lot
of people call the regeneratechurch membership, and that's
different than what aPresbyterian church...
would hold to.
So they would allow people thatare not Christians to be
members, right?

(33:07):
Is that too simplistic inseeing it that way?
Not intentionally,

Dave (33:15):
right?
Right.
So, I mean, I think, generallyspeaking, in Acts chapter 2,
when Peter gets up on the day ofPentecost and tells them that
These people here are not drunk.
It's the morning.
This is what Joel prophesied.
The spirit has come upon us inthe last days and our people are
prophesying and speaking intongues.

(33:35):
Peter commands those people torepent and to be baptized, to be
saved.
And then he said, this promisesto you and your children and
those who are far off.
So a Presbyterian hears thatand they say, okay, the promise
is to me and my children.
It's right there in Actschapter two.

(33:55):
So I'm going to take the signof baptism and I'm going to
apply that sign to my childrenwhen they're babies, just like
we applied circumcision to ourchildren in the Old Testament.
However, we would not interpretthat phrase in that way.
We would say, no, what Peter issaying is that the promise of
salvation is for you and thepromises for your children too,
as long as they believe too, andthe promises for those who are

(34:18):
far off too, as long as theybelieve too, which is what
happens in the book of Acts,right?
It starts, he's talking topeople who are gathered in
Jerusalem.
To you and your children, likeright here, you guys who are
gathered in Jerusalem, the Jews,is where we're going to start.
It's going to start in Judea,Samaria, and then it's going to
go to the uttermost parts of theearth.
So to you and your children,that's the promises to you.
and to those who are far off aswell.
Now, what we don't do isbaptize those who are far off.

(34:40):
We don't just go to all thenations and just baptize them.
No, we go and tell them thegood news and tell them to
repent and believe, and then webaptize them, right?
So the same rule that we'reapplying to you and your
children, we're going to applyto those who are far off as
well.
So we would just interpret thata little bit differently.
But regenerate churchmembership is like probably the
hallmark, the cardinal point ofview of the Baptist church

(35:03):
polity.
That's what really sets usapart.
That's what got Roger Williamskicked out of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony.
That's what got Fritz Erbathrown into that hole.
Because it was like, you know,dangerous stuff.
You not baptizing your infantwas like scandalous back then.
So they didn't want any part ofthat.

Bob (35:21):
So are Presbyterians always wondering if the people in
their church are actually saved?
Is that a logical outflowing

Dave (35:29):
of their position?
So R.C.
Sproul is probably one of themost well-spoken Presbyterians
of our generation.
Used to say the task of the...
leaders of the church is tomake the invisible church
visible.
But it's like concentriccircles.
I see my brain just thinks incharts.

(35:51):
It's like concentric circles,right?
So there's the church.
I can see it.
It's

Bob (35:55):
forming.

Dave (35:56):
Tim's

Bob (35:57):
just going to

Dave (35:57):
fade

Bob (35:57):
to

Dave (35:58):
a

Bob (35:58):
chart

Dave (35:59):
right now.
Imagine a Venn diagram.
So there's two circles.
Then you have the invisiblechurch and the visible church.
That's right.
And the goal is to have thosebe the same thing.
But in this life, thePresbyterian would say we can't
really know for sure who thereal invisible church is.
But we're going to try our bestto discern that.
And they do that through thepractice of church discipline.

(36:19):
Yeah.
Good.

Bob (36:22):
Little question.
Yeah.
Good question.
So religious liberty.
You had two points about that.
You called it individual soulfreedom as well as separation of
church and state.
Is that a distinctly Baptistthing?
view would would a presbyterianor an episcopalian see their
relationship with the statedifferently uh because of course

(36:43):
over the over the course ofhistory when it comes to the
episcopal church descending fromthe anglican church there was a
wedding of the church and stateas well as with the catholic
church so were baptists thefirst ones to bring that about
that that doctrine

Dave (36:59):
we were we were i mean if you read the founding document
of the the Puritans who cameover, the...
Is it the Mayflower Compact?
I'm trying to remember the nameof the document, but it says we
are founding this colony forthe glory of God and the

(37:20):
testimony of Jesus Christ.
They are setting up a city on ahill.
They are wanting to set up...
Right.
And John Calvin led Geneva thatway, too.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So back then...
They didn't think in theseterms.
They didn't think that therecould be a separation.
They understood the fact thatwe have leaders and it's their

(37:42):
job as the magistrate to bringabout God's law upon the people.
And people today, some peoplestill feel that way.
I mean, there's a very famousbook called Christian
Nationalism written by StephenWolfe a couple years back that
made the case even today that weshould, even in the United

(38:03):
States of America, bepursuing...
the idea that we're going tohave a Christian government and
that these are the principles,these are the God's laws.
Why wouldn't we want God's lawsto be laws in our nation?
Wouldn't that be a blessing toeveryone in our nation if God's
laws weren't, if God's laws wereour nation's laws?
So people who hold this viewtend to be more reformed in

(38:29):
their doctrine.
They tend to be a lot of timespost-millennial in their
doctrine.
They tend to think that societyis going to continue to grow
better and better, andeventually we are going to bring
the kingdom of God on earth,and it's our task right now to
bring the kingdom here, whereasa Baptist would say these are
different spheres, and we'rekind of living in the already
but not yet, and we're nevergoing to bring about the kingdom

(38:49):
of God by our own governmentalpower.
So

Bob (38:53):
it's not that a Baptist wouldn't say that having
Christian principles as part ofpublic life is a bad thing.
In Right.
Am I summarizing thatcorrectly?

Dave (39:07):
Yeah.
If you want to read more aboutthat, Andrew Walker's stuff is
excellent.
So don't put a caricature onthat and say...
then we should never legislatemorality.
The only thing you canlegislate is morality.
So there are certain principlesthat we would want to see put
into effect in our laws,especially like you talk about
creation order issues.
What would you say would bethose kinds of

Bob (39:28):
issues?
We're talking about sanctity ofhuman life, marriage and the
family, marriage.
Those

Dave (39:36):
things that are good for a society's flourishing.
Yeah,

Bob (39:38):
there's one other big one that I'm forgetting.

Dave (39:40):
Religious liberty.
Religious liberty, yeah.
Yeah.
So we would certainly supportthat.
But I think Baptists and theseparation of church and state
was kind of a novel idea backthen.
And it caught fire in thecolonial days and America made
for very fertile ground forBaptist churches to start
springing up like crazy.
Right.
Good.

Bob (39:57):
Well, let's talk about baptism for a second.
So you had a long section onthat, and you had a couple
questions that you answeredabout where should you be
baptized, who can baptize, whenshould you be baptized.
Yeah, and you talked a littlebit—let's talk specifically
about the where.
So why, again, is it importantthat you are baptized within a

(40:20):
church— It's certainlypreferable for that to happen in
front of your local body ofbelievers.
And you had this coolillustration about being
attached to an assembly as anambassador.
Yeah, let's talk about that andsee where maybe some objections
could come up to your answers.
Okay.

Dave (40:36):
There are exceptions to this, and we call them irregular
baptisms.
I told everyone that I wasbaptized in a pond, and it
happens.
The Ethiopian eunuch is a greatexample in the scriptures of an
irregular baptism.
He's out there, and he's notreally connected to a community.
So if you have a missionary whois sharing the gospel and

(40:57):
someone accepts Christ, butthere is no church community for
them to be connected to at thattime, then that would be
perfectly fine to practicebaptism in a more
individualistic way.
But the general principle Ithink we want to go by in
scripture is that baptism is aprofession of faith that's being
affirmed by the localcongregation the body that that
person is joining and so we wantto understand baptism as the

(41:22):
passport if you will if I couldgive an illustration like that
like it allows you in it givesyou access it is your the card
that it says yeah I'm I'mallowed to be here I I'm in the
front door so you would want toactually participate with the
congregation in because it's avery meaningful act, and it's

(41:42):
wonderful to do that before yourbrothers and sisters in Christ.
So to just isolate and do thatalone, I think you're missing
out on a broader implication,because baptism is not just
about you.
It's about us, and it's amovement, actually, from the me
to the we.
And so we would encourage youto do that in the context of the
congregation, if possible.

(42:03):
So I have a follow-up questionto that, because Obviously, the
goal of baptism is you'reproclaiming to everyone that you
are following Christ and thecongregation, those are your
witnesses to that.
So if someone wanted to do anatural baptism, I don't know if

(42:24):
that's the right word, but youknow what I mean.
If someone, like the ocean or apond, what would you say is the
acceptable amount of witnessesto bring baptism?
if someone wanted to do that?
Like, it's just like, I reallywant to get baptized in the
ocean, but I also want there tobe the appropriate amount of
witnesses.
How many people do you thinkthey would need to bring?
I don't think it's about thenumber of people as much as it's

(42:44):
about, is this something thatyou're doing under the umbrella
of the church leaders and yourchurch congregation?
And are they welcome to attendand affirm your profession of
faith?
So I think it's less aboutlike, counting heads and more
about hey this is something thati'm doing with the elders and
my pastors here and there's mymy brothers and sisters that are

(43:04):
also members of this body andwe're all invited out to this
lake or this river or this beachtogether and like this we're
having a thing but we're here asthe church and we're
celebrating together as thechurch so that's um the ideal
way to practice it so i don't idon't think there's a number
there but um do you get the idealike the context yeah i think
is important for you to thinkabout Okay, who's my church?

(43:27):
Who are my people?
So ideally, that doesn't meanthat if you were baptized like
me, that we wouldn't accept yourbaptism.
We would.
It's great.
We celebrate with you.
It's wonderful.
You know, my daughter,Michaela, she really wanted to
get baptized outside.
So we took her down to RoundValley.
And, you know, but weinvited...
church people so you know therewas a lot of millington baptist

(43:49):
church people there at roundvalley playing the guitar
singing songs with her listeningto her testimony you know
watching her go professor faithin the waters of baptism there
so it was very much a churchevent um and so we think that
that's wonderful so there'scertain environments that are
just you know people want to getbaptized in certain
environments, that's fine.
That's great.

(44:09):
Good.
They actually had like guidancein the early church about what
kind of water you should likefind if it's possible.
Like in the Didache, it said ifit's possible, if you can find
running water that's moreconducive than just stagnant
water.
They had like preferences as tohow this would go.
And they really gave it somethought, huh?
They did.

(44:29):
Yeah.
So it's interesting when youread about the early church
practices.

Bob (44:34):
And another question for the baptism topic.
So from a Baptist perspective,would we consider a baptism
valid if someone has a genuinebeliever's baptism, but it
wasn't by immersion, it was bysprinkling?
Do we still view that as validfor a

Dave (44:51):
Baptist?
Our church insists onimmersion.
Um, not every Baptist churchhas that strictness.
So that's called the mode.
So, um, we want to see threethings.
We want to see like the rightmode and we want to see the
right reason and we want to seethe right time.
So Millington is probably thestrictest, strictest church that
I've ever been a part of.
Um, and that's okay.

(45:13):
I kind of agree with it, but,um, So the right time is like
after faith, not before faith.
The right reason is you'redoing this because you think
it's a profession of faith.
You're not doing this becauseyou think this is going to save
you or you're not doing thisbecause your mom pressured you
or your friends are all gettingbaptized.
So you're going to getbaptized.
You're doing this becauseyou've accepted the gospel and
the spirit now lives inside ofyou.
And you want to likeacknowledge God as your father

(45:34):
and Christ is your savior andGod's people is your people.
And then the right mode iswe're going to ask you to do
that by immersion.
Because we think that itcommunicates something about the
gospel.
It's a redramatization or arecapitulation of the death,
burial, and resurrection ofChrist.
And we would want you to beimmersed.
That's what our Constitutionsays at Millington.

(45:55):
I believe that you werebaptized in two different ways.
Is that correct?
Yeah, I've mentioned thisbefore.
I

Bob (46:01):
was baptized.
I was baptized as a baby.
We grew up in more of aPresbyterian-type church, or I
did.
But then when I got to highschool, I started attending a
Baptist church, and myconvictions changed, and I was
baptized as a believer in mychurch when I was about 22.
But it took some time.
I had time, discussions, and Isaid, you know what?

(46:21):
This is something I should do.
So were you going by yourselfto the Baptist church, or did
your family...
No, I wound up going by myself.
Yeah, it was mostly me.

Dave (46:32):
So you kind of had your own individual pursuit of the
Lord apart from...
Yes, very much so.
That's cool.
So at other churches that I'vebeen a part of, they would
accept other modes of baptism aslong as it was as a believer,
and they didn't do this for thepurpose of saving them.

(46:53):
They would accept another mode,but then in the church
database, like their version ofCHMS, there was a little
drop-down menu that you had tocheck something called watch
care, which means whenever thatperson's profile would come up,
you would see that that personis a member by watch care.
And what that meant was youneed to realize they were not

(47:15):
baptized in the way that wetypically baptize at this
church.
We accept it as an irregularbaptism, but every time that
that person would want to dosomething like lead or teach,
the person would have to bereminded We want to have a
conversation with you if you'regoing to be teaching about
baptism here because they don'twant to have that person
communicating like somethingdifferent than what the

(47:36):
doctrinal statement said.
But, okay, here's somethingelse that's fun.
So, Tim, maybe there's a slideabout this.
There's a guy named John Smith.
Back in the early 1600s, it'sin the very beginnings of the
slides, who was the first everBaptist person.
He was part of the Church ofEngland.
He went to Amsterdam.
And he was convicted thatbaptism was for believers only.

(48:00):
And there was no one to baptizehim.
He's the first.
So he baptized himself.
And you may not know this, buthe's like the very first Baptist
And he baptized himself not byimmersion.
He did it by pouring.
And so the very first, like thefounder of the Baptist movement

(48:22):
did not.
It's been a big bucket.
Yeah.
He didn't baptize himself.
Ice bucket challenge.
By immersion.
He baptized himself by pouring.
And then.
This other guy, Hellweiss, camealong.
Thomas Hellweiss.
If you go to the next slide, Ithink I have him next.
He actually did a deep dive onthe Greek term for baptism.

(48:44):
And he's the one whodiscovered, oh, we should do
this by immersion because that'sthe way they...
That's what the word means inthe New Testament, like baptizo.
It doesn't mean to wash,although sometimes baptizo does
refer to washing stuff, but whatyou realize when you read it is

(49:05):
they're washing stuff bysubmerging the stuff.
That's why it's used that way.
You know how you wash a platein the sink?
The reason they're usingbaptizo is they're washing it by
submerging it into the sinkfull of water, right?
So the word baptizo is used todescribe like a sunken ship at
the bottom of the ocean.
That thing is like down there,man.

(49:25):
It's submerged.
It's, you know, and so boom,Hellwise said we should do this
by immersion and then He camealong, and then pretty much
after him, they were doingbaptism by immersion.
By the

Bob (49:36):
way, that guy looks like a Hellweiss.
When I think of Hellweiss, Ithink of that guy right there.
Yeah.
Did he just go by one name, oris that his last name?
I don't know.
Those

Dave (49:47):
were the general Baptists.
So you're coming to the baptismon Sunday.
Yeah.
Go to the next slide, Tim.
What's after this?

Unknown (49:55):
Let's just take it through here.

Dave (49:56):
Let's just walk through.
All right, so there was twokinds of Baptists.
Thomas Hellweiss.
There was general and there wasparticular.
So the general Baptists werethe guys who said Christ's
atonement is for all, and thenthe particular were more
reformed.
They said that the atonementwas limited.
All right, go to the nextslide.
Okay, so this is a famousparticular Baptist, Henry Jesse.
If you want to click through acouple slides.
He was the pastor of the JLJChurch, and he was the leader of

(50:22):
one of the first particularBaptist churches in England.
in England at the time.
Alright, go to the next slide.
How about that guy's picture,huh?
Henry Jassy.
So he said, this is his thingabout...
That is a picture right there.
Baptism.
All right, just click through,Tim.
I'll just talk our way throughthis.
Okay, he's one of the most...
Bunyan's one of the most famousBaptists.
He was convicted of believer'sbaptism.

(50:43):
He got saved after he gotmarried.
He was baptized in 1653.
And then soon thereafter, inEngland, it became illegal to
preach in a way that was notused in the Book of Common
Prayer.
And so Bunyan got put inprison.
And then while he was inprison, kind of like the...
Apostle Paul, he wrote somewonderful things.
And so his book was ThePilgrim's Progress.
And that's his story.

(51:04):
Kiffin, he was a particularBaptist that was very
influential in the writing ofthe second London Baptist
Confession.
And they wrote the first one in1644, and then they wrote a
second one in 1689.
Actually, they wrote the secondone in 1677, but it was
illegal, so they didn't publishit.
And then when it became legalto actually be Baptist, then

(51:26):
they published it in a morepublic way.
All right, go to the nextslide.
Oh, this is Kiffin.
We just talked about him.
He actually advocated forclosed communion, meaning only
baptized members of this churchcan take communion with us.
Him and Bunyan had a smackdownabout that.
Bunyan said, why are youexcluding people?
You know how we have opencommunion?
Bunyan was like us.
He wanted open communion.

(51:47):
Kiffin was like, what are youdoing?
You can't affirm these people'sprofession of faith.
Why would you let them into theLord's Supper?
So Bunyan and Kiffin had likeback and forth on, you know, the
early version of Facebook wars,it was like writing letters to
each other, arguing about allthat stuff.

Bob (52:02):
By the way, when I went out to Colorado, my friend's church
does only baptized believerscan take communion.
So if you had kids that weren'tbaptized, they weren't supposed
to take

Dave (52:11):
communion.
That's very common.
We actually don't take thatview here.
We could, but we take the viewthat We won't baptize children
unless they're 12 or older, butwe leave it up to the parents to
decide whether or not theirchildren are ready for
communion.
So we're a little bit moreflexible and loose around that.
It kind of depends.

(52:32):
Parents, you kind of know bestwhether or not your child is
ready.
That's a big decision.
Well,

Bob (52:36):
yeah, we decided.
We thought it was okay forJenna to take it.
But when I went to Colorado andthey said baptism, I said, no,
you can't take it here becauseof their rule.
And then she was upset.
So I had to explain it

Dave (52:43):
to her.
Right.
Remember when you and I used togo up to the Apostles Church in
New York City with J.R.
Vassar?
They had a slide on the screenthat said, baptized believers
may come.
So that's not that uncommon.
Yeah.
All right, Tim, what otherslides do I have for today?
I'm not remembering what elseis in there.
Okay, so those are some otherBaptists in the early days.

(53:04):
We talked about Roger Williamsyesterday, First Baptist Church
of America in Providence, RhodeIsland.
This guy was kind of like anover-realized eschatology guy.
He couldn't find the perfectchurch, so he was even
dissatisfied after he foundedthe First Baptist Church.
He was a little bit of a quirkyguy.
Did he also

Bob (53:22):
found the Second

Dave (53:22):
Baptist Church?
He's our hero.
So these pictures were taken byScott Rajopi.
You can just click throughhere, Tim.
Scott went up there forvacation or something like that,
and he actually visited theFirst Baptist Church of
Providence, Rhode Island, and hesent me these pictures.
So this is like their foyer.
There's not much to it, man.
It's a lot smaller thanMillington.

(53:43):
It's just like an old schoolBaptist sanctuary.
But it's been there since theearly 1600s, and it's still
there today.
It's still a functioningchurch.
There's...
people who worship there.
It's a top-notch steeple.
It is, man.
It's a quite

Bob (53:58):
beautiful church.
What do you think it would taketo maintain that church right
now?

Dave (54:03):
Probably all kinds of historic rules and all kinds of
little things.
Tell me about Obadiah.
Obadiah Holmes was actuallywhipped and scourged for his
belief on believer's baptism.
In those days, man, to be aBaptist was to be like persona
non grata.
You were not welcome insociety.
So that's a famous story ofsomebody who was persecuted for

(54:26):
the Baptist faith.
All right, next one.
Oh yeah, this is the tree thatate Roger Williams.
I think that's a hystericalstory.
Had you guys ever heard thatstory

Bob (54:35):
before?
People had a big chuckle overthat, man.
There's lots of

Dave (54:39):
laughter around me.
Tim, is that the first time youheard of that?
Yes.
It's actually a really weirdstory, but it is what it is.
So they kept the tree root.
So now I got to my charts.
I have like four or fivecharts.
What I did this week, and thesecharts are ugly, but They're
meaningful.
There's a lot of good data.
As I said, who's like the mostmeaningful Baptist?
And I started making a list.

(54:59):
So here's my list.
Some of those you've alreadyseen.
What is Marty Ray D.?
martyred.
See, I told you, this chart isbusted.
All right, go to the nextslide.
You can see there's some, thisis loosely in date order, so as
you keep going up.
John Gill, he was a majorBaptist theologian.

(55:19):
Benjamin Keech, he's the guywho wrote the Keech's Catechism
off the Baptist Confession.
Next slide.
Andrew Fuller, there he is,man.
Yeah, this is important.
William Carey, the founder ofthe modern missionary movement.
Definitely a Baptist.
John Broadus.
Remember when you and I were atHarvey Cedars and we saw Brian

(55:40):
Chappell?
Yeah.
He talked about John Broadus asthe founder of expositional
preaching.
John Broadus.
He's the guy who brought it,man.
He was one of the founders ofthe Southern Baptist Seminary.
Didn't they

Bob (55:50):
have the Broadus gavel for the

Dave (55:52):
president of the Southern Baptist Convention?
Yeah, that's what it is.
That's right.
That's awesome.
All right.
I got a couple more there, Tim.
So here's some more modernpeople.
Graves.
Noah, are you related to thisguy, J.R.
Graves?
Did I ask you about that?
Are those your people?
Not to my knowledge.
All right.
Might be.
He's a famous Baptist man.
Landmark Baptist movement.
So Spurgeon in London.

(56:13):
A.H.
Strong.
B.H.
Carroll.

Bob (56:15):
Strongest concordance,

Dave (56:16):
man.
What's that Prince of Preachershieroglyphics going on right
there?
The Prince of the Pulpit.
My chart didn't come over verywell.
All right.
One more slide or maybe two.
Okay, W.A.
Criswell, First Baptist Churchof Dallas.
Millard Erickson, that's yourfavorite systematic, isn't it?
Millard Erickson's my guy, man.
I still like him.
He's got a good book.
Grudem.
Okay, Annie Armstrong, she's afamous missionary.
Billy Graham.

(56:36):
All right, Noah.
All right.
You're a Graham fan, right?
Go, Billy.
He was a Baptist.
John Piper.
I often refer to Noah as thenext Billy Graham.
Yeah.
All right, here's my last page.
Charles Stanley, First BaptistChurch of Dallas, and then Al
Mohler and Mark Deverer.
That brings us to today.
Al Mohler, martyred, no.

(56:57):
I probably left out a lot ofBaptists.
Not yet.
Those are some well-knowntitans, some pillars in the
Baptist church movement.
I feel like we got some heroes.
We do.
We do.
That's not to take away fromother denominations.
There's a lot of Christiansthat make up Christendom.
There's folks in

Bob (57:13):
other denominations.

Dave (57:14):
But we have something to be proud of.
There we go.
It's okay.
A lot of people throw shade onthe Baptists.
I feel like, boom, wait aminute, wait a minute.
We've done some good things.
There

Bob (57:25):
it is.
All right.
Well, I think we're going tocall an end to the sermon
portion for today.
All right.
Next week, we are finishing 1Timothy.
We're going to do the end of 1Timothy chapter 6.
I'm preaching that.
And 1 Timothy 6, 11, and 12 isactually what I adopted as my
life verse.
So I'm pretty excited to preachthat one.
Fight the good fight of thefaith.
Yeah.

(57:45):
Fight, fight, fight, man.
So we're going to get afterthat next week.
Okay.
And then next week is our lastBehind the Pulpit.
We're going to take a break.
And then in the fall, we'regoing to be diving into Isaiah.
So we'll be back for someIsaiah discussions.
That'll be kind of likeRevelation.
Lots of, lots of.

Dave (58:01):
Can I just throw out, throw out a couple books?
All right.
So I did a lot of research thisweek.
Here comes, here comes a stackof recommendations.
Here we go.
If you want to read like apretty accessible history of the
Baptist, get the Baptist storyby Finn and those guys.
That's really good.
If you want to just like have atheological case for believers,
baptism, this is just aboutthat.
There's a lot of differentauthors, different articles in
here, including Steve Wellum.

(58:22):
That's a great book.
This one is about Baptistchurch polity called Baptist
foundations.
Debra and Lehman edited this,um, True Confession, I only read
part one, but it was good, andI still need to finish that one.
This one is actually aboutcongregational government.
It's called Don't Fire YourChurch Members by Jonathan
Lehman, which is good.
I love this book by BobbyJamison.

(58:43):
He's over also at Capitol HillBaptist.
This is about baptism andsubtitle why baptism is required
for church membership.
Why would we do that?
He makes a really good case inthere for that.
This is my little tiny pocketcopy of the 1689 Confession.
Check that out.
It's really cool.
Look at that, man.
if you want a little book aboutcongregational authority
because you just want to like ataste this this is a tiny little

(59:06):
thing it's only like 50 pagesso understanding congregational
authority 1689 and that's allthat's all i got so just
throwing out a couple littleresearch things that i started

Bob (59:17):
adopting the uh what is this one

Dave (59:21):
That one's understanding congregational authority.
Gotcha.
There you go.
Perfect.
Hope that was helpful for youguys, and I enjoyed a little
deep dive.
No pun intended.
Can I ask one more?
Hopefully by this point youunderstand why we're Baptists.
Can I ask one more question onbaptism?
Okay.
All right.
We're still here.
Let's keep talking about it.
I keep trying to move on,but...
So I feel like...
Things are reeling.

(59:41):
Yesterday.
We're going to

Bob (59:42):
skip over the theology sprint.

Dave (59:43):
Yesterday.
Oh, we have a good theologysprint, I hope.
Yesterday.
I feel like you often hear inthe Baptist church, like baptism
and membership are always kindof hand in hand.
Do you ever think that it getsalmost skewed that people are
just, you know, they're gettingbaptized for the purpose of
becoming members and that wesometimes lose focus on like the

(01:00:04):
actual purpose of baptism?
Does that make sense?
Yeah, no, I think it's theopposite.
I think we put probably toomuch focus on the individual
baptism profession of faith, andwe forget to tie it back to
church membership.
That's actually the realproblem.
So baptism is wonderful.
I think it's a thing tocelebrate.

(01:00:26):
We should do that.
But as much as possible, weshould probably tie that more
closely to people's membership.
And that's why we would saydelaying after 12 is perfectly
fine.
You want that individual to beable to participate in the life
of the body and use their giftsas well.
Because that's really whatbaptism was back in the day.
So that's what it is today.

Bob (01:00:46):
Part of the challenge is a lot of people might go to
different churches ornon-denominational churches that
don't have membership, but theyemphasize believers' baptism.
Right.
So they don't, you know, itdepends on the person's
background and where they camefrom.

Dave (01:00:59):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, and people come toMillington from all different
backgrounds and they bring allof that history with them.
And so we just try to like...
kind of shepherd them in ourway the best we can because this
is who we are.
Tim, did that answer yourquestion?
Yeah, thank

Bob (01:01:15):
you.
Did it spark a follow-upquestion?

Dave (01:01:17):
No, it sparked a theology sprint.
All right,

Bob (01:01:20):
let's go with a theology sprint and then some few
announcements and we're out ofhere today.
Oh, here it is.
Can I just focus again here onwhy Pastor Dave is so upset with
the

Dave (01:01:30):
microphone?
Speaking of lightning bolts, wehad an incredible storm here
Thursday night, man.
There was lightning.
You look like you're going tobeat somebody up in that
picture.
You're like, I'm going to giveyou a theology answer.
Sound doctrine.
He doesn't mess around.
So I should hold the mic likethis.
All right.
So I'm taking a theology sprintthis week.

(01:01:52):
It's something I actually havewondered about.
So I've saw it somewhere thatsin is defined by when the
thought, word, or deed isagainst God's character.
What about dreams?
If you sin in a dream, is thatsomething you should be
repenting for?

Bob (01:02:12):
Wow.
You ever heard that one before?
It's a first-time

Dave (01:02:19):
question.
You know, I heard a funny storyabout a marital dispute where
the wife was having a dream thather husband was mistreating
her, and she got up and she wasmad at him.
He's like, well, it's not evenme.
It's like in your dream.
I don't understand dreams.
I'll just be totally honestwith you.
The stuff that I dream of is sowild and bizarre.

(01:02:43):
It's just like, where did thiscome from?
I have no idea, man.
I have this repeated snakedream that keeps happening in my
life.
I have some weird, wild stuff.
If I'm accountable to God forwhat I'm dreaming...
I'm in trouble, man.
I got a lot of repenting to do.
I don't know what dreams are orwhere they come from.

(01:03:03):
I know in the Bible sometimesthere's prophetic dreams.
I understand that.
I don't think my dreams areprophetic.
I think they're just wild stuffmy brain's doing to try to
decompress the stressors that Ihave or something like that.
I don't see anywhere in theScripture that we're going to be
held accountable for our dreamlife.
Do you want to take a different

Bob (01:03:21):
perspective on that?
No, I wasn't going to say that.
I was going to say, though, interms of just...
You know, we are sinners, andwe then also actively engage in
sinful acts, and all of it issomething that needs to be
redeemed by Christ, you know?
But I think you're asking thequestion, hey, in my dream, I
did something terrible, or Icommitted adultery or something

(01:03:44):
like that, whatever it is.
Correct.
Do I need to repent of thatthought?
Correct.
And I just...
I think I would agree withDave.
Who knows why your mind isrunning wild like that?
Sometimes they're symbolic.
I mean...
So I don't think so.
I don't think you need to berepenting of things that happen
in your subconscious.
Great.

Dave (01:04:04):
Sounds good.
If you feel differently, I'dlove to hear from you.
I really don't know the answerto this question.
This is a total stab in thedark for me.
So if you got a differentperspective, please share.
Yeah, this stemmed from youhear the funny stories of
someone like Like you said,Pastor Dave, where it's like,
oh, you were doing this to me oryou cheated on me in your
dream.
It's like, no, but it wasn'tme.
It wasn't me.

(01:04:25):
You made that up.
Yeah.
So I was just wondering aboutthat.
Cool.
I will tell you, like...
I sleepwalk.
Did you do?
Yeah.
Wow.
This has happened a coupletimes in my marriage, and it
really disturbs my wife.
So I used to manage a pizzashop, and evidently she was in
the living room, and I got upout of my bed and walked over to

(01:04:46):
the living room, and I lookedright at her, and I said, what
are you doing?
She's like, what?
I'm like, stretch the pizzas.

Unknown (01:04:56):
What?

Dave (01:04:57):
And she's like, Dave.
And then I walk back into thebed.
Did she follow you?
She was scared.
Because what are you capable ofwhen you're dreaming?
She's like, what can he doright now?
I don't want to move.
I don't want to disturb this.
This is really kind ofdangerous to even provoke a

(01:05:20):
sleeping person.
So that's happened a coupletimes in my marriage.
And it really, really...
Like, if I'm accountable forthat stuff, Tim, man, I'm in
trouble.
I gotta...
Repent.
Next time we go on a conferenceand we're rooming

Bob (01:05:31):
together and you start yelling at me to stretch the
pizzas, I'm going to know what'sup.
I was working a lot,

Dave (01:05:36):
and I must have just been dreaming and stressing about not
having enough dough and nothaving enough stuff for the
customer.
This guy out here wants amargarita.
Get on it.
Stretch the pizza.

Bob (01:05:46):
Is that the title?
I don't know.
I'm surprised there's not adeep theological work on this,
because dream life is a prettybig part of your life.
You spend, what, a third ofyour day asleep?
So I'm surprised that there'snot...
like half a third of thattreatment.
Maybe there is.
I think we're just not aware ofit.
Yeah, it's not as popular orwidespread.

Dave (01:06:05):
The only stuff I've ever read on it is Sigmund Freud's
student...
Carl Jung has a famous book onthe interpretation of dreams.
I got that at a library onetime just to see, like, what are
the major symbols?
What do psychologists thinkthat these things symbolize?
It's interesting, but I don'tknow.
There's nothing, like, biblicalabout it as far as I

Bob (01:06:24):
understand.
There might be more stuff in,like, the charismatic stream
because I know they have kind ofan emphasis on dreams and
stuff.
So we'd have to look it up.
Have to do some research.

Dave (01:06:33):
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
There we go.
That show took a weird turn atthe end.
Time to wake up.
All right.
How

Bob (01:06:40):
about we end with some announcements?
What's going on in the bodylife?

Dave (01:06:43):
Yeah, we talked about it earlier.
When

Bob (01:06:44):
you're awake, let's see what you can do.

Dave (01:06:46):
So way back, about an hour and five minutes ago, this was
teased.
So we're going to put a bow onit.
Let's talk about SummerConnections.

Bob (01:06:53):
Summer Connections.
Don't sleepwalk into SummerConnections.
Here you go.
Can we talk about how good thesalad is?
Let's talk about how good the

Dave (01:07:00):
salad is.
Some green goodness, huh?
What's in there?
It's strawberries.
It's blueberries.
It's goat cheese.
And it's that incredibleItalian dressing.
It's

Bob (01:07:10):
the goat cheese.
Okay.
It's the goat

Dave (01:07:12):
cheese.
It's amazing.
I actually don't love thecheese.
I eat the salad.
I don't enjoy it.
I love food, obviously.
But I don't love the goatcheese.
I'm not a big cheese guy.
All right.
Well, listen.
Tim's going to save it for you.
So there's more salad for youguys.
I do like the dressing.
thing.

Bob (01:07:30):
But by the way, fun fact, I was on a conference call.
Did you know that the Kangs,you know Stan and Delia, I was
on a conference call with herthe other day.
They have goats out there.
She was like.
No, I didn't know that.
She was just out tending thegoats.
Is that where they get thecheese from?
Or whatever they were doing.
And I'm like, you guys havegoats?
Wow.
It's Kang goat cheese.
I have to ask them if they havegoat cheese that they make
themselves.
We're going to find out aboutthis.

Dave (01:07:53):
Have you ever seen like those videos of the goats
screaming and it sounds a littlebit like a human?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
It's scary.
It's scary.
I wonder if that happens at herhouse.

Bob (01:08:01):
I tell you what, a little while ago, middle of the night
by my house, there was, I think,a fox outside barking and it
sounded like a baby crying andbeing tortured.

Dave (01:08:11):
There's a lot of stuff around your house.
We've got snakes here.
The other day we had a coyote.
Now you've got foxes.
Maybe it

Bob (01:08:16):
was the

Dave (01:08:16):
coyote.
Yeah.
When foxes do that thing,whatever it is, it sounds
demonic.

Bob (01:08:22):
It was really weird.

Dave (01:08:23):
Michaela had it happening outside of her window one time.
She's like, Dad, something'sgoing on in the backyard.
I don't know why.
I'm like, just go back to bed.
She's like, no no you gottacome see this I woke

Bob (01:08:31):
up it was like 2 in the morning

Dave (01:08:33):
what is going on outside I had someone text me one time
and it was like oh there'ssomething crazy happening
outside there's like weird soundI was like does it sound like a
baby getting mutilated I'm likeyep it's probably a coyote
Yeah, well, I know

Bob (01:08:49):
there are several foxes around here.

Dave (01:08:51):
I've seen them.
I know, like, back in the backbehind Crest, there's, like, a
wild preserve, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bob (01:08:58):
But periodically, I'll be taking the garbage out, and the
fox will steer me down.
I'm like, all right, out of myway.
The

Dave (01:09:04):
garbage is like an adventure around here in the
summer, man.
I had a run-in.
I had a run-in one time.
I was throwing away some trash.
Raccoon?
There was a raccoon that didn'twant me in there, man.
Raccoons, foxes.
He came up on the edge andlooked me right in the eye.
I'm like,

Bob (01:09:20):
oh my gosh.
I saw a groundhog scurryingaround the other day.
It's like the wild, wild, wildwest out here.
Got a zoo here.
All right, what else are weannouncing?
Summer Connections.
We only got one more.
I feel like Summer Connectionsis happening on July 20th.
Virtues.
All right.
You want me to take that?
You want to take that?

Dave (01:09:36):
So Virtues is a new partner ministry that they are
going to be launching soon.
And what it is, is it's anopportunity to get two years of
college credits and you can takethose classes here at
Millington it's part in personpart online there'll be a
teacher mentor that will helpyou with the in-person classes
you can even take those classesbefore you're done with high

(01:09:59):
school in your last couple yearsof high school junior year
senior year you can get startedon some of your college classes
early and get credit from atleast six different universities
right now that are partneredwith virtues it's an alternative
model might not work foreverybody but it might work for
you if like four-year schoolgoing away to a traditional
college is not really thedirection you want to go, or

(01:10:20):
maybe you don't really know thedirection you want to go, but
you want to take a few classes,that could be an option for you.
It is a Christian-basededucation.
There's going to be sometheology classes there, some
business stuff.
And we're going to be lookingforward to how God might use our
campus to bless other peopleand maybe get a little bit of a
head start and maybe help withthe financial debt problem that

(01:10:40):
sometimes college can bring.
So Virtues Campus.
If you have questions, see AmyHuber.
She's going to be the mainliaison for that here at
Millington.
But we'd love for you toinquire about that.
We're glad to share moreinformation.

Bob (01:10:53):
Boom.
There you go.
And as we heard yesterday,it'll save some money.
It will.
All right.
We've come to the end.
Unless Tim has anotherquestion.

Dave (01:11:05):
No, I'm out for today.

Bob (01:11:07):
Well, we hope you have a wonderful week.
We'll be back here for ourseason finale next Monday.
Is that called the ultimate?
We had this conversationbefore.
I do believe it's the ultimateepisode, right?
Next week, we'll be...
Well, actually, it'll be SummerAdventure or VBS next week.
This

Dave (01:11:25):
might come to you late next week.
We'll see.

Bob (01:11:28):
It might be late.
We might have some guests.
Maybe we'll have some kidsrunning around in the studio.
Who knows?
But we'll be here next week.
week to conclude.

Dave (01:11:34):
Say a prayer for Summer Adventure.
We're looking forward to agreat week.
It's going to be incredible.
God bless.
See you guys then.