17. Baptist Successionism Part 1: Baptist Distinctives w/ Dr. Matthew Lyon

This is the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring to light the legalism and abuse in the independent fundamental Baptist movement and to encourage believers to grow in grace through the scriptures. Now, here's your host, John Holyfield. Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. I'm excited about the next set of episodes I'm going to be doing, and so we're going to get started with that today. What I'm going to attempt to do, I know that I went through the history of the IFB, and before I get into dealing with some subjects, some specific topics of legalism, I want to address the subject of history again. And so one of these aspects that is very prevalent in the IFB is the subject of Baptist successionism or the trail of blood theory, the view that is prevalent in IFB churches on church history is that Baptists are not Protestants, and the Baptist church has always existed down through the line to Jesus Christ and the disciples. And so as we look at this, this is something that every IFB church that I've ever been a part of has held to. Now, while some of them are not as vocal as others, most every IFB college teaches this. So I think this is important to cover as understanding what those in the IFB look to as church history. And to get started with that, though, I wanted to bring back Matthew Lyon, a historian. And Matthew was on the podcast a few, several episodes ago, as we were talking about the history of the movement. And we discussed together the life of John R. Rice. And so I wanted to bring him back. He's actually done an episode in his podcast on the trail of blood. And I encourage you to go listen to it. We're going to go into a little bit more detail with our examination of this subject. But let me say a little bit about Matthew, and then we'll get into the interview, and you'll know where we're going with this one. We're going to talk about the baddest distinctives in just this episode. And so Matthew Lyon is Dr. Matthew Lyon. He has his Ph.D. in Baptist history from Southern Seminary. He is the pastor of Reese Road Baptist Church. He is the co-host of the History and Hope podcast. And also, more importantly, he is a husband to his wife Kathleen, and they have eight children. And they range from 11 to two months old. That's right. They have a newborn in the house. And Matthew is a wonderful guy, and I really enjoyed sitting down and talking with him about the Baptist distinctives. And so you'll understand why we're going to be talking about that. I set that up in the interview. But without further delay, here is the interview with Dr. Matthew Lyon. All right. I am excited to have Matthew Lyon back on the podcast today. And basically just sort of an idea of what's going to be the topic is, is I want to tackle the whole trail of blood type of understanding concept of history, Baptist history. And in order to do that, we're going to jump into Baptist successionism, and I'm going to try to get as detailed with it as I can. But in order to understand that, I think the best way to show how it's so misunderstood is to compare that to what Baptists actually believe. So I'm talking about the Baptist distinctives. And so Matthew's back on today to discuss this. Matthew, how are you being, man? Pretty good. Pretty good. How's the church doing? It's doing all right. Yeah, it's, you know, pandemic. So it's tough, but we're still here. Awesome. Well, I had a wonderful response from the last time you were on. We were talking about John R. Rice and IFB history. And so I hope that, you know, people maybe have reached out to you and been listening to your podcast. Matthew also co-hosts the History and Hope podcast. And so, and actually in that podcast, he does a very detailed sort of overview. He goes through the Baptist distinctives in a whole lot more detail than what we're going to do. So I encourage you, if this interests you at all, or you want to dig a little bit more, go to their podcast, listen to each and every episode on this, because it is, you'll get a whole lot more out of it than what we're going to be able to dig into today. But with that being said, let's jump into this, the breakdown of Baptist distinctives. So Matthew, sort of what are we talking about with the Baptist distinctives? So just introduce that subject. Yeah, so after the Reformation, or during the Reformation, 1600s. So before the Reformation, the Catholic Church was the church. They controlled all the religious, denominational understanding. There was just one church in the West, at least. And you had the Eastern Orthodox and Coptic Church. But in the West, from where we come from, for the most part, the Catholic Church was the church. Then the Reformation happens. Luther breaks away, helps create the Protestant. So now you have sort of two branches, or two understandings of Christianity. Well, once that happens, once there's some freedom to actually read the Bible and apply it, you start seeing more groups form saying, this is what the Bible says the church should be. So you get theological differences like Calvinist, Arminian. You get denomination like Lutheran, Presbyterian. And out of that, one group develops their own view of the church that were later labeled Baptist. Now what happened was, the Catholic Church's main criticism of the Lutherans, Presbyterians, everyone else was, that they were Johnny-come-lately. That if they were the real church, they would have been there the whole time, and not just show up all of a sudden out of nowhere. So everyone had this incentive to trace their church back to Jesus, to the Bible, to show that they were the true church, the true understanding. And there's validity to that, and we should be able to see our ecclesiology in the Bible. But it was kind of taking a step further with the Baptist group, to where many of them, and maybe even most of them, especially through the 1800s, because of the competition from Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Anglicans, put a lot of emphasis on being able to actually historically trace the Baptist denomination, the Baptist group, faith, tradition, historically through the years, all the way back to Jesus. And one attempt is the trail of blood. And the goal there was to show that they were not, we've heard before, if someone preaches something new out of the Bible, it's probably heresy. There's nothing new coming out of the Bible. So they were trying to defend themselves against this idea that they were new, and that they were basically a heresy. And they tried to use history to do that. And that's where all the Baptist histories from the 1800s, most of independent Baptist colleges are teaching from these books, people like Armitage, John Christian, and others like him. They're coming from a context where they're trying to defend their denomination by tracing it back. So the problem with that is it's bad history. And the main reason it's bad history is because they change their definitions in order to find the people they're looking for. And so this is where Baptist distinctives come in. So we have the Baptist denomination. No one argues that it's here. What they're trying to do is find what we have today back through history. So the first step in doing that is to identify who we are now and then find people who have the same thing, same identifiers in the past. So what we call that is the distinctives, the things that make Baptist distinctive or distinct from Presbyterians, Lutherans, Catholics, and all those sorts of things. Once you can find what makes us distinct, then you look for other groups that have that. Now what Armitage does, because he's probably the leading authority in the 1800s, he changes his definition in his book. So he starts out in the beginning of his book with the same definition that we will use today. But then he shortens it dramatically in order to identify people in the past who agree with Baptist. In other words, he's moving the goalpost. So what you'll find is James Belcher, I don't know if you know him. He wrote a book on Baptist history. Oh, Beller. Sorry, Beller. Yes. His college handbook was my textbook in college. The one with the lions on the front? Yes. Yes. Yeah, people get martyred. So, and then he has another one, American and Crimson Red. The more recent the history is, the better it is for his stuff. But he does the same thing. He has an agenda. We all have agendas. But his agenda is to identify Baptists in the past. And he shortens the list down to, he basically strips away almost everything from the Baptist faith in order to identify it in the past. And one of the most difficult things about studying church history is that when there's one dominant church or group like the Catholics, they control the information. So you mostly only know about other groups through the Catholic church because they recorded them. And so you only learn bits and pieces. And usually you only learn the main points of those groups. And so when you look back, you see them talking about the Cathari or the Paulicians, all these groups that are identified with Baptists. It's because the main thing that's identified in those groups also is identified with Baptists. One thing. So usually it's they oppose the Pope. Well, Baptists oppose the Pope. So therefore they must be Baptists. Or they'll say they baptized after conversion. Well, that's Baptists. So they must be Baptists. The problem is you can't identify Baptists from one point because then you're going to lump in a lot of other people who believe the same thing. So, for instance, the Presbyterians opposed the Pope. The Lutherans opposed the Pope. John Wycliffe was a Catholic and opposed the Pope. Was he a Baptist? Yeah, they try to make Wycliffe a Baptist. They also try to cherry pick certain individuals that were looked positively on in church history, like St. Patrick and William Tyndale is one that they claim as a Baptist as well. Which are great heroes of the faith, as it were, great leaders in the church. But if you can only identify one Baptist distinctive, it doesn't work. The Baptist distinctive is work together. And when you have all of them, you have a Baptist. If you're missing one, they're either an inconsistent Baptist or they're not a Baptist at all. So if you're looking for baptism by immersion, after conversion, if that's the distinctive of a Baptist, what do you do with Pentecostals who do the same thing? So are now Baptists the same as Pentecostals? Well, no, of course not. But they baptize after conversion. So you've got to have more distinctives. And that's where you have anywhere between four to eight distinctives that sort of rule out any other group. And what you can't find is all eight of those or all seven of those anytime before the 1600s. You just can't find them. And there may have been groups that believe that. Who knows? But you can't find them. So maybe the Paulicians, I can't remember exactly what they believe. So maybe the Paulicians, I think they did believe in baptism by immersion or after conversion. Maybe they also believed in the other seven Baptist distinctives. Maybe they did. We just don't know it. And so we can't claim them. So that's why it's important to first understand what is a Baptist before you start looking for them in the past. Okay. So we, most commonly, people that are familiar with the term Baptist distinctives understand that these things have been characterized or categorized into a, an acrostic as the, and I know you use the acrostic as well. Is that the way they were established in an acrostic? No, that's actually really recent. I came across the guy who did it, but I can't remember him now, but there are numerous current theologians who don't know that acrostic. So I don't know if you're familiar with nine marks. Yeah. Mark Dever. Yeah. I was actually talking to him about this. We have lunch about once a year. So we're close friends. And I said, are you familiar with the acrostic for Baptist? Now he's a Baptist and historian too. And he's like, no, I've never heard of that. So it's actually not that common. Well, I don't know why it's not common because it's so helpful, but it really isn't. It really isn't that common. So I would imagine most Baptist historians would know about it. But if you went outside of that, just like say a church historian, there was a good chance they wouldn't know that way of doing it. So moving forward, this, this understanding these in the order of the acrostic Baptist does not necessarily mean that if you don't do it this way, you're not a Baptist. It's the ideas that are in the, the acrostic. Okay. Acrostic is just a way to remember them. Okay. So let's, that's how I remember them. Go ahead. Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah. That's how I remember them. You can study a long time and still forget, you know, what they are. So, but don't look for them in a Baptist history book or distinctive book. They're not always there. Okay. So what are, let's start with, uh, go down the list here and let's, let's get into this. This is the, going to be the meat of the episode, the Baptist distinctives. Uh, what are they? So first of all, these are not in order of priority. These are just to fit the distinct, fit the acrostic. So the acrostic is Baptist plural. First one is biblical authority. Uh, second one is autonomous local church, which really should be congregationalism, but it doesn't start with an A. So that biblical authority, autonomous church, priesthood of all believers, two ordinances, individual soul, liberty, save church membership, two offices and separation of church and state. So the separation, sorry, I just saw that. I have a not thought comes to my mind. Separation of church and states of Baptist thing, not a constitutional thing to begin with. Right. Right. Right. It's religious liberty is another way of putting it. Okay. Religious. We're right there now. All right. So as we look at this and we're comparing, uh, as, as the, the next week's episode and, and the further episodes, I'm going to be comparing these groups that are linked up in the, the succession of Baptist with some of these, what are the, the main ones that we, or, or maybe we could go through quickly, define some of these, and then point out the, the ones that really would, would take some issue with, with comparing these to historical groups. Yeah. Yeah. So one thing we have to do, and this is really going to bother a lot of people. Baptist tradition is situated in the Protestant Reformation. You just can't deny it. I mean, there's just no evidence outside of the Protestant Reformation. Now they were part of the radical Reformation, which is true. Uh, so the Reformation is divided in half. You have the, um, magisterial reformers, Luther, Calvin, uh, the Anglican church. And then you have the radical reformers, Anabaptist, Baptist, the kind of the fringe people who didn't want the state involved. Okay. So, but that's still the 1500s. Even the, even if you think the Anabaptists or where the Baptist came from, that's, they still started in the 1500s. So this is a Reformation, which means that the Baptist faith, self-identified as Protestant. Read the confessions. They clearly, they clearly state, uh, that we, that we are Protestants, that we are not, uh, to be confused with Catholics or heathens or heretics. We are Protestants who have some things we'd like to add to that. So when we look at two of these biblical authority and priesthood of all believers, that's to distinguish us more from Catholics than from other Protestants. So there's, so biblical authority is the core of the Baptist faith. We get our, our doctrine from the Bible, but so do the Presbyterians, at least they claim to the Lutheran. So biblical authority is not unique to Baptist among Protestants. Uh, the same with priesthood of all believers. Luther was the one who really developed that in the Reformation. Baptists also agree with it. So that, that distinguishes us from, uh, Catholics. So Protestants produced a bunch of non-Catholic groups, one of which was the Baptist. And that, you gotta start there. Uh, otherwise you're having to make these leaps. The leaps come from trying to identify us as something other than a Protestant. So if you, if you can not make that historical leap, you're a lot safer. So those two can be sort of put to the side in the sense of, this is just how we start. The Bible is our starting point. And in a Presbyterian, we would say, wow, I totally agree with that. So it's like, okay, good. We can go from there. Um, okay. So, but then you can, the rest of these, you can prioritize because some of them are core doctrines. And some of them are, uh, derivative of those core doctrines. So you start with this core doctrine and it produces some other ones. So the first and most distinctive and most foundational is, is probably autonomous local church. Now, when you talk to most people, the thing that's most, that appears the most distinctive is believers baptism. By immersion. Like when you think Baptist, you think, Oh, baptizing. but I think historically, and there's more stuff coming out about this, that congregationalism is the starting point for the Baptist. So the Baptists are coming out of the English reformation, Anglicanism. Then you have separatists, Puritans, independence. And so these Baptist people start thinking, we shouldn't be controlled by other people, other churches. The Bible doesn't say that we have the Holy spirit. We have the scriptures. We have our own ministers. Uh, why should we have a Pope? And if we don't, if we shouldn't have a Pope, then we shouldn't have an archbishop. So the church of England has archbishops and all sorts of hierarchy. Baptists, the early Baptist started saying, well, I don't see that in scripture. And of course the early Baptist tradition is a little fragmented, but I think that's where you start really seeing the core come together of the church governs itself. The members govern themselves, not some hierarchy that was created in Rome a thousand years ago, and then sort of watered down in England with the, with the church of England. And some of the early Baptists were very harsh on the church of England. I think hell was said, um, if you were baptized in Rome, and then left and started your own church, but kept that baptism, you're just as bad as Rome. And that's what the Anglican church did. He said, they're the stepchildren of Rome. He said, so if I don't, if I reject Rome, then I reject the Anglican church too. It was pretty harsh. So this sort of congregationalism, that's the core. And, and if some people know this about me, I get kind of prickly about Baptist churches who aren't congregational, who sort of are elder ruled. And it's like, ah, you know, who cares? Because I think once you start undermining congregationalism, you are leaving the Baptist faith at a core place. Um, you start bringing it in the independent Baptist have already done this. The independent Baptist have left the Baptist tradition, uh, in the past 100 years. And you can pretend to have a business meeting, but we all know that the tradition of that independent Baptist church, and of course, not every independent Baptist I'm talking about, typical. Lead, look at the leaders, Jack Hiles, Jack, um, or Jack Hiles, Paul Chappell, Shelton Smith, Clarence Sexton, Paul Treber, or whoever you want to pick as your leader. They're all autonomous leaders. They control the church. The church does not dictate what they do, which means they've left the Baptist tradition at that point. But that's the core. Congregationalism is the core, which means the people make the final decision. The members make the final decision. Okay. So Baptist started thinking about that and saying, well, if the members make the decisions, then we need to be really careful about who we let become a member. Because there's no one to keep a check on these people. So before you had the bishops, you had the elders, you had the leaders guiding and ruling the church. As long as they were good, it kind of didn't matter who was in the church. But once you let the church people decide, the next question is, should they? Who are the people deciding? Now we have a business meeting and everyone takes a vote, but I don't know if I want these people voting. So the next thing was, everyone in the church who gets to control the church needs to be a Christian, needs to be a believer. Otherwise, we'll have unbelievers dictate the church. And I think that's where a lot of the independent Baptist tradition comes from. In the most charitable way possible, it's leaders, pastors, trying to guide their church to be faithful to scriptures and not trusting the people to do that. So they take the leadership. They take the reins in an effort to keep the church from going astray. Not that it doesn't always happen, but let's assume that's the motivation. It's because they don't trust the people. Well, the early Baptists had the same problem. They said, how can we trust the people to follow God? And so the next Baptist distinctive is saved church membership. If the people are going to rule to the church, how can you trust them? Well, because they have the Holy Spirit. So don't let anybody in your church who doesn't have the Holy Spirit. In other words, who's not regenerate, who's not saved, who's not a believer. And so those two, you can see that the logic there. First, the church rules itself, not some outsider or the pastor. And second, you make sure everybody in the church is being led by God and trying to follow Christ. Now, I think two things come up with that idea. Number one, maybe somebody's thinking, well, in the 1600s, what churches were having people part of their church that weren't saved? And the other thing is, how would you say that the saved church membership in today's, maybe for, you know, just to pinpoint a little bit in the independent fundamental Baptist church is really sort of diluted or distorted. Yeah, so, in the 1600s, every church had unbelievers because they were letting people join as infants. So infant baptism meant membership in the church. Actually, all Protestants, actually all Christians, whether you call yourself Catholic or whatever, believe that baptism precedes membership. So you can't join the Catholic church until you've been baptized. You can't join the Lutheran church until you've been baptized. The problem is, everyone really, except for the Baptists and the Anabaptists, were baptizing infants, making them members of their church, which continues to this day. Presbyterian churches, Lutheran, Episcopal, Methodists, they're baptizing unbelievers, infants, into their church membership. So, the Baptists said, no, we only want saved people, which means we only baptize believers. So that's where you kind of get believers baptism. So, in the 1600s, the Baptists were being killed for this sort of thing because they were saying, we're not going to let children become members of the church. And everyone who'd only known child membership, infant membership for a thousand years, were horrified that these Baptists were denying children access to church membership. So, when Protestants were killing Baptists and persecuting Baptists, they were doing it to protect the children, to care for children. So, good motives can produce bad results. And so, today, you still have that same problem, which is why in a Presbyterian church, which has children, infants, as members, you have elders ruling because you can't let unbelieving babies vote, the Episcopalian church and so on and so forth. So, outside the Baptist church, and I'm sure most of our, of your listeners have friends who are Presbyterian or Lutheran or Methodist, what they need to know about their churches is that the elders rule those churches because they have unbelievers as members, whether they're unbelievers by choice or just because they're six months old. Now, what's happened within our circles, Baptist circles, is we practically say you have to be baptized to be a member and you have to be a believer, but our membership is so shallow that we're letting unbelievers in not because they're infants like the other churches or because we don't care, but because our process is so superficial and careless that there's no process to make sure that the membership is saved. Okay, so this is going to be typical for most of our experiences. You have a revival service, Sunday morning, Sunday night, altar call, right? So the pastor, the preacher says, if you're a sinner, you need to repent of your sins. If you'd like to know Christ as your Savior, please come forward and we'll speak to you about it. Okay, that's a different argument. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. So the person comes forward and they say, I'm a sinner, I repent, I trust Christ as my Savior. And the person says, great, the next step in obedience is to be baptized, which is true. And so the person is like, okay. And then they say, do you want to get baptized right now? Sure. And they take them back, they get them ready. The church saw the person walk forward and the next thing they know, they see the person up in the baptistry in a robe and the person standing with his hand up saying, I'd like to introduce to you, John Smith, this is his first Sunday and he got saved and now he's getting baptized. Okay, what's the problem with that? Who's John Smith? Where'd he come from? Maybe he's just, he doesn't have a home and so he came to the church for help and he's like, look, if I get baptized and join the church, will you help me? Oh yeah, we'll help you. Okay, I'll get baptized. He doesn't mean anything wrong by it. He's just trying to get help or maybe he was raised in the deep south where every single person is a Christian and so he says, oh yeah, I'm a Christian, I'll get baptized. Nothing wrong with that. It won't change my life. I'll still go to work the same way. I'll still have the same friends. All my friends that I go and do all these sorts of wild things with, they're all Christians too. So in other words, there's no process to make sure that this person is not just going through the motions without a heart change and so you get a lot of people who are being baptized, joining the church and no one really knows if they're saved and no one follows up with them. I would say, and this is a broad statement that I'm not sure I could back up but in my experience, the real members of a church are the ones who show up. That's the membership in an independent Baptist church. The ones who show up faithfully and participate, those are members. It's not about baptism, it's not about covenants, it's not about, it's just about showing up which is a really risky way to manage your church to just have people and I know in the church I'm in now, one of the early problems I had was people who were attending for decades faithfully, Sunday school, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, were not members but were treated like members and then people who had actually joined the church but weren't very faithful were basically ignored. In effect, giving up on Baptist distinctives for some other sort of denomination where you don't really have to be saved to be in the church and we're not really going to make sure, I'm not going to find out. We're just going to sort of, everyone that says they're a Christian, we just believe them and we really just focus, the church is made up of the people who show up and you can see how there's not much oversight there and you can let in and I've seen it in my own church and other churches, you let in unbelievers who are revealed later. So in today's day and age, especially in the past 10 years, maybe even 20 years, a lot has been said and written about nominal Christianity, which would you say that we've probably created that ourself? Yeah, it's, in fact, for a long time, not so much anymore because the world's becoming more secular, but if you move to a new town and you're a lawyer, you need business. So you go and you join the local Baptist church and tell everybody that you're a lawyer and now everyone's like, oh, we can trust this lawyer. He's not, he's not an outsider anymore. He's a member of my church. He's a part of the community now. He's an upstanding citizen. He's not just a random person anymore and so people would, as part of their business practice and not in a devious way, just sort of a standard, this is what we do, we're joining churches in order to be a part of the town community. Well, that doesn't mean they're saved and so there was a lot of incentive and there was a lot of benefits to joining churches and this is where the seeker-sensitive movement comes from. So this isn't just independent Baptists, though independent Baptists are heavily seeker-sensitive. That's another podcast. The seeker-sensitive movement said people want to go to church. If we just make it easy for them. There's really no downside to it. We just need to make it a place that they would be comfortable. And so the main target of the seeker-sensitive was 80s and 90s, the boomer generation. People who are already comfortable with the idea of church were going to join a church if they could just find one that was relaxed, had good music, made them feel comfortable. they would go to church. And so these churches are exploding with members because they'd taken away all the barriers to being a church member and these people showing up were like, yeah, we're a part of the church. Why not? Well, the problem is there's no spiritual connection. And anytime you're just trying to get people in the church, you're going to run into that. Now, I think it's a good thing as America becomes secular, there's no longer a benefit to going to church. In fact, it could be a downside. You're a lawyer. They find out you go to a conservative church that doesn't support gay marriage, you could get fired or downsized or penalized in some way. So it may just be better to, you didn't really believe in the church anyway. Why risk your livelihood? College students are going to have a harder time as members of churches than not members. So that's why the secret sensitive movement is dying. And that's why churches in America are closing down. Mega churches, they're out there, but they're not like they were in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. It's because there's no benefit to going to church anymore. Which, that's not how church should be run anyway. You don't attract people like a business. So yeah, the nominal Christians are leaving the church, but Baptists should have never let them join in the first place. We should have guarded the church. The saved church is a core Baptist belief. And that's why membership exists, is to make sure everyone's a believer. Okay. I do want to ask one quick question on one you've already covered. That was biblical authority. With the idea of biblical authority, help me if I'm understanding this right, but was those, maybe not just the Baptists like you said, but others that held to this, would this have been to the exclusion of extra-biblical revelation? No. Those that held, to say that you agree with biblical authority means that you, you repudiate or you oppose those that are getting revelations from God. Is that a... No, actually it wouldn't be. It's, it's not that the Bible is the authority, it's that the Bible is the final authority. So a lot of Baptist confessions will say something like, the Bible is our only rule of faith and practice. it's not to say that there are no other authorities in the world. So you can, you can believe that God sends visions to people and be a Baptist. you just have to believe that the Bible is the final authority and not the vision. No, I don't personally, well, I don't know what I believe on that kind of stuff, the sort of the miracles, but biblical authority as the final authority. Everything else is judged by the Bible. And so, yeah, you can come to church and have a prophecy, but your prophecy doesn't, is not the final standard. The Bible's the final standard. And that would be similar across Protestant denominations. I think the difference with Baptists is that Baptists hold it more closely because they rejected so much tradition that all they had was the Bible. And so biblical authority is so important because it's all Baptists have. We don't have any sort of tradition to fall back on. It was such a radical break from Catholicism, from Protestantism, from the Anglican church that really it's like, if we don't have the Bible, the whole thing kind of falls apart. Okay. All right, so where do you want to go next? Priesthood of all the believers? No. So that would be one of those things that it's more of a Protestant doctrine that underlies everything like biblical authority. So biblical authority and priesthood of all believers is sort of the foundation that Baptists work from. but you would find common ground with Presbyterians, Lutherans. We just say, if the Bible is the final authority and if all believers are priests, then all believers can vote and rule the church. And if all believers can rule the church, then you have to make sure that all the members are believers. Which means every believer has to answer for himself. and so you get individual soul liberty. Okay. Because there's no bishop deciding what you believe, deciding what's doctrine, individual soul liberty goes hand in hand. You can see how congregationalism works towards that, believers baptism. How do we know what's true? Well, we have access to God. How do we have access to God? The Bible tells us what God believes. Okay, we all have the Bible, biblical authority. Individually, we have it. Well, how do we know we're interpreting it? correctly. Well, we have the Holy Spirit. Well, who has the Holy Spirit? Everybody who's saved. So everyone who's saved and is a member of this church has the Bible and the Holy Spirit. Which means they have sufficient access to truth and they don't need another person to tell them what to believe. And so that's where Baptists really were the most consistent in their beliefs. Luther's going to say priesthood of all believers and biblical authority, but then he's not going to let the people decide how the church is running. So he's really saying one thing and doing another. Presbyterian is the same way. They're saying that everyone has the Holy Spirit in the Bible, but only the elders get to make the decisions. And that's what independent Baptists have done. They preach individual soul liberty, but then they won't let anybody make decisions because they don't trust them. They don't trust them to make good decisions or right decisions. But Baptists believe because we have the Holy Spirit in the Bible and we're created as individuals who can relate to God, we answer to God individually. And you can't tell somebody what to believe. You then become God to them. and this is one of the core issues about abuse in the church. It's pastors and leaders taking the role of God in people's lives and spiritually abusing them by telling them you must obey me as if I were God and let me dictate your spiritual life. Physically abusing them by, you know, God can tell us what to do with our bodies, correct? Because he made us. Now you've got leaders using their authority to control people's bodies, to control their behaviors, control their spirit. That's so anti-Baptist. And that's why theology can't be put on the back burner for practical issues. Like, well, I don't have time to look at theology. We've got an abuse scandal on our church. It's like you've got an abuse scandal on your church because no one was following the doctrines. The pastor was going and preaching unbiblical things and no one called no account. So individual soul liberty is that core Baptist doctrine that says you have the Bible, you have the Holy Spirit, you have the right and the ability to talk to God for yourself and to hear from God. And you don't need a priest, a pastor, a parent. I mean, this is really subversive. You don't need the government, you don't need the state, you don't need the media, however you want to turn this, it's radical. And that's why they were called radical reformers because they're subverting everything. And that's what they were accused of. Like, well, if you're letting people decide all these things for themselves, kids are going to turn against their parents and citizens are going to turn against their governments. and sometimes that does happen. But what does Jesus say? I didn't come to bring peace, I came to bring a sword. Mother from daughter, father from son. This is what he's talking about. Individual soul liberty says, I have to give an account for myself and I can't listen to other people tell me what to do over God. And that goes hand in hand with believers baptism, with church membership, with priesthood of all believers, with biblical authority. And so you can see how the Baptist faith is building a tradition. It's not just one thing. It's a tradition that builds on top of things. And that's what traditions are. I think a lot of people don't understand what a tradition is because they think it's man-made religion. A tradition is you take principles and you build off of them and you make them more explicit and you see where they relate to other things and you start building a way of doing theology, Christianity, church. And that's what Baptists have done is they've taken principles and they start building practical applications of those core doctrines. So, in a way, it seems, and I don't want to broad, that's the main accusation I get is that you broad brush the IFB. But, maybe not all of them, but the leadership and the majority of the IFB tends to be more Catholic than the does Baptist. the technical term is Episcopalian. Okay. So, Congregationalism is the members decide. Presbyterianism means that the elders decide, basically, I miss this simplification. Episcopal government means the bishop decides. Those are the three forms of government. So, Catholics have a Episcopal government. the Pope decides. Of course, Episcopalians have an Episcopal government, but Baptists have an Episcopal government. Independent Baptists because the bishop decides. They don't have a Presbyterian, though I have noticed that some independent Baptists, especially younger guys who have sort of fed up with this single leader dictating, they've moved towards a Presbyterian government where they have a board of elders who run the church. That's Presbyterian. But, traditionally, independent Baptists have been what's called a mono-episcopacy. So, the Episcopal government is usually a network of bishops, sort of like a pyramid with the top bishop at the very top. A mono-episcopacy is just one bishop ruling one church. And that's what independent Baptists have become. And, it's true that not all are like that, but they all go to the conference and listen to the ones who are like that. So, you can, it's not, let's not broad brush and say every independent Baptist has an Episcopal government, but I think it is fair to say that every independent Baptist supports an Episcopal government. Whether with their money, their time, their youth conferences, it just is what it is. And you can only deny being complicit for so long before someone sees a picture of you at some youth conference where the bishop's preaching. So, I don't know, what do you call someone who doesn't believe in Episcopal government, but will have an Episcopal bishop come in and preach their revival services? Is that ecumenical? At least. That's a good word for it. Because we know they love that word. Oh, man. Non-denominational at least. Okay, so, as we're thinking about and putting this stuff together as I'm going to be comparing it to the groups that are claimed Baptist, we then talk about the two ordinances, baptism and the Lord's Supper. Yeah. So, believers, baptism goes, ties right in with saved church membership because in the Christian church, baptism brings you into the church. Okay, well, if we're only going to have a saved church membership, then we're only going to baptize saved people. So, that's where you get that regenerative baptism. And the same with the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper, actually, I think every church, even Catholics, will only let baptized people take the Lord's Supper. I think. So, when we say Lord's Supper, we're just saying only baptized believers. but the main thing I think would be is what we believe the Lord's Supper does, that it's a memorial, that it's not, that it's not a, certainly not what the Catholics believe. And not what Luther believed. Yeah, so Catholics believe it became the actual real body of Christ. Luther believe it became the spiritual body of Christ. Baptists, there's different versions, but we don't believe either of those things. And we don't have any more ordinances. That's a big thing, too, is we don't have, I think, Lutherans have, so Catholics have, what, seven ordinances? I think Lutherans have, yeah, they call them sacraments. And the word sacrament just means oath in Latin. So, it really depends on how you use it. Because I'll use the word sacrament sometimes, but I use it in the sense of an oath, commitment. I think Lutherans have three or five sacraments. So, Baptists only have two. So, that's the distinctive for us. Now, does the mode of baptism, is that, is, I guess what I'm saying, of course, it would matter to me, it would matter to you, but overall, viewing somebody as a Baptist, is the mode a deal breaker? Yeah. I call them irregular Baptists. Okay. So, if you are, if you believe in all of the other Baptist distinctives, especially baptizing believers only, but you do it by pouring, it's just kind of, okay, like, that's weird, but you're not anybody else, that's for sure. Right? Like, there's no other group that would have all the Baptist distinctives and then pour. So, you, you're kind of, you're, what I call an irregular Baptist, but you wouldn't fit in with anybody else. So, you're not going to find many of those, even in history, because it came pretty apparent pretty quickly that that doesn't make sense, that that was a carryover from, well, the reason, yeah, well, the reason why I brought it up was because some of the, a couple of the groups that I'm going to be pointing out that are claimed in the trouble of blood, they used just about every method of, they would baptize, but yet, they would, they would immerse, they would sprinkle, they would pour, they, they did it all. Yeah, I guess this would be a good illustration. If you saw a man walking down the road in a, um, a Canadian uniform, military, uniform, you would assume they were a Canadian soldier, correct? But they could be a U.S. military soldier. Just because you're wearing a Canadian uniform doesn't make you a Canadian soldier. You could be in the U.S. army and wear their uniform. That's how I would apply it. If you see someone baptizing by pouring or sprinkling, your first thought is they're not a Baptist. But maybe they are, they're just for some strange reason wearing the uniform of another army. So it's sort of a red flag in the same way as like, why are you an American soldier but you're wearing somebody else's uniform? That's weird. Like, something's wrong here. I would do the same thing with Baptists. But it's not a deal-breaker. deal-breaker. Okay. And it looks like the only ones that we have it hit would be the two offices, pastor, deacons, and, I asked a question about separation of church and state at the beginning. Yeah. So the two offices kind of goes along with autonomous local church. So the only reason you need more than two offices is because you have a hierarchy. So the Episcopal church has more than two offices because they've got the local pastor, then they've got the guy over him. Well, he's not a pastor, he's something else, so they call him like a bishop. But then you've got someone over him, and he's an archbishop. And so you start multiplying the offices because of the hierarchy. Same with the Presbyterian church. In the Presbyterian church, you have the elders who are ruling, so you've got kind of two types of elders, and you've got deacons, but they're different than elders. Because they don't rule. But then over the elders, you have the synod. So that's another office. So what Baptists said is, well, if the church rules, and in the Bible, you only see the overseer and the deacon, well, that's the only two offices we have. The only reason you need more offices is because you've got a hierarchy. And there have been some Baptists who added a third office, and this is where they become a regular Baptist of what they call a messenger. messenger, and it didn't happen very often, I think, General Baptist in the 1600s. And that messenger would have authority over other churches, which undermines the Baptist faith. So the two offices comes from that autonomous local church, where when you read the Bible, you don't need another office unless you have a hierarchy. liberty. And then the separation of church and state, which you said better identified as religious liberty. Yeah, you just have to have the S to make the acronym work. Right, so if the Bible is the final authority, if all believers are priests, if we have individual soul liberty, then no one can coerce us outside of God. No one can dictate how we believe outside of God. And in the context of the Baptist tradition, it was the government who was trying to do that. Because the government was tied with religion. Now, nowadays, it's a little bit different because we don't have state religions. But in the Baptist tradition, separation of church and state was because the state in England had the Anglican church, the Church of England. And they were trying, so they were hand in hand. The Roman Catholic Church was tied in with the government. The Lutheran Church, same thing with Germany's government. Calvin was working with the Geneva City Council. So the Baptist said, wait a minute, how is a secular organization, even one ordained by God, which the government is, going to tell us how to behave spiritually. We have soul liberty. We have the ability to listen to God for ourselves, and if God tells us to do something, the government can't tell us different. So it's the idea of applying priesthood of all believers, biblical authority, individual soul liberty, to the institutions in the world we live in. And we did an episode on this. This is not a bare doctrine by itself. You have to look at the tradition around it. Baptists were very cautious not to seem disrespectful to the government. Every time they talked about separation of church and state, if people talk like Baptists traditionally have about the government, we would view them as communist sympathizers. They would be very deferential, very almost groveling. We would view it that way, like bowing before the government to not offend them. But Baptists understood that the government was put in place by God. And they were very cautiously saying, we respect you as much as we can respect any human organization. We fear God, we fear the king, but we have to follow our conscience. And we're really sorry. You can hear the tone that all these Baptists had for hundreds of years. kind of, you can imagine hat in hand, standing before the king, very apologetic, like, I'm really sorry, but I can't obey you. And I say that because current Baptists and Baptists adjacent are openly defiant to the government. And that's not part of the Baptist tradition. the stuff we see in the news with, like, Jack Treber in California and just sort of the defiance of government. John MacArthur, who's not really a Baptist, but he used to be, the sort of open defiance of you can't tell us what to do. That's not part of the Baptist tradition. The Baptist tradition was you've pushed us to a point where we don't want to do it and we hate that we have to stand up against the government, but in the end, we just can't do it. And in their confessions, they'll say things like, look, if you have to defy the government, do so in a way that puts you in the best light possible, that gives no one a reason to persecute you further, and that will sort of make you a model citizen and not cause undue hardship. So we've left that with the sort of open, defiant, revolutionary behavior. Baptists were never revolutionaries. they were not a revolutionary tradition. Not until we got in power, but the Baptist tradition is humble, quiet, mostly oppressed for most of this history, but willing to take a stand for religious freedom. And so, I know you said this at the beginning, but again, thinking in context of looking at the comparison of some of the groups that are included in the Trail of Blood, you could have more than these things and still be a Baptist, but if you're not, and we're not saying that you may even be, you're wrong or you're right, you're not. This is you or it's not. Yeah. The argument here is not who's right, Baptists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Lutherans, that's not the argument. The argument is, who are you? Are you a Baptist and wrong or a Presbyterian and right? That's what a Presbyterian would say. So it's not who's right or wrong, it's just your basic identity. So yeah, you could add to this list and say you can only wear, you can only preach in suits or you can't go to the movies. You're still a Baptist. But if you take away from it, and you can do it practically. So take away from one of these and you're going to see that you are now going to be confused with another denomination. So which one will we take away? Let's take the main one, baptism. If you kept everything else but got rid of baptism, believer's baptism, you get confused with Pentecostals or if that's the only one you kept I should say. So what you can do to test this theory is see if you'd be confused with another group with one of these missing. And you would be. So there's a reason there's this many. Because once you get to this point, you've now become a distinctive identifiable group. But you have to have all seven. Yeah, and if you think about the 1600s where this was born out of, I mean, you're talking about a time where most of those denominations, it was a time where it was very confessional. People were very specific about what they believed in. So in order to differentiate or to separate yourself from, hey, we're not this group or we're not that group, I mean, they had to be very specific. Yeah. So this is very clear when you read their confessions, which independent Baptists don't do that, which is part of the reason we have the confusion. They are very clear to introduce most of these confessions as a way to say this is who we are. And a lot of them would say not to be confused with Anabaptists. Like, we're not Anabaptists. Don't confuse us there. Our understanding of separation of church and state is different than the Anabaptists. Our understanding of church government, it's different. Otherwise, there were so many religious groups being organized and accused and persecuted, you just get lost in the mix. and what has happened in the past 200 years is there's no downside to being identified incorrectly. There's no persecution. Right? So if you get accused of being an Anabaptist, your life pretty much goes on the same way. So there's not as much motivation to separate. That's why non-denominationalism is such a big deal now. because why not? There's only bad things associated with being identified as a Baptist or Presbyterian or Pentecostal. I mean, there's only, let's be honest, there's only two kind of non-denominational Baptist and Pentecostal. You just, one or the other. So non-denominationalism is popular because it's only beneficial. But back when the Baptists were formed, you needed to be very clear who you were because you were going to be persecuted for it. And so you didn't want to be persecuted for things you didn't believe in. Yeah, they basically started themselves off as a persecuted group. Yep. Yeah, the first 200 years of Baptist history was persecution. And so they knew that they were going to be persecuted for some things because they held those core beliefs. And they said, this is the way life's going to be. But we're not going to be persecuted for being an Anabaptist. We're not Anabaptists, so if you're going to persecute us, here are the things. Persecute us for these things. Believers baptism. But don't persecute us for things that other people believe. And there's not as much incentive to do that anymore because there's religious freedom for one. And people care about other stuff now like music and preaching style. children's programs and things like that. Well, I think this is a great foundation that we're going to build on as we go forward. And thank you so much, Matthew, for this. Is there anything else that you'd like to add? Yes. The key to being a Baptist is understanding that we are part of the Christian church first, and then we're Baptist. And there's a lot of confusion here. We're not Baptists and then Christians. First we're Christians and we share brotherhood with all other Christians of every denomination. And the danger that you get into with this kind of stuff is trying to make us the true church. the Baptists are not the true church. There are false churches who are Baptists and there are true churches who are Baptists, just like with every other Bible believing denomination. So we have to be careful not to become a new sort of Catholic church with different set of beliefs. Awesome. Awesome. I love it. And I am going to finish up here. I did not do this. I've started doing this with guests Matthew. So if you have one, maybe two more minutes, I want to give you the speed round. Okay. Are you ready? Yeah. Okay. This is seven questions so people can get to know you a little bit better. The speed round. Number one, what is your favorite movie? Easy answer. I would say Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring. Yeah. I just watched it recently. That's a pretty good one. That's a good one. That's a good one. extended version. Of course. See, I've never watched the extended version. Oh, you haven't watched the movie then. It doesn't count. Okay. Number two. What is, well, we talked about this off air. What is your favorite sports team? I'd say probably the Orioles, maybe the Ravens. Tough call. Okay. All right. Favorite food? Um, probably barbecue. Smoked brisket. Smoked brisket. Texas style? Of course. That's the only kind there is. Right. Okay. What is your favorite snack? Um, I'm really addicted right now to the flaming hot lemon Doritos or lime Doritos. I eat those by the bag. They're hot, but I just love them. Okay. Uh, favorite Bible story? Hmm. That's a tough one. Man, favorite Bible story. That's a spiritual question now. See, I'm coming out of fundamentalism, so I've had to revert on all the things I thought I liked. You have to edit this down a little bit, I think. Um, man, I would say this isn't a specific one, but anytime that Jesus, um, was talking to the Pharisees. Okay. Anytime he just sort of made them, you know, own up to who they were. That's good. Okay. Now this is a hard one too. I think it'll be a hard one for you. Most recent book you've finished. Oh, finished. finished. Okay. Uh, it should be right here. Let's see. And I didn't say it'd be a hard one for you because you don't read. Because which one did I finish? Yeah. Um, Oh, okay. I know what it is because it's right on vacation. Um, the, the cross and the lynching tree by James Cone. Okay. And now that now they know I'm a liberal. all right. Last number seven favorite family activity. Um, favorite family activity, probably watching the Marvel movies together. There you go. There you go. You got a bunch of boys. Uh, five boys, three girls. Okay. Yeah. I got actually all like, yeah, I got three girls and my, my oldest daughter is, is all into it. She, she loves it. Yeah. Yeah. We just, we just spent about two months watching them all in an order. Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, Matthew, thank you so much for coming on and, uh, guys look forward to the next episode as I'm going to be jumping a little bit more in detail into this Baptist successionism. Uh, as always, you can track the podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagrams. Give it a like, a share, or maybe a comment. And, uh, as always, to God, not the pastor, be the glory. will you all know? Thank you. Thank you.

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