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Excellent. So let's see. Rich. Good question. With Israel very 
much in the news these days, can you comment on the position 
of the nation of Israel with specific reference to the Abrahamic 
covenant, the land promise, other Old Testament promises in the 
prophets, the new covenant, and special promises of national 
salvation according to Romans 11, and also some insight on 
the history, pros, and cons of replacement theology? That could 
probably take us to the end of our session. There is a lot of 
good stuff in there, so I'll just throw it out. What do we 
think of – maybe just to boil it down on the one hand, what 
should we make of ethnic Israel today, and how is that consistent 
with our views of the Abrahamic Covenant, Old Covenant, and New 
Covenant? And you were sharing, yeah. No, we don't use the word share. 
I teach my students not to use the word share. You don't stand 
up in the pulpit and ever say, I'm here to share with you. Oh, 
no, I agree with that. I meant we'll share the response, not share. But we might not agree. You got 
me nervous there. I'm not into sharing. We might not agree. 
As I was taught by my mentor, you don't want me to share my 
heart. It's vile. The last thing you want is to 
share. Proclaim Christ and share what's on our hearts. Yeah, so 
ancient Israel and the modern state. And I think the context, 
you know, obviously the context, Israel's in the news a lot with 
the dispensational theology that has been rampant over, you know, 
the last 100 years. The way I read scripture, the 
modern state of Israel is not a fulfillment of prophecy. Amen. 
Amen. Israel was, Israel was used by God to prepare 
the world for the Messiah. And when the Messiah comes, Israel 
went with it as a national entity, especially the religious side 
of it. The temple was destroyed. I think 
that's telling us something. The Church doesn't replace Israel. 
The Church is the eschatological Israel of Old Testament prophecy. 
So when the Church as the fulfillment of the eschatological Israel 
of Old Testament prophecy text comes, it uses the language of 
fulfillment. What about supersede? I think I saw that on Twitter 
recently from a guy we love and appreciate. And he was countering 
this charge or this idea of replacement theology. And it seems to me 
that he made much of a supersede. He used it positively? I think 
he did. I don't want to misrepresent. Okay, wow. Yeah, it's usually 
not used positively. Yeah. But I don't know. Maybe 
I missed, you know, I'm not, I don't spend a lot of time exegeting 
things on Twitter. I just... The father of Israel 
was a Gentile, which is very interesting. Israel came into 
existence through the Abrahamic covenant of promises. And I think 
we have to distinguish the Abrahamic promises, the ones that terminate, 
in Israel, in Abraham's physical carnal seed. Because there was 
something actually going on. There was something actually 
in real going on. But what's connected to that is the older 
Mosaic covenant, where you have most people think that's temporary. 
They want to go back to Abraham and say, it's not temporary because 
he uses the language of forever. But just like we talked about, 
eternity in God and eternal life for us are not one and the same. 
The word olam is used. Covenant. It's in covenant too, 
certain covenants. Yeah, the word Olam, forever, 
everlasting, can mean a long time, or it can mean God's eternity. 
Or until this covenant is over. Yeah, so I think the land promise 
is ultimately fulfilled in the eternal state because the spiritual 
seed of Abraham, Christ, is going to be a blessing to the nations 
of the earth. Israel was a means through which God set the world 
up to do what he did in his son, the incarnation. Now, there are 
some things that terminate in Christ and his kingdom that come 
from the original promises, like the land promises. I think they're 
extended to the... I think it's not fulfilled until 
the eternal state. So I know there are some guys 
that are real good friends of mine that think even the land 
promises were fulfilled already. The progressive covenantalists 
hold the view I hold, and I didn't know that until just recently. 
I'm going, oh, I hold that view. But there is a book, Owen Martin, 
is that his name? No, Oren. Oren, Oren Martin. 
O-R-E-N. Good book in the NST series. I thought that was very helpful. Land starts before Israel and 
Abraham. It goes back to the garden, I 
think. If you look at Adam, you go, 
okay, did he have a land? What was he supposed to do with 
it? Cultivate it, but also extend its culture. Throughout the earth. Yeah, throughout the earth. He 
didn't do that. Who ultimately fulfills that? The Lord Jesus. 
And in Romans 4.13, doesn't Paul say he would be an inheritor 
of the earth? So it's not Abraham because he 
was a great guy. It's Abraham's seed. And I think, 
too, the seed, you know, Jesus is the true Israel. Jesus is 
what the Old Testament prophets prophesy. Even the seed, the 
seed promise to Abraham. Where's the first seed promise 
given? It's not Abraham. It's Genesis 3.15, so you have 
land actually precedes Abraham, seed promise precedes Abraham. There was another, oh, this is 
getting off the subject, so. I was going to say, sufferings 
and glory precedes the New Testament. It's all over the prophets. But 
where is it first revealed to us? I think Genesis 3.15. So 
you have a lot of stuff happening before Abraham that I think you 
have to account for once Abraham comes and Israel's unique covenantal 
status. Most people hold, as far as I 
know, except dispensationalists who believe that Old Covenant 
ceremonial laws will be enacted in the millennium, which to me 
is weird. Read the book of Hebrews. Most people believe the Mosaic 
Covenant was temporary. It was a this world thing. But 
the problem is you read Abraham, it looks like, well, it goes 
to Gentiles. And that's my point. It's not 
just a Jewish thing. It's a human thing. It's a sinner's 
thing that are saved by And he says not to seeds, but to seed, 
that is, Christ. So I think we often take, we 
don't read it in the Old Testament like Christians. And I think 
traditional, especially dispensationalism, has trained us to think that 
way. It's their book. One man in Southern California, 
a certain large congregation in the San Fernando Valley, said, 
the Old Testament is Judeo-centric. I fell off my chair when I heard 
that. What are you talking about? Listen to the Lord Jesus. That's 
right. If I could, just kind of... Continuing 
in this theme, Romans 11, the questioner asks about Romans 
11. I remember many years ago my mentor had said that Ian Murray 
book on Puritan Hope was very good. And then I changed my mind. And then you changed your mind. 
So, I think it's a legitimate Orthodox position that there 
is going to be a gathering of ethnic Jews into the kingdom 
of Jesus through faith in Jesus. So, that's legitimate. I know 
that, you know, when I read that, it helped me understand, at least 
I thought, the Romans 11 sort of emphasis. I think old Palmer 
Robertson offers another view or corrective to that. Have you 
read that? He's got an article on the Israel 
of God. I don't think so. But anyways, 
maybe just speak a little bit to that. So Romans 11 does seem 
to envisage or envision... And that's all Israel shall be 
saved. Yeah, so how would we understand 
that? You're asking him. I'm looking 
at you. I know you are. He said we again, because we 
could disagree. You know, Ian Murray makes the 
observation in that book that, you know, it was this understanding 
of a massive in-gathering, a big in-gathering of ethnic Jews. 
that impelled much of the missionary enterprise and, you know, caused 
them to, you know, Westminster Larger Catechism, pray for the 
conversion of the Jews. I think that still, in my experience 
here in the Three Forms of Unity town, there is that. There is 
that concern for Israel, and it's not a dispensational-ish 
concern. So, there's a bit of, you know, 
overlap, but the Romans 11 option or position, I think it's not 
heretical. It's John Murray's view. John 
Murray, yeah, definitely. I don't know. I haven't read 
Haldane, but I would be probably thinking it would go that way. 
Hodge, I think that seems to be the way that it was dealt 
with. So, does that make sense in terms 
of this view of the Romans 11 sort of fueling the missionary 
enterprise or evangelism or things like that? I'll tell you a story. 
Okay. It's always good to be a storyteller. 
Are you going to share it? Are you going to share it? No, 
I'm going to tell it. Okay, share your heart. I don't know, November or December, 
a friend of mine contacts me. He says, you just blew up such-and-such 
a church's Facebook page. I don't do Facebook. I don't 
do social media. And I'm saying, what? What's 
going on? Well, here's the story. I spoke at their church last year in the fall, and it 
was chapter 7 of God's covenant. Leading up to it, the pastor 
of the church—I have no problem with him doing this—he created 
a meme of my head, a floating head. In other words, to this 
effect, the church does not replace Israel. The church is Israel. 
That's what I said. I own it. I'm not afraid of that. Well, apparently it gets shared 
and shared and shared, and a bunch of dispensationalists began to 
get really upset. They called me a heretic for 
saying those things. There were a couple of terms 
that they used that were really very strong language. It didn't 
bother me at all. I knew they can say what they 
want, but it's not true. But it's a very real issue because 
a lot of people who are dispensationalists and in the charismatic and prosperity 
movement have been influenced by Left Behind and all of those 
Tim LaHaye novels. And so anytime that you say something 
that indicates that the church is the people of God, is the 
Israel of God, neglect the reality of Jewish believers who are brought 
into the church. But there are no two strands. 
There's no two people of God on parallel tracks. They're brought 
together in one. The New Testament over and over 
makes that point, doesn't it? That the wall of partition is 
broken down and we are one. So to think in terms of something 
special that belongs to Israel is to undermine the very nature 
of what the gospel is about that brings together Jew and Gentile. 
Amen. So I know one or the other. I 
was a heretic. I was advocating replacement 
theology or supersessionism. No, I wasn't. The dispensationalists 
don't understand this. We don't say the church replaces 
Israel. We say that the church is Israel. 
We've been grafted in, we are part of it, so that all of the 
promises that were given to Abraham belong to us. We are the children 
of Abraham, that's who we are. You know, my brother used to 
make a point, it's really in Luke's gospel, where Jesus says 
God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. 
My brother would ask the question, Would they be genuine children 
of Abraham if God raised them up from the stones? And the answer 
is yes, because God said that they were. God said that if he 
chose to do that, they would be genuine children of Abraham 
without any DNA. That's right. So that belongs 
to us. We need to claim it. We don't 
replace Israel at all. Israel and the church are brought 
together so that there's one people of God. When you have 
a picture of the heavenly throne room, you have 24 elders, which 
I think is a really interesting number. Because you take 24, 
you divide it by two, you have 12 apostles and you have 12 tribes. 
And those 24 elders represent the totality of the people of 
God surrounding the throne. You know, I sort of brought, 
it brought a smile to my face to read all of these posts, because 
I thought these people really, they're passionate about this. 
I never use that word, but I just did. They're passionate about 
this. You sure are. And there's a reason 
that I don't use that word. And he's getting excited. You 
guys know what it is. They don't know, and they don't understand. 
They've just been badly taught, and they make these charges. 
It's like water off the duck's back, proverbially. It didn't 
trouble me at all, except for them, and the fact that they 
are deep into this thing. So that's how I would view it. 
Good. I want to backtrack. Maybe he didn't say supersede, 
so I don't know. But real quick, I want to hear 
what you have to say. Your observation is correct. 
I think it's just bad teaching. And it's unfortunate that it's 
so rampant and that some of the bigger-gun, famous preachers 
hold this position because when you disagree with it, how dare... You're a liberal spiritualizer. You've just spiritualized away 
the Bible. And it's a rhetoric. I think 
what feeds that is a lack of a... allowing the entire canon 
to be an assistant in interpreting the parts. That's exactly right. 
You lose the force for the trees or however that goes. And just 
listening to Paul, you know, behind that is Galatians 6, peace 
be upon the Israel of God, or we are the true circumcision. There's not a Jew who's, you 
know, externally circumcised, it's internal. I can one-up you. 
Read the red letters of the New Testament. Jesus interprets himself 
in relation to the Old Testament. He's not sling-casting new meanings 
on old texts. You know the motif, and especially 
Matthew, but Acts and the sermons, this is that. What we're experiencing 
now is that which the prophets said would take place. It's the 
fulfillment of what God revealed would happen. And when you go 
back in light of that, and you read the Old Testament, you see 
that the servant, the Messiah, coming out of Jerusalem with 
a small remnant around him, and then they're going out from there. 
They're taking light first to the Jewish people, and then light 
to the Gentiles. And where is that first, where 
were we first told about light? Genesis 1. Yeah, Genesis 1, actually. But it goes back through the 
prophets. It goes to Moses. Matter of fact, in Numbers 24, 
is it one of those weird Balaam texts? You got light. It's the 
torch of revelation. And then you have the line of 
the tribe of Judah. It's all there. All that language, 
it's all connected. And it comes to its consummation 
in the events surrounding the sufferings and glory of our Lord, 
and then the proclamation of it, and then the written revelation, 
and the recording of the ministry of our Lord, and then the interpretation 
of it in the rest of the New Testament. The New Testament 
should I mean, especially when Jesus says, this is that. It's like, okay, game over. This is the way we interpret 
the Bible. It's good enough for Jesus. I mean, that's a glib 
statement, but it should be good enough for us. And then the apostles 
understood our Lord in relation to the Old Testament, just like 
Jesus did. They didn't always get it right, 
by the way. Yeah. Remember? But who do you say 
that I am? Thou art the Christ, the Son 
of the living God. Blessed are you, Simon Barjona. 
Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who 
is in heaven. And then Jesus says, I got to 
go to Jerusalem. I'm going to suffer according 
to the prophets and all. And then what does Peter say? Not so, 
Lord. Not going to happen. We're not going to let that happen. 
Get behind me, Satan. But when you get to Acts 2, Acts 
3, the two big featuring sermons in the Book of Acts, he's preaching 
like Jesus. He sounds like Jesus. This is 
that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. Which, by the way, 
reading J.C. Ryle on the Gospel of John, he's 
got some very pastoral observations when disciples, not just the 
apostles, but others, say, like Martha, she has a wonderful Christological 
statement, and then And then afterwards you're going, do you 
really believe that? He says, we need to be careful not to 
impose the entirety of the New Testament on these disciples. 
They're still connecting dots. They don't have the resurrection 
yet. They don't have this. They don't have Pentecost. Even 
immediately after the resurrection, they're still connecting the 
dots. They're still scratching their heads a bit. The resurrection day on 
the road to Emmaus. And they're downcast, though 
they've heard of the resurrection. They know that it happened. And 
Jesus is the one who, incognito, explains to them. And then they 
rush back to Jerusalem to tell their brothers. And then you 
have Thomas. Unless I see her touch, I'm not going to believe. 
And then you have after the resurrection, before the ascension in Acts 
1, when are you going to restore the Kingdom to Israel? Which, 
by the way, there's a book called It's really good. Alan Thompson 
from Sydney is the author. Is it the book on Scripture? 
The Acts of the Risen Lord Jesus. Oh, that's a good book. That 
is a good book. And his section on Acts 1, 6-8, 
outstanding. Outstanding book, yeah. Jesus 
basically is doing what they asked. And he started in the 
first century. Acts of the risen Lord Jesus, 
that's a good one. And by the way, in Acts 28, all 
you have to do is read it, thinking about all this stuff. Paul was 
reasoning with the Jews about Christ and the kingdom of God 
from the Old Testament. And he refers to it as the hope 
of Israel. The hope of Israel! That's a 
good book too. That new book by... What's that 
guy's name? He's Westminster Seminary, Pennsylvania 
prof. Yeah, Hope of Israel, good book. 
It makes all these connections and just shows that this is that 
motif is very important. This, Christ and the complex 
of events surrounding him, his sufferings, glory, and Pentecost, 
is that which the prophets said would take place. As a matter 
of fact, this is in one of my lectures, so it's fresh in my 
head. When Peter is preaching on Pentecost, he's going to end 
up quoting Joel 2. Before he quotes Joel 2, he says, 
God said this would happen in the latter days or something 
like that. That's not in Joel 2. But it looks like it, but 
it's not. It's Isaiah 2.2. It's Micah something 
or other. And you know where it first starts? 
the book of Genesis, Genesis 49, the scepter, that one, the 
Shiloh prophet. Shiloh prophet, there's a lot 
more going on there. Latter days, okay, the latter days are connected 
to this Shiloh person, I think it is, who has dominion over 
the peoples. And you trace that through Daniel 
and all over the place, you go, all right, wait a minute, he's 
putting the context of Joel's fulfillment in a wider canonical 
context by using two words, latter days. So it's a trigger mechanism 
for good readers of the Old Testament. By the way, you can't understand 
the New Testament unless you've got a good Old Testament. And 
the other way around. So Peter, before he quotes Joel 
2, puts Joel's prophecy in a larger context. eschatological context 
that's first indicated to us way back in the book of Genesis 
connected to the Shiloh character there. And it's just a lot of 
stuff. And you mentioned the weird Balaam prophecies. There's 
a lot going on there too. I'm supposed to get back into 
numbers. We're going through the Pentateuch on our Wednesday 
night studies. And the Balaam prophecies, I've 
heard Beale or I've read Beale. I kind of think I get it, but 
at the same time, Balaam's just an odd duck for me in the pages 
of Holy Scripture. Before you go on, let's reiterate 
here, okay? Because this is really important 
and it's widespread and rampant among many professing Christians. 
We do not believe that there are two peoples of God on a parallel 
track. We believe that the gospel brings 
them together and there's one people of God who will enter 
into the eternal state forever. So that the charges that are 
made of supersession or replacement theology are slanderous, really. They really are. I can say easily, 
they need to stop. They do need to stop. Well, they 
won't, but I can say that. And I would appeal to people 
who may be listening, to recognize that that is a misrepresentation 
of what we believe. We do not believe that the church 
replaces Israel. We believe that there's one people 
of God. So there's no superseding. There's 
no replacement at all. That's right. Yes. And for me... since we're sharing here. By 
God's grace, we got converted, and six months later, I met him. 
And I'm not sure that's the part of God's grace. No, I'm kidding. 
He's been very influential, very helpful. But one of the things 
that I'm thankful in my Christianity is that I didn't have to go through 
a lot of things. I went. He had already gotten 
into the confession, So, I didn't have to do some time in dispensationalism 
or Arminianism. It was just, you know, nurtured 
in a good environment. So, much of, at least back then, 
what I learned of dispensationalism, I would hear from Rich. And I 
just, for me, it's always been, how could you possibly believe 
that? And I don't mean that in an unright... I probably do because I got my 
issues, but in Ephesians 3, Paul takes pains to tell us, from 
the two, he's made one new man under Jesus Christ. So then you're 
going to come along and separate that and say, well, you know, 
that's only for a time, and then it just doesn't make sense. Well, it does in their system, 
which is which is built off of a hermeneutic. So what I said 
before, and you said amen, I said you got to allow the scripture 
to help you interpret the scripture or else you're going to bring 
your own hermeneutic to an Old Testament text without considering 
the New Testament whatsoever. It was Walter Kaiser who has 
this principle of the the analogy of antecedent revelation. So 
antecedent, afterwards, if the timeline's going this way, Genesis, 
Revelation, you're in this text. You can't use texts over here, 
like when Jesus expounds on a text. You can't use that, but you can 
use Calvin. You can use Calvin, or you can 
use lexicons created by liberal Germans who were in hell. to 
help you with Hebrew words. So, I mean, people don't think 
that way, but I try to push them to think that way. Now, wait 
a minute, I can use Calvin or somebody else to help me with 
this text, but I can't use Jesus or the prophets pick it up, Moses, 
you know, whoever. So I think it's a hermeneutical, 
it ends up being a, a blind spot for them. When I was in seminary, 
and I did go to the master's seminary, and I was very thankful 
for what I got there. Our systematic theology prof 
was a friend of Verne Poythress, and they had a dispensational 
think tank where they had Wayne Grudem, I think, and Mark Mueller, 
my esteemed professor, and Vern Poitras and others were involved 
at ETS for a few years there. And he says, you know, in my 
discussions, we have all come down to this conclusion, the 
difference between the various forms of covenant theology and 
dispensationalism is at bottom an issue of hermeneutics. Yes, 
absolutely. And I think he was right. And 
another thing I think that complicates it at a practical level is the 
political rhetoric as well. If you question dispensationalism, 
it has been, I think, how Lindsay made this observation. You're 
anti-Semitic. You're anti-Semitic. That's a heavy one to lay on 
a person. Well, that's another charge that 
was laid against me in that Facebook discussion. Anti-Semite. If you 
don't believe dispensationalism, therefore you're anti-Semitic? That's a baseless attack that 
is very rhetorically powerful and hard to get away from. You 
get branded as an anti-Semite in the 21st century in North 
America, that's career ending. You can be canceled. So, you 
know, a theological difference amongst, you know, interpreters 
of Scripture over however many years, that's perfectly legitimate. That doesn't commit me to anti-Semitism. Right, exactly. And I would also 
say that, you know, a historic pre-mill, obviously an Orthodox, 
not one I agree with, you know, it's not my favorite, but it 
isn't loaded with the same sort of baggage that dispensation 
is a mess. Yeah, it's just a really, because 
there's been this combining of the political and the theological 
and the, well, there must be this, really makes it tough. 
Yeah. One of the big issues when I 
was a dispensationalist was the Davidic covenant, the promises 
of 2 Samuel 7, 23 and Psalm 89. Are they fulfilled in the church 
age or not? Church age, I'm already talking 
like them. Are they being fulfilled now? 
Are they in partial fulfillment? And then there's a millennial 
fulfillment. What's all that? And the more 
I just read the New Testament thinking, OK, Abrahamic covenant, 
Davidic covenant, Mosaic covenant, and all that stuff, the more 
I just came to the conclusion that the New Testament reads 
the Davidic promises as terminating in our Lord's first 
coming. We mentioned Matthew 16, aren't 
we? Yeah. Matthew 16, 2 Samuel 7. Yeah. A son of God will build 
a house for God. Yeah, a house for my name. That's 
exactly what is happening there. And what's the house? So Peter 
confesses, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Well, 
this is Davidic covenants. What's the Son's house? It's 
a church. A church local? Yes, and universal. Absolutely. Throughout the interadvental 
age. Yes. That's right, yeah. Glorious. Wonderful. By the way, that's 
all connected to Adam and the Garden of Eden, too. Since sharing 
is the word of the day, let me share one more thing that comes 
to mind as a result. Our generation, many of us were 
converted out of or in a dispensationalist circumstance. I mean, when I 
was a teenager, we used the New Schofield Bible. And I can remember 
the youth pastor in the church one time standing up saying, 
if you have the right kind of Bible, turn to page such and 
such. If you don't, then please turn to the text. The Lord have 
mercy on you. Repent. I can immediately think of a 
whole lot of young men today who are not raised in a dispensational 
environment and so don't have that baggage with them and are 
doing some really wonderful things in helping to restore an older 
more consistent hermeneutic and theology. I am really encouraged 
by the next generation, the younger men, and what God is doing in 
raising them up. I pray that they will stay faithful. and that their lives will not 
be ruined by indulging in any kind of evil. But if they are 
kept in the way, I think the future is really very bright 
because we have a lot of very fine young men. You brought up 
hymns, right? I don't think so. I mentioned hymns earlier. You 
did? Okay, yeah. It's fascinating. older, more traditional hymnology, 
the hermeneutic required to get to those lyrics was not dispensational. And yet, I've sung some of those 
hymns at dispensational worship services. And I think, you know, 
you had touched on this earlier, but just to reiterate, you know, 
the problem with dispensationalism isn't a pre-trib rapture, that's 
just a fruit of You know, one of the issues, it's hermeneutics. 
And if you go in and you end up with a two people of God, 
you divide what Jesus has brought together. In my mind, you need 
to go back to the drawing board and examine those hermeneutics 
because that's not where you want to end up. You don't want 
to say, well, Paul must be speaking about just this time because 
there's going to be this great divide. No, the whole point, 
the mystery is Christ as the Savior for Jew and Gentile. Gentile 
inclusion in the covenant promises of God goes all the way back 
to Genesis. Maybe we can say that the 20th 
century was a parenthesis. There you go. A theological parenthesis. I like that. Intercalation. It does still last, though. The political angle, too, really 
just adds a whole lot of fuel to the fire. You know, it's hearsay, 
but, you know, pulpits, dispensational pulpits really using the modern 
scene in Israel in ways that I don't think is good. I don't 
think it's helpful. It just stirs the pot. And then, 
of course, covenant theology guys are the bad guys because 
we deny, you know, the place of ethnic Israel and God's political 
plan. That's a lot to heap up on somebody. You know, I've got my issues, 
but I like to think that's not it, necessarily. It's a reminder 
of the fact that when we stand before God's people, We must 
speak his words and not our own opinions, nor the opinions that 
are swayed by current cultural mores and ideas, which I think 
very regularly happens in Christian pulpits. And we need to be really 
careful. But it's another argument for 
two things that Rich and I both love, and that's confessionalism 
and historic Christianity. What has the church said? Well, 
let's get beyond the, what did C.S. Lewis call it, the tyranny 
of the chronological snobbery. Let's get by that thinking that 
we have the answers now. You know what that is? That's 
progressivism that's entered into Christian theology. Let's 
hear the voice of Christians through the ages, believing the 
promise that Jesus gave, that the Spirit would lead His people 
into all truth. That's right. And let's conform 
ourselves to that. Yeah. We've said this at a conference 
together. I think it was—was it last fall? One of those conferences. We wanted to get this message 
out, especially to younger guys. You're not a younger guy, but 
you've already done this a long time ago. Matter of fact, you 
told me this one time, do you read commentaries chronologically? And I said, you cited him. I 
said, no, why? You go, dude, cause you, cause 
you go from 20 to four Southern California. Cause you go from 
20 to 20 commentaries to four real fast. Yeah. You weed out, 
you do learn to weed out. And usually just keep the older 
ones. Because any time the newer guys 
say what the older guys said, it's redundant. But what the 
newer guys usually tell you is the size of their toga or something. 
The history of togas in the first century. And you're going, I'm 
not going to preach that to a woman who's got a jerk for a husband 
half the time. They fought on the way to church. 
They have seven kids. I'm going to preach about togas. 
That's not preaching. That's background stuff that 
might help you in your study, but you don't need to give that 
to your people. So the older guys you read, it's 
just scripture. They deal with the text. They 
try to show the relation with other texts, and they try to 
encourage you if it's about Christ or if it's about a promise of 
God for individual souls or whatever. They're not afraid of doctrine, 
of drawing theological lines. Yeah, recently a friend, I sent 
a text, a friend said, hey this professor of Old Testament guy 
said this about background material, and I told you guys this earlier, 
and my friend says, Who cares? Shut up and do theology or something 
like that. Well, I have to say, as a pastor 
in our movement, if I can use that language, or Confessional 
Reformed Baptist Churches, I've been very thankful for both of 
you men in terms of some emphases that I think have become more 
pointed and conspicuous the longer you guys do what you're doing. 
And I really appreciate the theological interpretation of scripture. 
You know, there is that mind, well, you gotta read 15 books 
on what was going on in first century Israel to really get 
at what the text means. God seems to think that people 
that have the Spirit and the Bible, that can be overdone. 
All I need is me and the Holy Spirit. But based on, you know, 
in Acts 4, or I'm sorry, in Ephesians 4, Christ ascends on high, leads 
captivity, captivity, gives gifts to men. Those men teach, those 
men preach, those men write good books. And it's not necessarily 
the socioeconomic conditions going on in first century Israel. It's what are other texts saying? What is the theology of God's 
Word as a whole saying? To me, that's always been more 
important. And some of that, like you said, 
it can be helpful. You know, the Revelation 3. you 
know, because you're neither hot nor cold. It helps to know 
that, you know, one city had hot springs and the other city 
had cool, refreshing water. But you don't need that to get 
Jesus' message out of Revelation 3. And I think when we teach 
people that you need that in order to get this, we're missing 
something there. So the Bible comes packaged in 
such a way that, you know, the law of the Lord makes wise the 
simple. If you've got the Spirit, and you put your mind to it, 
and you read, and you're prayerful and dependent upon the Lord, 
we hope and expect that you're going to be, you know, a decent 
theologian. The woman that's got the struggles, 
got the problem with her husband, she needs good theology, and 
she can access that good theology without dead Germans that wrote 
lexicons that are in hell. Kindly put it a few minutes ago. 
Picturesquely. Picturesquely. Yeah. So I just, 
you know, as a pastor on the ground, you know, seeking to 
preach through scripture and do so in a confessional context, 
I really have appreciated both of you guys and as I said, the 
emphases that you bring to the table, and I'm just glad you're 
with us for this weekend, but glad that you're available to 
us, because I think I'm not speaking alone. I think if you were to 
take my comrades in arms, the guys at the local church level, 
we would all say the same thing, and I'm sure you're going to 
hear that. from the guys that are here this weekend. They're 
probably going to come up, Dr. Ranahan, thank you for your exposition 
of the confession. It's helped me tremendously. 
Thank you for your book, Trinity and Creation. Thank you for your 
exposition of the Bible. So you're known for helping guys 
with a confession. I'm known for helping guys with 
the Bible. You're both known as men that 
are committed to the authority of God's word. and have seen 
that the Second London Confession is a wonderful summary statement 
of that word. I don't get, and this is another 
thing in my own experience, I don't get this antipathy to the wheel. If the wheel works, Let's use 
the wheel. Why would we reinvent it? The 
17th century confessions have stood the test of time. They're 
wonderfully biblical. They're wonderfully robust. And 
I have found going through the confession in our own church, 
you get more practical out of these old, dusty, dry, orthodox 
treatments. Who writes chapters like Assurance 
in our Second London or Perseverance or the recognition that, you 
know what, there's times It's like God withdraws his smiling 
face. You've got to persevere through 
that. You've got to deal with that. The typical self-help Christian 
approach is, you know, you're doing something, fix it, and 
God's face will be on. Our guys are a lot more biblical, 
much more thoroughly practical. I just don't get this argument 
that it's tried, you know, orthodoxy. Can I say something? You brought 
up theological interpretation of scripture. I think I have 
a section in my lectures for the conference on that. But I 
was, you know, in the 90s, I started reading biblical theology more. And after a while, I realized 
a lot of the books are kind of redundant, saying the same thing. 
And then I got to know Dr. Renahan in the late 90s. And 
what he helped me with was a theological slash or dash historical reading 
of the confession. And I don't know if I've ever 
told you this, but the way you read the confession is the same 
way you read the Bible. You read it sideways. So tell 
us what you mean by read the confession sideways and how that 
relates to reading the Bible sideways. Yeah, well, I use that 
more refined term more often now, horizontally. Horizontally. Well, when it comes to the confession, 
I would argue that early on in the chapters, they're laying 
down a foundation. The latter chapters are building 
on that foundation. So I try to teach my students, 
pay attention to what is stated in the first few chapters, early 
chapters, let's say up through chapter 6. And notice then later 
on how those threads are woven into everything that comes afterwards. And when you're later on in the 
confession, think through what is this picking up. So that, 
for example, the doctrine of God. The doctrine of God is foundational. Every time that you see the word 
God in the Confession, you ought to think of Chapter 2 and what 
Chapter 2 says. If I remember correctly, I think 
there's 15 chapters where the first word or the first phrase 
includes the name God in it. You don't just treat that as, 
okay, the divine being. No, you think about all that 
you've learned back in chapter 2. Who is the one who grants 
repentance or gives faith or who brings us to the end in eternal 
life? Or who is the one who willed 
that his son would be head over the church? all of those things. So that's reading it horizontally, 
or I used to use the word sideways. It's a good word, but horizontal 
means it's easier for people to grasp. And that's how we have 
to think about the Bible as well. You know, sometimes I wonder 
if an illustration of it is Let's say that you are suddenly dropped 
down in a foreign country that you don't know the culture, you 
don't know the language, but you're right in the middle and 
you have to figure it out. is influenced by everything else 
that happens in that country and its history and its culture. 
And as you grow in your understanding of the language, the culture, 
the food, the geography, as you grow in all of those things, 
you're becoming more and more one who is able to live in that 
country. Well, in a sense, that's what 
it's like with the Bible. The more that you know about 
the whole picture from beginning to end, the better that it is. So I go back to what I said before. 
We must assert that the Old Testament is a Christian book and that 
we read it as Christians in light of what the New Testament says. 
I think Rich has done some great work, even within the Old Testament, 
showing how the more recent Old Testament books are interpretations 
of the previous Old Testament books and how the prophets don't 
add anything new. Rather, what they're doing is 
giving us understanding of what was laid down, for example, in 
the Law of Moses or the Torah, the Pentateuch, etc. So, I remember, 
just real quick here, I remember, because there's a New Testament 
use of the Old Testament commentary, and I remember you saying, and 
I agreed, that there needs to be an Old Testament use of the 
Old Testament. I have subsequently heard that 
Junius did something like that, I think, but there is a volume 
now that is the Old Testament use of the Old Testament. Just 
a quick question, have you used it at all? There is? Yeah, I 
think Dolezal recommended it. Oh. Yeah, we can talk about that 
later. But I think G.K. Beale and a 
team of contemporary scholars are working on an Old Testament 
use of the Old, corresponding to the New Testament, a commentary 
on the New Testament use of the Old Testament. So your confession, 
you said start the first six chapters, those are foundational, 
take them with you as you interpret, go through the rest. Should you 
do the same by taking the rest of it back then, coming through 
here and reading the whole in light of the whole over and over 
again? over and over again, and things start jumping. You go, 
you have aha moments, and you're going, the text hasn't changed. 
It's, you know, the confession's the same. Same thing with the 
Bible. Foundation, you know, was it Sinclair Ferguson? Genesis 
3.16 to Revelation 22 is a foot. is a footnote to Genesis 3.15. Yeah, yeah. There's so much foundational 
stuff there that's just assumed by the subsequent writers. And 
we need to assume it. It's there, it's revelation, 
and it's an interpretive grid or a help for the subsequent 
passages. But just like with a confession, 
you have aha moments, it's even more so with Scripture. You know, 
somebody will be preaching, like, you're going to preach Psalm 
15. I guarantee you most of the people, if not all, I'm saying 
most because maybe Mike's heard you preach this before, are going 
to go, most of the people that have are more seasoned. The more 
you know the Bible, the better it is to understand the depth 
of some of these things. They're going to say, I've read 
that. I never saw the connections. It's so clear to me now. So he's 
not inventing connections. And I'm not doing anything that's 
esoteric. And you couldn't do really straightforward. 
How about 40 years ago? Could you preach this sermon? 
No. No. So, you know, if I've had 
students, especially at a certain seminary in the United States, 
text me or email me and say, why didn't you and Dr. Renhan 
come out on this issue? Because 15 years ago, I said, 
It would have been half-baked. You learn. You get older. You're 
able to see connections more. There's a concept called inter-biblical 
exegesis. There's different phrases. The 
Bible, within the Bible, exegesis, intertextuality. There's various 
forms of intertextuality. One is, you know, all texts are 
related to other texts. Okay. One is quotation. Another 
one is allusion. Another one is echo. Echo. And 
ask GK Deal, because he, that seems to be his forte. An echo 
is a weak allusion. And I'll talk about these things. 
But the more your blood is bibling, CH Spurgeon, the more you see 
the connections. And then going back to traditional 
hymnody, And I've done this with my people a lot. I said, look, 
think about what it takes to get to some of these poetic lines 
here. And ask yourself, is this just 
poetry disconnected from the Bible? Or is there an interpretive 
method that We couldn't write that as a dispensationalist. As a matter of fact, with the 
more modern hermeneutic, we couldn't write the big confessions of 
the church or certainly the early creeds. The early creeds just 
reduce massive swaths of scriptural truth into short, pithy statements, 
you know. Yeah, I've said it often on our 
Saturday morning. I'm glad they did it, because 
I'm not convinced we could do it. The Nicene, the Chalcedonian, 
and Second London. But when you see the logic of 
it, the order, the theological order, and you're just going, 
this is... There were giants in the earth. 
Yes, there were giants. And they were very careful exegetes, 
too. Yes. is simply bringing together threads 
from Scripture. Absolutely. It's the fruit of 
Jesus. Yeah, it's not Greek philosophy 
imposed upon Christianity. I know. That's a lie from the 
pit of hell. That's right. I agree. How do 
we protect, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with 
God, the Word was God, the Word became flesh and dwelt among 
us. We have a We've got to protect that. We're going to use these 
outside the Bible words to protect those inside the Bible. Words 
are not in the Word to explain and protect the Word. That's 
right. And nowadays, it's like, we don't need that. I've been 
using the illustration because we're going through John's Gospel, 
dealing with some Trinity stuff. You know, guardrails on the road. 
Imagine you drive up to your friend's house and all these 
cars are off the side of the road. You say, well, what happened? 
Well, we used to have these guardrails. This is playing off of simply 
a Trinity adrift in Barrett's book. We used to have these guardrails, 
but they took them down. Well, you think if you put the 
guardrails back up, it would keep the cars from all flying 
off the... We've taken down the guardrails and we've got bad 
Trinitarian theology. But I agree, there's many good 
things to be encouraged about in terms of guys writing now, 
you know, doing good work. So, I don't want to end on or 
get close to ending by...