Latest / The Immutable Word / EP060 Why Baptist? Individual Soul Liberty - Part 6

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EP060 Why Baptist? Individual Soul Liberty - Part 6 · The Immutable Word

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Because every individual must give an account of themselves to God.
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When you get to the white throne judgment, if you're lost, every individual
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will face God and they will not give an answer for their neighbor.
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They won't give an answer for their family members.
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They can't point the finger at religious groups that didn't tell them the truth.
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God will hold every individual accountable for their own soul and for the decision
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that they made regarding Jesus Christ. And the idea is that no civil government,
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It doesn't matter, state, county, national government has any power or say so
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in who you conscientiously worship.
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Welcome back to The Immutable Word. We are continuing our series of the Baptist Acrostic.
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We've gone through several episodes already, so if you haven't caught any,
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I'd suggest folks to go back, start with the intro. and we've already covered the first four.
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And I'll briefly go through and just briefly cover what we had just gone through
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in the last few episodes.
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So we went through the introduction just explaining what the Baptist distinctives
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are and then we started to move forward into actually going through the distinctives themselves.
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The first one we went through was biblical authorities,
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so B and the Baptist acrostic where we covered that the Bible is the absolute
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final authority in all matters of faith and practice, which surpasses human tradition.
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Then we moved on to A, autonomy of the local church, where each local church
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is an independent, self-governing body,
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accountable only to Jesus Christ, rejecting any kind of external hierarchy,
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aka the Catholic Church.
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And then we moved on to P, which is the priesthood of the believer.
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Every born-again Christian has direct access to God through Jesus Christ,
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requiring no mediator, like a priest, for example.
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And then, the last episode, we covered tea, which is the two ordinances.
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The Church observes believers' baptism, and the Lord's Supper strictly is a
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symbolic memorials imparting no saving grace.
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So we're moving on to I in the Baptist Acrostic, which is individual soul liberty,
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or the doctrine of individual soul liberty.
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So we'll go ahead and get rolling into it, Robert. I don't know if you wanted
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to start us off, and then we'll start going from there.
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Yeah, did you want to just go through the Epstein files real quick?
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We don't want to go there. That's for another episode. Or we could talk about
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disclosure, alien disclosure.
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I really, really, really want to talk about alien disclosure,
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but we must hold back and stay focused on the acrostic.
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Well, maybe we can. Do you have a few minutes?
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It wouldn't take a few minutes, I promise you. No, yeah, that's the only problem
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is this will be a three-hour episode.
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Yeah, easily. Don't torture our listeners. After the Baptist distinctives,
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maybe we'll do some alien distinctives and Epstein files. Alien distinctives, there you go.
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We'll cover all the different classifications, the grays, the whites.
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Did we talk about that? I thought we did talk about that one.
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We touched on it briefly.
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I mean, the main, when we were doing the alien stuff, it really wasn't aliens.
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It was angelology, right?
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Oh, right. The life forms. That was the thing is spiritual wickedness in high
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places. We don't believe that there are extraterrestrials from another planet.
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We believe that these are interdimensional beings, right? That's what we talked
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about, but that they're more likely demonic.
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So, any kind of encounter, I know our friends there on the Unmovable Apologetics,
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they talked a little bit about it today.
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I was listening, it's a pretty good episode, but, you know, they talked about
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Doc's book, Black is Beautiful. Yeah.
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And some stuff like that, and they also talked about, you know,
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the classification. But the point was, they also talked about,
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you know, the Creation Ministries video, right?
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The what is their video again again intrusion
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alien intrusion yeah it's their book i didn't know they had a video no they
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did have a video that's right yeah it was first a book and they adapted it they
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did the book and then they did the documentary on it you know but the guy that
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worked at MUFON i think it was MUFON one of the directors there started in doing an investigation,
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finding out that people that were christians or professing christians or that
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are saved or never abducted or people that did experience abductions you know
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when they did get saved it stopped like all the residual effects and stuff yeah
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it was immediate or just simply saying.
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Jesus christ help me or something like that right immediately stopped
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which indicates that whatever is happening is just
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it's demonic exactly but good
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book definitely yeah good video uh this is good documentary great
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book i think there was a couple books by that
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author and of course gary bates i believe
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wrote the book and black is beautiful black is beautiful is
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a classic too also a great book yeah that
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that one you know be prepared and you
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better make sure your marriage is really strong before you read
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it it does go through alien distinctives in that one i
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remember specifically a lot of classifications but yeah this goes to show there
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there's it's a it could be a very complex it's a very complex topic but with
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a very simple underlying foundation which is these are spiritual beings that are basically demonic.
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And I suspect that our friends, Randy Keener and them over at the Immovable
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podcast was talking about it because of the recent disclosure,
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additional disclosure. Exactly.
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That's been out in the news. Well, that's, everybody's been up in arms,
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especially pastors, you know, and people are being warned, you know,
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like, this is going to shake your faith.
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And they were talking about, hey, we've been talking about this stuff for decades.
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And then there's other Baptist preachers like Doc, Dr.
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Ruckman, for example, you know, he's been talking about aliens since the 60s,
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you know, and talking about their demonic nature. And he's always looking at
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it from a biblical point of view.
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So, you know, the point is, is you can't just ignore it and,
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you know, put your head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist because as
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a Christian, you're going to be confronted with it at some point.
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So, you need to have some kind of a biblical response to it,
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right? So, anyway, see what I did, Alan? Yeah. We started talking about...
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I'm going to stop it right here.
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It's going to stop right here because I know where this is going to be.
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All right. All right. Baptist Distinctives. Baptist Distinctives.
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Okay. Individual soul liberty. Let's go.
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So, individual soul liberty, really, the simple way to describe it is that every
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person, you know, possesses an unalienable right and responsibility to deal
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directly with God without human coercion.
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Cohesion i can never say that word coercion coercion
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there it is coercion this doctrine is rooted in
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scripture it's championed you know it's champion championed by
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a lot of our baptist forefathers and we'll talk about
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some of them and give some examples but it's it's threatened in every age because
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really it's the foundation of what we call or what we believe is religious freedom
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in this country it's it's underpinned by this doctrine individual soul liberty
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and so individual soul liberty and separation of church and state are very closely related.
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So when we get to the last, and that's why I mentioned earlier,
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some of these acrostics, that, you know, each of the letters,
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some of them play into the other, right?
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So there's some overlap or, you know, one may influence, and there's going to
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be some redundancy in some of these because.
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You know, again, these aren't clear-cut distinctives as
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they're independent of each other they
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they actually supplement each other so it's
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important to understand that but when we
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talk about the doctrine of individual soul liberty the
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assertion is that every person has this freedom to worship god as they see fit
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according to the dictates of their conscience it's what it comes down to right
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every because every individual must give an account of themselves to God when
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you get to the white throne judgment if you're lost.
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Every individual will face God, and they will not give an answer for their neighbor.
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They won't give an answer for their family members. They can't point the finger
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at religious groups that didn't tell them the truth.
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God will hold every individual accountable for their own soul and for the decision
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that they made regarding Jesus Christ.
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And the idea is that no civil government, right?
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It doesn't matter, state, county, national government has any power or say-so
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in who you conscientiously worship, okay?
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Or, nor does the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the church.
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The church cannot force you to serve God or not serve God as far as your conscience is concerned.
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They cannot, they do not have the authority to dictate your conscience.
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They can't force religious compliance or mandate assent to any belief or ritual.
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Now, they can force you to do something against your beliefs,
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but that's still against your belief.
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Okay? They can't make you believe in God.
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The church can't make you believe, right? They can deceive you,
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but deception is different.
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Then you're going to basically make your own individual decision.
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So true faith basically it's you know there's two kind of pillars that uphold
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the scriptural foundation of individual soul liberty and one is the mandate
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of individual accountability so we just kind of.
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Alluded to it, right? But true faith is voluntary, okay?
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You have to decide that you're going to trust Jesus Christ and believe,
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you know, the propositions that are given in Scripture regarding salvation.
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So, a religion that forces you to serve God basically produces hypocrites.
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They don't produce converts.
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Salvation and sanctification are individually assessed by God.
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And, you know, for example, you know, any kind of proxy faith,
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like, for example, oh, my grandparents were Christians.
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You know, there's a genetic fallacy of like, well, you're only a Christian because
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your parents were Christian.
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You're only a Christian because you grew up in America. You didn't grow up in West Africa, right?
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But that's a proxy faith. This doctrine of individual soul liberty actually
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refutes that belief, okay? That every person...
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He individually has to give an account. The Bible says in Romans 14,
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12, for example, so then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.
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Now, that passage, Romans 14 specifically, has to do with the judgment seat
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of Christ because he's talking to believers there.
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However, it's the same individual account that a man has before God.
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Like, remember in Luke 16, the rich man went to hell, right?
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Abraham, in Abraham's bosom, you had Lazarus.
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And what happened?
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You had him, you know, this poor man, this beggar, who was in Abraham's bosom,
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but the rich man was held accountable.
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He says, he said, you enjoyed these things in life.
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Now, what he did, you know, we don't have time to go into it,
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but he violated the Old Testament law.
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He was supposed to provide for the means necessary for a poor man to eat.
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And the Bible says that he ate of the crumbs of his table.
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But in the law, they were supposed to actually not mar the edges of their field
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and allow poor people to be able to feed themselves and get their sustenance
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and so forth and so on. That was actually a requirement of Mosaic Law.
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But he was accountable because he broke it. He knew what that law was.
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So, the Bible says in Romans 14, verse 5, earlier in that chapter,
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Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. Right?
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So, you know, your ultimate devotion to God is basically your individual decision to make.
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So, if it's your individual decision, guess what?
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That also means you're individually accountable. You have to give an account.
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So, the individual soul liberty is kind of predicated on individual accountability,
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but also it highlights the true source of liberty, okay?
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The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 3.17, now the Lord is that spirit,
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and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
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In John 8.36, Jesus says that the Son, therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
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So, liberty is not just a political construct, right?
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It's not a political philosophy or an idea. It's a spiritual reality that originates with the Holy Spirit.
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Only the Holy Spirit provides true freedom. That's why, you know,
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there's so many verses, like in the book of Proverbs, the Bible says that a
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man is held by the cords of his sin and so forth and so on, right?
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I think it's in 2 Peter, 1 Peter, where he talks about that they're bound to,
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They're brought it back into bondage of their sin. Yeah, so when they promised
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them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption.
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For of whom a man is overcome, like he overcomes sin, right?
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Of the same, he's brought into bondage. He's brought in bondage. So sin is like slavery.
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So being bound by your sin is being a slave to it.
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Well, he says, you know, the Bible says in 2 Peter 2.19 that they think it's
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liberty, but they're the servant of corruption.
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Because of their sin. The thing that they were released of, especially when
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you look at the context for when they speak great swelling words of vanity,
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they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness,
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which is much wickedness.
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Uncleanness, and those who were clean escaped from them who live in error.
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While they promised them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption.
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So, these are people that allure other people into sinning.
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So, anyway, the point is, is that true liberty comes from the Holy Spirit.
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So, if you want true liberty of conscience, that's another way to say it. It comes from God.
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But God, the Bible says in John 1, verse 12, that when Jesus Christ,
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the true light, comes into the world, he lighteth every man.
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Every man has, you know, some element of light or understanding.
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And we call that the conscience.
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Conscience is a combination of two words, con, with science,
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with knowledge, basically.
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So, and then Romans 2.15, the Bible says when a man does, the Gentile does by
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nature the things that are written in law, they're a law unto themselves,
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his conscience bearing witness.
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So, again, that's where we're dealing with the conscience of a man.
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There's an old saying that says, you know, a man convinced against his will
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is of the same opinion still.
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You cannot force a man to believe something
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conscientiously they you can force
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them to do something against their will but like i
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said earlier it's still against their will but the
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so the roman catholic church is obviously is always going to be the
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contradiction to these doctrines so the baptist doctrine of soul liberty it's
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in stark opposition to the roman catholic union of church and state and of course
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the roman catholic structure and hierarchy is a bunch of priests that will force
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a baby to be baptized against its will, right?
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We talked about infant baptism, but they use state power historically to enforce religious conformity.
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So, some of the things that they did, so here's an example of some statements that they've made.
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Papal supremacy and denial of conscience. So, Roman Catholic theology historically
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demanded total submission of the, you know, individual to the ecclesiastical
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hierarchy of the church, explicitly denying the right of private judgment.
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Here's what Pope Boniface VIII said,
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In his Bull Unum Sanctum in 1302, he says, We declare,
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say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation
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of every human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff.
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So, the Roman pontiff steps into the place of God.
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So, a man does not have freedom to serve God individually on his own.
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He has to go through the Roman Catholic Church.
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Another Pope Innocent III in the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 said,
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There is but one universal church of the faithful outside which no one at all is saved.
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So the problem with this is the Bible tells us in Timothy that there's one mediator
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between God and men, the man, Christ, Jesus.
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That means there's only one person, a human being, needs to go through to get
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to God, and that's Jesus Christ.
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Hebrews 4, or Acts 4.12, neither is there salvation, any other,
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there's no other name given among men, whereby we must be saved.
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Jesus Christ is the sole entry. That's why he said in John 14,
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6, I am the way, the life, and the truth. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.
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So those are exclusive statements that Jesus Christ is the only way.
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Well, the Roman Catholic Church, well, Pope Innocent III and Pope Boniface VIII,
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according to these two statements, are in direct contradiction and violation
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of what Jesus himself declared.
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So they'll try to squirm out of that by trying to say, well,
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you don't have the right to interpret it.
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You don't really understand that in light of, you know, ABC history or tradition or whatever it is.
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But a man can pick up a Bible and read it for himself.
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And he reads those statements that are in direct contradiction of what the Roman Catholic Church said.
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So, this is the problem that people, when they stand before God and they go,
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well, I was brought up by the Roman Catholic Church and the Roman Catholic Church, you know, lied to me.
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Well, okay, well, guess what? They're going to be held accountable,
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okay, for their false doctrine. But the individual had access to the Word of God.
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The individual had access to their God-given conscience, right?
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And there's got to be something inside of a man where if another individual
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is saying, you must believe this, you know, that person has to make a conscious
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decision whether they're going to accept that or not.
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And the one thing that you find in scripture is that God, Jesus Christ,
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will, you know, will hold people accountable for what they know.
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So, if a man knew he was wrong to steal and he stole, he's going to be held accountable to that.
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So there's a great example. I'm going to just, because I want to highlight this.
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This is kind of important.
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But in Genesis chapter 22, I'm not 22.
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In Genesis chapter 24, there's a king saying.
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Name Abimelech. Actually, it's 20. I don't know why.
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Yep. And there's this king Abimelech and Abraham in Genesis chapter 20,
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verse one, the Bible says he journeyed from thence toward the south country
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and he dwelled, he dwelled between Kadesh and Shur and sojourned in Gerar,
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Gerar or Gerar, however you want to say it.
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And Abraham said of his Sarah, of his wife. She is my sister.
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And Abimelech, king of Gerar, sent and took Sarah.
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So, Abraham lies to Abimelech and tells him, hey, this is my sister.
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So, Abimelech is like, okay, you know what? I'm going to take her as my wife.
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But the Bible says in Genesis 20, verse 3, God came to Abimelech in a dream
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by night and said to him, behold, thou art but a dead man.
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For the woman which thou is taken, for she is a man's wife.
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Now, notice, what's the indictment that God lays out in verse three?
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That's somebody's wife, right? Okay. Well, what's the problem?
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You and I know today it's wrong to take another man's wife.
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The Bible says in Exodus chapter 20, you know, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's
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wife, right? But what's the problem?
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Exodus 20 was written 400 years later after this event with Abraham.
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We can assume that he knew this, but likely not.
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He was a Gentile, so. That's what I'm saying. He's a Gentile. There is no Jews.
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There is no giving of the law. Yeah. Right? Leaves his conscience.
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So, the indictment, we'll watch, but the indictment that God brings is you're a dead man.
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You deserve punishment.
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For the woman which thou hast taken, she's a man's wife. Now watch what Abimelech says, verse 4.
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But Abimelech had not come near her, and he said, Lord, wilt thou also slay a righteous nation?
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Now think about the hubris to tell God, we're a righteous nation.
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Okay, now God could have easily said, are you kidding me? For all have sinned
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and come short of the glory of God.
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There's none righteous, no, not one, right? God could have said that.
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But look what he says in verse 5. He goes, said he not unto me,
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she's my sister. And she, even she herself said, he's my brother.
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And notice, and here's what's interesting. He says, in the integrity of my heart
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and innocence of my hands, have I done this?
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Abimelech says, I'm innocent, God. I didn't know she was Abraham's wife.
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Because why? Because in Abimelech's heart of hearts, he knew it was wrong to
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take another man's wife.
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Now, where's that written at this point?
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Nowhere. Nowhere.
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Other than his conscience. So, Abimelech had enough light to understand right from wrong.
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He knew it was wrong to take another man's wife.
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That's why Romans 2.15 says, when the Gentile, when they do by nature the things
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that are written in the law, he says they are a law unto themselves,
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even their conscience bearing witness.
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They meanwhile accusing and excusing themselves.
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That's their conscience. Now, look what God does. And this is why I believe
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that just because somebody hasn't heard the name of Christ and hadn't had the
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opportunity to hear the gospel, they will still be held accountable to their conscience.
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Look what God says in verse 6, and God said unto him in a dream,
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said unto him in a dream, yea, I know that thou didst this in the integrity of thy heart.
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For I also withheld thee from sinning, sinning, sinning.
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Notice God said, I stopped you from sinning against me. Isn't that interesting?
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God literally stopped him from, why?
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Because he obeyed the little bit of light he had, his conscience.
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And he goes, I also withheld thee from sinning against me, therefore suffered I thee not to touch her.
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Now, somebody said, well, God controlled his will. Yeah, but he first obeyed
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his God-given conscience.
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And then God rewarded him for that. That's the lesson you learn here.
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So, when a man is able to follow his conscience and willingly submit himself
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to God, then God will reward that man.
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But the opposite is also true. When a man willingly rejects the truth,
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God will hold him accountable.
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I'll show you one more verse to kind of back that up. 2 Thessalonians 2.
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Now, we know this is about the man of sin. talks about the Antichrist.
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The Bible says in verse 3, 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, verse 3,
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let no man deceive you for any means, for that day shall not come except there
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come a falling way first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition,
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who opposeth and exalted themselves above all that is called God or that is
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worshipped, so that he as God,
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sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.
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Now, remember ye not that I was with you.
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I was yet with you. I told you these things. Now notice what he says.
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And he goes on, he talks about that wicked's going to be revealed,
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whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, even him whose coming
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is after the working of Satan with all power, signs, and line wonders.
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And then it says this in verse 10, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness
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in them that perish. Why do they perish? Watch.
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Because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved.
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And for this cause, God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie.
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Now, does God send the lie before or after they willingly accepted or rejected the truth?
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So, after they rejected the truth. Yep.
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What's the outcome? Verse 12, that they all might be damned who believe not the truth. There you go.
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God holds a man accountable, okay? He holds that man accountable for what they
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conscientiously choose or reject. That's the key.
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Now, because the Bible clearly establishes that truth,
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God says that any person that tries to violate scripture and say that you must
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come through the Catholic Church for salvation is lying out of their teeth.
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I mean, they are directly contradicting scripture, because God says that a man
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is accountable by his free will and conscience to choose to serve God or believe
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in God, period, or reject the truth.
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That's why Calvinism is false, too.
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So, the other error of the Catholic Church, not only is it papal supremacy and
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denial of conscience, but it's also what's called the Nicolaitan error, okay?
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Revelation 2.6, God is telling the church there, he says, but this thou hast,
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he's commending them, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
26:35
He also talks about their doctrine in Revelation, the doctrine of the Nicolaitans.
26:40
And what that is it's it's a actually it's
26:43
a combination of two greek words niko niko or
26:45
like nike that's where we get our word nike from victory laitan
26:50
is laity the people it's victory over
26:53
the the the ruling class the i'm sorry victory over the laity the people so
26:59
the elevation of a ruling clergy class over the laity also seeks to subvert
27:05
the soul liberty by dictating doctrine in via human creeds, critical scholarship,
27:12
you know, pastoral dictatorship, you know, church hierarchy,
27:15
rather than individual illumination by the Holy Spirit.
27:18
So, what they're doing, this Nicolaitan error, is again, it's another attempt
27:22
to destroy the individual conscience of a human being to believe or reject God freely.
27:30
So, Nicolaitan error is what the Roman Catholic Church basically represents, okay?
27:38
So, now, where do the Baptists come in? Our Baptist forebears,
27:43
they're primarily, you know, intellectual and theological architects of religious freedom.
27:49
But they were trying to, because they went through so much religious persecution, right?
27:54
Suffering, imprisonment, beatings, fines.
27:57
They went through so much persecution, they demanded, especially in the early parts of America.
28:05
And one thing I don't think people realize, you know, when did Plymouth Rock,
28:09
when did the Mayflower land on Plymouth Rock? Do you remember the year?
28:13
16, was it 16 something, right?
28:18
1620. 20. Nine years after the King James Bible was published.
28:23
Matter of fact, they had a copy. They had a Geneva Bible and a King James Bible.
28:27
That's another topic for another day. Yeah.
28:30
From 1620 to when was the Constitution ratified?
28:37
1796?
28:39
1788. That was way off. June 21st. Yeah, I knew it was in the top of my head.
28:44
June 21st. Yeah, right. I just looked it up.
28:48
June 21st, 1788. So that means from 1620 to 1788, that's 168 years, right?
28:57
Am I right? Yeah, 158 years. So almost 160 years from the time we landed on
29:03
Plymouth to the Constitution being ratified.
29:06
Here's what people don't understand. That 158 years, during that 158 years,
29:12
the Baptists were persecuted.
29:15
They were imprisoned. They were beaten. They were forced to get licenses to
29:19
preach, to marry each other.
29:20
It was illegal to hold office unless you were a Puritan or a Congregationalist
29:27
or Church of, you know, Church of England or Roman Catholic in the 13 colonies
29:32
before the Constitution.
29:35
They suffered 160 years of persecution in the United States of America. They could not...
29:42
Worship God of their own free will. There was only one colony,
29:46
one colony that had absolute perfect religious freedom, and that was Rhode Island.
29:52
It was started by a combination of Roger Williams, who was fleeing Massachusetts
29:58
for religious freedom, and John Clark and a group that followed him.
30:03
John Clark ended up starting the First Baptist Church. Roger Williams started one briefly.
30:07
I think he only lasted a couple years. But John Clark, he served for 40 years.
30:13
His son served for another 40 after him. And then his grandson served for another 40 after him.
30:19
So, you have 120 years of John Clark's heritage in the First Baptist Church.
30:25
The First Baptist Church is also, surprisingly enough, across the street from the Turo Synagogue.
30:32
I mean, you can literally walk from the John Clark's, you know,
30:37
Memorial Baptist Church, I can't remember what it's called, there in Providence,
30:39
Rhode Island. I think it's in Providence.
30:41
I might have the city wrong, but it's in Rhode Island.
30:44
You can literally walk across the street and go right to the Turo Synagogue,
30:48
which is the oldest synagogue in the United States. You know why?
30:53
Because the Jews were not allowed to land or enter into New York Harbor.
31:00
They were actually, they were forced to sit in New York Harbor and not gain
31:04
access to the United States by
31:06
the governor of New York, and other states would not let the Jews come in.
31:12
They were trying to escape religious persecution with the Inquisition over in
31:17
Europe under the Catholic Church.
31:19
The only state that allowed them free entry was Rhode Island.
31:25
Isn't that amazing? So, and you know why? Rhode Island was a Baptist colony.
31:29
It was the only Baptist colony.
31:31
Virginia wasn't. Maryland was the only Roman Catholic colony.
31:36
Massachusetts, New York, you know, all those, Maine, I mean,
31:41
Virginia, I mean, you go on and on and on.
31:43
Each one of those colonies were either controlled by the Congregationalists,
31:47
Church of England, Puritans, but they all persecuted Baptists for 158 years.
31:53
Yeah that's it's fascinating to hear about that that it
31:56
happened here in the united states in
31:59
the united well before the united states but then you know here in america
32:03
and for so guess what that
32:05
did though that that sowed the
32:08
seeds of the baptist movement that would eventually lead to the first amendment
32:14
of the constitution of the united states which led to religious freedom religious
32:19
freedom was literally on the lips of every Baptist in the colony for 160 years
32:26
before the Constitution was ratified.
32:28
Yeah. And I would say that we wouldn't have a constitution.
32:33
Yeah, it's exactly right. Without the Baptists advocating for it. There was John Clark.
32:38
So the one that I was talking about, John Clark, he wrote a,
32:41
he petitioned, I think it was King Charles. I'm trying to remember.
32:47
I'm trying to remember what it was. It was called, oh, there it is. The charter, right?
32:50
In 1663 was the Rhode Island Royal Charter, and it was considered the only document at its time.
32:59
It was the first document that guaranteed that no person would be punished or
33:05
questioned for differences in religious opinion and establishing religious liberty
33:11
for the very first time on the planet.
33:14
It was the first governmental document that established and guaranteed religious freedom.
33:22
And this is 1663. So this is, again, 120 years before the Constitution was ratified.
33:30
And it was in Rhode Island. And it was a Baptist minister. And I believe he
33:35
waited for over 11 years in England waiting for King Charles to sign that royal charter.
33:43
Yeah, I think that's crazy. I think that royal charter is still in existence,
33:46
too, and you can actually go look at it.
33:48
But that had influenced the movement later on, over 100 years later,
33:54
which led to the Bill of Rights.
33:57
As a matter of fact, and we'll get into it when we get into separation of church
33:59
and state, but that phrase, separation of church and state, was because of Roger Williams.
34:06
Roger Williams is the one that said
34:07
that the garden of the church would be protected by a wall of separation,
34:13
that the government would never be able to infringe upon the religious beliefs
34:19
and religious practices of the individual.
34:22
And so he talked about it as a garden. Well, guess what?
34:25
I think it was right before the signing of the Constitution when the Baptists
34:29
were going through a lot of still persecution, especially in Virginia. It was horrible.
34:34
That's why James Madison, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, they were all lawyers.
34:39
And they defended a lot of these Baptists, you know, whenever they would be held in court.
34:44
Well, Thomas Jefferson was writing a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association
34:49
of Virginia trying to ensure that, look,
34:53
you're not going to see religious persecution because of, and he used the phrase,
34:59
separation of church and state.
35:00
What he was doing was borrowing from Roger Williams' letter and writings about religious freedom.
35:08
You know, whether or not people, you know, want to believe that Roger Williams
35:11
started the First Baptist Church or not, that's irrelevant.
35:13
What does matter is that Roger Williams was a fierce proponent of religious
35:18
freedom and liberty of conscience.
35:21
Because at the end of the day, what they believed was that the state had no
35:26
right or the church had no right
35:28
to dictate what a man should believe or should not believe about God.
35:33
Okay so all of that to say is
35:36
that it made the environment rich for
35:40
these three individuals i'm going to mention one is isaac bacchus john leland
35:44
and francis wayland and and i want to quote i want to you know provide some
35:49
quotes what they said about religious liberty and individual liberty because
35:52
they were extremely active baptists in their day that was fighting religious
35:58
persecution and intolerance.
36:00
Isaac Bacchus, he opposed state taxation of worship.
36:03
Because guess what? You had to pay taxes in Massachusetts to support the Puritan church.
36:11
Literally, you were paying taxes if you were a Massachusetts citizen.
36:16
Your taxes was not to go to the defense of the state. It wasn't to go to better roads.
36:23
It was to support financially the Church of England, the Puritan Church.
36:31
So, Isaac Bacchus, guess what he did? You know, he had many,
36:36
many debates with this guy by the name of John Adams.
36:40
And John Adams was out in Massachusetts. So, Isaac Bacchus had something to
36:44
say about this religious freedom and individual soul liberty that a man had.
36:49
And then you had a man by the name of John Leland. John Leland was a significant
36:53
influential Baptist in Virginia leading up to the writing of the Constitution.
36:59
And he's the one that you know asserted liberty over toleration because you don't tolerate.
37:06
Religion you're not supposed to religion is supposed to have two true 100 freedom
37:11
you don't tolerate because if you tolerate it what you're implying is that you
37:14
can have control and you'll allow it to be practiced you'll tolerate it and
37:21
and john leland fought against that but john leland was also, he wrote,
37:25
you know, he was a fierce proponent of religious liberties in Virginia.
37:30
He influenced a lot of Virginians, and it was James Madison,
37:33
when he was trying to write the Constitution, he was trying to get Virginia
37:39
to ratify the Constitution.
37:41
But the problem is, is that Virginia had a ton of Baptists, and the Baptists
37:46
would not support it, because as far as they were concerned,
37:49
you're basically going to, you know, we're going to go from 13 different kings
37:52
or whatever, 12 different kings in different colonies, and you're going to put
37:56
us under one big giant king with this constitution and a nationalized central government.
38:02
So James Madison asked John Leland, what can I do to get your support,
38:08
to get the rest of the Baptists in Virginia to vote and ratify this Constitution?
38:14
And John Leland specifically told him, you must put an amendment in that Constitution
38:20
that guarantees the right of religious freedom.
38:23
And James Madison with that discussion with John
38:26
Leland he wrote the first amendment of
38:29
the constitution United States to guarantee religious
38:33
freedom and freedom of speech that was
38:36
that was John Leland's doing John Leland is
38:39
the one that talked to James Madison and James Madison agreed
38:42
to it and that's why he put it in the constitution there's and
38:45
if people doubt that you can you know reach out to the sons of
38:47
the American Revolution in Virginia and Culpeper
38:51
County there is a park it's not even
38:53
it's on constitution hall highway it's called the
38:56
leland madison park and there's a big giant statue there
38:59
and in in the statue i can't
39:02
remember if it's a statue of john leland madison but there's also
39:05
a big it's like a big raw you know stone tablet thing and it says on this site
39:11
there was a significant meeting between john leland and james madison which
39:15
resulted in the the religious freedom that we we basically you know enjoy in
39:21
the first amendment so that That was a Baptist preacher.
39:23
Yeah, I mean, isn't that something that, and most people will know this,
39:27
that the fact that the Bill of Rights exists was because of a Baptist preacher.
39:32
The terminology of separation in church to state didn't come from some left-wing
39:37
liberal complaining about influence of churches in government or in school.
39:42
It was a Baptist preacher understanding the importance of separation.
39:46
You'd mentioned, too, the Puritans earlier, and I often, or not so often,
39:54
every once in a while, I travel up to Boston for war purposes.
40:00
And sometimes I have an opportunity to walk through that city,
40:05
and as you know, it's really big historically and played a large part in the Revolutionary War.
40:12
But there's a park there called the Boston Commons.
40:15
And Boston Commons is a really beautiful park. It's pretty big.
40:19
It's been there since the establishment of that city.
40:23
I mean, the British used to parade on there and do their practices and things like that.
40:29
But at that same park that I would walk through from day to day when I'm there
40:34
visiting is that there was a significant occurrence there where somebody was
40:39
beaten, whipped, a guy named Obadiah Holmes.
40:42
And he was whipped because of his beliefs, because he was preaching the gospel,
40:47
and he went against the Puritans.
40:49
Yeah, what they did, just to provide some context, is they had a congregant
40:57
that was saved and baptized.
41:00
And this is significant to say, but the Protestants of those days,
41:04
the Puritans and so forth, And a lot of those Reformed churches all baptize infants.
41:11
The Baptists obviously would re-baptize when a person would get saved.
41:14
So they had one of their congregants lived in Massachusetts right across the border.
41:19
And they traveled to that person's house to hold a meeting, a preaching meeting.
41:25
To study the word of God. And basically the civil authorities in Massachusetts
41:32
found out about it, arrested him.
41:33
And that's what led to the beating of Obadiah Holmes. Because they were told to pay fines.
41:38
And Obadiah Holmes said, I refuse to pay the fine, give me the beating.
41:42
And he was given a public beating and whipping because he preached the gospel in somebody's house.
41:48
Yeah, right there in Boston Commons, they ordered him whipped 30 times in public.
41:53
And just because he had preached the gospel and just walking through there,
41:59
you got people walk through that park every single day, don't understand the
42:03
significance of that history and the importance of the liberty of conscience.
42:09
So, that should help set really the stage about this liberty of conscience and
42:14
why it was so important to Baptists.
42:16
If you haven't really figured it out yet, you know what I mean?
42:19
It's like, you think about it, these men had a strong religious conviction that
42:25
they should have the right to worship their God by the dictates of their conscience
42:31
without the state interfering and without a church interfering.
42:35
They were living and breathing this for 158 years.
42:42
And this doesn't even include the persecution they received in England.
42:47
I mean, they had to flee England. They had to go into, you know,
42:50
the Swiss Alps and so forth and so on.
42:53
And remember, we talked about not, you know, Baptists didn't always go by the name Baptist.
42:58
But if you look at the Waldensens, the Albigenses, the Paulicians,
43:03
these different groups, the Novatians, and over and over again,
43:07
every single one of them were persecuted for their religious worship and devotion of God.
43:14
So, men like Isaac Backus, John Leland, Francis Whelan was the fourth president of Brown University.
43:21
But he was also the pastor of the first Baptist church in Providence.
43:25
Now, it wasn't Providence that John Clark was at. John Clark was the pastor.
43:30
Oh, where was it? John Clark.
43:33
I want to say. I went to his— It was the Baptist church.
43:39
Yeah, I went to the Baptist church. but it was trying to think where it was
43:44
the other one was Rhode Island this one was in.
43:49
Newport. That's what it was. He became co-founder. He co-founded Portsmouth
43:54
in Newport, Rhode Island.
43:56
But he was in, I think it's Newport. Newport is where we went.
44:01
I want to say it. Portsmouth or Newport or Portsmouth.
44:05
So anyway, so these men, they were influential in their day, right?
44:10
But I wanted to, I brought up, we said all that history to kind of,
44:13
I want to quote, I want to give you a couple quotes from these men.
44:16
So, Isaac Bacchus, right, he rejected state taxation because he fought against
44:21
the Massachusetts establishment that taxed citizens had to support state-sanctioned
44:26
ministers, arguing that the state has no jurisdiction over worship.
44:30
This is what he said, God is the only worthy object of all religious worship,
44:36
and nothing can be true religion, but a voluntary obedience unto his revealed
44:42
will of which each individual soul has a right to judge for himself.
44:49
So basically the state has no jurisdiction over worship.
44:53
Taxation to fund state sanctioned ministers and churches was a direct violation of soul liberty.
44:59
And that's what Isaac Bacchus, I don't remember how many times,
45:02
but I know he was a pain in the legislature's you know, side in Massachusetts.
45:08
But he had, I think he had two or three open debates against John Adams over
45:14
this taxation of state-sponsored churches.
45:17
So Isaac Bacchus basically said, look, a man, the only true religion that exists
45:23
is a voluntary obedience unto God's will, and each individual soul has a right
45:28
to judge for himself what that will is. John Leland said,
45:32
So, he argued that toleration implies that the state has the power to grant
45:36
or withhold religious freedom.
45:38
So, he demanded absolute liberty as an inalienable right.
45:41
He said, every man must give an account of himself to God.
45:45
And therefore, every man ought to be at liberty to serve God in a way that he
45:51
can best reconcile his conscience.
45:52
If government, now here's what's important, watch what he says.
45:55
If government can answer for individuals at the day of judgment,
46:00
then let men be controlled by it, government, in religious matters.
46:05
Otherwise, let men, let me be free.
46:09
John Leland also said this, the liberty I contend for is more than toleration.
46:15
The very idea of toleration is despicable.
46:18
It supposes that some have a preeminence above the rest to grant indulgence.
46:25
You can serve God basically through our power and allowance.
46:29
So he despised that. John Leland was against that.
46:32
Then Francis Whelan, he said this, it is our central belief that the scriptures
46:39
are a revelation from God, given not to a pope or a general assembly or a synod,
46:46
but to every individual man.
46:50
They were given to every individual that he might understand them for himself.
46:57
Now, Waylon's formulation, he's very decisive here.
47:00
He says the chain of Revelation runs directly from God to the individual.
47:05
There's no institutional, you know, church. There's no government institution.
47:11
That's an intermediary, right? We said that God is a mediator.
47:15
Jesus Christ is a mediator.
47:16
So, there's no other mediator, basically, between God and men that consists
47:24
of a church or a government, according to Francis Whalen.
47:27
He says, God gave the scriptures directly to man, and guess what?
47:30
That man is directly responsible.
47:33
So, the historical threats, right, they came from the church hierarchy,
47:38
from the Roman Catholic Church.
47:39
The modern threats today, okay, people don't realize this, but we've come full circle.
47:45
Back then, they were fighting for religious freedom to freely worship as they see fit.
47:52
You know what we see today? We see people going to court now being sued because
47:57
they own a business and they don't want to support, you know,
48:00
a gay wedding, for example, or they don't want to support a wedding that violates
48:03
their religious freedom and conscience.
48:05
And now they're being held accountable to that stuff.
48:08
You know, professors are being fired from universities because they have religious beliefs.
48:14
You have teachers that try to express religious belief and they're being held accountable.
48:20
And of course, what they're doing is they're perverting the statement,
48:23
the separation of church and state.
48:25
And that's actually being weaponized against the church.
48:28
The idea is that the state can dictate what the church can do or can't do.
48:35
And that's actually a violation of the First Amendment.
48:38
It says it can't establish any religion. The state has no right to do that.
48:45
And that's exactly what they're doing.
48:47
So the modern threats we see today, they come from the ideological conformity
48:52
and cultural, you know, subversion of our culture, basically through cultural Marxism, relativism,
49:00
identity politics, right? They all undermine liberty of conscience.
49:04
How? Through academic collectivism, through censorship, right?
49:09
Through firing people, destroying their careers, you know, and bringing them
49:15
before the public, ridiculing them.
49:17
So again, 2 Peter 2.19 says, while they promised them liberty,
49:22
these Marxists, these relativists, you know, because they themselves are the
49:27
servants of corruption.
49:28
A Christian surrenders to cultural, religious, or political influence.
49:33
If they do that, they surrender their individual liberty. No one takes it.
49:37
So how does this happen in this society where we went from, you know,
49:41
1788, the ratification of the Constitution to where we're at today,
49:45
where, you know, people are getting rested on the street for preaching the gospel
49:50
because it's offending people.
49:52
So, how do you get to that point where there's a process of abdication?
49:56
What you do is you see soul liberty eroded progressively through a cultural shift.
50:01
Number one, you start to tolerate sin, right?
50:04
You tolerate a cultural ideology, you know, whether it's, you know,
50:09
cultural Marxism, whether it's identity politics, whether it's you know sexual
50:14
deviancy or lifestyles right you start to tolerate it as a society,
50:19
then what you do is you start to accept it you go from toleration to accept
50:23
acceptation you start you start to accept that lifestyle as legitimate that
50:29
sin as legitimate and then when you tolerate it and accept it the next step
50:34
is you start to celebrate it.
50:37
People start to celebrate. That's why we have, you know, gay pride month and
50:42
all these other things that happen, right?
50:43
You start to celebrate a sin according to the word of God. And then what's the
50:49
last step is participation.
50:52
Now it's mandatory. Now you have to be part of these social groups and you have
50:57
to be part of diversity politics and diversity in the workshop and so forth and so on.
51:02
That's how you literally step-by-step destroy individual soul liberty.
51:08
And it was the Baptists that had advocated and fought so hard.
51:13
They went through all that persecution to establish it. That's why it's a shame
51:16
that you have Baptists today that won't open their mouth and say anything about it.
51:20
Yeah, it is a shame. And it goes further back than just the persecution around
51:26
the revolution or before the revolution, but we're talking 2,000 years all the way back to Paul.
51:32
I mean, all the way from the Paulicians all the way up until now,
51:35
the thousands of Christians that were persecuted for their beliefs.
51:40
Yeah. I mean, it's probably more than millions, but yep. Yeah.
51:43
And to see that eroded fairly quickly, you know, over the last course,
51:49
you know, century or century and a half or so.
51:52
And we've all heard the terminology and the language of toleration.
51:56
We hear it all over the media.
51:59
We hear it in the culture today in our work. You mentioned the,
52:02
what do you call those sessions at work? I've gone through them myself on a
52:08
number of occasions, and they bring that up all the time about tolerance.
52:14
But that's just a sure sign of where we're at today, and the degradation of,
52:20
again, the liberty of conscience.
52:24
Well, one of the things, you know, Paul writes, he outlines in Ephesians 6.12
52:29
that, you know, we have a spiritual warfare, right?
52:32
But he also outlines it in 2 Corinthians 10 verses 3 through 5.
52:36
He says this, for though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh.
52:40
So it's not a physical warfare.
52:42
He says, verse 4, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal,
52:45
but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.
52:48
So these strongholds are not carnal strongholds, are not physical flesh strongholds.
52:53
And so he says, verse 5, he describes them as casting down imaginations,
52:58
ideas, and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge,
53:04
the knowledge, the knowledge of God. Guess what? It's ideology.
53:08
And bringing into captivity every thought.
53:12
So, whatever ideology influences the thinking process is the enemy.
53:19
So, ideas are the enemy, is what Paul is saying in 2 Corinthians 10.5.
53:25
Ideology is the enemy. That means false doctrine is the enemy.
53:29
That means false, you know, philosophies that aren't built on,
53:34
you know, the rudiments of Christ, but they're built on the rudiments of the
53:37
world and tradition of men.
53:39
That's exactly what becomes the enemy so
53:43
the enemy of soul liberty today is bad ideas that's why we stress especially
53:49
with this ministry you know with the immutable word is we stress apologetics
53:54
apologetics is a way to defend the christian faith and contend for the faith
54:00
once delivered to the saints.
54:02
If you do not learn apologetics, you will not adequately defend the Christian worldview.
54:09
You won't do it. And that's the idea. The idea is, is how do we get from,
54:13
you know, these men like Isaac Backus, John Leland, Francis Whalen,
54:18
and several other, you know, heroes of our Baptist faith.
54:22
How do we go from there to today, where you have the Southern Baptist Church,
54:28
you know, ordaining women,
54:31
Southern Baptist Church ordaining homosexuals, you know, and you have other
54:35
churches now that have just let down, you know, and just let cultural Marxism,
54:40
you know, destroy their particular identity politics.
54:44
You know, you take any of these ideologies, again,
54:48
they're unbiblical worldviews and philosophies that are juxtaposed to the Word
54:56
of God and to the worldview that we're supposed to be defending.
54:59
That is why it's so, so, so vitally important that Bible believers today,
55:05
especially independent Baptists, King James Bible-believing,
55:08
dispensational Baptists, learn doctrine,
55:11
learn apologetics, learn how to defend the faith, learn the laws of logic,
55:17
learn how to think properly and critically so that these ideas don't influence
55:21
and infiltrate your homes and your churches.
55:25
So individual soul liberty I mean even though at the core It's basically a man
55:31
has a right To worship God To accept God or reject God On his own free will
55:35
That's what it comes down to,
55:37
So, the five arguments, basically, as we kind of conclude this,
55:40
the five arguments are what we call the argument from personal accountability.
55:44
So, you know, what proves soul liberty is true? Personal accountability.
55:50
Every individual must ultimately stand before God to give a personal account of themselves.
55:54
No earthly government, no church, right?
55:59
No other hierarchy, religious hierarchy, possesses authority to dictate or force
56:04
a person's conscience, you know.
56:07
And then, so that's the argument from personal accountability.
56:10
What's the second argument? The argument from voluntary faith.
56:13
Because true religion fundamentally requires a voluntary obedience to God's revealed will.
56:19
That means the use of state power to force religious assent destroys the very
56:23
nature of genuine faith. You can't have genuine faith if it's forced.
56:28
Then number three, the argument from spiritual proxy. Because no priest,
56:32
church, or civil government can answer for an individual's soul at the final
56:34
judgment, Every person must have unrestricted liberty to serve God according
56:40
to their own conscience.
56:41
Number four, the argument from jurisdictional limits. Because the legitimate
56:46
powers of civil government extend only to punishing acts that cause physical
56:51
or societal injury, right?
56:53
The government can only act upon those laws that harm my neighbor, right?
57:00
Or prevent my neighbors from harming me. That's the only time civil government,
57:04
that's the only jurisdiction it has, right?
57:07
The state inherently lacks a jurisdiction to regulate or punish private religious opinions of men.
57:14
That's where it doesn't have the boundary. When we get into separation of church
57:17
and state, we'll get into that more.
57:19
But that's where one of those overlaps I was talking about earlier.
57:23
Then, of course, the argument from direct revelation, because God gave the scriptures
57:26
directly to every individual, right?
57:29
He didn't go through a church and then communicate his message to individuals.
57:33
He didn't go through a government and, you know, communicate his message.
57:38
He, God, gave the scriptures directly to every individual human being to read
57:42
and understand for themselves, rather than exclusively to a ruling,
57:47
you know, ecclesiastical body like the Roman Catholic Church or any state church, really.
57:52
No human creed or religious institution can claim supreme authority over an individual's faith.
57:58
So, at the end of the day, that's why we say it's an unalienable right, right?
58:02
That's what the Declaration of Independence says, that we have certain unalienable rights.
58:08
Unalienable means that they can never be alienated from the individual.
58:12
They can't be changed. They can't be coerced. They can't be forced.
58:17
They can't be regulated by the government. So, somebody says,
58:20
well, you know, that right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that
58:23
right to worship god where does that right come
58:26
from well if the government gave you that right the government has
58:29
a right to take away but if god gave you that right nobody has the right to
58:33
take it away so individual soul liberty is the core belief that every person
58:38
is directly responsible to god for their own faith their own salvation what
58:43
they choose to do is the revelation god gave them this means no government or
58:47
person can stand between you and God,
58:49
or force you to believe a certain way. Throughout history—,
58:53
People like Isaac Backus, John Leland, Francis Whelan, they all sacrificed a
58:58
great deal to protect this freedom, which helped shape the religious liberty
59:02
that we have in America today, which is slowly eroding, sadly.
59:06
It's a vital truth that each generation must understand and defend.
59:09
That's why we say you must educate. The Bible says in Hosea that my people are
59:13
destroyed for lack of knowledge. Right?
59:16
And one of the—our John Marshall, he was the first—he was the first Supreme Court justice.
59:22
Yeah he was the first supreme court justice was john marshall
59:25
he actually stated that the
59:29
that every school student
59:32
every school student whether from grade school all the way through what we understand
59:37
as high school through college every year should be trained to understand the
59:42
constitution of the united states of america now you can't even get people that
59:46
there's people don't they've never even looked at the Constitution of the United
59:50
States their entire life.
59:51
They'll live their entire life and die in America and have never read the Constitution
59:55
for themselves. They couldn't tell you the articles.
59:58
They couldn't tell you which articles defer to Congress, which ones defer to
1:00:02
the executive branch or the judicial branch.
1:00:05
They couldn't outline the boundaries of the judicial branch,
1:00:10
the executive branch, and the congressional branch.
1:00:12
They couldn't do it. They don't know that the Constitution actually outlines
1:00:17
and guides that many of the liberal policies that we've seen in our country
1:00:21
is a distortion of the interpretation of the Constitution.
1:00:25
It really is a shame that, you know, independent Baptists shouldn't know that
1:00:28
Constitution. I carry a copy of the Constitution with me when I go street preaching.
1:00:33
Because there's a lot of police officers that don't know what the Constitution says.
1:00:36
And the fact is, is if you do not defend it, if you don't learn it,
1:00:41
if you don't apply it, guess what's going to happen?
1:00:44
There's a church in DeLand, Florida. Pastor James Knox, Bible Baptist Church in DeLand.
1:00:49
They were, this was, I think it was probably 10, 15 years ago.
1:00:54
They were in downtown DeLand and they would pass out tracts,
1:00:58
religious tracts, okay?
1:00:59
They would preach on the street. they would hold scripture signs
1:01:02
and so forth and so on they weren't blocking public
1:01:05
access they weren't stopping cars they were
1:01:08
on they were on open sidewalks that
1:01:11
were public sites public access ways okay
1:01:14
protected by the first amendment they would preach now guess what happened they
1:01:19
had a police officer said hey you guys aren't allowed to pass out religious
1:01:23
tracts and they go no it's our first amendment right they go no well there's
1:01:27
a there's an ordinance There's a city ordinance that states you cannot pass
1:01:32
out religious literature.
1:01:34
And they didn't believe it until they were shown the land had an actual ordinance.
1:01:40
And guess what? This ordinance had been on the books of the city laws for 50 years.
1:01:47
For 50 years, there was an ordinance that stated it was illegal to pass out
1:01:53
religious literature in a public square.
1:01:55
So you actually had a city ordinance that was violating the First Amendment
1:02:00
that went uncontested for 50 years.
1:02:06
Until you had a church that faithfully went out on the street and proclaimed
1:02:11
the gospel. And guess what they did?
1:02:13
They defied that. They took the city to court. They sued the city over the first
1:02:20
amendment and the city lost and they had they were forced to eradicate that
1:02:25
ordinance from their laws.
1:02:28
But you know why? Because somebody exercised their First Amendment rights. Yeah. Taking a stand.
1:02:35
Yeah, it's crazy that that happened in, well, one, 50 years on the books.
1:02:40
Two, this was in the deep south in Florida of all places where someone's religious
1:02:47
liberties were being inhibited.
1:02:49
But to happen there, yeah, it's crazy. If it's happening there,
1:02:52
it can happen anywhere else.
1:02:53
But the point here is if you don't take a stand for defending liberty of conscience,
1:03:00
well, guess what's going to happen?
1:03:02
Well, that law would have stayed, it would still be on the books today.
1:03:05
Yeah. You know? Yeah, if they didn't do anything about it. I mean,
1:03:08
again, these uncontested laws, if you do not exercise your First Amendment rights,
1:03:13
you are going to lose them.
1:03:15
That's what many, especially if you read some of our forefathers,
1:03:20
the founders of America, the people that were invested in the Constitution,
1:03:24
that had debated over the Constitution, pushed for its ratification,
1:03:29
even though some of them weren't Bible-believing Christians.
1:03:32
But it was again it was promulgated by
1:03:36
underscored by baptist you know
1:03:39
individual liberty soul liberty that's why it's so important to
1:03:42
understand freedom of conscience was was such a huge huge issue you know at
1:03:48
the ratification of our constitution and today our you know our freedom of rights
1:03:53
is being literally just picked apart piece by piece and you don't see people
1:03:58
i mean there are some people fighting for it.
1:04:01
But again, if you stop fighting and you don't stand up for what our forefathers
1:04:06
had stood up, now people go, oh, well, you know, we can't get involved in politics.
1:04:10
We're not supposed to get involved in politics.
1:04:12
You know, Paul appealed to his Roman citizenship in the book of Acts whenever they arrested him.
1:04:18
And, you know, especially there in the Philippian jail, they said, hey, we're Romans.
1:04:23
You arrested us. There was no due process.
1:04:26
And of course, they freaked out because they didn't know he was a Roman citizen.
1:04:30
Matter of fact, you know, the jailer and them said, well, you know,
1:04:32
for a great sum, I bought my citizenship.
1:04:36
And you know what Paul said? He goes, I was freeborn.
1:04:39
I was born with these rights. And so, you know, Paul appealed to his citizenship
1:04:45
rights, his civil rights.
1:04:47
So, you know what? As Baptists, that's what people like Isaac Bacchus and John
1:04:51
Leland and Francis Whalen and many, many others did.
1:04:54
They were fighting to fight for their civil liberties that were given to them,
1:04:59
but for the God-given right to worship their Lord and Savior as they saw fit.
1:05:05
So, anyway, so this is why, you know, as you study these Baptist distinctives,
1:05:11
you start to understand these aren't just a list of, you know,
1:05:15
statements and propositions these men made.
1:05:17
These were part of their core being, their core individual conscience,
1:05:24
you know what I'm saying?
1:05:25
This is something that was vitally important to them, you know?
1:05:29
So they believe no civil government or church hierarchy has the authority to
1:05:33
dictate the conscience, which you enforce religious compliance, right?
1:05:38
Every individual has a right to judge for themselves what they're going to do
1:05:42
with what God's given them.
1:05:44
So that is a core distinctive that Baptistic people have held on to for the last 2,000 years.
1:05:54
All right, that's it. So this is, again, a key doctrine, the doctrine of soul liberty.
1:06:00
And it's a sober reminder that our Baptist forefathers have fought and died
1:06:06
for, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of millions over the course of a few thousand years.
1:06:11
And it's key that we know, understand, and stand up for and appeal when necessary,
1:06:19
just like you mentioned Paul appealing to his Roman citizenship.
1:06:24
So, the erosion of soul liberty that's happening today, we see it getting worse
1:06:31
and worse as time goes on.
1:06:33
We hear of how people's individual liberties, like especially liberty of conscience,
1:06:39
is being violated. You go to Canada, we just go up north, go to Canada,
1:06:43
and you're going to hear and see and maybe even experience it.
1:06:48
The preachers up there are limited in what they can preach.
1:06:51
They say they have religious liberty or the terminology of freedom of worship,
1:06:56
but their liberty of conscience is restricted, and you just got to go up there.
1:07:04
You don't have to go to China or some communist country, just go north.
1:07:07
But anyways, yeah, it's a key doctrine, and people absolutely need to know this.
1:07:13
It really is the bedrock of our true religious freedom that we still enjoy today.
1:07:18
Yeah, amen to that. All right, so that is a wrap on that one.
1:07:24
That's B-A-P-T-I is what we've covered so far.
1:07:28
And again, if those are just jumping into this episode, maybe you haven't listened
1:07:33
to some of the other ones that were covered.
1:07:36
Definitely cover the other ones. Like, listen to the other ones.
1:07:38
Listen to the introduction where we talk about the Baptist acrostics and where
1:07:42
we start to move through from biblical authority through autonomy of the local
1:07:46
church, priesthood of the believer,
1:07:49
two ordinances, and the individual soul liberty.
1:07:52
So, until next time, we're going to be covering...
1:07:57
What is the next one? S. Saved, regenerated church membership.
1:08:01
The last T is going to be the two offices. And then the very last S will be
1:08:06
separation, church, and state.
1:08:07
And they'll kind of close the loop and really tie into the individual soul liberty
1:08:11
stuff and a little bit more about that.
1:08:14
We covered a really good, you know, foundation for it in this lesson. Yeah.
1:08:19
Because separation, church, and state is predicated upon individual soul liberty.
1:08:24
So, but, you know, we'll go into a little bit more about the division between
1:08:28
the church and the state.
1:08:30
We'll talk a little bit more about that when we cover that distinctive.
1:08:34
Yep, it'll be good. I like church history and U.S. history in general,
1:08:39
especially with the Baptist involvement.
1:08:42
Our dad was a huge historian. He's the one that influenced us greatly.
1:08:47
Yeah, it was because I remember Jack told us, and he's our stepdad,
1:08:50
we call him Jack. So, you know, I remember Jack told me his love for history
1:08:54
grew out of his high school class.
1:08:58
He hated history like everybody, I think, you know, thinks boring, dry and dull.
1:09:02
And his teacher had a big giant rug that was the it was a map of the United
1:09:10
or the world. It was a world map on a big giant rug.
1:09:13
And he he used the game Risk.
1:09:17
And what they did is they played Risk on that big giant rug.
1:09:20
And as they went through, they would actually learn world history.
1:09:25
They would learn different world wars.
1:09:27
They would learn cultural history about many of those locations while they played
1:09:32
Risk. And of course, Jack loved Risk.
1:09:35
So it just fired him up. And he became a huge historian.
1:09:40
Matter of fact, that was his major in college. That's what he wanted to do was
1:09:45
teach, be a history professor.
1:09:47
And of course, he kind of like, you know, infused that into us.
1:09:52
But after we got saved, you know, we started getting introduced to actual real church history.
1:10:00
And when we started to learn about our Baptist heritage, man, it just fascinated.
1:10:04
And I'll tell you, part of it is just because I get frustrated.
1:10:09
I get mad that that history was hidden from us when we were in public school.
1:10:15
You know what I mean? I mean, we learned things that we should have learned
1:10:18
about our country that we don't.
1:10:20
And now today, you go to the average high school or public school,
1:10:24
and you ask them who John Jay was, or you ask them who James Madison is,
1:10:28
Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and they'll go, oh, what basketball team does he play on?
1:10:35
They have no clue. Yeah, there's no clue and no interest, unfortunately.
1:10:39
But they enjoy their free lattes. You know, they enjoy walking around in the
1:10:44
mall, impress their friends, you know, do the little TikTok videos.
1:10:48
They enjoy the freedom to do that. And they don't understand that those freedoms
1:10:52
are underscored by Baptists that were persecuted for those beliefs.
1:10:57
Yeah. And what did our dad used to say that people that don't know history are doomed to repeat it?
1:11:04
I know it doesn't originate from him, but I remember him saying that all the time.
1:11:08
And the importance of just knowing. It was George Santayana that said it,
1:11:11
that people that don't know their history or don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
1:11:16
It's true. It is true. Well, all right.
1:11:21
That was another good one. I've been enjoying this particular series and looking
1:11:25
forward to the next ones coming up.
1:11:28
There is information and we're starting to build that out in our site finally.
1:11:33
So if you navigate there, it's incomplete.
1:11:37
Maybe we'll have a formal website launch here pretty soon. But you'll start
1:11:40
to find that some of the information is starting to be consolidated there.
1:11:45
Robert, you have a sub stack that you write articles for on a regular basis.
1:11:51
That's also being pushed to our website, theimmutableword.com.
1:11:55
You're also a contributor to Randy Keener's site, thewatchman.org, right?
1:12:01
The Watchman's Warning. The Watchman's Warning, sorry.
1:12:04
Or .com, I think. I can't remember. It's .com or .org.
1:12:08
Yeah, I think it's a .org, but it's the Watchman's Warning.
1:12:12
It's .com. I just checked it. Okay. The Watchman's Warning. Matter of fact,
1:12:15
there's some really good articles on there.
1:12:17
I would definitely, definitely encourage our listeners to go there.
1:12:20
There's one that Caleb Hickam just posted called Dispensationalism Among Anabaptists.
1:12:26
Man, it's an awesome article.
1:12:30
Because he talks about, you know, our forefathers, again, Anabaptists.
1:12:34
But he talks about that essentially their belief structure, their hermeneutic,
1:12:40
their way that they interpreted the scriptures, they believed in dispensationalism.
1:12:44
So dispensationalism was not invented in the 1800s by, you know, John Darby.
1:12:50
And, you know, the Schofield Bible is not the result of a, you know,
1:12:53
Jewish conspiracy to put together a Zionist Bible.
1:12:57
I mean, listen, if you're getting caught up in that junk, I'm sorry, you're an idiot.
1:13:01
You don't know how to study for yourself and you don't know how to think critically,
1:13:06
but you know, that's why, you know,
1:13:08
sites like watchman's warning and some of the articles that are being posted
1:13:11
there, it's some of the articles that I'm attempting to try to put,
1:13:14
I want, you know, we're doing this because we're trying to educate people.
1:13:17
You know, a lot of these Christians that spend too much time on social media,
1:13:21
that'll watch movies, and they'll never learn to think critically.
1:13:24
They'll never learn how to establish, you know, the foundations of their faith
1:13:29
and be able to solidify it and defend it.
1:13:32
Like we just talked about 2 Corinthians 10.
1:13:35
You know, anyway, I would definitely encourage you.
1:13:38
And not only that, I also want to say this, Alan, is that, you know,
1:13:41
I've talked to a few people that have been hugely blessed by some of our episodes.
1:13:47
Right? They said it's really helped them.
1:13:49
It's grounded them in their faith. It's strengthened their faith.
1:13:53
And, you know, and I love that feedback. You know, we want more of that feedback.
1:13:57
But I want to say, in spite of that feedback, we go back to,
1:14:04
you know, our episodes, and sometimes we don't have even a thumbs up.
1:14:08
We don't even see a comment or a like, right?
1:14:11
You know, please, if this has been a blessing to you, then it can be a blessing
1:14:15
to somebody else. and the only way that we're going to get.
1:14:19
You know, these episodes into other streams and threads and, and, you know, and,
1:14:25
and other algorithms that'll pull it into people's search engines is the more
1:14:30
activity and more posts and more likes and more subscriptions and forwarding
1:14:36
and sharing, you know, our,
1:14:38
our, you know, the stuff that we have online that will drive more people to
1:14:42
these articles and to these episodes.
1:14:44
Yep, and just remember When you like When you subscribe When you share,
1:14:51
You save a puppy's life So just remember that you're saving a puppy's life When
1:14:57
you do that No, on a serious note It does help us We certainly appreciate the support,
1:15:03
And we aim to push more out there We've got a lot planned As usual And check
1:15:09
out the site too Like I said, it's not done yet We're working on it We've got
1:15:13
some content on there already and start perusing it,
1:15:16
but you should see more information start to get populated in there as well.
1:15:22
And we're also going to pull in people that we work with, contributor work,
1:15:26
and just a lot of good stuff that we can hopefully pull together for everybody
1:15:29
that might be helpful in your Christian growth.
1:15:34
So with that, I think we'll put this one in the bag and hopefully we'll see
1:15:39
everybody on the next acrostic that we'll cover.