Sojourners and Exiles: Recent Episodes
Dan Szepesi
We recently had some long time members leave our Church and as a note of explanation, they forwarded an episode played on BOT radio of a show by Jan Merkel of Olive Tree Ministries. The episode centers around a letter sent to Jan by a listener who was leaving a Reformed Baptist Church over the way that Revelations was preached. Listen as we break down the letter and Jan's response.
We took a break from the finer points of theology to talk about simple faith and what it means to have faith in Jesus. We wandered as we often do but the core message is there. Faith is a gift from God, given through his grace and if you seek it, you will find it.
It came as a surprise to me that the Reform faith does not believe in dispensationalism, a way of interpreting Biblical history invented by John Nelson Darby in 1830. This flew in the face of what I heard from nearly every Christian that I met here in the deep south, especially as I moved out to the country. There is a ton to unpack here so join us as James explains what dispensationalism is and why he believes it is wrong.
How is that for a click bait title? Martin Luther wasn't one to mince words and he used donkeys in a lot of his more bombastic statements including one that we talk about briefly in this podcast. Despite the deep theological content of what we are discussing in these podcasts, we often end up laughing and cracking jokes through them. This episode is no different as James takes on trying to explain to me why we need Church. Sola Scriptura means 'By scripture alone' so why can't I just sit at home with the Bible and be fine?
Catholics tend to get riled up over arguing this point of 'Sola Scriptura' so I dug up a lot of what I call 'opposition research' to throw at James to see how well their arguments stuck.
Since we are done with describing TULIP, I took the opportunity to pepper James with some questions about scripture and about comments that he has made about the evangelical church. We fly over a lot of topics here including evangelicalism and the woke church.
We close out our discussion of TULIP by talking about the perseverance of the saints, or as James says in the podcast, 'Once a genuine believer, always a genuine believer.' We also talk about he doctrine of assurance, that comfort to all of us that still sin that we can still be assured of our salvation.
NOTE: The final four minutes of the podcast have some static noise that I wasn't able to edit out. I beg forgiveness, I know what caused it so hopefully, we won't have that problem again. -Dan
The third of the five points of Calvinism is the L in Tulip - Limited Atonement. Pastor James gets pretty into this one - as the title says, the L is the gospel!
We continue our discussion of the five points of Calvinism by talking about the U in TULIP, Unconditional Election.
In episode four, we now start to get into the acronym that is commonly used to describe what is called 'Calvinism'. Starting with the Canons of Dort, we introduce TULIP and dig into what the T stands for, Total Depravity.
Millennials get a bad rap these days, some of it deserved, most of it not. One thing about millennials though, they have to be one of the most jaded, cynical, and world-weary generations to come in quite some time. They can see right through the hype around all the things that churches are trying to do to bring them into Church and they see it for what it is, fear and hype. In part two of Episode Three, we talk about the common means of grace, and how ordinary and authentic will always win over contrived and over the top.
When you come to Winnsboro Reformed Church, don't expect an altar call or an invitation to come and be saved by the pastor. Why not? We get into it in part one of episode three.
In the bible belt where Winnsboro is snugly tucked, Calvinism or being a Calvinist can be a negative thing. In this episode, Dan and James talk about why it shouldn't be.
What does it mean to be a Reformed church? It must be important, it's front and center in our name. In this first episode, I sit down with Pastor James and ask him to put into words what the Reformed means and how I could explain it to someone.