Latah Reformed Baptist
We warmly invite you to explore the information presented on our website and take a moment to reflect on its validity. There is a lot of false information in the world about God, Christ, Man and the Church, particularly, it seems, here in Latah County.
You may find the the rich heritage of Reformed Baptist Covenant theology surprising. Charles Spurgeon, John Bunyan, A.W. Pink, William Carey What is a Reformed Baptist?
As you navigate through our resources, you will find articles, sermons, and teachings that are grounded in biblical truth. Each section is crafted to challenge you—challenging your understanding of God’s Word, encouraging deeper reflections on faith, and inviting you to grow in your relationship with Christ and fellow believers.
So, take a moment to explore, challenge your assumptions. We are here not only to inform but to warmly invite you into a deeper experience of God’s love and truth. We believe that faith thrives in relationship, "iron sharpening iron" and we encourage you to engage with us through comments, discussions, and fellowship.
We hope you enjoy your visit and find the content thought-provoking.
The AXIOM
The Bible alone is the Word of God. The sole authority for doctrine and practice.
The Sovereignty of GOD
Since the Fall of Adam all people have been in the same condition, dead in their trespasses and sins. (Eph 2:1) We believe God saves people, no matter when they lived, in the same way. Old Testament saints, New Testament saints and people today were Elected to salvation before the foundation of the world (Eph 1:4) according to God's sovereign choice and for no merit of their own. (Rom 9:11) We believe that the unmerited favor that God grants to totally depraved sinners is not related to any initiative of their own part or to God’s anticipation of what they might do by their own will, but is solely of His sovereign grace and mercy (Eph 1:5)
In time, something miraculous happens, God regenerated those Elect persons. (John 3) God removed their hearts of stone and gives them hearts of flesh. (Ezek 36:26) This means God changes their affections. The Elect are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. (Rom 8:9)(Rom 5:1)(Gal 2:16)(Eph 1:13) They are no longer God haters but lovers of God and his word. God gives them the Faith (Eph 2:8-9) and the understanding they need to believe God, His Word, (the Bible), and the Gospel (1 Cor 2:14) (John 14:26) and the conviction and ability to repent of their sins and turn to God. (Ezek. 36:26–27;)( Acts 11:18;)( 2 Tim. 2:25) Based on the Finished work of Christ, His sacrificial death on the cross, and for no merit of their own or actions on their part, God declares the Elect to be righteous (Justification) and their sins forgiven, covered in the blood of Christ. (1John 1:7) Not by Imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by Imputing Christ’s active obedience unto the whole law, and passive obedience in his death for their whole and sole righteousness, (LBC 11.1) Believers are justified by God's grace through faith, receiving the Imputation of Christ's righteousness (WCF 11.1). This righteousness is not inherent but is Christ's obedience and satisfaction, Imputed to believers by God (WCF 11.3)They are destined for eternal life with God as his adopted children. (Eph 1:5) This is called Salvation. Also, at this time God gives the Elect ministry gifts for serving in the Body of Christ (the church), and places them in the invisible one true Christian Church. (Eph 4)
The links on this page provide extensive information and Biblical support for the doctrines of God's sovereignty.
The Illusion of Free Will
Your Will is free to choose what your heart and mind desires. But before God changes your desires, through the New Birth, you will not desire to choose Christ. (1 Corinthians 2:14)
Baron D’Holbach an atheist, conjectured, “The universe, the vast assemblage of everything that exists, presents only matter and motion: the whole offers to our contemplation nothing but an immense, an uninterrupted succession of causes and effects” (Systeme de la Nature, 15) Baron D’Holbach D'Holbach's basic argument goes something like this: The choices you make are determined by the things coming at you, your life experiences. Everything has both primary and secondary causes.
Consider: God is working behind the scenes, using primary and secondary causes, to bring you to the point that you freely choose exactly what God intended for you to choose at that moment. RC Sproul "There is not one maverick molecule in the universe."
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH ALONE IS THE HEART OF THE GOSPEL
Teaching all the doctrines of grace confessed by the Reformed believer in the Three Forms of Unity, the Westminster Standards and The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith
Eternal predestination as the source of all salvation
Efficacious atonement as the bases of all salvation
Irresistible grace is the power of all salvation
And the preservation of the saints as the benefit and comfort of gracious salvation
The federal vision denies all the doctrines of grace openly and explicitly
Faith and Repentance in the Order of Salvation
(Or, Why Repentance Follows Justification but Is Born at the Moment of Faith)
EVERLASTING COVENANT
Jeremiah 31:33
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Ezekiel 36:26-27
"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws."
Hebrews 9:15
Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.
Hebrews 8:13
In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
Hebrews 8:6
But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises.
Hebrews 13:20
Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant,
Luke 22:20
And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
1 Corinthians 11:25
In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
Mark 14:24
And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.
Romans 11:27
“and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.”
Matthew 26:28
For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Throughout history God made covenants with man. A covenant made by God is "an unchangeable divinely imposed legal agreement between God and man that stipulates the condition of their relationship." (Berkhof, Systematic Theology) These covenants are essentially conditional promises, God promises blessing if the covenant conditions are kept and God threatens curses if they are broken. (Grudem, Systematic Theology) For example the covenants with Adam, Abraham and Moses, the primary condition was obedience.
There are also unconditional covenants, the covenant God made with Noah and the New Covenant are unconditional, no conditions on man were stipulated. (Eph 2:8-9)
The Old Testament Covenants did three things. First they revealed the righteous requirements of God's law, they highlighted man's inability to achieve God's righteous requirements, and the consequent punishment for failing to do so, and thirdly they revealed the Gospel in the promised Messiah, the one who would himself keep God's righteous requirements and Himself pay the price for man's transgression and sins. (Griffiths, Reformed Baptist Covenant Theology) Old Testament Covenants pointed to and were types and shadows of the New Covenant, part of the progressive revelation that God used to prepare man for their Savior.
The Abrahamic covenant had both spiritual and physical elements. Through Abraham's physical descendants God would bring the Messiah. God commanded the male physical descendants of Abraham to be circumcised as a covenant condition. The circumcision was to mark the boy as a physical seed of Abraham, a member of the Abrahamic covenant.
Gen 22:18 And in thy seed (Christ) shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. Christ in the Abrahamic covenant, God had Abraham cut animals in half and lay the halves opposite each other. (Gen 15) The meaning is that this is a blood covenant, if either party breaks the conditions of the covenant the penalty is death. But only God passed between the slain animals, so God transferred the punishment of Abraham's Spiritual descendants breaking the covenant to Himself. At that moment, Almighty God pronounced the death sentence on his Son Jesus.
This is the Promise of salvation for Abraham's spiritual descendants. There is no salvation in the Abrahamic covenant only the promise. Most of the physical descendants of Abraham had no part of the promise. Most were born to unbelieving parents and they themselves had no faith, just the physical seed of Abraham. But God had chosen some to be given the faith to believe in the Promise, the spiritual seed of Abraham. So the Abrahamic covenant was a mixed community of believers and nonbelievers but membership was based solely on genealogy not faith.
The New Covenant is not just superior in every way to the Old Testament Covenants it is different in Substance and Purpose. The New Covenant is uniquely Spiritual in that you have a personal spiritual relationship with its Mediator, The Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 11:25) “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. " (Matthew 26:28) "For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins."
There is no salvation out side of the New Covenant. Abraham was chosen by God and gifted the faith to believe God's promise of the coming Messiah. (Eph 2:8) Abrahams sins were forgiven on the bases of Christ's blood and Christ's substitutionary atonement. Abraham believed the LORD, and God counted it to him as righteousness. (Gen 15:6) The New Covenant was operational in Abraham's time, and before, saving all that believed. (John 8:56) Abraham embraced the the promise in faith before any conditional covenant was made with him. In this sense, the New covenant is the oldest covenant, that is why Pink calls the New Covenant, "The Everlasting Covenant". In eternity past, it's the covenant that was made between God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit to save the people God the Father chose to give God the Son, the elect. The New Covenant is called "New" because 'in time' , chronologically after the Old Testament covenants, God revealed it's nature, Christ proclaimed He was the mediator and in time Christ ratified and consummated the New Covenant by his sacrificial death and resurrection.
The Covenant of Grace is the in-breaking of the Covenant of Redemption into history through the progressive revelation and retro-active application of the New Covenant. Bavinck says, “The covenant of grace was not first established in time, but has its foundation in eternity, is grounded in the pact of salvation, and is in the first place a covenant among the three persons of the divine being itself.” Vos says: The covenant of redemption is the pattern for the covenant of grace. However, it is more than that. It is also the effective cause for carrying out the latter. As far as its offer and application are concerned, the covenant of grace lies enclosed in the counsel of peace, so that with respect to the latter it appears completely as a gift, as a covenantal benefit.
To know that there has always been only one way of salvation, one covenant of which Christ is mediator, namely, the New Covenant. The New Covenant is the final manifestation of God's redemptive plan. Membership in the New Covenant is based solely on faith not genealogy.
Baptism and Circumcision
Central to my critique of the covenantal argument for infant baptism is that it fails to understand correctly the proper relationships between the biblical covenants and the degree of continuity and discontinuity between them. Pedobaptist rightly emphasize the unity and continuity of God’s salvific plan across the ages. They fail to do justice, however, to the progressive nature of God’s revelation, especially regarding the biblical covenants, the covenant community, and the covenant signs. In the end, this leads them to misunderstand the proper degree of discontinuity inaugurated by Christ’s coming and to which the Old Testament points, namely, the arrival of the promised new covenant age. (Wellum, 'Baptism and the Relationship Between the Covenants')
Many Pedobaptist view the Abrahamic covenant essentially identical with the new covenant and group them together and call it the "Covenant of Grace", same covenant just different administrations. They downplay or ignore the national and typological aspects of the Abrahamic covenant then apply the genealogical principle "you and your seed" to the new covenant.
Who are the people of God? There are differences between the new covenant people called the Church and the old covenant people called Israel. And these differences explain why it was fitting to give the old covenant sign of circumcision to the infants of Israel, and why it is not fitting to give the new covenant sign of baptism to the infants of the Church. The Church is not a continuation of Israel as a whole; it is a continuation of the true Israel, the remnant—not the children of the flesh, but the children of promise. Rom 9:6-8 6 But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel, 7 nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham; but, “In Isaac your seed shall be called.” 8 That is, those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted as the seed.
God's promises were made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as believers and they were the spiritual food and property of none but believers (Rom 4:13,16) (Pink, "The Divine Covenant")
Pedobaptist teach circumcision and baptism are essentially the same ordinances. But there are major differences. 1) Circumcision was administered to only male physical children, Pedobaptist baptize male & female children 2) Pedobaptist require the child to have at least 1 believing parent, Circumcision was administered to male babies if their parents were believers or not. 3) Circumcision creates physical evidence (a Mark) that stayed with the male child his whole life, Baptizing a baby is just a ceremony like the baby dedication that some churches do. 4) Circumcision was only for the Hebrews, Baptism is for believers worldwide. 5) Circumcisions' is physical, your relationship to Abraham; Baptism is spiritual; your relationship to Jesus Christ
There is agreement among most Pedobaptist and Credo Baptist (Believer Baptist) that when a person is given faith and he has not been baptized the Bible commands that person to be baptized. This is a public declaration of an inward transformation. Baptism celebrates not what the believer did, come to saving faith, but what God has done regenerated another helpless sinner, indwelling them with the Holy Spirit, creating a new creature that is equipped to honor God, adding them to the church, adopting them as a beloved child and Imputing Christ’s active obedience, Justifying them before a Holy God.
Confessing Sola Scriptura, it does not seem to bother the Pedobaptist that in the New Testament there is no express command to baptize infants and no record of any clear case of infant baptism.
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