The R.C. Sproul Chair of Theology

That's the main thing that having this title, RC Sproul Chair, means to me is remembering that call to to faithfulness and to and not just for myself, but to remind the other faculty about that. Is that a weight in a way that feels intimidating, or is it more exciting for you? I don't consider it a weight. I can, by God's grace. Remain faithful to his vision for the school, and that's what's exciting about it.

is It's an honor. It's an honor to be able to be called to to strive for my own faithfulness and to encourage others to that that faithfulness to the vision and to our biblical theology. Dr. R.C. Sproul founded Ligonier Ministries to proclaim, teach, and defend the holiness of God in all its fullness to as many people as possible.

In this effort, Dr. Sproul wrote books, recorded teaching series, hosted conferences, and broadcast shows like this one. Dr. Sprole was passionate about training faithful Christians, and he was especially passionate about bringing up the next generation in the historic truths of the Christian faith. And that is what led Dr.

Sprole to found Reformation Bible College 15 years ago. Welcome to a special episode of Renewing Your Mind. Today, we join Ligonier President Chris Larson and Reformation Bible College's newly appointed R.C. Sprole Chair of Theology, Dr. Keith Matheson, as they explore the legacy of Dr.

Sprole, Reformation Bible College, and the importance of making an investment in the next generation of Christian disciples. Reformation Bible College exists to educate students in the historic Christian faith, so that they would be equipped to know, serve, and worship God in all of life. If you'd like to learn more about RBC's on-campus and online degree programs, you can visit discover.reformationbiblecollege.org. But for now, let's listen in to Chris Larson and Dr. Matheson.

Well, Keith, congratulations! You've been appointed as the R.C. Sproul Chair of Theology at Reformation Bible College, and it comes on the occasion of also your thirtieth year of being here with us at Ligature Ministries. You were here well before I arrived, and you. Came to Christ through a Gideon's Bible.

Is that right? That's right, Chris. I um, I was in high school and there was an elderly gentleman on campus who was handing out these little pocket-sized New Testaments, little Gideon's New Testaments. And at the time, I was not a Christian, had not been raised in the church, so I took the thing. I was polite, threw it in my backpack, and took it home, threw it in my desk, and didn't really think about it.

But a few years later, about a year after Graduating high school, I just reached a low point in my life, and for whatever reason, God caused me to remember that Bible that was in that desk. I pulled it out, stayed up all night reading the thing, and it was during that night the Lord opened my eyes while reading the Gospel of John and brought me to Himself.

So it was providentially through that gentleman handing me that Gideon's New Testament. He didn't speak to us, he didn't share the gospel or anything, but. The Lord used that as a very key point in my life, and in God's providence, you raised there in Texas and end up at Dallas Seminary. Not initially; it was a winding path. Take us a little bit through that path.

Well, the first problem was I had not been raised in any church, so I didn't know where to go after becoming a Christian. The only thing I knew was there was a Christian bookstore at the mall, and so I went there and grabbed some books. They happened to be Hal Lindsey books. That could be dangerous territory. That's right, and that's what pushed me in the direction of dispensationalism.

Was reading him. I didn't know that's what it was. I was too too new at this to know that this was a distinct Theology, but it was interesting, and I think it was about a year after I was converted that I ran into two friends that I'd gone to high school with, who had also become Christians, and they invited me to their church, and so I ended up at this little rural Southern Baptist church south of Houston. And the pastor there was dispensationalist, and so for all I knew, dispensationalism was just what the Bible taught. I didn't know the name or the word, and I ended up going to what was then Houston Baptist University.

And it's now Houston Christian University, and from there transferred to Dallas Seminary, and that was the mecca of dispensationalism at the time. It wasn't the main reason I went there. Was my undergraduate college was very liberal. All almost all the professors were trying to convince us that the Bible was just a bunch of fairy tales. It was the authors at Dallas.

Those books were what were just helping me to sustain my faith in the face of all of that onslaught.

So I went to Dallas right away. And they they were teaching dispensationalism, which was what I already believed in.

So it was a winding road that got me there, but I ended up there. Yes.

So this is the early '90s at this point. This would be the fall of 1990. I graduated from college in the spring of '90, got married in the summer of '90, and moved to Dallas in the fall of '90.

So there you are, Dallas Seminary, and so eventually you find yourself in Dr. Sproul's classroom. At Reformed Theological Seminary, so what what happened? What's that sequence of events, and what unsettled you to actually dislocate you to a completely different tradition? Yeah, the first thing, I think, the thing that started the ball rolling was my very first Old Testament class.

We we had a room full of prospective pastors, men wanting to preach the word, and our Old Testament professor told us in that classroom. If you preach a sermon from the Old Testament, you should be able to preach that same exact sermon in a synagogue without raising an eyebrow. And I wasn't educated in theology. I'd been reading the Bible over and over again since becoming a Christian, but that struck me as off. There's something wrong here because I don't know a lot, but I know Paul raised eyebrows when he preached in the synagogue, and The only way I could not raise an eyebrow when preaching in the synagogue is not to mention Jesus and not to mention the gospel, and there is no way that can be right.

So that was one of the first things that got the wheels turning in my head that something might be off here. I wasn't at that point thinking dispensationalism is wrong. I was maybe this professor is just off, but that was the first in a series of things, and then. October thirty first, I looked up the dates. November first and November second of of that fall, we had at Dallas a the W.H.

Griffith Thomas Memorial Lecture Series every year. And providentially, the man who was invited to speak at Dallas in my first semester was Doctor R.C. Sprole, and he was. He was speaking on the topic that eventually became his book, "The Glory of Christ," I believe. But I think it was on the Friday evening of that week that he invited a bunch of students over to a professor's house, and I rode with one of the students.

We all got there, and Dr. Sproul was sitting at one end of the room. A bunch of students on the floor, professor standing around. It looked like photos I've seen of the Lehigh Valley Study Center days. But at some point, that in that conversation that night, somebody asked Dr.

Sproul, "What do you think of dispensationalism?" And I don't remember word for word what he said, but he said something to the effect of, "I just think it's kind of silly." And that was something that. Stuck in my mind and penetrating analysis. Yes, he didn't. He didn't go into great detail about it. Then in 1991, John Gersner, Doctor Sproles' teacher and mentor, published a book titled "Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth," and it was a critique of dispensationalism.

And somehow or another, that book wound up. Really quickly after publication, on the used book table outside the seminary, Dallas Seminary's bookstore, and I picked it up and started perusing it. Doctor Sproul wrote the foreword. That was the first time I had seen a systematic critique of dispensationalism as a system, and that raised a lot of questions in my mind. And when I went to my advisor's.

They didn't want to answer the questions, and so I started exploring the questions on my own, reading more critiques, reading responses to the critiques, and just trying to figure out what was going on. and by By the spring of my second year, I had become convinced dispensationalism just isn't biblically defensible, and had become convinced that Reformed theology, as I at least as I understood it at the time, was. Was the system of theology taught in Scripture, and I started looking for another seminary to attend, and found out where Dr. Sprole was teaching at the time, which was Reformed Seminary Orlando, and packed up our bags and moved out here. Wow!

In the summer of ninety-two, that. Early exploration and research that led you to write your first book, and so all of that was in that season.

So your your first first book was sort of a play on Gerschner's title, right? And so it was titled as Dispensationalism, Rightly Dividing the People of God? Question mark Yes. Eventually published in 1995. You know, tell us about that season writing that first book.

The encouragement, maybe, that Dr. Sproul gave to you. That well, first, I have to give credit to the publisher for coming up with that subtitle. It was I didn't have that kind of imagination, but he. When I got to Dallas, I still had a lot of friends.

I mean, when I got to Orlando, I still had a lot of friends at Dallas who thought I had apostatized from the faith, and so. That book initially started as a yellow legal pad of me writing down to my friends. Here's why I've I've gone to Reformed Theological Seminary. I've had the been become convinced of this, and so I was writing this on a legal pad, and I ended up typing it out. And when I got to Reformed Seminary, eventually I got a job in the bookstore.

The bookstore manager. Had also come out of dispensationalism, and he asked if he could read this little thing I'd written for my friends back in Dallas. He read it and he said, "You know, we ought to. We've got a printer right next to the bookstore. Why don't we have this thing comb bound, plastic comb binding, and sell it here in the bookstore?" And and he did.

He took it over there, had it photocopied and spiral bound, and and he started selling it in the bookstore. And then I heard this after the fact, but he back in the day before the computers, for the bookstore manager to order books, he had to call the publisher, and so he was. Was on the phone with PNR Publishing, speaking to their main people, and told them about this little comb bound book we were selling, and they expressed interest in reading it. And he told me, and so I sent it to them. They expressed interest in publishing it if I expanded it and fleshed it out a little bit.

And so, without me even looking to try to publish this thing, this it took on a life of its own. I don't think it ever made it to the guys at Dallas that were my friends, unless they bought the published book, because it just. It happened so quickly, but yeah. And and after I'd written the version, expanded it. That was when I asked Doctor Sproul if he would mind taking a look at it to make sure I had not said anything really stupid.

And he he read it and was very encouraging about it. Wrote a little blurb for the cover, and that. Started a long period of time of him encouraging my writing, so I was very very thankful for that. Reminds me of some of the students there in Wittenberg, seeing Luther's Ninety Five Theses, tearing it down and going and making a bunch of copies, and like it it just catches on like wildfires, just spreads. Right, people are doing things behind your back that you have no idea.

Yeah. Do you remember the first class that you were in with R.C. It was Doctrine of Christ. It was an evening class. I assume he came over from Liganiere.

At the first campus of RTS, and I remember that it was the doctrine of Christ, and I remember doing something I should not have done, which was sit on the front row. Because that intimidating. Oh, Doctor Sproul, he had a way. He wanted to teach students to think under pressure, and so one of the things he did, if you were foolish enough to sit on the front row, was he'd plant his hands right in front of you, get his face just a few inches from yours, and start grilling you. I was not prepared for that, and so I made sure from that point forward to show up early and in the back row.

Yeah, and so you you finished out your seminary studies there at RTS, and by 1996 you're on staff at Liginiere, right? And so what what was developing in your own Sense of calling before the Lord, what He was leading you to do in terms of your own ministry. One of the things I discovered while in seminary was that I was not, I didn't have the gifts to be a pastor, and that was kind of. A problem because I'd gone to seminary because my first pastor had said you need to be a pastor and I just went there to do that and but then discovered along the way from the feedback of others that that wasn't my gifting, but I'd put so much time and finances and everything else into this that I didn't want to just leave so I decided I'll finish up the degree. And then we'll pray and figure out what to do.

So I graduated from seminary. We went back to Texas for about nine months or so. I couldn't find a job and talked to some people back in Florida. Ended up driving back to Florida. Found a job that was open at Liginiere, a nighttime job for the Tape of the Month.

So I was doing phone calls, calling prospective Tape of the Month people, and did that for about four months. And then a job opened in what was then called Frontline, where we received the incoming phone calls.

So, at that time, what attracted me to Liginiere wasn't just the fact that they had a job opening, but Liginiere was doing something. And RC had always talked about this. That appealed to what I was discovering that I thought my gifts were. He always made that comment about aiming between Sunday school and seminary. He he wanted to get that deeper theology to the laity and.

That's where I felt my gifts were: taking the academic stuff, bringing it down to a level that anybody can understand, and getting that out there. And that was something that Doctor Sprole was uniquely gifted at: being able to teach those deep truths with clarity and conviction, and yeah, simple truths without being simplistic. Right, right. And isn't it just an amazing Kindness of the Lord, that that's exactly what you get to do in the college class. It's amazing.

It's it's surreal. You've been there since the very beginning of Reformation Bible College. We were working on this project. I think we were in the same conference room when RC kind of laid out the vision and. It's like, Arcee, we get one chance to do this, so let's let's go for it.

And you set to work immediately. And I know he relied on you so much in so many different projects. And we're going to get into some of those projects as well. But isn't it interesting just to think about what was happening there in the 1990s? Even referenced, you know, the the Tape of the Month program for Liginiere.

Well, that was in response to Ligier starting Renewing Your Mind on the radio, and they needed a way to pay for all this airtime for the radio program, and the nineties were such a galvanizing period for you and me, and I think.

So many others, particularly of our generation, and you go on and look at what happened in the two thousands with what's been called the young, restless, reformed movement, and the new Calvinism, and and all those other things that that. Came to the fore in public consciousness. It was really the '90s that seemed to bring so many streams together. And we're going to get into talking about Dr. Boyce and Dr.

MacArthur and Mike Corton and some other projects that were going on at that time. But isn't it just fascinating just to see the streams that led you here, and then to see now God's kindness in allowing you to. Kind of carry that vision that RC had forward for this next generation. It's it's an enormous blessing, and at the time I couldn't see two steps ahead of me, but looking backward, the providence that worked through all of that is absolutely amazing. Even when I first came back out here to Florida, the thing that's striking is the gentleman that told me he would let me and my wife stay stay in their home while I looked for an apartment.

He lives on Wayside Drive, which is where Ligener ended up being. Of all the thousands of roads in the Orlando area, that was where we ended up, right across from the cemetery down the road.

So amazing! And yes, but God's providence is just astounding, and it's is really interesting to go from seeing R.C. Sproul as a guest lecture. I'd never heard of him. To now teaching at the school he started and and being able to do such a wonderful wonderful job.

Well, on your 21 year anniversary at Liginiere, this year's your 30th. RC wrote this this letter of commendation. It's a Dr. Matheson.

He is a treasure for Reformation Bible College. Keith Matheson is a treasure for Legioner Ministries. He is a treasure for St. Andrew's Chapel. He is a treasure for the whole world.

I call him a cave man. He spends so much time in his office; it is his cave. But he is one of the most productive cave men ever. From the darkness of his cave, he sends light to the whole world. He may be a cave man, but he's our cave man.

It doesn't get any better than that. I'm grateful for your years of faithful service, Keith RC.

So why did he call you the Caveman? And I, I think I know because I remember the old Ligonier office where they had, you know, carved out a room that was big enough to really hold your library. I think that was the issue: is that you had so many books. I think it was because I spent so much time in that office; I wasn't out. Speaking or anything, I was doing writing and editing projects, and so every time Dr.

Spall came by. He'd see me in that in that room editing or writing or something like that, and started to to joke with me about being a caveman.

So it was just his sense of humor, I think. He tried to echo something from Plato. There, he might have been. Yeah, I could see that. I mean, that was how I first met you.

That was my first experience when I came in 2004, coming to see you in your office, and you were working on the release of the. Reformation Study Bible in the English Standard Version, and I just remember seeing the stack of loose leaf paper, and you're just going through page by page because you had served as associate editor of that edition back in two thousand four, two thousand five, and there you were just. Piling away at at your work, and it was amazing just to see your commitment and all you're trying to do as a writer, editor, working with Table Talk Magazine, of course at that time, and then this idea of Reformation Bible College. Really began to pick up speed there in the late two thousands, and you jumped right in. And the Lord's blessed your work there.

And it's just so fitting that you would be the torchbearer for RC's theology. One of the things that he would speak of so frequently. Was not about so much the success of the institution, but the faithfulness of the institution, and so I think that's a significant aspect of what the board has recognized here. In that you've had a sticktuitiveness, to kind of use an RCism, to be able to continue at this work in a way that is unwavering. And that's what we need.

RC was familiar with the history of Princeton. Princeton probably held the line the longest, didn't they? In terms of theological fidelity, and it was through just steady, faithful teaching, generation to generation. Second Timothy two two. And so I see just God's kindness to Reformation Bible College to all of us, and looking here that you would be here and to be able to continue in that same stream.

Of teaching, I'm very grateful for that. I remember faithfulness was the key thing he emphasized about RBC. He didn't want the college to continue if it didn't remain faithful. There's no point in it if we depart and start teaching unbiblical ideas. It was also part of why he thought in terms of controlling the size so it didn't get too big, right?

And he was trying to do that also by Helping to maintain faculty size so that you didn't proliferate faculty. Where he said sometimes you would just get these new ideas, and we appreciate the old paths approach that you take and all that you seek to do in the classroom.

Well, thank you. That's that's the main thing that having this title, R.C. Sproul Chair, means to me is remembering that. Call to to faithfulness and to and not just for myself, but to remind the other faculty about that. Is that a weight in a way that feels intimidating, or is it more exciting for you?

It's not. I don't consider it a weight. It's it's given my history and how I met Dr. Sproul. There's a surrealness to it that is kind of strange, but it it's.

It would have been a weight if I was under any delusion that I share the unique combination of gifts that Doctor Sproul had. I don't. He was very. I don't know anybody. Nobody does.

Yeah, but I, I can by God's grace. Remain faithful to his vision for the school, and that's that's what's exciting about it. Is it's an honor. It's an honor to be able to be called to to strive for my own faithfulness and to encourage others to that. That faithfulness to the vision and to our biblical theology.

Let's talk about some of what was happening there in the 1990s. Your coming of age theologically, many of us in the Gen X world were coming of age theologically, and. Just in God's timing and providence, the 90s were a prolific era for RC in terms of the books that he was producing, and we'll get into talking about the teaching series that he was producing at the same time to feed the radio engine that needed to be served. But he wrote a book on abortion in 1990, following Christ. And the hunger for significance, both in 1991, 1992, before the face of God, essential truths of the Christian faith, 93, a second volume, another tract on doubt and assurance, another monograph on the soul's quest for God, 1994, we have before the face of God three.

It's a devotional collection, Ephesians commentary. Not a chance. Which we're going to come back and talk about in a few moments. A discussion, a commentary on Romans. I was ninety-four, ninety-five.

Faith alone, the New Geneva Study Bible, over which he served as general editor, and the Mighty Christ, 1996. Before the Face of God, another collection of devotions. Choosing My Religion, the King Without a Shadow, his first children's book, The Invisible Hand.

Now that's a good question. Ultimate Issues, Explaining Inerrancy. I just the list goes on. Nineteen ninety-seven, Grace Unknown, which would become what is Reformed theology. The priest with thirty clothes, willing to believe.

If there is a God, why are they atheists? Ninety-eight, an updated edition of the Holiness of God. The Last Days According to Jesus. The Reformation Study Bible in the New King James Version. Is released, Renewing Your Mind.

Title is released, and then nineteen ninety nine, a walk with God, getting the gospel right, and in the presence of God. Devotional literature. Which of those titles jump out at you as significant and formative for your own theological growth? A lot of them, but the two that I I think stand out the most: faith alone and grace unknown. The what is Reformed theology?

Faith alone grew out of the controversy that I got to watch while I was still a seminary student with Doctor. Sproul. He he came in the bookstore while I was working there one day, and he and investor came in there, and he was angry. It was I think it was very soon after the ECT document had come out, and he was just explaining to people that were in the bookstore why this was so wrong and why he felt like he was going to have to do something, and I believe that's what. Led directly to him writing "Faith Alone." Ultimately, is the all of the controversy and heartbreak that arose out of the ECT controversy.

So, let's maybe pause there and dive a little deeper, because I think that that is one of the galvanizing moments. Not just in our life, but really for the Christian Church in the 20th century, and it certainly bled over even into the 21st century. Right.

So that moment, maybe just describe what was happening: evangelicals and Catholics together. It was a movement that Bill Bright, Chuck Colson, J.I. Packer were advocating for, and there were some on the Roman Catholic side here in the U.S. to try and and Do something ecumenical. Could you expand expand a little bit more on what they were trying to do, and maybe what kind of got RC's ire up a little bit, or a lot, a lot.

I think in the background of that was the a little bit of the culture war that was going on that that. You had evangelicals and Catholics who, for example, were opposed strongly to abortion and this cultural issue and ethical issue that needed to be addressed. And so, some of them thought, well, if we join forces, maybe we can make a stronger impact. United front, a united front against this this this ethical evil. And that seems to have been some of the background, underlying impetus for this.

And while the you know fighting against abortion was obviously a, and of course a good thing, what they ended up doing was putting together this theological document, evangelicals and Catholics together, trying to find these points of agreement. And one of the points they In the document that they said they had agreement on was the doctrine of justification, and you had this claim that both evangelicals and catholics believe in justification by faith and by grace, but they didn't really carefully define the terms, so it ended up being a very vague statement, and that's what bothered Doctor Sprole. He knew, especially with a man like. Packer, they have to understand that the Roman Catholics mean something different when they say justification. They mean something different when they say grace.

So it's not just a matter of the words, and it left a lot out. It left alone out. It left imputation out. It left a lot of key elements of the Reformed doctrine of justification out. And so, just making this blanket statement that evangelicals and Catholics both believe in justification by faith.

Is not true if you actually define the terms, and to say we agree on that, you're just you're agreeing basically on audible sounds, but not on the concepts there. And that was huge. And what Doctor Sproul talked to us about was the need to we have to define our terms. You know, Mormons will say they believe in Jesus Christ, but it's not the same Jesus. You can use the same words and mean something different.

And and so he went to great lengths and great efforts trying to convince his friends to recant of this because you don't actually agree, or just to clarify, even that, just to clarify, even clarification would have been good. But there was no clarity. It was just. Ambiguity, ambiguity, and vagueness in that document. Studied ambiguity, very studied and deliberate ambiguity, I believe, and.

So he began talking with other like-minded men, Michael Horton, David Wells, and others. Doctor MacArthur, D. James Kennedy. There was a big meeting down at Coral Ridge Church, right after the document came out, and and both sides came together trying to find some way forward. And people can look up the entire story of this, but RC tried to recount some of that in Faith Alone.

There's a saying that goes around today. On the internet, of you got to do the reading. RC did the reading. We can walk across the campus over to the library to RC's collection, and we can see where he has marked up extensively the Council of Trent, where it's dealing with justification and imputation and pronouncing an anathema. Upon the reformers, so he really understood what was at stake, and he wasn't just creating a tempest in a teapot.

Right, it was not, and he knew this is we can't compromise on this. This is a doctrine we have to draw the line on, and he was he was willing to do that at the cost of friendships. It's significant that it's called Reformation Bible College, isn't it? Is If we compromise on that, there's really no reason to remain Protestant. Honestly, if if if the gospel of justification by faith alone by grace alone is is negotiable, then what are we doing?

We're not doing anything but being schismatic. If that's the case, and I think he understood that is what Paul said in Galatians one. This is This is not negotiable. Even if an angel preaches a different gospel, that's anathema.

So we can't do that. I think of so much of what we try and do, and what we loved about our C is that he would actually help us to remember the things that we should never have forgotten in the first place. I remember speaking to the Reformation Bible College students in chapel. I'm not a preacher, but I was giving a message, and I was thinking about this ECT moment back in 1994, and just thinking, do they know? Do they know what?

What happened? Do they know the cost? I mean, R.C. lost friendships. Ligener lost support because of this stance that R.C.

took to try and clarify. And R.C. thought a lot about Luther's hymn. He said, "Let goods and kindred go. This mortal life also." He understood that we could not compromise, and so I was just trying to just.

You know, create more form for you and the classroom, as if you need it, just to continue to have that conversation with the students, so that this is a living memory. And we have to talk about this because this is our family history. You know how families get together, and they they like to tell old stories. We got to tell old stories so that we don't forget, and that's why we have these stories. And that's that's this link to what was happening and why, again, and God's timing and providence.

The '90s were so galvanizing, I believe, for those of us who would call ourselves in that stream of the Reformation.

So faith alone, where RC tried to lay out a positive case for for this argument, I've heard from other teachers, preachers, prominent ones today, that that book was really what helped to cement their faith and strengthen their faith in the Lord and His Word and in the doctrine of salvation. It's amazing how the Lord used that. And that the other thing I think that book is a helpful reminder of is. I think people can get it in their minds. We've settled this issue, and we can move on.

And this one's safe. We can deal with this now and set that on the back burner. But enemies of the gospel don't rest. The enemy doesn't rest, and and this continues to be an issue. Attacks on the doctrine of justification.

In the '90s, in the 2000s, in the 2010s, today, and prior to the '90s, it's an ongoing thing. But the '90s really kind of brought this to a head within evangelical circles. Those who thought, you know, maybe we've got this one down. We're evangelicals. We're about the gospel, but we can't even state this clearly without ambiguity and vagueness.

And Dr. Sproul said, "Nope." We can't compromise on this. We need to be crystal clear on this. This is a matter of life and death, eternal life and death. It's exactly right.

He would frequently speak of even teaching at the seminary level, and he would ask people to define the gospel, and just the abysmal responses that he would get, and just. That galvanized him to continue to make sure that people get this. He would use a phrase. He would say, "We got to get it into our bloodstream, right? We have to get the truth into our bloodstream, and you have to continue to help students to understand the attacks that are going to come because the serpent is crafty." And you see the way that the internet came along, and and this doctrine of justification started to be bantered about again with the new perspective on Paul.

And so here again, it starts to show up again in the late nineties, early two thousands as well. Right.

The that's the other main thing that changed in the nineties for all of us who lived on both side of the nineties. The advent of the internet is. Has really impacted a lot of these these issues that might have been a little more containable, if if that's the correct way to look at this. But with the advent of the internet and everybody having access to to being able to publish whatever they want and read all this, there's some good and bad to that, of course. But certain controversies that With faith alone and ECT, might not have been known to everybody.

That's not the case anymore. After the internet, now controversy happens and it blows up and goes around the world in ten seconds.

So, the the new perspective, other other. A tax on justification. Even the Manhattan Declaration comes out later in the 2000s. Right, and here we go again. Is ECT part two or three?

I don't. I can't keep track. I don't even know how many ECT documents have come out by now. But it's just one after the other, and we have to be continually vigilant to maintain that no compromise stand on on that that crucial doctrine. Yeah.

And R.C. picked his battles, didn't he? He wasn't out there looking for every little skirmish. Say a little bit more just about his way of doing theology that helped him to kind of choose wisely in terms of what he would engage in. And he would, in one sense, major on the majors, even though he would get into some finer points of theology here and there.

Right.

And I think that that phrase is probably the best way to describe it: majoring on the majors. He he majored. On the fundamental doctrines, the doctrine of Christ, the person of Christ, the the Trinity, the the the gospel, the things without which you don't have a Christian religion, the doctrine of Scripture inerrancy. We don't have any source for our theology if we don't have a an inerrant Bible. And so these things that were foundational, he he picked those.

This is where we cannot. Fudge, and we cannot draw lines in the. I mean, we have to draw line in sand and not compromise. Other things, secondary and tertiary issues, we can discuss those. We can debate those.

They're not insignificant or unimportant.

Well, and you actually see that in his friendship with Dr. MacArthur, right? It was just so beautiful to see these these titans to have such a endearing friendship that we all stood back and were helped by because they they had a strong conviction about certain points of doctrine that differed from one another, and yet. They could have conversations and have a strong friendship because they had that ultimate standard, didn't they? Right.

They. I think I don't remember what year it was, but at one of the conferences, I believe they had a baptism debate and a doctrine about which everybody came away thinking that their side won. Yeah, that's usually what happens in those kind of debates. People hear what they want to hear. It seems like, but the.

They they debated that each took a very strong stand, but then they go out to dinner afterwards and have a have a good conversation. We that was helpful for me because in the nineties I'm young, I'm in my twenties, and when you're in your twenties and you you convert to Reformed theology, you go through what Doctor Horton has called that cage stage Calvinist, where it's safer for everybody if you're just put aside because you just want to fight with everybody about every. Yeah, go have a glass of lemonade and just chill out a little bit. But that was something that impressed me greatly about Doctor Sproul was he he he wanted to focus primarily on those issues that were of fundamental importance: Scripture, God, the Gospel, the Lord Jesus Christ. If we have that as a foundation, then we can work out our family squabbles.

But if we undermine that, we burn the house down. If if you throw out the gospel, the debate over baptism is irrelevant. If if we don't have inerrancy, if we don't have the Trinity, if we don't have justification or the deity of Christ, then debates about the millennium and things like that are really kind of irrelevant. You talked about the internet, and then just extrapolate that now to social media, and you're talking about people just having flame wars, and I mean the. Being able to detect signal from the noise today, and all the banter that's happening online, you really needed the that spirit of friendship to be able to to bridge the moments of disagreement.

But today, it just seems like everybody just devolves into their own angry tribe. And and some make you know very good points, but it seems like we're just talking past each other, and everybody's kind of posting for the the roar of the crowd for their own applause. I think so, and I I believe this is it's one of the social media has some benefits, but this is one of the downsides with the internet and social media is is that phenomenon and. It's one of the things I've tried to emphasize to my students in the classroom: is that if a lot of people that are doing this, seeking to glorify themselves, look at what a great internet debater I am, and and just ignoring the damage they might be doing to to the sheep, Christ, sheep who come in and witness these things, they're missing a very valuable. Element of traditional reform theology.

If you go back and read those early reform theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, they they understood the connection between. The head and the heart and the hands— to use Calvin's metaphors—to understand the relationship between theology and godliness. That the character of the theologian is as important as the content of the theology. If if you're not growing in your sanctification, then you haven't really understood the theology. You say you're.

Fighting for, many of them bounced off of Titus one with the truth which accords with godliness phrase, and that was something I believe also that R.C. emphasized that theology isn't just this academic game that is being played in journals. It involves real Christians and with real issues in real flesh and blood churches, and that we need to. Do our theology with the understanding that this needs to not just puff us up and make us arrogant, but has to get from our head to our heart, to where we meditate on the word, and then it has to get to our hands—doxology, praise of God, service to the church, proclamation of the gospel—and and it. The internet seems to dehumanize, depersonalize theology in some ways, where it just becomes a kind of a gnostic matter of knowledge, and the knowledge is necessary.

We're not anti-intellectual, but it's it's also a lived in the church doctrine and. That was made really, very clear as we sat under the preaching of Doctor Sprole in St. Andrews. He, he was taking this theology into the pews and delivering it to the pews.

So that's been a huge influence on on me as well, watching how he did that. And he came to that somewhat later in his own ministry in the local church, and he reflected on the fact that he. He wished he had gotten to it sooner. He found it so rewarding to preach to the same congregation week in and week out. And I don't know about you, but I was, I was struck by the urgency that he would make in his gospel appeals to the congregation in the years leading up to his death.

It just seemed that he had this pressing desire to ensure that those who were there. Heard the gospel and would respond to the gospel positively, and that they wouldn't just walk away. And it was even his last message, his last sermon. I remember it like it was yesterday. You know, we've got a little pamphlet on it, and it was an appeal to flee to Christ and away from the destruction and the and and hell.

What awaits sinners who do not repent for their sins? It was applied theology, wasn't it? Absolutely, it's not abstract. I think that that might be something that happens to all of us as we're getting older, as we realize you know we're we're reaching the end of our earthly pilgrimage. What's most important?

I think the gospel was always most important to Doctor Sprole, but in those last few years. It it became very evident. It was all. It was always evident, but it became very evident if you sat under his preaching that he that was something that was just a passion in his preaching. It was amazing to see.

So, going back to our timeline for the '90s here, I've read all the different titles we mentioned. Faith alone.

So ECT is 1994, same year that Renewing Your Mind starts broadcasting. Archie's writing the Reformation Study Bible, originally published as the New Geneva Study Bible, would come out in 1995.

So he's busy with with a lot of that, and then his friend. Dr. James Montgomery Boyce would gather together a group in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the formulation of what would become known as the Cambridge Declaration. Just recently, I was I was chatting with Senator Ben Sasse, who actually was working with Dr. Boyce at the time to help behind the scenes to organize this meeting.

And this year is the 30th anniversary of the Cambridge Declaration, and one of the things. That Dr. Boyce had said about the battle of inerrancy is that the battle had moved on. Of course, he was right there at the battle for inerrancy with R.C. and many others.

Moved on to the issue of is is the scripture sufficient? Are the scriptures sufficient? One of the things he had said is that we've moved on in one sense to a different battle today, from inerrancy to a question of the sufficiency of the scriptures, and they were drawing a lot on the work of David Wells and his his monograph No Place for Truth, which really set the evangelical world kind of on the edge of their seat. And trying to point out that the doctrine of God rests in a in a very weightless way upon the church today, and so you started to see all these methodological innovations in the seeker-sensitive movement and the attractional church and and different church philosophies that were out there. And one of the things that Dr.

Boyce was concerned to do is to have a unified statement to say, why are we running to other methods? The scriptures are sufficient. Reflect on the Cambridge Declaration. You know, thirty years on now, and I read it again recently, and it just seems like it's it's a track for our times, Stephen. Today, I also I've I reread it recently.

I've read it every couple of years. The the discussion of the five solas are so central, and. That was another key moment with the with the secret sensitive movement that you mentioned going on. Churches had had. Lost the the concept of the sufficiency of Scripture.

You know, is very well laid out in the Westminster Confession of Faith. All you know, everything that's just necessary for our faith and our life, either expressly set down in Scripture or by good and necessary consequence, can be deduced from Scripture. Scripture sufficient for our Christian faith and life. And and many churches forgot that apparently, or at least functionally, and started looking. To the culture, to consumerist ideas and marketing ideas from Madison Avenue on how best to sell their services to to unbelievers, and it kind of flips things upside down.

You started to look at if you're if you're basing what you do in church and your worship on what unbelievers want rather than what Scripture dictates, you've got a serious problem because unbelievers don't want The truth—they're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. They—they want to be entertained. They want to be coddled. They don't want to hear the hard truths of the law and and and then the the stumbling block of the gospel. They—they want anything else than that.

And so, I think voice was right on that. the The issue of sufficiency had been a problem with Rome. But we transposed that issue into a similar problem. We're not looking to. We're not saying scriptures insufficient.

We need to supplement it with tradition. We're acting like scripture is insufficient. We need to supplement it with modern cultural ideas, and that led to. the The mess we saw with the seeker sensitive worship services with it was a Broadway show. It was just entertainment.

It wasn't gospel. Yeah, and and that's where you have the even even the two thousands the the pastor just sitting up there with his coffee, chatting with you, yeah, with no sense of thus says the Lord, no sense of gravitas, no sense of the the weight. The weightiness of the doctrine of God and of sin and of the you know the holiness of God of sin and of the gospel it it just became a TED talk kind of thing little anachronistic but it was that kind of a thing and I think even today we always face that temptation to not think the scriptures are sufficient you know the seeker sensitive church. Let the culture dictate the the the concepts, the categories, the debates, and we just kind of assumed that. And I think that still happens today.

Where I mean, you can name just about any question that has popped up, any major controversial issue that has popped up. And ask: Do Christians, when these new ethical issues or new whatever issues and questions pop up, is our first inclination to go search the Scriptures prayerfully to try to find how should I respond to this, or is the first inclination I'm going to go see what my favorite YouTuber says about this, or my favorite pundit on in in the media says about this? And when we do that, I think that's another way of kind of setting the sufficiency doctrine to the side. When we let the culture dictate the categories, dictate the terms of the debate, dictate all the categories, dictate everything, and our first gut reaction is to go to the cultural influencers rather than the Word of God. Why not go to the Word of God first?

As we're seeking to answer the questions, may not be specifically addressed because they're new things, new scientific questions, medical ethics, and so forth, gender issues, all that kind of thing. But the basic principles are in Scripture from which we can develop the wisdom to respond to to newer. Newer questions, which is meaningful for our series emphasis on creating faithful study notes to go along with the scripture, so that lay people can just have a reliable companion as they are studying the scriptures. Right.

We, the Bible, very only in a very limited way, for example, would address the question is. If somebody's saying, "What about partial birth abortion, or should we allow abortion before this trimester or that trimester?" The Bible doesn't address trimesters, but it does address what human beings are—they're created in the image of God. It addresses that it is one of the top ten: "Thou shalt commit murder." Starting from there, then we can work forward from that. Is are we talking about a human being or not? With abortion, is are we taking the life of an innocent human being, or are we not?

But we start with the biblical principles, God and His law, and His what He determines is good and evil, rather than letting the the culture dictate those issues.

So, even if Scripture doesn't have a verse on trimesters, we have the starting point to be able to deal with that. That question and every other kind of question. What you are doing right now is what I've heard Doctor Sinclair Ferguson speak of as reasoning from first principles, and of course the the catechism is so helpful for giving us those first principles to be able to give us the the doctrinal Velcro to be able to attach our understanding of. God and His Word, and then how we're to live in the world, and that He has not left us adrift. And I guess that's another thing too about your work with this next generation in the classroom.

Do you find that it's a lot of what you're trying to do is give them confidence in the Word? I think so. I believe most of the students we have coming in here, the vast majority of them, have a strong belief in the authority of of scripture, but I it. I think they feel overwhelmed. There is such with social media, and this generation that's coming into RBC in these semesters—they've grown up with the phone in their hand.

They've grown up with social media and the internet, so it's all they've known. And it's just this flood of notifications of stuff in your news feed, and you wake up in the first thing in the morning, you're just scrolling through every horrific thing that's happened in the world. I think there the there's an anxiety there because of just this nonstop flood of information, and they need to be. We need to remind them that that idea you have of the authority of the Word of God—that's your anchor point in all of this. God is.

Stable. Everything else may be fluctuating and flying around, and people debating about the very nature of reality and and saying things that are bordering on insanity constantly. You've got a stable anchor point there, a stone in the middle of this storm that's constantly around you, and you you're going to have to learn how to to depend on that because. You know, unless the Lord returns, this is t here is no signs that this is going to stop anytime soon.

So, you know, Lord willing, we may as the gospel goes forth, people are converted, but the enemy just gets more and more violent in the attacks, and he's seeking to sow confusion.

So, we have to have that. Confidence in the authority of the Word of God, and in the goodness of God—that He's sovereign over all this. It's not just arbitrary, crazy chaos. He's in control. He's He's He's not worried.

Out of everything that RC is producing there in the '90s, both the the teaching series, Dust to Glory, Consequences of Ideas, Defending Your Faith, many, many more recordings that he would do. He's still teaching. He's involved in these other conversations. He's got the Study Bible Project, the radio program. Of all the different titles that he develops there in the nineties, there's this one that that stands out.

It looks like almost a side quest for him. This book, not a chance. Maybe just tell folks about how that came to be. It really is a remarkable genesis of that story. And then it's something that you yourself picked up as a great area of concern and and development.

I don't. I don't really know all the details of how the origin of the book came about, but the the basic idea I know there's he had had discussions with Carl Sagan. There's this correspondence with Carl Sagan. Yeah, I've seen the letters. Yeah, it's yeah that I remember.

And if that was the the origin story for this book, it's quite fascinating. He's he's having this discussion with this atheistic, materialist scientist and. the the the point of this book was you have so many people constantly saying something is caused by chance you know this just is just happening by chance and the the simple point he's trying to make in the book is that that's just nonsense chance doesn't do anything it's not an entity it's not a being it's it's it's really a mathematical way of describing probability but it's not.

Something that has causal power, and I've I've always found the discussions he had about science fascinating because he would always hone in on the most important ideas on that, and and to me that book. It's it's not only brilliant in terms of just annihilating this nonsensical idea that passes as as brilliant wisdom in some circles, but I when I read it, I see that twinkle in his eye. Like he was a passion, yeah. There was a zeal. You can see it on the page.

Yeah, he knows this idea is absurd, but he knows a lot of people have bought into it. He's just like this is this is.

So nonsensical. Let me just show you. Yeah, is the philosopher in him coming out? Wasn't it? Yeah.

And you you you picked this up and developed a short little ebook that we published on a reformed approach to science and scripture, and then later. Published an updated version of Not a Chance alongside of RC and contributing to that.

So this is an area where you're trying to show that the scriptures do speak to the questions of our day. Right.

the The scriptures speak to issues related to science, just like everything else, and. Dr. Sproul again. This was majoring on the majors. He was focused on the the main points here of well, in terms of the worldly philosophy.

There's no such thing as an entity called chance, but also on the importance of God's general revelation and the reliability of our senses that God created us. In a way that's fitting to the world he created, we can interact with this world and not get killed in five seconds because we can see and hear and taste and touch and smell. But the these ideas of general revelation and had been downplayed a lot in the late 19th and early 20th century, and so he's bringing back this this important understanding of general revelation. And that's what I picked up on in the little ebook. It grew out of a Q and A session that happened at one of the conferences, and I've just found his approach to that to be extraordinarily helpful.

Part of our mission is to help the church to guard against pragmatism, because RC would point out that we tend to just follow what works. That's our human nature, but we have to act with principle. And one of his concerns is that the church would be more concerned with what works rather than what Scripture commands. Why did he see that as such a critical issue? And what do we need to do in communicating that to the next generation?

Right, because sometimes. What works is completely unethical and ungodly. Speaking of technology, one one of the things many students and writers are doing today is asking AI programs to write their papers for them, and they submit those to to classes. That Can work. I've read a number of stories of students graduating, and then they'll notify their professors after they've received their diploma.

Gotcha. I did most of this work by asking. An AI program to do this. I don't know why anybody would be proud of that and and brag about it. All you've confessed to is being deceitful and not wanting to learn, which defeats the whole point of of education.

And my students could do that. I could easily be fooled by an AI generated paper, and so it could work in the sense of getting a good grade, but it doesn't. It doesn't work in the sense of you growing in your godliness and in your sanctification. If if we do something that works that is against God's law, then that's just is and there's no way around that.

So pragmatism, since since what works can be something sinful and evil, that can't be the starting point. We have to start with the principle of God's definition of good and evil. And avoid the evil, even if the evil works in a in a limited sense. Yeah, truth matters ultimately. Absolutely, you've mentioned faith alone and grace unknown, which became what is Reformed theology two significant books for my own theological development, and I think many others.

So, what about what is Reformed theology or grace unknown, as it was originally titled? Struck you? That one struck me because I read it while it's still relatively new to reform theology. I'd come out of that dispensational background that we didn't study church history a lot or early church theology. There's people in that circle, at least the way I was.

I just assumed what I was being taught was what. Jesus and the apostles taught, and everybody in between. It didn't occur to me that this was really a 19th century theological development. Reading, so when I read what is Reformed theology, one of the chapters that struck me the most and was the most Is most unsettling initially, but the most helpful ultimately was when he he had the section on reform theology as Catholic, because in my background. Catholic meant Roman Catholic.

Yeah, he stood up. What is that? What in the world are you talking about here?

So the the flags went up, the red lights went on, and how how can you be saying this? Because I had heard him quite often criticize Roman Catholicism.

So what do you mean? And as as a budding theologian, I'm reading it.

Okay. He defines his terms: Catholic, universal, ecumenical. It's, it's the church around the world and throughout time. It's not Roman Catholic. And then reading that section of that chapter where he's showing the connections and continuity of the theology of the early and medieval church through the Reformation and pointing out the fact that the Reformation.

Isn't just this completely new thing that dropped out of the sky one Wednesday afternoon? It has precedents. It has continuity with the early and medieval church. was was mind blowing to me, and in some ways, and it really sparked my interest in studying the early and medieval church even more. And so.

I to this day I have a love for studying the theology of the early medieval church and and not just the Reformation and that book was one of the catalysts for that. Isn't it odd that you even see some out there on the internet today trying to make the case that the Reformation was this aberration and that what we have to do is we've got to retrieve and get back to the early church, but the reformers understood what they were doing as a continuation. Of the early church, right? If you go online and if you if you listen to enough Roman Catholic apologists, they will try to convince you of this statement that John Henry Newman had said: "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant." And that's just not the case. They bring several assumptions into that whole argument.

They don't share those assumptions with Protestants who are listening to them. But once you start to watch the game they're playing, they're redefining a lot of. Of terms, like for example, they'll always say, "Go, just go read the early church fathers." But that means to them, that means the second and third century authors. That's not the earliest church fathers. The earliest church fathers are the writers of the Old and New Testaments.

You know, Jesus and the apostles. Jesus is the cornerstone. The apostles are the foundation. They're the earliest church fathers. They're the standard by which we measure the second and third century, not the other way around.

But they get this—they get this idea into your head that you need to measure everything by what a second-century author wrote. And they're bringing this assumption that if somebody wrote something in the second century, it must be absolutely pure, just by proximity, because they were closer. Yeah. Well, go read the letters Paul was writing while the apostles were still alive. There's.

Crazy stuff going on there. We talked about Galatians. You've got people denying the gospel. Responding to all these aberrations. John's responding to people he's calling antichrist.

The seven letters to the churches of Revelation. There's all kinds of nonsense going on.

So early doesn't necessarily mean pure. The the pure is the inerrant writings of the scriptures, and they are the standard by which false gospels, false doctrines of God, the writings. From the second all the way up to now century are measured, and Roman Catholic apologists have become very clever at getting people flipped around on their head with this. And it's it's important that students be aware of that, and that students be aware that the Roman Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation was something that really only began to look like that between the ninth and the twelfth centuries. There's nothing that looks like that in the earlier churches.

It was a slowly developing thing, and a lot of it had to do with political issues and tumultuous wars and all kinds of things. But it it wasn't. It's not something you find in the first century, or even in the second century. And many of the things RC would point out that people see in the Roman Catholic Church today were actually fairly recent interventions. Yeah.

What would you say to a young person today who you know is they're confused and they're they're hearing all these different competing truth claims between the Roman Catholic tradition, Eastern Orthodox tradition? What would you say to them? They need to. First of all, come to a real understanding of what it is Rome is claiming. It's really easy to get distracted by all these side issues, and and you need to understand what Rome is claiming in particular about the church and this claim, basically to be infallible—that you have an infallible magisterium under certain circumstances and an infallible pope.

If that claim is true, all the other questions are settled, and that we all need to go back and submit to the Pope.

So that, first of all, you need to hone in on the core question and not be distracted by all the side questions. And and then, second, is there any good reason to accept that claim? If I walk into a classroom or anywhere else and claim to be infallible, or if you walk around and hear anybody claiming to be infallible, Jim Jones or some Cult leader or anybody claiming to be infallible, you don't just automatically say, "Oh, okay, I'll follow you." They need to have good reasons for you to believe they're infallible.

Now, Scripture claims to be infallible, but that's God speaking. We have good reasons to believe that when God speaks, it's infallible and inerrant.

So when when the Roman Church claims this kind of infallibility, All right. Is there any good reason for me to believe that? And when that's when you go back and you look through the history of the contradictions, the frauds, the forgeries, the the numerous things that are going on there, there is zero reason to believe that this is an infallible institution, and which means their main claim is is wrong.

So I would. I would have them a young person first of all. The other thing with this is going back to what I said about being cage stage. Young, I don't know whether it's because of the age and maybe you know twenty year olds males just are full of a desire to fight. But the internet gives everybody the opportunity to jump in and argue with everybody, and young young Christian theologians.

Young Christians sometimes want to get in on that fight before they're ready, and that's kind of like being a white belt and jumping into the octagon with a professional fighter. You're going to get your head kicked off if you've not trained and prepared. And that's a lot of what RBC is doing is we're trying to prepare you. It's boot camp. You don't go into the ring when you've just all you've bought is your boxer shorts.

You're going to get knocked out. And those Roman Catholic apologists, many of them are PhDs in philosophy. They know how to fight. They're wordsmiths. They know how.

Yes, they're wordsmiths, and they're very clever. And they probably know your arguments better than you do if you're just starting.

So. Step back and wait. Take a deep breath and take the time to learn your own theology and to learn what it is they're actually claiming and to learn why those claims are really not supported. Yeah. So encouraging to hear.

Just again, so glad that you're the one in the classroom with your with your faculty friends, trying to help equip this next generation. Going back and thinking of just God's bringing together so many streams of activity. It is remarkable when I look at the 1990s and all the different aspects of leading your ministries in those days. How many things are continuing even today and are really the pillars of outreach? With the Renewing Your Mind radio broadcast, Table Talk magazine, kind of coming into its own in its format, the Reformation Study Bible, Reformation Bible College.

Even that idea started to, I think, formulate, and RC was sort of itching to go. Go back to the Liginiere Valley Study Center days with that life-on-life discipleship. The advent of the internet too, and RC, he loved to use technology and to be able to get the message out there. Did it feel like RC was intentionally building something for future generations? I mean, you were sort of thrown into the mix while all this activity was going on.

Does he have this long-term vision? I think so. I jumped onto a train that was moving 100 miles an hour. Yeah. And it did feel very intentional.

I wasn't involved in all the discussions behind the scenes, but watching one new initiative after another be brought to to life, he he had when he had a vision, we go for it, we make it happen. And there were he was having a lot of good ideas at that time, not only all the book ideas, but those long overview series, dust to glory, and consequences of ideas, and so forth, and. the the Bible idea the the study Bible the it was just the radio one thing after another so it it was a little bit overwhelming because I was at that time answering the phone so people were asking all kinds of questions about all these new things do you remember do you remember a particular moment where somebody calls in I remember a lot of the phone calls, but mostly the encouraging ones stand out. But people would buy these Bibles, they would buy these series, and they would call us sometimes in tears, you know, because they had finally they they might be going to a church that doesn't faithfully preach the Word, and they're maybe a hundred miles from a good church. And people would call in in just in tears.

They would have read something in Table Talk. They would have heard something. Renewing Your Mind, they would have heard something in Dust to Glory or read something in in the notes of the the study Bible. Those were the things that were encouraging me, encouraging to me. It can be tiring to talk on the phone for eight hours, but when people are calling in and they are just overwhelmed with joy and gratitude about what you're doing, I can do this all day.

It is amazing. We get those testimonies every single day. They're such a blessing. Yeah, and and it's really God doing the work, isn't it? It's doing the work through the Word.

And that's the other thing about RC is that he put his confidence in a sovereign God, who does His work through His Word, and he didn't try to innovate or do anything. Really, all that original. It was just a plain teacher of God's Word and. Knowing that God is going to bless His Word for His own sovereign purposes, right? And that's the thing that I that encourages me.

One of the there's many things that encourage me, but one of the things all that you talked about that stack of paper when we were working on the study Bible, that was tedious work. It was fun, but it was very long. It took a long time. It was very tedious. When I see these photos of Of these Reformation study Bibles being handed handed out to these pastors in Africa and South America and so forth, I'm so thankful to have had a little small part in that because God is using that to change their lives and through them to work in the lives of.

Who knows how many people? It's like we don't have any idea. We won't know until the last day some of these stories, most of these stories. But it's little things like that, something that we're doing on a daily basis that feels like I don't know if I can look at another page of this, but it has that eternal impact. It's like that Gideon's Bible.

That guy, he doesn't know me, but I can't wait to tell him thank you. Many people may only know Reformation Bible College by name. If they were to visit the campus and they were walking around with you, what would it be that you would hope that they could experience? Not just in the classrooms, but in sort of this special community that's developed here. I'd want them to meet the students.

We have such an incredible group of students, and is why I am so looking forward to next week and being back in the classroom again. All of these students come from different backgrounds and have different stories, but talking with them, it's really easy in today's world. People hear about Generation Z, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha, and it's this cynical, disconnected people, and and you can get if if that's all you hear is the bad thing about Gen Z and Gen Alpha, it can be very discouraging. Come talk to our students. These are Gen Z kids, Gen I think coming up into Gen Alpha kids pretty soon, that are passionate about the Lord Jesus Christ and about sharing the gospel and about serving His people and spreading the gospel.

These kids go in groups to the beach, to downtown Sanford, to the abortion. Clinic and share the gospel face to face with people there, that energizes me.

So anybody who came to this campus, I'd take them to talk to the students. RBC is in its second decade now. When you think of Legionnaires' reach that the Lord has allowed, what gives you the greatest confidence that the work that Dr. RC Sprole began years ago will continue for decades to come? My colleagues, you know, looking the faithfulness of God and the faithfulness of my colleagues.

When I talk to you know the younger people that are working at Liganiere now, the twenty-somethings, some RBC grads working at Liganiere, and hearing them have the same passion and vision that R.C. Brol had for this ministry, remaining faithful and continuing to do. Then that that gives me a lot of hope and confidence that when I'm gone and this ministry is in the hands of that generation, it will continue to remain faithful.

So. The young people around here at RBC and on the staff at Liganiere give me a lot of hope and confidence that the Lord is going to continue to do this work through this ministry Dr. Sproul started.

Well, we give thanks to God for His grace in allowing you to serve here, and we pray that you would be blessed to have a great ministry for many years to come with these students and then all the other things that you contribute to.

So, thank you, Keith, for this conversation. Thank you, Chris. What a legacy Dr. Sproul has left behind, and what a comfort to know that it is in such good hands. Dr.

Sproul often said that in every generation, the truth of the gospel must be proclaimed with the same boldness, clarity, and urgency as in the 16th-century Reformation. Ligonier Ministries has been carrying that torch for more than fifty years, but, as Chris Larson and Dr. Matheson said, it is vital to make sure we're appropriately passing that torch to the next generation. And that's exactly what Reformation Bible College has been striving to do for 15 years. At RBC, students are immersed in a tight-knit community of learners, where they study God's Word alongside close friends and learn from faculty who model theological truth both in and out of the classroom.

I've had the opportunity to know many of RBC's professors personally, and can attest to their kindness, humor, and Christlikeness. It is truly a one of a kind school with one of a kind students and one of a kind teachers. RBC offers on campus and online degree options.

So, please visit discover.reformationbiblecollege.org today to learn how RBC can help you or your student lay a biblical foundation for wherever God calls you.

Next week, we join Doctor W. Robert Godfrey in his series, "The Necessity of Reforming the Church." That will be Monday here, on Renewing Your Mind.